Table of Contents

Blood Run Cold – 0.0
Brochure, ‘Experience Kennet’
Lost for Words – 1.1
Lost for Words – 1.2
[1.2 Spoilers] Notes on Others
Lost for Words – 1.3
Lost for Words – 1.4
[1.4 Spoilers] Notes on Practices #1
Lost for Words – 1.5
Lost for Words – 1.6
[1.6 Spoilers] Flyer & App
Lost for Words – 1.7
Lost for Words – 1.8
[1.8 Spoilers] Inventories
Lost for Words – 1.z
Stolen Away – 2.1
[2.1 Spoilers] Interview Notes I
Stolen Away – 2.2
Stolen Away – 2.3
[2.3 Spoilers] Spell Notes #2
Stolen Away – 2.4
Stolen Away – 2.5
[2.5 Spoilers] Gifts Collected
Stolen Away – 2.6
Stolen Away – 2.7
[2.7 Spoilers] Location Diary
Stolen Away – 2.8
Stolen Away – 2.9
[2.9 Spoilers] – End of the Trail
Stolen Away – 2.z
Out on a Limb – 3.1
[3.1 Spoilers] Interview Notes 2
Out on a Limb – 3.2
Out on a Limb – 3.3
[3.3 Spoilers] – Timelines
Out on a Limb – 3.4
Out on a Limb – 3.5
[3.5 Spoilers] Gifts Received
Out on a Limb – 3.6
Out on a Limb – 3.7
[3.7 Spoilers] Confiscated Items
Out on a Limb – 3.8
Out on a Limb – 3.9
[3.9 Spoilers] SunnyDay Logs
Out on a Limb – 3.z
Leaving a Mark – 4.1
[4.1 Spoilers] BHI Information Packet
Leaving a Mark – 4.2
Leaving a Mark – 4.3
[4.3 Spoilers] Packing Up
Leaving a Mark – 4.4
Leaving a Mark – 4.5
[4.5 Spoilers] Bedtime Reading
Leaving a Mark – 4.6
Leaving a Mark – 4.7
[4.7 Spoilers] Student Guide
Leaving a Mark – 4.x
Leaving a Mark – 4.8
[4.8 Spoilers] Dossiers
Leaving a Mark – 4.9
Leaving a Mark – 4.10
[4.10 Spoilers] Spell Notes #3
Back Away – 5.a
Back Away – 5.b
[5.b Spoilers] Phone Conversations
Back Away – 5.1
Back Away – 5.2
[5.2 Spoilers] Faerie Courts & Goblins
Back Away – 5.3
Back Away – 5.4
[5.4 Spoilers] Outgoing Call
Back Away – 5.c
Back Away – 5.5
[5.5 Spoilers] Kennet Newsletter
Back Away – 5.d
Cutting Class – 6.1
[6.1 Spoilers] Famulus Text
Cutting Class – 6.2
Cutting Class – 6.3
[6.3 Spoilers] Implementum Text
Cutting Class – 6.4
Cutting Class – 6.5
[6.5 Spoilers] Demesnes Text
Cutting Class – 6.6
Cutting Class – 6.7
Cutting Class – 6.8
Cutting Class – 6.9
[6.9 Spoilers] Binding & Countermeasures
Cutting Class – 6.z
Gone Ahead – 7.1
Gone Ahead – 7.2
Gone Ahead – 7.3
[7.3 Spoilers] – Borrowed Eyes Comic
Gone Ahead – 7.4
Gone Ahead – 7.5
Gone Ahead – 7.6
Gone Ahead – 7.a
Gone Ahead – 7.7
Gone Ahead – 7.8
[7.8 Spoilers] Can We Talk About The Girls?
Gone Ahead – 7.9
Gone Ahead – 7.x
Vanishing Points – 8.1
Vanishing Points – 8.2
[8.2 Spoilers] Soul & Self
Vanishing Points – 8.3
Vanishing Points – 8.4
Vanishing Points – 8.5
Vanishing Points – 8.a
[8.a Spoilers] New Other Correspondence #1
Vanishing Points – 8.6
Vanishing Points – 8.7
[8.7 Spoilers] New Other Correspondence #2
Vanishing Points – 8.8
Shaking Hands – 9.1
Shaking Hands – 9.2

Blood Run Cold – 0.0

Prologue

Louise’s eyes welled with moisture as an animal cry shook her house, and she found herself shivering as it died away.  She shivered in a very different way when she wiped at one eye and her fingertips came away crimson with blood.

It’s the hallucinations, she told herself.  She winced and held a hand to her lower back as she rose to a standing position, blinking the blood out of her eyes.  Has to be.

Again, the cry echoed through the town of Kennet, not a dog, not a wolf, nor coyote.  It echoed as though it came from far away, bouncing off of the nearby mountains, but it had a volume better suiting something just outside of Louise’s home.

The doctors said I might see or hear things, she reminded herself.  When the body’s in rough enough shape, the brain starts to go too.

It was a strange mix of emotions, feeling her heart race at the same time she felt at peace.  She had been bracing herself for this since months ago.

She hobbled over to her kitchen, found her pills, and checked that the compartmentalized box with sections for each day of the week was in order.  She hadn’t taken too many or done something wrong.

Disappointing.  It would have been nice to have a simple, tidy explanation.

Thirty-five and having to double check my medications in the same way a woman twice my age might.  

Her thoughts were disturbed by bloody tears dripping down onto the plastic pill separator and her kitchen counter.  She tore off a paper towel from the roll and wiped it, and saw the blood streak, bleeding into the paper.

Too real.  She would have expected things to add up less if this was fake, for the paper towel to wipe away the blood and then to have nothing on it, or for it to turn into something else.  The only weirdness was that her eyes didn’t really sting enough.  Shouldn’t blood in the eyes sting?

It was disconcerting, doubts bouncing around in her head at the same time she was calm and prepared for the worst.  She had been warned about these hallucinations.  Until tonight, they had been limited to fleeting shadows resembling shadowy monkeys or rodents in the corner of her vision, each of them darting away before she could meet them with her eyes.

Her cigarettes were by her pills.  A sticky note was stuck to the carton, a note to herself scrawled on it:

One a night!

Might as well, while I’m up, she thought, and her thoughts had a tremble to them in the same way her voice might, if she were to try to speak.  Feeling that tremble, she had to fight for a moment to keep the strangeness in her head divorced from her heart and her feelings.

She tapped the carton against the counter until a cigarette slid through the opening, placed the carton beneath the plastic pill separator, and grabbed her lighter.

She lit her cigarette with one hand while using the other to let herself out onto her front porch.  She had to twist a bit to keep the wind from outside from extinguishing her lighter, and she felt a pain in her side like she’d been stabbed.  The first time she had felt pain like that, it had dropped her to her knees.  Now it was everyday.

The air was chilly and the wind blew directly in her face, forcing her to close her eyes.  When she opened them again, she saw that the moon was bleeding.

The smoke from her first puff of her cigarette and the fog of her frozen breath mingled in the night air.  The moon hung heavy in the sky, and blood welled out along the edges where it met the sky, heaviest toward the bottom, with trickles periodically running down the face of it, changing the light it reflected to a dull red.  A thin trickle stabbed down to earth from the bottom-most portion of the moon.

Louise’s eyes traced the path of that trickle, and she saw a beast atop one of the forested hills.  It was canid, red furred, and barely visible in the dark, against the backdrop of the mountain behind it.  It was tall enough and massive enough that its furred belly traced the treetops.  The blood from the moon met the creature’s head, ran between and around its pale eyes, down a throat with a heavy fur ruff, and down long, thin legs, out of sight.

Its back was hunched, its tail hanging straight down.   That cry earlier-

Almost as if it were completing the thought for her, it raised its head, and it howled.  It was so far away, but the mournful cry was still loud enough it made her worry the windows would rattle or make something break.

That was the same noise as before.  As it carried on, Louise’s eyes welled with moisture once more, with blood instead of tears.  Sympathy made her heart ache, while other pains erupted across her body.  That spot at her lower back, off to one side, was the worst, a pain that had become too familiar in the last year.

Joints ached, her head pounded, and she found she couldn’t breathe or connect her thoughts.

When the pain subsided, Louise found herself doubled over.  Bloody tears joined the still-burning cigarette on her front porch.  Grabbing the railing at the boundary of her porch to steady herself, she scuffed the cigarette out with the toe of her boot, smearing the drips of blood around in the process.

The thing was still out there.  Each step it took seemed to be an effort.  It had moved, and now it slowly made its way into the town.  The moon remained directly above it.

Just a hallucination, she thought.  I shouldn’t change what I’m doing or get anxious because of it.  The doctors warned me.  

Driven by impulse, she stepped off her front porch, and climbed into her car, wincing at the pain in her midsection.  This wouldn’t be the first time she hadn’t listened to her doctors.

She pulled onto the lonely mountain road that saw perhaps one car an hour, each property separated by a few minutes of driving.

She chased the colossal beast, using the bleeding moon to keep track of it when the tall pine trees or the dips in the road put the great beast out of sight.  For long stretches of her trip down the isolated road, only her headlights provided any illumination.  For the other stretches, the fact the moon was tinted red cast the entire city in crimson hues.

It was eight in the evening, which meant most of the buildings in Kennet were closed.  Below the mountain road, shops were dark, and half the lights across the main road through town were off.  The gas station was the first lit building she came across, garish and bright in the dark.  It was the first thing she’d seen since she’d stepped out onto her porch that had light strong enough to cut through the dull red glow of the bleeding moon above.  There, she caught up with the beast, a creature so tall that the roof of the car blocked her view of everything above the bends in its long, thin legs.  The blood that ran down the legs seemed to disappear into the darkness of the fur that grew darker lower down, to claws that were as black as anything she’d ever seen.

Just outside the gas station, lit by the fluorescent lights from inside and the neon red Mushie sign, teenagers were gathered around a car.  They didn’t seem to care or notice as the beast’s leg touched ground in the middle of the empty road, foot shifting and clawed toes parting as the leg took more of the creature’s weight, then picked up again, almost disappearing in the midst of the dark sky.  Their attention was consumed by the snacks they were parceling out between them.

She couldn’t put a name to the children, but she was pretty sure she could name the families one or two of them came from.  Kennet was that sort of town.  Five thousand residents, two schools, two gas stations, and a theater that closed for the summer months because they didn’t get enough customers.

She slowed as she caught up with the creature.  This close to it, everything about the world seemed to have a red tint, even the light from her headlights.  Fascination overrode her everyday pain.

She could hear it now.  The huffing breaths, the low sounds it made in its throat.  Even with windows up and a windshield in the way, that throat higher above her than any treetop.

All of this felt like a dream.

It’s a hallucination, Louise, she told herself, as she leaned into her steering wheel, craning her head to look up through the windshield.  Frustrated, she leaned back, steered to the side of the road, and shifted the car to park.  She paused to look in the rear-view mirror, and saw her face, her eyes wide, blood running thick from the lower eyelids to her chin.  Some of the blood stained her shirt collar.

She deliberated her next actions.  She wasn’t wearing a winter jacket, because it hadn’t occurred to her in the moments between when she’d stepped off her porch and when she had started up her car.  She was wearing boots, but that was because it was hell to keep her feet warm these days, more hell to bend down to pull the boots off.  Endless health problems, and the boots offered better stability than her feet did.  She took them off for bed and put them on after showering and drying her feet.  That was it.

Underdressed for the weather as she was, she climbed out of the car, grunting at the pain in her back, shut and locked the door, and then followed the great beast on foot, leaning heavily into the railing that ran beside a set of concrete stairs.  The stairs connected the straighter parts of the winding mountain road, so people in the town who wanted to travel up to the gas station on foot didn’t have to zig-zag their way up the lonely road.  The fact the gas station was at the top would be why there was so much litter on either side of the staircase, including a half-full plastic bottle standing up on a stair that she nearly tripped over on her way down.  She stopped herself mid-fall by catching the railing with both hands.

Embarrassing.  It felt like yesterday that she had been one of those teenagers outside the gas station.  Now she was a wreck, chasing a hallucination, and holding a railing with both hands because she was so infirm.  Still only thirty-five.

She looked back to see if anyone had seen her stumble, and she saw a tiny figure crouched at the top of the stairs.

Small, like a chimpanzee in size and posture, it was lit from behind by the gas station, its features obscured.  The same sort of thing she had seen out of the corner of her eyes, in what she’d thought and hoped would be the full extent of her hallucinations.

It wasn’t alone.  Now that she looked, she saw four in total.  The original one, two in the bushes, and one taller than she was a few stairs down from her.

With the way the light struck them, they were mostly silhouettes, to the point she couldn’t tell where they were looking or what they were doing, but she had the impression they were watching her or reacting to her.

All together, according to some signal she couldn’t see or hear, they ran off, in the same direction the beast was traveling.  Before she realized what she was doing, she joined them, following down the stairs, both hands on the railing, crossing an empty road, and hobbling past a restaurant that was loading stuff into the back door from a dilapidated van.

The restaurant employees stared at her, but they didn’t run up to exclaim about the blood on her face.  One young woman raised a hand in greeting, which would have been nice if she didn’t lean over to say something to a colleague, the look in her eyes wary.

I must look like a crazy person.

Because I am a crazy person, now.

One of the small shadows disappeared beneath the van.  Three seconds later, someone dropped something, eliciting a cascading series of crashes.

Louise’s heart pounded as she left the scene behind, feeling guilty somehow, but feeling even more that she should follow the beast.  It was long-legged, huge, but slower and slower to move, as if it had to gather courage or strength to steady itself before it could take the next step.  She was just slow.  These companions of hers that stuck so close to the shadows quickly passed her and scampered ahead.

She and her hallucinated companions reached the heart of Kennet, where the houses were close enough together that people had to worry about neighbors, and there was actual separation between business and home.

The shadowy figures stopped there, remaining just outside of the light from the streetlamps.  Still following them, still hobbling a bit, because her side hurt, she walked into their midst before pausing.  Looking up at the swaying, struggling beast, she pressed on alone.

Streets were a maze, laid out because the houses had come first, individual cabins and fixtures that had been set up wherever was convenient, not far from the lake’s edge.  The roads had come later, the planners doing their best.

The taller buildings made it hard to keep the creature in view as she kept up with it.  It was too much walking for her side, and she shivered with the cold.

It’s going by the Arena.  Or to the Arena.

The Kennet Arena or the K-A was like the gas stations, brightly lit at a time the rest of the town had wound down.  Here, the parking lot was filled with parents talking to parents, kids talking to kids.  A good number of those kids were wearing hockey uniforms.  The building itself was one of the largest in town, next to the hospital, hosting a full-size hockey rink and gymnasium.  In a town with so little to do, there was usually a practice or a game at the K-A.  This might have been one of the last games of the season for the kids.

The beast placed one foot on the roof as it walked over the building.  Louise stopped at the street, hesitating at the traffic coming out of the parking lot, which was moving too slowly to let her believe the road would be clear, and too fast for her to make her way across the street.

She saw people looking at her, and felt self conscious.  She hadn’t showered today, she realized.  She was disheveled, she wasn’t wearing a coat, and she was hunched over a bit, one hand perpetually at her lower back.  If they saw the blood welling from her eyes, they might have assumed she had been in a car accident.  They didn’t, averting their gaze instead.

The great beast passed over the Arena, while she was trapped on the far side of the parking lot, feeling anxious.

It’s just a hallucination, remember? she thought.  She was having trouble convincing herself.

“Louise!”

Her awareness of her present state made her cringe more than anything as she heard the familiar voice.

She walked a few feet over to get a better look at Lincoln, an old classmate, leaning out of his truck window.  He was heavy, with a scraggly orange and gray beard, wearing a plaid shirt and a plaid hat with ear-flaps.

“Doing okay?” he asked.  “Want a ride?”

“Nah,” she said, anxious.  She looked over in the direction of the Arena, but the lights above the parking lot were bright and she couldn’t clearly see the beast on the far side.  The moon- she looked up.  Still bleeding.  “No need, my car’s parked near the gas station.”

He was trying to look friendly, but he had an anxious look on his face as he looked at her.  More anxious as the cars behind him began honking.  “That’s a long way.  You don’t have a coat on.”

Someone behind Lincoln honked, long and loud, which spared Louise from having to decide on a response.  He was holding them up.  Not that he could go far, with the way the road was clogged.  She would have crossed, but it was two lanes, and cars were going around him.

“Never been very good at taking care of myself, you know that, Linc,” she told him, her voice artificially light and cheery, even as her heart was heavy.  She was aware of the blood, the ‘hallucination’, that Lincoln wasn’t reacting to.  “Listen, I saw an animal run this way.  Dog or dog-like.  It headed around the Arena.  I’m just going to-”

She was interrupted by a cry, long and loud, that felt like it could have knocked the snow from trees.  Louise’s eyes were locked to Lincoln’s, and she held onto the fact that he wasn’t reacting, that he wasn’t bothered, that the cars around them were still honking, to keep from doubling over again.

She pressed a hand to her lower back.

“-me to come with?” he asked, the first part cut off by the tail end of the howl.

She shook her head, her eyes searching.  The lights over the parking lot left deceptive spots in her vision, when she wanted to see through the darkness beyond.  The honking continued, distracting.

The look he gave her was worried, pitying.  This was the point she’d sunk to, now.  If she’d once been one of those teenagers at the gas station, he could’ve been one of the others trading licorice for sour candies.

She saw a gap, started to cross, and a car honked.  She stopped.  It wasn’t a gap large enough for her to cross and continue to chase.

“Here, let me be an asshole.  And if you get too cold, you get inside the Arena, okay?”

He steered his truck, inching into the other lane, so he blocked both lanes that led out of the Arena.  The honking increased in intensity.

Louise gave him a wave of thanks as she jogged across the road, an action that almost took her breath away with the pain it brought.  She saw a glimpse of the worried look he was giving her.  Then he momentarily squealed his wheels in his hurry to get moving again.

She fast-walked between parked cars, stopping and taking the long way around here and there when people opened doors to get into their vehicles.  She wanted to get to the back of the Arena.

She first tried to go around the left of the building, but the traffic there made navigation too hard, with several minutes of waiting as she hoped for a break in the traffic there.

She walked to the doors, and peered through, but the crowds were too thick, too many parents, too many kids, the route through the building too winding, and too many others who might stop an unwashed, unhinged woman.  Unsure, she walked around to the right side of the building, and found a path littered with the cigarette butts from a hundred smoke breaks, a bit of a squeeze between the building and the dense foliage there.  She had to duck her head and shield her face from branches as she cut through.

Finally, she emerged in the back parking lot, and her first thought was that things were too bright, too white.

When she looked up at the moon, it was so bright compared to what it had been that her eyes hurt.  No longer strange, no longer dripping.

The great beast was gone, and she felt lost, like a child that had seen her birthday come and go with nobody remembering.  She didn’t know why and she couldn’t put it together in her head with the visions of blood.

It couldn’t have, wouldn’t have gone far, she hadn’t been delayed so long that it could have left.

Feeling unfulfilled and still heartbroken, the feeling of the howling still heavy in her chest, she walked this way and that through the parking lot behind the Arena, aimless.  A few people who had taken the shitty parking spots furthest from the building got in their cars to leave, girls in teal or orange hockey jerseys piling into the back with big sports bags.

A group of twenty-something men were packing up from their game of hockey on the outdoor rink, including Tom and Arnold from the ski hills.  They were roommates, sharing the house two minutes down the road from her.  Back when she’d been healthier, she’d caught their runaway dog and brought it back to them.  They’d been good neighbors ever since.  Helpers when she’d needed a lot of help, putting up a rod in her shower, checking in.

“Leaving already?” she called out, feeling very out of place.

“Hey, Louise,” Tom greeted her.  He was dark haired, with the stubble kept even with a razor.  “Ice is a mess.  Everything’s thawing.”

“Yeah, too bad,” she said.

“Last outdoor skate of the season, I think.”

“I hope it was a good one.”

“Was alright.  Need a ride?” he asked.  His forehead creased in concern.

“Nah, thanks.”  She waved him off.

At least he didn’t stop or insist.

She walked over to the rink, bounded by wooden boards that held up badly abused sheets of plexiglass that kept the pucks inbound.

Yeah, the ice was a mess.

Across the rink, she saw, there was a loose silhouette shape stained into the ice, matching a leg and paw of the great beast.  It extended, she realized, into the trees at the back of the rink, and onto the mountain of snow that had been built up over months of the parking lot being plowed and the ice of two rinks being cleared off.  It could well be the very last thing in Kennet to fully thaw.  On that mountain of snow, if she walked around, she could see the general shape of the thing’s ear and muzzle.  More of the stain extended across the outer perimeter of the parking lot.

All crimson.  Blood.

She hugged her arms to her body, shivering, as she walked the length of it, around three-quarters of the parking lot’s perimeter.  The red stain was thickest where the beast’s neck would have been.  Blood was sinking into frozen ground and snow in a pool as large around as the rink was.

It was only now that she finally felt cold.

What had just happened?  If this was a dream, was it supposed to symbolize something?  Was she finally dying?

If it was something else, if it was actually important… she didn’t know who to turn to, who to ask.

The cars gradually emptied out of the parking lot.  All but one of the lights shining down on the outdoor rink were turned off.  There were only stragglers now.  Girls talking while parents patiently waited.  Parents talking while their children scuffed snow with the toes of their boots, skates hanging from their necks by laces that had been tied together.

She trembled, turning occasionally to try and find someone, or figure out where to go.  She wiped at her cheek, and the blood had stopped flowing, starting to dry instead.  It came away in flecks.

“Did you just get here?”  A man’s voice.

“Yes.”  A woman’s voice.

Louise turned her head to look.  On the far side of the rink, standing between trees and the rink’s boundary, there were several people.  Two women and a man, and two children.  One of the children might have been humming or singing.  It was hard to hear.

“We’re too late then,” the man said.

“Clearly,” said the woman standing by the rink.  She was dressed well, with a nicer scarf and coat than most shops in Kennet sold, but she stood between the plexiglass and the trees, and a combination of scratches on the glass and the glaring reflection of the light above the rink obscured her from forehead to chin.

“What a mess, what do we do?” the other woman asked.  Louise was pretty sure she’d seen her in town.  Short, wide hips, maybe thirty.  She had bleached blond hair underneath a toque, and the lights caught her eyes, making them seem too bright.  Her expression was very serious.  Worried.

“We do what we have to,” the woman with the hidden face said. “Everything by the book.”

“By the book, our lives will be turned upside down,” the man said.  He was… Louise couldn’t place the name.  He worked at the tackle and hunting shop.  Friendly, easygoing.  Twenty-something, broad shouldered with a rounded jawline that made him look slightly overweight, even though he wasn’t.  The short beard he’d cultivated to suggest a jawline didn’t really do the trick.

He went on, more agitated.  “By the books we’d have to invite outsiders in to handle this, and in the best case scenario, I’m pretty darn sure they don’t leave after.  Most likely case, we’re goners.  Murder doesn’t get any passes.”

“Calm down,” the woman with the toque said, putting a hand on his arm.  “Don’t panic.”

One of the children grabbed her sleeve, holding a finger to his lips.  All went silent, but for the distant chatter of people and youths just outside the doors to the Arena, and the faint singing, which wasn’t one of the two children here.  Louise looked and saw more children in the dark between the trees.

All, child and adult, seemed to be looking at Louise now.  The woman with the obscured face walked around her companions, her hands in her pockets, and stopped by a tree, her face blocked at first by their heads, and now by a low-hanging tree branch.

All were tense.  Guarded.

“Do we know you?” the man asked.

Louise shook her head.  “I know you work at Buckheed.”

“Yep,” he said.  “You’re local?”

“Louise Bayer.  I live up by Blue Gas.”

“I’m Matthew,” he said, and his smile was wide, friendly.  He approached her.  “You have blood…”

She touched her cheekbone.  The blood was cold and entirely dry now.  She brushed it off.

“Yeah,” he said.  “You look frozen.  Here…”

“You don’t have to-” she told him, remembering the talk of murder, backing up.  But he was already pulling off his coat.  He held it out.

She took it, if only to keep things friendly-ish.  She winced as she reached out.

“Here,” he said.  He held her hand through the coat, and she felt a note of panic as he led her away from the others, toward the center of the nearly empty lot.  Uncomfortable and bewildered, she let him walk her away.  It wasn’t like she could fight, in the condition she was in.

He helped her put on the coat as he continued leading her further away.  “There.”

He backed up a few steps, his hands at his side.  The look he gave his companions was anxious, but the look he gave her was kinder, set beneath eyebrows that were up and drawn together.

The fact he’d backed off, at least, helped keep this from feeling menacing.

The coat was warm.  “Thank you.  I’m… bewildered.  I… you see that?”

She indicated the rink.

“I could try and make it all make sense for you, if you want,” he told her.

“Sure,” she said, hesitant.  “That would be appreciated, hon.”

He nodded.  “Tell me, are you one to lie?  Never?  Sometimes?  Often?  Do you know what I mean when I ask you that question?”

“I sure lie sometimes, more to myself than to others.  You’re doing a bad job of making this all make sense with questions like that, Matthew.”

“Did you happen to bump your head?  Brain tumor?  Bad trip?”

“No, no, and no.”

“Early onset dementia?”

“I have diabetes.  I had the warning signs, I ignored them for far too long, then I had full blown diabetes and I didn’t take care of myself after the diagnosis.  Now my body has crapped out on me.  Kidneys… I go to the hospital three times a week to get five hours of dialysis each time, and it’s not enough.  Hurts like-”  she noted the children.  “-fudge.”

The damn children weren’t talking, weren’t playing.  They just stood here and there.  None of them matched in the clothes they wore or the groups they came from, none reminded her of locals she’d seen, and none moved their lips, though the singing and humming in the background persisted.  The words of the song were indistinct.

“That kidney problem, or the diabetes, does it mess with your head?  Or did you come back from the very brink of death?” he asked, gently.

“No brink for me.  But when your kidneys go, you can start seeing things,” she answered.  She watched him carefully, and saw him nod, as if this somehow added up.  “Are you going to tell me this is all in my head now, Matthew?”

“You could say anything any of us see or experience is in our heads.  But no.  Listen, bear with me, and I think I can make it worth your while, and I don’t say that lightly.”

“And the world will make sense again, Matthew?”

“About as much sense as it did before you started seeing these things.  Tell me, you saw her?  Big, red, scary?”

“Big, red, beneath a bleeding moon.”

“That would be it.”

“But not scary.  Sad.  The blood on my face… I cried, hearing it.”

“Something that big, in your face, you’re not equipped to handle it,” Matthew said, and his voice was gentle.  “That’s why you had the bleeding.”

“It was real?” she asked, and her voice was barely a whisper.

“That’s a very tough question to answer and I’d worry answering it would just lead to many more questions.”

“Not doing a very good job of making this make sense to me, Matthew.”

“I know,” he said.  “Trust me.  How long did you follow it?”

“From the hills by the bigger ski lodge to here.  I only lost sight of it for a minute or two.”

“You tracked it here?”

“Followed it.  Sure.”

The women were talking behind Matthew.  The one with the obscured face broke away from the conversation.  He noticed Louise looking, and turned his head.

“We can’t tamper with the witnesses too much,” the woman with the hidden face spoke, raising her voice a bit as she made her approach.  The course the woman took kept Matthew between Louise and her.  Louise started to step to one side to get a better look at her, and a pain in her side made her look down.

Matthew raised his voice as he asked, “What are you thinking?  I was thinking we could do things another way.  Not by the rules others have set.  Keep certain other authorities out of it.  Handle all of the witnesses.  See if we can’t cover this up.”

“No.  That invites its own problems,” the woman said.  She walked up behind him, and leaned over his shoulder to murmur something in his ear.  His head turned, perpetually blocking the woman’s face.

Three times, at least three different ways that Louise couldn’t see the woman’s face.  Louise hadn’t yet caught a glimpse of it.  It made her nervous, and felt wrong.

The woman whispered to Matthew for a few moments.

“Yeah,” Matthew murmured, in response.

“What… what is this?” Louise asked, unnerved by the secrecy and the weirdness.  “What are you?”

The woman turned, her back now to Louise, and walked away, toward the bloodstained rink, hands in her pockets.  She spoke while walking away, her voice almost but not quite bearing an English accent, “The very young, the very old, and the infirm, can sometimes see what others are blind to.  This can be very unlucky or very lucky, depending.  The kind of luck that changes the direction of lives, or the unluck that ends them.”

“I’m happy to say you’re very lucky,” Matthew reassured Louise.

“I don’t… This doesn’t feel lucky,” Louise told him.  Her hands clutched the front of the coat Matthew had given her, over her heart.  “I feel… heartbroken?”

She had trouble articulating it, because she’d never experienced true heartbreak, but this was what she’d always imagined it would feel like.

“You’re right,” Matthew said.  “This is far from lucky.  This was and is a tragedy of the worst sort, the sort that hurts everyone, and you’re exactly right to feel the way you do.  But you being here is very fortunate for you and for us.”

“Not necessarily us,” the woman with the hidden face said, her back still turned.  She seemed to be studying the red stain from the side of the rink.

“The people who will look into this will be in need of those clues, and we’ll be desperate and in need of them,” Matthew said.  “If my life partner is willing to oblige me, I’d like to offer you a deal.  Edith?”

The woman with bleached blond hair and a toque took a few steps forward.  “She’s in a lot of pain, Matthew.  You’re too much a part of this to get involved, and you’re fragile.”

“I know.  But she’s dying,” Matthew said.

“That obvious, huh?” Louise asked, and she couldn’t help but feel she was butting into a conversation, even though that conversation was about her.

She wore a half-smile and she didn’t feel at all like smiling.  The sadness she felt at finally hearing those words and admitting the reality out loud was a close cousin to the heartbreak of hearing the beast’s howl.  Her eyes moistened, and as she wiped at one, the fluids proved clear.  An actual tear this time.

“Okay,” Matthew said, smiling.  “Here’s the deal, Louise.  We’re going to send a person or some people your way, so don’t make yourself too hard to find, it’s important you’re there when they come.  They’re going to ask you about tonight.  Help them, answer any questions, point them in the right directions, and be honest.  You’re going to remember every last detail you can, and I want you to go with the flow, act like it’s a day like any other.”

“Sure,” Louise said, dazed.

“Forget about us, okay?  Then, outside of any meetings with us or any other person or people who ask you about it, forget about tonight and forget about… that thing you saw.  Make it a total, comfortable amnesia that ends if you’re asked.  In exchange, I will take some of your hurt, pain, and suffering, and I’ll give you more time.”

“I don’t… how?”

“All you have to do is say yes, and if you want me to help you out more, again, if my life partner doesn’t disagree, I’ll give you a bit of a kiss.”

“That’s fine,” Edith said.

Louise shook her head, bewildered.  “I mean I don’t know if I can make myself forget that conveniently.”

“All you have to do is say yes, Louise.  This is, barring any outside intervention, a good deal for you.  Say yes.”

“Yes?”

“May I kiss you, Louise?” he asked.  “There’s nothing romantic to it, but these things traditionally work better with a kiss than with the holding of a hand.  Is that okay?”

“Yes?” she made it almost a question, again.

He touched the underside of her chin to raise her face, and then he kissed her.  It had been a long time since she had been kissed, and a longer time since she had been kissed in a way that made her heart warm.

That warmth was choked by a sudden hurt, black and bitter.  The hurt leaped into her mouth, and it tasted like regurgitated bile, metallic tastes, salt, foul-tasting medications, and the stinging smell of her own body odor when she didn’t shower frequently enough.  It filled her nose, and she twisted away.

He held her face, not letting her, his fingers gripping her chin to maintain the contact.  The taste and smell dissipated.  It was him who wrenched his face away, expression twisting.  He hunched over.

Dizzy, bewildered, she swayed on the spot, watched as this man pressed one hand to his lower back.

“You’ve suffered a lot,” he said, grimacing.  The woman he’d been with hurried to his side, supporting him.

“Yes.  My own fault,” Louise answered, adrift in the moment, her heart pounding.  She felt like she was floating.

He grimaced, but the expression became more of a smile, “Why don’t you go home, Louise?  Have a rest.  It should be a good one.  All of the stress and confusion of tonight should slip away as the memories do… and things will make sense again, if only because you don’t remember the things that don’t make sense even to us.”

“Yet, hopefully,” a woman by the rink added, her voice faint.

Louise looked around to get her bearings.  She was standing in a half-lit, mostly empty parking lot behind the Arena with a stranger – one of the employees from Buckheed.  It was disconcerting, things not adding up.  She felt like music had been playing, and her ears now rang from the lack.  The only noise was the rustle of wind.

“What’s next?” the stranger from Buckheed asked.

“We handle any other witnesses,” said his companion, a woman wearing a toque.  “Talk to the others.”

Why was she here?  Where was her coat?  Her car?

This is like that moment when you’re dreaming and you realize that things don’t flow together or make sense, she told herself.  I’m stuck in that prolonged momentInstead of jolting awake, I’m being sucked deeper into the mire.

It was the thought that connected everything, stirred her awake.  She sighed, releasing a tension she hadn’t known she had been feeling.  She opened her eyes.

She sat in her recliner, and a blanket was draped over her lap.  The throw from the couch.  Strange.  She never used it while in her recliner, because she felt like an old woman whenever she did it.  She gathered it up, and leaned forward, before wincing in anticipation-

No pain.

Every other morning, when she had forgotten she couldn’t move like she did before her health problems, the pain of sudden movements could leave her immobilized for minutes, breathing her way through it.  Now… it hurt, still.  It hurt as a dull and distant, small thing, but she was able to rise from her chair.  She walked over to the counter where she kept the pills without hobbling or staggering, her expression clear.

Morning light shone in through the windows, and she felt better rested than she had in months.

She opened the pill container, and collected her pills for the morning. She filled a glass, downed the handful of pills, and then decided to take her daily cigarette early.

Out to the porch.  She lit the cigarette, and stood out in the cold morning air, drawing in a full breath of smoke without any stabbing pain in her side.  Today was a good day.  A matter of minutes in and she knew it was going to be a better day than she’d had in years.

A stamped-out cigarette sat at the edge of the porch.  Had that been her?  She bent down to pick it up, reveling in the fact she could do so without her knees buckling from the pain.  She flicked it in the direction of her car, which she had parked sideways for some reason.

Her eyes found the horizon, searching treelines and the hilltops.  She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but she found herself searching with intent and feeling disappointment when she didn’t find anything.

She kept looking long after she’d finished her cigarette, stopping only when the tips of her ears and fingers started to feel the cold.  She stretched, almost trying to provoke the pain she was so used to, and only felt a dull throb, like she was hurting from being punched a day ago.

Shower, she told herself.  Then a walk.  Get the blood flowing to those feet of yours.

After that, a cleanup.  Her place was a mess, and she had a feeling some people would turn up at some point.  It felt important that she be ready.

She couldn’t bring herself to go back indoors.  She gave the mountains and hills one last glance, then another, then another.  The looking felt wistful, with a faint sense of loss she couldn’t put her finger on.

A good quarter or half hour passed, and she spent that time outside.  It was something of a relief when she saw the car come up the road, an excuse to break the spell.  A truck she recognized.  She stood from her seat on the stairs, her butt cold.

Tom and Arnold, together.  They worked at the ski hills in winter and scraped by the rest of the year.  She waved at them as they pulled into her driveway.

“Louise, hey,” dark-haired Tom said, as soon as his door was open.  He slammed the car door.  “Everything okay?”

“I think so,” she said, and she smiled.  “Why?”

Tom shook his head.  “Had a bad feeling.”

“Kind of know what you mean,” she said.

“I mentioned it to Arn, he said he felt the same way.”

“My first thought was maybe something happened to you,” Arnold said.  He had light brown skin, his mop of snowboarder hair highlighted with blond.  “I remembered seeing you at the rink by the K-A last night.  You, uh…”

“I’m fine, boys.  Really, you’re sweethearts, but I’m fine.”

“That’s a relief,” Tom said.  His forehead was still creased in worry.  “I don’t know why I was so convinced something had happened.  It’s like…”

The twenty year old trailed off.  He looked back out over the town, toward the hills, and toward the Arena.  Like her, he didn’t find what he was looking for.  Arnold, too, looked worried.

“Come inside,” she told them.  “Give me a hand with cleaning up, and I’ll pay you for the trouble.  I’m expecting company sometime soon.”

“You don’t have to pay us,” Tom said.

“I insist,” she said, opening the door to let them in.  As they walked by her, she cast one last look out over the horizon before letting the door close behind her.

This was and is a tragedy of the worst sortThe sort that hurts everyone.  The thought crossed her mind, in a voice that wasn’t hers.

Dutifully, she put that thought out of mind, as per the terms of the deal she no longer remembered making.

Brochure, ‘Experience Kennet’

Lost for Words – 1.1

Verona

(Posted Last Thursday – Brochure)


Verona leaned over her kitchen sink, looking out past the window and across the long, narrow backyard to stare down a woman who might not have eyes.

“What do you want?” Verona asked, under her breath.  “What are you thinking?”

The woman was wearing a blue sweater with extra material around the neck, an ankle-length pleated skirt, and boots.  Where she stood, a branch hung low and the leaves obscured her face.  Verona couldn’t see her hands either.  One was hidden in the shadows of the foliage and the garage.  The other was blocked from view by the wind chime that hung just outside the kitchen window.

She leaned to one side to peer through the wind chimes, and the wind picked up, moving the long, dangling metal bars into the way.

She stopped leaning, and the wind died down.

Verona chuckled a little bit to herself.  “If this is you getting ready to come after me and do something horrible, maybe you could hurry it along, cut right to the chase?  Back door’s unlocked.  You don’t have to drag it out.”

The woman didn’t move a muscle.  She hadn’t for some time.

“I’d fight back, obviously, but if you’re this good at being freaky and messing with wind chimes or whatever, you can probably get away with murdering me.”

The water that was pouring into the sink made the suds collect enough that they touched her finger.  Grabbing a sponge, she walked over to the oven, giving it a scrub where pasta water from last night had crusted onto the glass stovetop.  There were grooves where the glass had melted from too-hot things being placed on top, and she gave those some extra attention.

She could hear the laundry beeping downstairs.  Jogging down, she went to the laundry machine to rotate the loads, pushing the sleeves of her sweater up a few times to keep them from getting in the way or getting damp.

She was in the middle of hanging up her dad’s work shirts on the clothesline that cut in an annoying way across the middle of the laundry room when her phone rang.  She extricated it from the tight jeans pocket and checked the time: 4:50.  She let it clatter down onto the top of the dryer before hitting the button to answer the call.

“I’m here!  Doing laundry!” she called out to the phone.

“I need you to help me think of something horrible to do to Avery.”

“Uh oh,” Verona said, without affect.  “Why?  What are you doing?”

“I’m going to make it so she’s in the middle of giving a presentation in class and then her hair starts falling out.”

“Lucy!” Verona laughed.  “You can’t say stuff like that!”

“We’re still at the school.  We haven’t even shopped yet.  I’d go in there and drag her out if I knew where to go to get her.  Making her hair fall out is being nice.”

Verona smiled. “But making her give a presentation might be going too far.  That’s cruel.”

“I can’t tell if I should laugh or roll my eyes at you.”

“Laugh.”

“I’m rolling my eyes, sorry.  Too lame a joke.”

Verona’s smile faded away.  She made a face as she fished her dad’s underwear out of the washer with one finger to minimize her contact with it.  She flicked it into the dryer and shook her hand, shivering.

“You can’t lie, remember?  That’s kind of a thing,” Verona said.  “If you say you’re going to make something happen like having her hair fall out, then you’re obligated to actually do it.  Or else.”

“I am going to do it.  We’re still at the school, Ronnie!  I sat through her practice, she went inside and she hasn’t come out.  We’re going to be late, on the most important day of our lives.”

“What could be the most important day of our lives.  Have to be careful of how you phrase things.”

“Ugh.”

“Did her teammates say what happened?  Maybe she got hurt.”

“She’s talking to a teacher.”

“Ohhh,” Verona breathed the word.

“Yeahhh,” Lucy said, echoing the sound.

“I’ve got to get some stuff done for my dad.  If he shows I’ll convince him to let me go for the weekend, if he doesn’t agree or if he doesn’t show, I’m going to leave and apologize later.”

“Leave now.”

“I don’t want any headaches, and my dad’s a headache.  I’ll be on time, don’t worry.  For now, if Avery comes out, don’t be too mean to her.”

“Ehhh.”

“Ehh, I know, it’s very ehhh,” Verona replied.  “But if you really get on her case, then there will be a bad mood hanging over everything for the day or the weekend, and that’d suck.  Be a little mean.”

She could hear Lucy’s snort.

“Do you want me to finish the shopping?  Or does that mess things up?”

“Can you?  I really don’t care if it messes things up a bit.  I’m antsy, and I’m annoyed, and the only way I can keep myself from losing it is if I think of more horrible things to do to her.  I’m sending her texts.”

“What do I need to buy?”

There was a rustling.

“Bread, milk, meat.”

“Meat’s a pain,” Verona admitted.  “I can’t bring it from home, right?  It’s my dad’s.  It has to be the corner store.”

“I was thinking about those deer pepperoni sticks, and that jerky you sometimes eat.”

“I’m not sure that it’s even meat.  I mean I love it, but I’m not sure.  Is that like… good?  Will they like it?”

“It works.  Or get the different kinds to cover some bases.”

“Okay, I’ll try.  Might have to get some cash from my dad.  Ugh.  Give me fifteen seconds, might be noisy.”

She’d finished hanging up everything that needed to be hung up.  She made sure everything was out of the washer, then turned on the machines.

“I’m going to murder her.” Lucy could be heard, over the rumble.  Verona scooped up the phone and jogged up the stairs.  “Dispose of her in the woods.”

The first thing Verona looked at as she stepped into the kitchen was the window.

Yep.  Still there, still not moving.  Still with face and hands hidden.

“Creepy miss hidden-face is in my backyard,” she remarked.  “Has been for a bit.”

“Avery and I saw her around earlier.”

“I wonder if she’s anxious or something.  Does someone like her even get anxious?”

Lucy made an amused sound.

“I’m serious.”

“Remember when we were wondering if she actually has a face, and it’s, like, awful?”

“Yeah.  We started wondering out loud if she might be burned or scarred or something.”

“And then we got into the really strange stuff, like what if she had a spider’s face?  Or a mess of holes and teeth?”

“Yeah,” Verona said.

“Do you think we could sic her on Avery, who still hasn’t come out of the school?”

“I think Avery is a sweetheart,” Verona said, at the same time she sighed.  She didn’t take her eyes off the woman.  “She’s not an idiot.  If she’s held up, it might be for good reasons.”

“Ugggh!”

“I’ll do the shopping and swing your way, over the bridge.  You’re out by the parking lot?”

“By the gate behind the school, closer to you, where you can see the sports field.”

“If she comes out, hurry this way.  Maybe call so I don’t walk right past you.”

“Okay.”

“I gotta finish up.  I’ll let you go.”

“Don’t forget your stuff.  I’ve got you down as… molasses and vegetable ash.”

“Yep, all packed up.  Just have to make sure I can leave without incident.”

“Good luck.”

“Same.”

She hung up, and spent a good minute scrubbing the top of the stove, until the white bits were gone.

She had to unbutton the jeans she wore to be able to comfortably bend down to scrub the front of the oven, the handle, and the groove that served as a handhold for pulling out the metal drawer below.  The jeans were from her shopping trip with her mom last fall, to buy stuff to wear for her first year of high school.  Now it was spring and as much as she hated it, she was outgrowing them.  They dug into her stomach when she sat down or crouched.

Her mom had been so frustrated when she hadn’t wanted to buy a lot of clothes.  It was Verona’s preference to have things that were very precisely hers, instead of a lot of things that kind of worked.  To those ends, she had two pairs of jeans she wore, this low cut pair of skinny black jeans, and acid-washed jeans with holes at the knees.  She had three sweaters, all with broad horizontal stripes, two of which were black and white, and then tops she tended to wear under the sweaters.

The sweater she was wearing now had a hole in the elbow.  The other elbow had had the same problem, but she’d patched it with black moleskin.  There were some loose threads of wool near the collar, too.  She tried to get them to lie flat and found they couldn’t.

She straightened up to a standing position, hooking her thumbs in her belt loops to get her jeans to where she could do them up again before finding the kitchen scissors to snip off the stray threads on her sweater.

As she dropped the strands into the trash, she gave the kitchen a once-over, popping open the microwave to check there wasn’t anything still stuck inside.  All handled.  Floor swept, counters wiped, stove scrubbed, microwave done, dishes cleaned.

Dining room was the same – table wiped, quickly wiped down with pledge, floor swept, papers sorted and put on the bookshelf behind the door.

She paused, looking out the back window.  The woman watched her.  She was pretty sure.

“Yeah, yeah,” she said.  Moving on…

Living room was vacuumed, and she’d dusted the mantle, top of the TV, and the picture frames.  She’d moved furniture to get beneath it.  The place had a faint baked smell to it, like the lint had gotten too hot inside the vacuum, and her nose ran a bit.

She’d decided.  She really, really hated cleaning.  She hated how insurmountable it was, she hated how cleaning off a surface often meant getting other things dirty, she hated every step in the process, and now that she was as close to done as she could get, she felt next to no satisfaction.  It would just get dirty again, and she hated that.  Hated that she was cleaning up a mess that would get made again and again for the next… however many years.  Fifty.  Seventy.  Crumbs and dust and gross food on gross plates, over and over again.

She stood in the doorway of the living room, surveying it all, and felt her dissatisfaction grow until she had to turn away.  She jogged upstairs, and pulled off her sweater as soon as she was at the top of the stairs.  She investigated the patchier bits as she made her way into her room.  There were more holes she could put her finger through, and the sleeve was damp from doing laundry.

With some regrets, she pitched it into the trash.

In the bathroom, she used a wet hand towel to wipe her face, neck, and pits, because it had been work to get all of the stuff downstairs done.  After a quick glance in the mirror, she grabbed her scissors and tidied her bangs.  She picked up a hand mirror to fix a few stray hairs at the back.

Her other sweater was similar to the one she’d just trashed, but the collar was wide enough it could slip off one shoulder.  She checked for holes, found none, and pulled it on.  The sleeves extended to her first knuckle.  Cozy.

She drew in a deep breath, exhaled.  She stood at a few different angles.

Serviceable.

“Ready,” she whispered, staring at her reflection.

She could hear a commotion downstairs as her dad let himself into the house, and she could feel it through the floor as the door shut.

She looked back at the mirror.  Her expression had changed, and it was probably the expression she’d had while musing on the cleaning.

She exited her room, walked down to the last few stairs, and took a seat on the stairs, watching.

Her dad was a big guy.  Tall, big around the middle, his eyes small.  He was red in the cheeks, and he was sweating enough that his hair -buzzed shorter than the hair on his forearms- looked wet.  He stood in the living room, wearing a short-sleeved button up shirt and slacks with zero personality.

Sitting on the stairs in the front hallway, she felt quietly pleased with herself as she saw her dad stand in the living room and look at the dining room.  She didn’t love the work, but… his reaction, maybe?

“Long day?” she prompted him, when he didn’t say or do much.

“There you are.”

“Here I am.”

“Scissors?” he asked.

Oh, she was still holding them.  She touched them to her hair.  As part of the back to school shopping, her mom had taken her to a stylist to get a french bob and she’d been trimming it herself to keep it in approximately the same style ever since.

“Yes.  A very very long day.  I’ve had a headache since noon, and then I had to deal with Louis and the mess he’s made of the client lists.  Renault is saying he wants to fire Louis for five months now, he has a paper trail of Louis messing up, but he won’t follow through.”

“Sucks.”

“I have to do twice the work.  I’d quit if I could get away with it,” her dad said.  “It’s exhausting.  You have no idea.”

She shrugged.  “I guess I’m glad I don’t.”

“Give it five years and you’ll understand,” he said.  He ran his hand along the top of the TV.  No dust.

Point for me, she thought.

“Um,” he said.  He closed his eyes, rubbing his forehead.  He did look like he had a headache.  “I was downstairs this morning.  Could you put on a load of laundry?”

“Done,” she said.  “Your shirts are hung up.”

Another point for me.

Doing the chores wasn’t satisfying, but this?  This was okay.  She leaned forward a bit more.

“Your room-”

“Cleaned.”  Point.

“Alright,” he said.  “As I was pulling in, I noticed the grass needs cutting.”

She frowned at him.

“It’s getting long, Verona, and it’s going to rain this weekend.  Can you get at least the front yard done in the next hour, before it gets dark?  And pull some spaghetti sauce out of the freezer to defrost.  I’ll tell you when to put on the noodles.  I’m going to go lie down.”

“Um, what?” she asked, standing up and leaning over the railing at the bend of the stairs.  “I just came home from school and spent two hours doing chores, and I don’t even get a thank you?  Or a ‘good job’?  I get more chores instead?”

“If you spaced out the chores more across the week, you wouldn’t have to spend two hours doing them.  There will always be more to do.  If you wait and it rains, the lawn will be wet and that much harder to mow.  Now please, I have a headache and the smell of the cleaning chemicals isn’t helping.”

“What’s the point?” she asked.  “Why should I even try if I’m never going to get credit for it?”

“Because if you don’t, you’ll get grounded.”  He said it like he was joking, his hand over his eyes, his head tilted back, a smile on his face.

She didn’t reply, staring at him with her eyebrows pressed together.

He dropped his hand and met her gaze.  His tone became more serious.  “Do you think my boss tells me thank you?  At either of my two jobs?  Do you think any of my coworkers give me a thumbs up?  When’s the last time you ever said thank you, dad, I sure appreciate you working six days a week to put food on my plate and a roof over my head?”

She paused, wanting to retort and not finding the answer ready.

“You haven’t,” he said.

“I have,” she said, even though she wasn’t sure.  She wracked her brain.

“This is just the way it is, Verona.  Houses are expensive, I don’t have time to do this stuff, so you’ve got to pick up the slack.  I get the bare minimum from your mom, I don’t have any help.  Our nearest family is a six hour drive away.  I need you in-”

“March sixteenth.  Your birthday,” she interrupted.

He shook his head, his tone exasperated.  “What?

“I wrote in your card, thank you for everything you do.  I told you I appreciated your hard work.  In your birthday card.  I spent a lot of time thinking about what to write.”

“Okay.  Thank you, but that doesn’t matter, Verona.  It doesn’t change that this is our reality.”

“But you never say the same to me.”

“And you don’t say it to me nearly enough.  A birthday card two months ago is not a lot when I spend sixty-plus hours a week working for your benefit.”

She frowned at him.

“You can argue all you want.  The lawn still needs doing.”

“I was going to go spend the weekend with Lucy and Avery.  We have a thing.”

“And when were you planning to mow the lawn?”

I wasn’t, she thought.  “After?”

“Sunday?  Before it’s dark?  Front and back.  Knowing the rain and damp may make it more difficult?”

“Sure,” she lied.  “Or Monday.”

“Promise?”

“Yeah,” she told him.  “Can I go hang out with them?  And get a bit of money so I’m not being too much of a sponge?”

“I guess I’ll get myself a pizza,” he said.

“The money?” she asked.

He produced a ten dollar bill, handing it to her as he walked up the stairs.  She leaned into the railing to let him squeeze by.

“Thank you,” she said.

“I’m not comfortable with your bra strap on display like that.  I’m fairly sure the school has rules about that.”

She touched it.  Her collar hung off her shoulder, and there was just a strap there.

“It’s a top.” She pulled down the collar to show him.  “And I wore another sweater to school.”

“Okay,” he said.  The stairs creaked as he made his way up.

She waited until she heard his bedroom door close before stepping down from the stairs.  She put the ten dollar bill in the side flap of the gym bag she’d loaded with stuff.

She paused, the scissors in hand, then removed the childhood toy she’d put in the bag, and put the scissors in instead.

Her eyes scanned the vacuumed carpet and swept floors, the furniture she’d wiped down with orange-scented polish, and the still-wet counters.

She went to the freezer, pulled out the spaghetti, and ran hot water into a bowl with the tupperware container bobbing inside of it.

Nobody in the backyard, now.

Her dad would come downstairs to call the pizza place, find the spaghetti mostly defrosted, and because he hated wasting and refreezing food, he’d feel like he had to eat it.  If he asked, she’d say she didn’t hear about him saying he’d get pizza.  Or something.

It was stupid and it was petty and it made her feel better.

She grunted as she picked up her bags and then let herself out.

The west half of Kennet was largely residential.  There were a couple of houses that had old people living in them that were nice, with gardens that were tended to every day, but for the most part it was just kind of sad.  There wasn’t anything metal without some rust on it, an awful lot of the paint was peeling, gardens were barren after the winter, and lawns were only just seeing their patchy initial growth.  Where lawns hadn’t been raked enough, the leaves formed dirt-like clumps that made the lawns seem more patchy than they were.

Five thousand people lived here, and she was pretty sure there wasn’t one person who loved living here.

Well, no, that wasn’t true.  As she put her mind to the task, she could imagine there might be some criminal types who would appreciate the ability to lie low.  Or idiots.  Or the stoner snowboarder types who did almost nothing for half the year and then worked at the slopes the rest of the year.  If all you loved was weed and snowboarding then this might be pretty good.

She looked over the area, and part of her reason was because she hadn’t seen the woman with the hidden face for a bit now.

Disappointing.

There was a corner store by the bridge that divided the western half of Kennet from the eastern half, and she hurried to do the shopping for the milk, bread, the jerky and the venison pepperoni.

Loaded down with schoolbag, gym bag, and the plastic bag with the milk inside, she crossed the bridge and navigated the winding streets on the east side of Kennet.  Here, the buildings were spaced far apart, with desolate lots and grass-less fields between them.  A big box hardware store.  A dismal car lot.  The dance studio.  The Christian school.

Her school was Louis Riel Public.  A big, featureless block of brick with a lot of windows, and a bit of corrosion from the metal around the windows that stained the white-painted ledges.  Lucy stood at the opening in the wire fence, leaning into the post.

Just coming back to the school was kind of depressing.

“I’m going to murder her.  If this thing we’re doing is for real, I’m going to feed her to a troll or something.  If it isn’t, I’ll feed her to wild dogs.”  Lucy’s words were aggressive, and it was a stark contrast to how her hair bounced behind her head.  It was combed close to her scalp with only a few kinky hairs escaping near the forehead and ears, and was held back with an elastic, where it formed an almost perfectly round afro-poofball behind her.  Even though Lucy was black, her light brown hair had even lighter red-blonde highlights to it.

Whenever Verona didn’t see her best friend for a few days, she somehow imagined her as having pink in her hair.  No idea why, no rationale, but it was something that had been consistent since kindergarten.

Verona put down her bags, giving her hand a shake to get blood flowing to where the plastic had been tight against her finger.  She stepped into the school grounds, put her hands around her mouth, and drew in a deep breath before shouting at the top of her lungs, “Averyyyyyyy!”

Lucy joined her, shouting, “Averryyyyyyy!”

They kept going, drawing in deep breaths and hollering, until Avery’s face appeared in the second floor window above the exit.

“I’m cold, you moron!” Lucy hollered.

Avery’s face disappeared from the window.

“You could have dressed warmer,” Verona spoke between huffs to catch her breath.  Lucy was wearing what might have been a red sweatshirt dress with a stripe down the side, and her legs were bare from the knee down, her feet in red and white sneakers with little maple leafs on the tongues.  It looked new, even though Verona knew the shoes weren’t.

“I wanted to dress nice.”

The door opened, and Avery stepped outside.  She was pale, her bare arms and face covered in freckles, and her strawberry blonde hair was tied back into a short ponytail.  She was wearing a jersey over a t-shirt and track pants, and had a towel around her neck.

Lucy bent down, picked up her bag, and held it up.  “Do not tell me we have to stop at your house too!”

Avery almost skidded as she reversed direction, holding up one finger as she re-entered the school.

“I’m going to curse her,” Lucy muttered.  “I’m going to make it so her teeth fall out, she swallows every last one, and they bite her on the way out.”

Verona laughed.

“I’m getting it out of my system,” Lucy said.  “The oaths and lies and crap.”

“I hope so.”

“This is going to be weird.”

“Yeah,” Verona answered, still catching her breath after all the shouting.

“You got the stuff?”  Lucy bent down to fish in the plastic bag.  “Bread, milk, meat?”

“Yep,” Verona said, even though Lucy had already found and opened the package of ten pepperoni sticks.  She took a bite before frowning at the door.  “You got the wine?”

“Yep.”

“I asked before and you were evasive.  You said you’d tell me in person.”

“I asked if I could try a glass.  My mom gave it to me, I tried it, I kept the rest.  It’s not a lot.”

“Hm.”

“How fast does wine go bad?  It was last night.  I put it into a thermos.”

“I have absolutely no idea.  Doesn’t the alcohol in it stop it from getting moldy or whatever?”

Lucy chuckled.  “No idea.  Really hope this doesn’t screw us up.”

The door opened.  Avery had her bags this time.

“Sorry!  Sorry, sorry, sorry!”

“Walk fast,” Lucy said, steering Avery through the opening in the fence.  Verona steered as well.

I’m so not up to walking fast.  I just walked halfway across Kennet.

“Sorry, please don’t be mad.”

“Lucy’s going to curse you,” Verona said.

“Is that a thing?  Please don’t, if it is.  I have an excuse.”

“It’d better be a good one.”

“Ms. Hardy wanted to talk to me.”

“Sorry, that’s the opposite of a good excuse,” Lucy replied.

“It’s a terrible excuse,” Verona said, dropping her own hand from Avery’s shoulder.

“She wanted to have a serious conversation.  How am I doing, how stuff is with family, how’s sports.”

“Curse it is,” Lucy said.

“I’ll help,” Verona said.

“Stop!  Listen, I owe her so much.  She practically saved my life.  She was being nice and supportive, I can’t be all hurr durr, role model, favorite person, I gotta go.”

“Can too, when we have an appointment,” Lucy said.

Verona watched Avery’s expression change from something anxious and energized to something… like she was sinking into a mire.  This was the dark cloud she’d wanted to avoid.

“Let’s not fight,” Verona said.  “We have to get along.  Do you think you could own up to being the reason we’re late, if it comes up, Ave?”

“Yeah, of course.”

Verona glanced behind Avery’s head at Lucy, who seemed to visibly relax as Avery said that.  Leaning into Avery to reach across, she gave Lucy a poke in the arm.

“Fine,” Lucy said.

“I can’t imagine her being mad, though,” Avery said.

“No.  Me either,” Verona admitted.

They crossed the bridge, and immediately turned left, walking down the path by the river that fed into the lake.  The houses thinned out pretty quickly.

“Can we talk?” Avery asked.  “Fill the silence?

“Sure.  About what?” Verona asked.

“You know Melissa, with the big hair?”

“I know Melissa with the big hair.  Why?”

“She’s on the dance team and the soccer team.  She was asking me if you’d join the dancers.”

Verona sighed.

“No?”

“Different topic, please.  I’m sick of it.”

Lucy explained, “They’ve been bugging Ronnie about it since we had kids in our classes who were still occasionally wetting their pants.”

“Huh,” Avery said.  “That’s a thing?  I missed out on a lot with homeschooling, apparently.”

Lucy shrugged.

“Were you one of the pants-wetters in kindergarten?”

Lucy stuck her elbow into Avery, who bumped into Verona as she backed off.  Avery laughed, even as she tried to look apologetic to Verona.

Which was good, Verona decided.  It was a break in the more intense mood.

“Oh, I wanted to ask!” Avery said.  “The app.  She also mentioned this thing?  Like all the girls in class are rating the boys or something?”

“Everyone’s rating everyone.  I think all the boys joined in,” Lucy said.  She got her own phone out.

“Seems kind of a bit mean,” Avery said.  “And I have no idea what to do.  I was going to ask Ms. Hardy about it-”

“Tell me you didn’t,” Lucy said.

“I didn’t!  I didn’t, really.  Why?”

“Teachers would probably make us stop.”

“I’m apparently one of the last people who haven’t joined, which is why Melissa nagged me, but then that gets weird.  Like, I wanted to double check, if I answer now, can they figure out what my votes are?”

Avery had her phone out, and there was a heart in a circle at the top along with the app name: Class_RankR.  She’d already put in their school and grade.  There weren’t enough students in their school and year to form two whole classes, so they were technically in the combined eights-and-nines.  There was a list of classmates, some of which had pictures attached.  Others were smiley faces dressed up with hair in varying style and colors.

“I think you’re safe.  Everything’s locked and hidden until the person who organized it asks for the tally.”

Avery didn’t pick or submit anything new.

“You wanted to talk and now you’re being all quiet,” Lucy said.

Avery looked up from her phone.  “Do you think there’s any chance at all that I could end up dating Ms. Hardy?  Because she’s had girlfriends, and-”

“No chance,” Lucy said.

“Sorry,” Verona added.

“But… like, even if I waited five more years, turned eighteen?”

“You were her student, she knew you when you were a kid.  No.  If she did, she’d be creep and I’m pretty sure she isn’t one.”

“But-”

“No buts,” Lucy said.

Avery sighed.  “This sucks.”

“Yeah,” Verona replied.  She gave Avery a rub on the back.

The path they were walking down was sloping.  There were trees on either side, now.  The ski hills loomed to their right.

“Who did you guys pick?”

“Amadeus,” Lucy said, without hesitation.  “Second pick was, uh, George, I think.”

“Yeah, okay.  I think they’re pretty popular.  Verona?”

“I really, really don’t care.  I picked Jeremy and Wallace, because they seem like the kind of guys who wouldn’t get votes, and I like Jeremy’s drawings, and Wallace is cool sometimes.  They don’t deserve to get no votes.”

“That’s nice,” Avery said.  “If I could go out with anyone who wasn’t Ms. Hardy…”

Verona watched as Avery selected Pamela O’Neill.

“Pamela?” Lucy asked.

“Why do you always have a tone in your voice like you can’t believe it whenever I say I like someone?  I’ve mentioned Pamela before.”

Lucy answered, “I didn’t think she was your first choice.  There’s way cuter girls in class.”

“Pamela’s cute!”

“Pamela’s-” Lucy started, finished.

“You can say it.  If you want to be judgey, own it,” Avery said, with as much aggression and indignation as she ever mustered.

“A healthy size.  Kind of like Ms. Hardy.”

“You have a type,” Verona commented.  Her hand and shoulder were hurting from carrying the bags.  She was glad at least that Avery was distracted from her nervousness.

“I like that about her.  Like she’d give great hugs.  And she’s legit the nicest person in class.”

Lucy considered, then nodded.

Avery hit the submit button, with just the one choice on the list highlighted.  She heaved out a sigh.  “When do we find out?”

“Whenever.  It’s dumb,” Lucy said.  “It really doesn’t matter that much.”

“It’ll matter when the results come out,” Verona guessed.  “Someone’s feelings are going to get hurt.  Probably a lot of someones.”

“I just wanna see,” Avery said, putting her phone away.  “I worry feelings are going to get hurt.  Maybe mine.”

“Fingers crossed,” Lucy said.

As they walked down the winding path, the trees getting thicker, Verona was keeping an eye out for the woman with the hidden face.  She saw a figure in the trees, moving through foliage faster than someone should be able to, given the slope and the undergrowth.  Not much bigger than them.

She huffed out a laugh, the huff partially because she was a little out of breath.

“What?” Lucy asked.

Verona lifted the bag that held the bread and meat, pointing.

The small figure carried on down the path, slowing down as they ran.  They came to a stop at a bend in the path.

The three girls carried on walking until the person was in plain view.  They stopped.

A child, a couple years younger than them.  Despite the recent run, the boy didn’t heave for breath, and was almost motionless.  He wore mismatched clothes that looked like they had been picked from the lost and found, and his mouth was hanging open, with blood smeared across his lower face.  With the open mouth, his teeth were visible, half of them missing and the other half broken with black and brown at the edges of the breaks.

There were others nearby, it seemed.  Verona could hear distant singing.

Her heart was racing, looking at the boy.  She felt very conscious of her breathing, where she wasn’t quite holding her breath, but she was putting in the extra effort to not breathe too loudly.

“I am sufficiently freaked out now,” Avery whispered.

“You’ve got a little something on your face there,” Verona said, loud enough for the boy to hear.  She tapped her mouth.

Verona,” Lucy whispered.

The boy turned, and then resumed running.  The sound of the distant singing faded.

“Don’t… agitate him.  Or it.  Whatever it is,” Lucy said.

“I am a little bit majorly freaked out now,” Avery whispered, her volume still low.

“Me too,” Verona admitted.  “Let’s keep going.  We don’t want to be late.”

Lucy checked the paper she had in her pocket- she was using the map from a brochure, and had other notes and lists with it.  “I guess we keep going forward until we get there.”

Verona still stood by Avery, her hand on Avery’s back, and she had the feeling that if she wasn’t there and Lucy wasn’t at the other side, Avery might not have budged.

They resumed walking.

“What’s the chance this is all a big joke?” Avery asked.  “Isn’t this stupid?”

“Is that why you procrastinated on coming?” Lucy asked.  Verona gave her friend a look, frowning, and saw an answering huff in return.

“I didn’t- no.  That really, really wasn’t why.”

“Five percent chance this is a big joke,” Lucy said.  “Too much weirdness, and I feel like they would have let us in on the joke before now.”

Verona considered.  “I was thinking more like fifteen percent.  It’d take a lot of smart preparation beforehand, but it could be a promotion for a scary movie or something.  The town could even pay for part of it if it got more people to come in the tourist season.”

“I don’t think it’s a fifteen percent chance this is all a prank,” Avery said.

Something moved through the foliage.  Bigger than a person, maybe, and it moved through the branches high above them, and it went from being twenty feet behind them to well ahead of them in a matter of a second or two.  Avery made a surprised sound.  Verona laughed.

It was nervous laughter, short, emotions spilling over, her heart racing in the silence after.

“You’re not going to go crazy on me, are you?” Lucy asked.

“No crazy here,” Verona promised.

Her friend was quiet, alert, and tense.  Lucy’s whole thing was showing no fear, no weakness.

The singing began to pick up again.  There were more figures in the woods.  More things moving through the foliage now, until the rustling seemed incessant.

There were other paths through the woods here.  She could see an adult male making his way through.  A guy she might have seen, once.  It wasn’t like he was a familiar face, but she felt like there might have been a time at a big event when she’d seen him, thought he looked scary or intense, and then never had occasion to think about him again.  Pale, his blond hair shorn short, he wore a canvas jacket that matched his pants, and he carried a bag.  He wasn’t old, but the lines in his face were deep and sharp.

There were others down the path too.  Faces that she did feel like she had seen around town.  A woman with wide hips and bleached-blond hair.  Maybe twenty-five to thirty five?  Verona wasn’t so good with that age range.  There was a guy sitting with her, broad across the shoulders, with a chin-strappy sort of beard that didn’t quite match his round jawline.

The woman with the hidden face was there too, hands in the pockets of a long coat.  She walked around the perimeter of the clearing as Verona and the others approached, and when it wasn’t low-hanging branches obscuring her face, it was leaves that had picked that moment to fall.

Verona looked around.  There were a lot of kids in the woods, along with the occasional adult.  Some had clothes that looked like outfits, others were mismatched.  A couple were naked, smeared with mud or blood.  Some had their mouths open, others had their mouths closed, but an awful lot of them had blood around their mouths.

The singing was louder now, and Verona couldn’t see the source of it.  Sing-song, playful, like a song that might get sung at the grade school, or a Christmas song with zero Christmas in it.  She couldn’t make out the words.

Neat effect.

The man with the short blond hair reached the clearing’s edge, and went over to lean against a tree behind where the toque woman and chinstrap guy were.

“Is this where you all murder us?” Verona asked.

“Murder?” chinstrap guy asked.  He looked surprised at the notion.

“Murder,” said another voice, “is the smallest of the things you have to worry about.”

The other voice was the latest person to join the group.  He took a similar path to the one the blond guy had.  He looked homeless, with the condition of his skin and hair, but his clothes weren’t that bad.  His hair was thinning on top, wispy, and his beard uneven, with wiry black and gray hairs.  Maybe an addict?  Something like that?  He didn’t look like he weighed much more than Verona or her friends.

“Children?” the man asked the woman with the hidden face.  “Really?

“Um,” Lucy spoke up.  “Teenagers.  Technically.”

“I’m noticing we haven’t firmly ruled out the murder,” Verona said, subdued.  There was a lot going on around them.

“As far as I know and hope, nobody here has any intention of murdering you,” chinstrap guy said.

“You’re, um-”

“I’m Matthew.  This is my wife Edith.  That’s Miss.”

Miss was the faceless woman.

“Behind me we have John.  The others are waiting to poke their heads out of hiding.  Nobody wants to be the first to get spotted.”

Avery made a sound, drawing closer to Lucy, as something moved in the bushes.

“Children?” the man with the thinning hair asked, again.  He sounded kind of outraged.

“It made sense,” Miss said.  “Everyone agreed.  You included.”

“I didn’t- I wouldn’t have… not if I knew it was children.”

“I saw it,” Avery whispered.  Verona was annoyed at the interruption, when she was drinking in every detail, trying to put the puzzle together.  What was happening, who was important…

“What did you see?” Lucy asked.

“In the bushes.  It was… really ugly.  It had a monocle.  I can see a face in the branches above.”

“Oh,” Lucy murmured.  “Yeah.  I… wow.”

Verona was bothered that she was the one who was missing out.  If this was a prank, were they in on it?  They weren’t that good at acting, but…

“If you want to make an issue of it, you can take a stand, Charles,” Miss said.  “We won’t hold it against you.”

Everything is held against me,” Charles said.

“Who’s he?” Verona asked, abrupt, pointing at the man with the hair so thin he looked almost bald.

“That would be Charles Abram,” Miss said.  “He’s your predecessor.”

The man was wild-eyed, swaying a little as he stood at the clearing’s edge, caught between looking at the girls and glaring at Miss.

“And, uh, what is it exactly we’re doing, that he was doing before?” Verona asked.

“There have been some arguable cases like Edith and Matthew here, but Charles was the sole practitioner of Kennet for a good decade.  But for him, you three girls, and the natural things one might expect to find in forest clearings, those here are best described as Others.  Beings that naturally exist beyond the realms and ken of man.  Charles would… manage us.  Keep people safe from us, keep us safe from people, and handle problems.”

“We’re here to solve a problem, right?” Lucy asked.

“Yes.”

“What have you told them?” Charles asked.

Watch your tone, cullion worm.”  The words came from the trees, and they made Verona shiver.

Charles was already tense, but he went more rigid at that.

“I made them an offer, five weeks ago.  The two girls were friends already.  I pointed them to the third because three makes a good number.  I told them we would teach them of magic and strange things if they would help us with a problem.  One you can no longer assist us with, Charles.”

“The Carmine Beast.”

“Yes.  I’ve described only the most fundamental things.  I had them spend a weekend practicing avoiding lies, and watched them carefully.  I explained the ritual to awaken, in rough strokes, and told them what they’d need.  I told them they would be able to speak to the wind, or to flames, to see far things, to change their shape…”

“Go to magical places,” Avery said.

“Yes.  And curse their enemies.”

Verona studied it all, taking it in.

“I can see the little things, and the faces in the trees,” Avery said.  “But I still can’t see your face.”

“Or your hands,” Lucy said.

Why?  Why were Lucy and Avery getting this, when Verona couldn’t?  Verona was more scared at that than she was by the children with broken teeth.  She looked at the children, seeking out clues.

“You can’t see her face because of what she is,” Matthew said.  “We can’t either.  I wouldn’t worry about it.”

What she is, not who she is.

Verona turned, aware they were surrounded.  She could feel her skin crawl, see the intensity in Charles’ eyes, the cold expressions.  The strangeness of it, without the slightest hint of a giveaway…

She swallowed hard, turning again.

She could see the things in the bushes.  Small, ugly, and twisted.  Something she might have taken as a stone in the corner of her eye was a figure too lumpy and misshapen to be a person.  Three other things were perched on him, one maybe a girl, tiny with red-stained skin, her expression twisted into a permanent scowl, then a fat one with what looked like nails sticking point-out from the inside of his belly, wearing a waistcoat and monocle, and a scrawny one with a nose like a pickaxe.

In the trees- there was a figure taller and more muscular than a person should be.  There was a slender woman sitting on a branch, and what looked like maybe they were wings, draped around her like a blanket.  A teenage girl with eyes black from corner to corner, hair matted with filth.

“They’re so new,” the woman with the wings said, in that silky tone.

Edith’s eyes burned like flames.  Matthew’s eyes were too dark.

All with the backdrop of that crowd of mostly-children standing motionless in the trees, and the constant, eerie singing.

It was-

She let out a half-note of a laugh.

“There we go,” Miss said.  “We can continue now.”

“This is on your heads,” Charles said, growling the words.

“There what goes?” Verona asked.  “Why can we continue?”

“Your eyes are open.  It’s a good first step,” Miss said.  “Traditionally, to open someone else’s eyes is to take on a responsibility for that someone.  We’ve spread that responsibility out among ourselves.”

“So if we die, all of you only suffer a little?” Lucy asked.

“We have no intention of letting you die,” Miss said.

“Why were my eyes last to open?” Verona asked  “That doesn’t seem right.”

“It’s a good thing, Verona.  Those things that let you hold onto what came before, like skepticism, imagination?  They’re going to be things that make you an excellent practitioner, should you follow through here today.”

Don’t,” Charles said.  “I don’t care if I make enemies.  You girls, I’m telling you now, don’t.”

“What’s his deal?” Lucy asked.

“The practice, as we call it, is best summed up as an ongoing contract.  By pledging to make your word inviolable, forces in this world will start listening.  Routine, ritual, and expectation have formed the grooves and determined how best to communicate with those forces.  Diagrams, symbols, knowing who and what to appeal to.  Many, many things become possible.  If your word is inviolable.”

“He lied?” Avery asked.

“Lying will hurt your relationship with spirits and Others by a very small amount.  But breaking an oath or promise?  It will make you forsworn.  Every force that worked for you as a practitioner will work against you.  The trappings of innocence and ignorance that protect most people in this world don’t protect the forsworn.  The unluckiest have no refuge, no means of self defense.  They become battlegrounds, their bodies open for any echo of a dead person, any complex spirit, any power to invade and try to take over, fighting among one another for purchase, and tearing up the substance of the Forsworn’s Self in the process.  And that is only one of the very many ways the Forsworn become vulnerable.”

“Do not,” Charles growled.  “I’m telling you three.  Walk away now.”

“Others, like Charles, make deals.  Some become slaves.  Others give up something.”

“And Charles?” Verona asked, staring at the man, who looked like he was ready to spit.

“I think we were kind, we were reasonable,” Miss said, with the hint of an accent.  “Once a year we give him something inconvenient.  A curse, for example, until we can deal with it.  Five weeks ago, we gave him a bit of sickness and that will be our contribution for this year.”

Charles looked off to one side.  He said, “You were very kind.  You could have made it a daily contribution and it would still have been kind.”

“What’s the catch?” Lucy asked.  “It can’t be as simple as just losing the ability to lie, in exchange for all of that.”

“Practices have their own prices,” Matthew said, from his seat on the fallen log.  “That price could be a simple offering of food, a little bit of risk.  But that’s not what you’re asking.”

“What do you want from us?” Lucy pressed.

The ugly little things were sniggering.  The smallest one had fallen from her perch on the largest one’s shoulder.

“Something terrible happened, of a scale that words cannot easily convey.  We need you to look into it,” Matthew said.  “No need to solve it.  Simply… look into it.”

“That’s sketchy as heck,” Lucy said.  “Elaborate?

“Five weeks ago,” Miss said.  “A very old, very powerful presence that helps manage this area was lost to us.  By old rules made thousands of years ago, the spirits, ambient and everywhere, may pass judgment on practitioners when it comes to matters of import; they decide things such as whether a person is forsworn.  By the flip side of that same coin, we’re not meant to look after our own affairs.  We need a practitioner to.”

“Our problem,” Matthew said, “is we have an equilibrium.  We’re free, we handle our own affairs when we can.  The moment we ask an outsider to come and they realize they could enslave us or make demands of us, the equilibrium falls.  They might exterminate the goblins.  They’d separate me from Edith.  They’d turn us into tools.  Names in books to be summoned.”

“It was always going to be some time before they realized the Carmine Beast was gone.  We hoped to have months, and we had five weeks,” Miss said.  “Now we need the ability to tell outsiders that practitioners are handling the matter.  Give us the ability to say that, help us where you’re able, and we will give you a share of all of our power.”

“You want us because we’re kids, we’re young, we’re… not threats,” Avery said.

“I picked you three for several reasons.  That was one, yes.  Our deal would include you promising not to seek undue power over this area or us, except where necessary to apprehend the culprit.  In exchange, each and every one of us would pledge to do you no harm, to give you power, and to protect you and lend you the aid we can against outside forces.”

“Like the murderer?” Avery asked.  “Or… did you mean lost as in missing?”

“With creatures that old and that important, the line between the two is a fine one.  Power is rarely extinguished, and the power that is the Carmine Beast is still in Kennet.”

“It’s-” Lucy started.  She stopped, looking around.

“We’re keenly aware of practitioners and visiting Others.  There have been none.  What’s left of the Carmine Beast is still in Kennet.”

“Meaning it’s one of you?” Lucy asked.

“It seems so,” Miss said.

“Walk away,” Charles said.

“You can walk away if you don’t like the terms of this deal,” Miss told them.  “You’re aware.  You’ll see things and Others, and they’ll know you see them, but you’ll be largely innocent, still.  You’ll have protections.  Especially here.”

Verona reached out for Lucy’s hand.  Her own sleeve still extended to the first knuckle, so when Lucy gripped her hand, she held it through the sleeve.  Verona could still feel how cold Lucy’s hand was.

Charles stared at them.

“I want more,” Lucy said.  “I want a promise, to make sure this isn’t a trap.”

“What are you doing?” Verona asked.

“That you won’t do anything that will keep us from leading long, full lives.  That you won’t just protect us from enemies, you’ll keep us… from whatever happened with Matthew and Edith-”

“It was a decision,” Matthew said.

“Still,” Lucy said.  “I think I want to grow up, get married, have kids, buy a house, get old.  You don’t stop us from getting those things.”

“Agreed,” Miss said, “we can make that part of the deal made.”

Verona clutched her friend’s hand.

“Then yeah,” Lucy said, with that stubborn look on her face, chin just a little forward.  “I’m all for it.”

“If I can go to neat places, travel, get… away,” Avery said.  “And if I’m safe.”

“As much safety as we can provide,” Miss said.

Verona almost said something, then changed her mind.  “You can’t lie?”

“I cannot.  Nor can the Others.”

“So we’re supposed to solve a murder-disappearance where the culprits can’t tell a lie, and can’t touch us?”

“Not without severe consequence.”

“Okay,” Verona said.  She looked at the various Others.  The woman with the hidden face.  Matthew.  Edith.  The filthy black-eyed thing in the trees.  The elegant, wing-wrapped woman.  The giant that stood in the background, barely visible.  The children.  The… goblins?  Was that what Matthew had said?  The man who leaned against the tree, with the short blond hair.

Her heart beat fast, and it wasn’t from fear.

Okay,” she said again, with more emphasis.

Charles had been someone who looked defeated from the moment of his arrival, because, Verona supposed, that was what he was, fundamentally.  It seemed worse, now.

“Did you bring everything?” Miss asked.

“Yeah.”

“The Awakening ritual is a fuller opening of your eyes to the practice, and the commitment to your word.  From that point, you would be unable to tell a lie without consequence, sometimes steep and life-altering.  By committing to your word, you will be heard.  Other families may conduct the ritual in a symbolic fashion.  With props, important objects, and offerings symbolically offered to the various kinds of Other.  Here, to make the deals, your responsibilities, and your protections manifest, all of the sapient Others of Kennet are here to take the offerings in reality.”

“Sounds good,” Verona said.  Lucy and Avery were nodding.  They’d gone over this part of it.

“When making this commitment, it is best you are quintessentially, markedly you.  Most do it unclothed.”

“Not gonna happen,” Lucy said.  “Not in front of all of these people, and not when it’s still cold as tits outside.  You said there was another way.”

“There are many variations on the ritual.  What you wear may be what the spirits expect you to wear.”

Verona had put her bag down, and now she unzipped it.  She pulled out the mask.  A deer mask, carved out of wood and painted with tan at the nose and around the eyes, a speckled darker brown at the edges and ears.  She handed it to Avery.

Avery handed Lucy a fox mask, painted orange.

“Damn,” Lucy muttered.  “You’re way better at carving than I am, Ronnie.  That deer mask is great.  Sorry yours is…”

Verona shook her head.  A black cat mask.  It was simple, but she liked it.  She hugged it to her chest with one hand while offering Lucy the hat she’d made herself.  Each of them had a gift for the other two.  And for themselves, short cloaks.

“If we make these the focus of what the spirits see in the ritual, you’ll find your practice is best when you’re in full raiment.  It will give your words more weight then.  You’ll want to keep at least one thing with you when you might be practicing.”

“Cool,” Verona said.

“You’ll be bound together if you awaken together.  You’ll be stronger as a trio than as a pair, and stronger as a pair than alone.”

Verona squeezed her friend’s hand again.  She looked and saw that Lucy was holding the brim of her hat and Avery’s hand at the same time.  That would be why she hadn’t donned the hat yet.

“Is the hat culturally insensitive?  Or inaccurate?” Avery asked, lifting it up with a free hand.  “Or… really silly?”

“It’s too late for second thoughts, you ditz,” Lucy said.  She was wearing the fox mask, but had yet to put on the hat.

“It’s fun,” Verona said.  “And that’s part of the point.”

“There is still time for second thoughts,” Charles said, his voice rough-edged.  “And I worry the fun will be fleeting.”

Verona looked back at the path that led to the southwestern end of Kennet, and found herself nodding.

Yeah.  She didn’t want that.

“Nah,” she said.  She smiled.  “Let’s do this.”

Lost for Words – 1.2

Lucy

If their job was to solve a mystery, then there might never be a better time to pay attention.

Matthew was drawing lines in the dirt with a branch, pushing it in to carve deeper where the ground was hard from the cold.  He seemed focused on the task, without nervousness.

It was hard to not feel nervous.  There was so much strangeness, she barely had anything to defend herself with, and every single one of her senses were on edge.  The smell of nature with traces of other smells she felt like she should track, the singing in the background nagging at her ears, the eye-catching movements of the various Others, some sudden, others subtle, the chill in the air against her face and bare legs numbing her sense of touch, the dryness of her tongue in her mouth.  She shouldn’t have had the salty pepperoni earlier.

She could have pulled on the extra clothes she’d packed, or gone to grab a drink, but she felt like she would miss things if she did, and she had to keep to old promises to herself.

“Explain what you’re doing?” Verona asked.  She sat on her heels, wincing and bringing her hand to her lower stomach as she did so, looking at the lines.  “This is a magic circle?”

“It’s been a long time since I’ve drawn any diagrams,” Matthew said.  “It might help to think of this as a stage.  If you don’t spread things out evenly, it’s imbalanced, the stage tilts.”

“We were told, uh, one person shouldn’t do all the shopping,” Avery said.  She had her hands in the pockets of her track pants.  “Or bring all the things.  Same idea?”

“Similar idea.”

“What happens if the stage tilts?” Verona asked.

“I… that’s complicated, and might not have a singular answer,” Matthew said, as he drew out a circle.  “I could see a situation where the spirits look to one person in your group as the spokesperson or leader.  One person ends up holding the cards or having more power, while the others are supporters.  In the very worst case, the other two practitioners could be suppliers of energy or power for the primary figure.  I wouldn’t worry, we’re well past that and into safe territory.”

“I bought the meat, bread, and milk, plus the molasses and vegetable ash,” Verona said.  “That’s more than Lucy and Avery.”

“Minor,” Matthew said.  “If there’s a difference it’ll barely be noticeable.  It’s more to do with the division of labor and effort.”

“Then I think we did okay,” Verona said.  She looked over at Lucy.  “What do you think?  The wine was a pain?  But you just got the wine, right?”

“Yeah,” Lucy said, her arms folded.  Her legs were cold.

“And Avery got the… honey.”

“Honeycombs,” Avery nudged her bag with her foot.  “And honey too, of course.  I went to my aunt’s to get it.  I thought it’d be a nice touch.”

“Do you know what’d be the best touch?” the smallest, reddest little ugly thing piped up.  “Spit in it!”

“Uhhh.”  Avery looked a little disconcerted by that.

“P-pee in it!”

“Manage yourselves, goblins,” Matthew said, without looking up from his work.

The goblin with the monocle wrapped his hands around the littlest goblin’s lower face, knobby fingers with pointed claws interlacing.  “My deepest, lowliest apologies for my companion’s vulgarity.  She has a brain the size of a thumbprint and it is composed entirely of nightsoil.”

“Nightsoil?” Lucy asked.

“Is easier to show than tell,” the plump goblin said, adjusting his grip, reaching behind him and into the back of his pants.

“Uh, no!” Lucy said.  She stuck her foot out, toe prodding the fat goblin and knocking him off balance and onto his rear end before he could do anything.  He nearly lost his grip on the small one, returning to a two-handed hold on her face, fingers threatening to crush the smaller goblin’s lower face.

“Nice save,” Matthew said.

“What’s their deal?” Lucy asked Matthew, pointing.

“Goblins are creatures of filth, vulgarity, and the basest, and the ugliest of human actions.  The smallest of them are rude jokes in the process of being told ad-nauseum.  The most dangerous of them could be mistaken for dark and twisted gods.”

“Sir Toadswallow,” the goblin with the monocle introduced himself, giving them an insincere smile.

“Toadswallow.  Is that toad and swallow or toads and wallow?” Verona asked.

“Activities best enjoyed when it is both at the same time, girl.  It’s a stage name,” he said.

Lucy crossed her arms.  “What kind of stage?”

“I work with children,” Toadswallow said, before giving her a wide smile that showed all of his teeth.  “When a practitioner drops a bit of meat from their nethers and wants to teach it to deal with goblinkind, they like to have goblins they’ve met and made deals with beforehand for the practice and initial lessons.  They summon, I go, they pay me.”

“You might get better business if you didn’t call the clients nether-droppings,” Lucy said.

Toadswallow smiled, and it was so fake it looked like someone trying to smile for the first time and doing it badly… with added fangs.  “My most regular summoners seem to have misplaced their books, and I have some time to myself.  I’m training some of this lot to do the child-work.  Cherrypop is the noisy little foetal deposit here in my hands.  The big one is… let’s call him Bluntmunch.”

The big goblin groaned, low, long, and drawn out.

Toadswallow pointed.  “Over there, separate from my students, is… you can call it Gashwad.  Cherry, dear, stop fighting or I’ll drown you in an outhouse.”

Gashwad was off with some of the Others, perched on the shoulder of the man with the questionable haircut who’d been called John.  It had a nose like a toucan had a beak, and dark eyes that seemed stuck in a perpetual glare. The Giant who had been in the woods had ventured closer, and was talking to the goblin, John, and Miss.

The fact the giant was seven feet tall wasn’t impossible by human standards but he was seven feet tall and confidently carried muscle in a way that defied sense.  When he moved, her instinct was to assume it would move slowly, she would take a half-second to check other things in the environment, including the winged woman, who reacted every time he stirred, and then she would look back and find herself surprised that he’d covered as much ground as he had.  When he moved, his hair sometimes got out of the way of his face.  That was as distracting as anything.  Not that she was into it, but it felt like recognizing a celebrity on the street.

The woman with the wings hadn’t actually unfurled her wings.  She’d hopped down from the branch with them still wrapped around her.  She smiled in a way that suggested she had secrets as she glanced at Lucy, even as she wandered on her own.  The teenager with hair like the matted, moldy black stuff in a gutter stuck to the trees and stuck fairly close to the woman with the wings, crawling across branches and staying mostly hidden.

Lucy watched them carefully.  Was anyone acting suspicious?  What was suspicious or ordinary, when they were so far from being human?

“Um, Sir Toadswallow, what is it-” Avery started, before being interrupted by Toadswallow’s yelp.  Cherrypop had bitten him.  He shook her free and tried to grab her again, only to land on face and belly.

“John!” Matthew raised his voice.  He’d messed up the diagram, maybe when Toadswallow had made the sudden noise.  He pointed the branch at the squabbling goblins.  “Would you?”

The intense looking guy broke away from the other conversation.  He marched across the clearing, toward the goblins, who were too preoccupied to notice.  He scooped them up and pulled them apart with apparent ease, despite the fact that tooth, nail, and stomach-spikes were hooked into one another.

Strong, Lucy noted.

“Suckle my ass!” the tiny goblin screeched.

“Orders?” John asked.

“I order you to suck, suck, succckkle it!  Suck out my bloody insides and choke on them!”

“No orders,” Matthew said.  “But if you wanted to take them somewhere out of earshot for a few minutes and let me finish this, it’d help.”

John glanced back across the clearing, surveying it.  For a brief moment, he met Lucy’s eyes.

There was something about the look in John’s eyes that bothered her more than any creepy singing kids, any drunk old forsworn guy, or the way she couldn’t see Miss’s face.

Three years ago, she had heard shouting, and had hidden in her room.  When she’d finally crept out, she’d found her mother sitting on her bed, crying.  For one moment, before she’d realized Lucy was there, her mother had had this look on her face… like she’d been wounded in a way that cut deeper than bone.

Then her mom had realized Lucy was there, mostly pulled herself together, and even though she hadn’t been able to talk much because she was choked up, took her back to her room and tucked her in, giving her a kiss goodnight.

John, as far as she could tell, had that look on his face all the time.  He didn’t or couldn’t pull himself together, and he didn’t look like he tucked anyone in or gave anyone kisses goodnight.

She watched him walk away.

“You okay?” Verona asked.

“Hm?” Lucy gave Verona a quizzical grunt of an answer.

“You happy?  Excited?”

“I was,” Lucy said.  “I will be again.  For right now I’m mostly trying to take it all in.”

Scruffy Verona, eyes large in her face, nodded in answer, hand going up to the mask that lay flat at the top of her head to keep it from slipping, before turning to look at the various Others.

“I like that we got our mission, I guess,” Lucy said.  Her fingernails dug into forearms, and she balanced on one foot for a second so she could rub at a cold calf with the shin of her other leg in a vain attempt to warm it.  “Helps to distract, gives us things to start looking for.”

“I have a bunch of questions I want to ask,” Verona said.  “About twenty questions for each person here about the practice, and what they are, and how they operate.”

“We’re investigating a disappearance, remember?  Kind of.”

“-And ten questions about the disappearance.  Questions about who they are are going to be important for that too, I think.  We’ll get there, Lucy.”

Lucy nodded.  Made sense, considering who Verona was as a person.

“You okay, Avery?” Verona asked.

Avery was sitting on a log, a spare jacket thrown over her legs, her attention on the woman with the wings and the girl with the dirty hair.  “I’m freaking out a little.  Worrying a bit.”

“About?” Lucy asked.

“About… what if I want or have to move?  What happens then?”

“The deal is that you’ll look into matters,” Matthew said.  “If you have to move, you could still look into matters if you paid irregular visits.”

“But, you know, try not to move away if you can help it,” Verona said.

“Yeah,” Avery answered.

“They won’t get angry or impatient?” Lucy asked.  “If Avery screwed off and moved to Toronto or something, and only showed up every five years?”

“Every year would be better than every five, to check in, but I think it’s important to stress that many Others live forever, or they experience living in a different way,” Matthew told them.  “Patience, impatience, time, it doesn’t often matter in the same ways.  When it does matter, a lot of it is stuff you still need to think of from a different angle, like Faeries and their amusements.”

He indicated the woman with the blanket of wings wrapped around her.  She turned her head to look at him, smiling.

“So…”  Lucy drew out the sound, unsure if she should bring this up.  “Is that why it took five weeks for you guys to start investigating the disappearance of this Carmine Beast?”

Matthew seemed surprised at that.  “I think it might be.  Didn’t cross my mind.”

“The first forty-eight hours are the most important, aren’t they?” Lucy asked.

“I always hated that idea,” Verona said.  “Isn’t the last forty eight hours the most important?  Without them, nothing would ever get solved.”

“I know you think you’re being clever, but it’s mostly annoying,” Lucy said, frowning at her friend.

Verona laughed.

“The first forty eight hours might matter more in your world, maybe,” Edith spoke up for the first time in a bit.  She stuck her hands further into her pockets.  “The kind of evidence and details you’d want to track for an investigation like this… the trails don’t fade, they take more turns, at worst.”

“Hoping this doesn’t end with a big ‘surprise, ritual sacrifice!’ and knives in our chests.”

“If they were going to do that, they had plenty of opportunities before,” Verona said.  “And the parts of the ritual Matthew just explained make sense, I think.”

Lucy looked at the circle as it had been drawn thus far.  A triangle about three feet across was contained within a circle, which was ‘strung’, for lack of a better word, with five lesser circles spaced out around it.  That diagram was in turn surrounded by another ring strung with more circles.

“Almost done?” Verona asked.

“Bowls go in seven sub-circles arranged in a ring, offerings to Others,” Matthew explained.

“I’ve got the bowls for that,” Avery said.  “They’re my family’s.”

“Get them out, we’ll need them soon.  These circles will each have an offering supplied by one of us.  I’m thinking back to a ritual I was barely paying attention to when I went through it twenty years ago, but it should be myrrh, oil, spice, quartz, and.. holly?”

“I would suggest holly,” Miss said, from the other end of the clearing.  “It’s the old way, and our approach here hews to old ways.  Up to the girls.”

“What’s the new way?” Verona asked.  “And what does it change?”

“The materials connect to fire, earth, air, and water.  The fifth spot can be wood or metal, depending on culture.  Wood has roots, and metal points to the future.”

“Got it,” Verona said.  She walked over to her bag and began to scribble down some notes.  “I don’t have an opinion.”

“I like holly,” Avery said.

“Holly it is.  Here, we have your objects,” Matthew said, indicating the outer ring.  “They relate to the pillars of human experience.”

Verona, already by her bag, was ready to pull some things out.

Knife, skull, coin, timepiece, thread, Lucy recalled.

Lucy reached into her pocket while walking over to her bag.  She fished out two coins, and showed Matthew.  He took them, examining them.  “One of them isn’t a coin, exactly.”

“‘HBC 100’.”

“Not a coin, exactly, but it’s metal and it was a currency of sorts.  Hudson’s Bay Company.  My grandfather had a coin collection.  He left it to me along with some stuff like a shoe shine kit and some mugs.  That’s supposed to be more expensive than the other one.”

“Silver dollar?” Matthew asked.

Lucy shrugged.  “It’s not expensive enough to pay a month’s rent or something, but…”

“It’s good.  Either one works nicely.”

She nodded, taking the coins back and closing her fist around them.

She had a knife in her bag.  Hand made by her cousin, and it felt nice enough to qualify for a ritual.

Well, technically she had two knives.  They were part of a set.  She grabbed both, along with the thermos of wine.

She stabbed one knife into one circle that had been made in the dirt, so the handle stuck up, then walked over to do the same with the Hudson’s Bay coin, so it was buried just enough it didn’t fall over.

“I have three skulls in my room,” Verona said.  “I asked Miss and she said the one that was actual bone instead of clay or plastic would be best.”

Verona set a raccoon skull down in one of the circles.  It was missing a fang.

Avery had a knit doll that wasn’t quite finished, with the knitting needles and the yarn still attached.  She looked back at the knife, then stuck the knitting needles into the cold ground with a bit of effort, propping up the doll so it sat up, and so the yarn wasn’t sitting in the dirt.  “I never finished making this for my baby bro.”

“Considering what the thread is meant to represent, that may be a perfect choice,” Miss said.

Avery looked nervous.  She placed a pocketwatch inside another circle.  “My grandfather’s.  He was going to throw it away, I kept it for myself.  Way before any of this.”

Knife, coin, thread, timepiece, skull.

“Is it a problem if I use the same thing twice?” Lucy asked.  “Knife and then knife again.”

“The ritual is, at its essence, you introducing yourself to our world,” Miss said.  She walked through the trees, and she seemed to have little or no difficulty at all picking her way through the undergrowth.  “The only wrong answer is the answer that feels wrong.”

“Does anything here feel wrong?” Edith asked.

Lucy had given a lot of consideration to the things she’d contributed.  She looked over the other things.  She shook her head with enough emphasis she could feel her hair move side to side, pulling at the elastic.

“No,” Avery said.

“No,” Verona said.  She pulled on her mask as she said it, ready to get started.

A bit premature, as the food still had to be apportioned out.  The plastic bag from the convenience store had the carton of milk, bread, and meat treats in it.  They put everything into bowls, and with each of them carrying their personal items, the two bowls, and the clothing, they made their way to the center of the diagram, being careful not to step onto any lines.

They’d shared online videos about the mask carving and a website with tailoring templates for the making of the hats.  The differences in mask were intentional, any differences in the hats accidental.  Verona’s hat was just a bit floppier at the brim.

When they’d done the search for the capes, they’d agreed to use the first blueprint on the list.  They’d been halfway when they had discovered the cape designs were all different.  Not that it mattered.  Verona’s was closer to a cloak, and Lucy’s closer to a shawl, it was so short.  Avery’s looked like more of a cape, with a wreath around the neck and shoulders.  She wore it ajar, so it covered most of one arm.

They stood with their backs to one another, and Lucy felt Avery reaching back, fumbling.

She took Avery’s hand, which was awkward when Avery had a folded-up bit of paper clamped between two fingers.  Pulling the knife out of her pocket, she tried to do the same with Verona, holding Verona’s hand and the knife at the same time.

The Others began to draw near.  Children, John, who had returned with goblins, the woman with the wings, the girl with the filthy hair, Matthew, Edith, and Miss.

The fox mask only had eyeholes, so her breath was hot against her lower face, while her legs were cold and her hands and head warmer.  The eyeholes gave her almost no peripheral vision.

Miss walked around the group, and her face was consistently hidden by the backs and heads of the Others.  When it wasn’t, others moved, distracting Lucy, or the Circle began to somehow stand out more than everything else around them, also serving to distract Lucy.

The singing in the background faded.

“Suleiman Bin Daoud took the first steps to establishing a new relationship between human and Other,” Miss said.  “A lasting compact between human and Other.  There are forms of this ritual where we recite old words in your language and in Suleiman’s.  There are forms where we conduct old traditions.  At the heart of it, however, lies an invitation.  For you to join our world, and for us to cooperate with you in interacting with the world of man.  Would you invite us in, Verona, Avery, and Lucy?”

“Yes,” Verona, Avery, and Lucy spoke in unison, but it was only Lucy who added, “With provisions.”

She felt a fingernail from Verona’s hand dig into her hand.

“Provisions, of course,” Miss said, taking it in stride.  “We pledge you safety.  We will do you no willful harm to body or mind, and we will do what we can to give you a long and full life, and avoid barring you from such.  Agreed?”

“Yes,” Lucy and Avery said, in near unison.  Verona was a bit late.

“If enemies from without would stand against you, we pledge our intent to stand with you, those of us here available as bodyguards, soldiers, distractions, or counsel.  You three shall not be alone against any threat.  Agreed?”

“Yes,” Lucy, Verona, and Avery said.  In sync this time.

“We pledge to give you our power and our knowledge without reservation, provided that power is taken in goodwill and without undue harm, or taken with the will of the majority here.  Agreed?”

“Yes,” the three girls agreed, in sync again.

That will be important.  I was wondering how we’d handle things if we could find the culprit of the disappearance… now we can call a vote and drain them of power.  I think.

The entire area had darkened, but the light of the overcast sky seemed to stick, where it fell on the diagram around them and where it lit up the various items, foods, and the empty circles where items were yet to be placed.

Lucy could feel the expectation.  Miss didn’t jump in, elaborate, or give any indication, but…

“We pledge to fill the role that was once filled by Charles Abram,” Verona spoke up.  “If others expect you to have local practitioners, we’ll be those practitioners, so they can’t upset the good things you have here.  If Others stand in judgment over practitioners in crucial matter of word, we’ll manage what needs to be managed, without any interest in taking over, enslaving you, or harming those of you who don’t do unjust harm to others.”

We didn’t rehearse this.  Am I supposed to say something?

Verona sounded so precise, so adult, using words she wouldn’t use, like ‘crucial’ and ‘unjust’.

“We’ll deal with you fairly, if you’ll let us.  As equals,” Avery said.  She didn’t sound quite as confident, and her voice was muffled by the deer mask she wore.  “If you’ll teach us of your world and show it to us, we’ll do the same for you, and help keep you in our world.”

Lucy swallowed.  She was halfway through the swallowing when she felt that expectation fall on her.  So many eyes were on her.

“We’ll work on your problem,” Lucy said.  The words came easily.  It was like letting a ball roll downhill.  She had to fill in the blanks and she already kind of knew the answer.  “We’ll commit ourselves to solving your problem and bringing the culprit to justice, whatever form that may take.  If-”

She hesitated.  This wasn’t exactly words that rolled downhill.  Not until she formulated the idea in her head.  “If justice is warranted we’ll play our role in meting it out.  We’ll do our part to protect Kennet, Other and human.”

‘Meting’, like Verona’s ‘unjust’, was one of those words that flowed, the words coming from a part of her deeper than lungs or breath.

The light that sat in the lines was so bright the world beyond was like shadows against the back of her eyes.  There were only the lines, circles, triangle, the scattered items, and the Others.

Lucy herself was cast in shadow, but for the mask she wore, the brim of her hat, and the folds of the short cape she wore at her shoulder.

“Who are you?” Miss asked.

Lucy let go of the hands of the other girls.  She brought the sheathed knife she held to her chest, pressing it against her sternum.

“I am Lucy.  Lucille Desiree Ellingson,” Lucy said.  “I picked the fox mask because I wanted something with fangs.  It’s important to me that I have fangs.”

It felt like an admission of weakness to say that much, and that admission was jarring enough that she almost thought the ritual would end, forcing a complete restart from the beginning.  It didn’t.  Everything was suspended, the lines of light tense.

“…The fox is smaller than a wolf, clever, capable of finding its way into henhouses, unraveling hedgehogs, and using cleverness with those fangs instead of brute force or a pack.  Even though it has fangs, it’s not always a carnivore.  I picked this knife because… family.  It came from family and it can protect those close to me, who are family by blood or friendship.  Because I wanted something that was a tool and a weapon both.  Same idea.”

It felt like everything was brighter, but when she fixed her eyes on them, they didn’t seem any different.  It took Lucy a moment to realize that even though she wore the mask, it wasn’t hampering her peripheral vision anymore.

“My name is Verona Hayward.  I picked this antique pair of scissors because… I didn’t really think about it so much as I just did it.  But if you want to know who I am, I think I’m the type of person who can improvise a good answer on the fly.  Scissors cut, they craft, these scissors in particular stand out, and those are me things.  I almost brought a toy from my childhood but… I don’t want my childhood back.  I don’t want something that ties back to who I was.  I wanted something that can cut that tie and also point where I’m going.  I picked the cat for my mask because I wanted a confident animal, and I want to be confident.  I wanted an animal that’s comfortable in nighttime and shadow and you’d better believe I’m ready to jump in with both feet first and join some of you in the nighttime and shadows.”

“Avery Kelly.  I picked the deer because I run, and that’s what I’m good at.  I run fast, I skate fast, I like to go fast.  Maybe I run in other parts of my life.  I don’t know…”

Avery held the paper up, which had partially unfolded.  Not paper, exactly, but a photograph.  With her nervousness, the photograph shuddered in a way that exaggerated the shaking of her hand.

“Do I actually have to talk about it?” she asked.  “I didn’t think I’d actually have to explain it.”

Only silence answered.  Because, Lucy knew, it was Avery’s time to speak, and only her time.

She didn’t know if she was breaching protocol or threatening to disrupt the ritual, but she turned a bit, reached back, and placed a hand at Avery’s shoulder, giving shoulder and back a bit of a rub.

“This photograph, it’s from the last game of the last Hockey season.  It’s more.  It’s not the best photo of that night, or the most important photo of that night, even.  But it has all the important people in it.  I was homeschooled for a long time.  I didn’t have many friends and I really cherished the friends I did have.  My best friend and teammate- our hockey team has people pulled from Tripoli, an hour’s drive from here, because we didn’t have enough players.  Some of the other players from Tripoli would go to Swanson.  My best friend… changed from our team to Swanson, because she wanted to win more than she wanted to be my friend.  I left homeschooling and went to a new school and everyone had already formed their friend groups since kindergarten.  I spent a year so-”

Avery stopped there.

The mask hid Avery’s expression.

Verona stepped from her position in the diagram to give Avery a one-armed hug.  Lucy gave her another rub of the other shoulder.

Others watched.  A woman with a hidden face.  Children with bloody faces.  Sneering, vulgar goblins.  A man with an intense gaze.

Avery didn’t seem to care about them.

“-So alone.  Until I felt like there were times I couldn’t breathe.  It got worse when I realized there were big parts of myself that I couldn’t share with people, even though most would be okay with it.  My family’s big and I got lost in the shuffle.  I made a game of seeing how many days I could go where I only gave one-word answers or answered questions when called on by a teacher or coach.  If I had to talk or had someone talk to me, I’d reset my streak.  Even counting time with my family, I went twenty-three days one time before a girl in class complimented my shirt.  Then I had a streak where I got to fifty-one before I stopped counting.  I don’t know if it got to fifty-three or sixty.  It started out like a joke, and ended up feeling like I couldn’t breathe.  A teacher saved me.  From that.”

Avery took a deep breath, around the choke that emotion had on her throat.

“That game, that night, we played against Swanson.  The photo was taken after.  My old best friend is in there.  So is my family.  So are Lucy and Verona.  Photographs are still images and we tend to think of them as moments in time, but… that was the night I first saw Miss and got introduced to them.  And I’m so glad.  The deer thing?  Deer are strong.  Deer have antlers.  They kick.  I’ll kick you if you look down on me or try to do anything to them.”

Lucy nodded.

“When I went looking, you were the one I found first, Avery.”  Miss’s voice was quiet.

Miss stepped out onto the diagram.  The diagram had become more complicated, with more lines like constellations, squares, and sub-circles orbiting bigger circles.  There were three dimensions to it, and the circles that had held the items were now arches.

In the darkness where it was only Lucy and the other girls, the diagram, the items, and the Others just beyond the diagram’s perimeter, the light from below didn’t reach Miss’s face or extend to her hands.

The woman walked on the light, small bright circles forming stepping stones, lines serving as roads to cross the void.  Through the arch-circle with the doll, which turned its head to watch her enter and walk past it.  To an empty circle, where she placed down a dull orange stone.  She had to walk a quarter-circle of the way around before she reached Verona, moving a hand to indicate a bowl.

Vegetable ash.  The bowl was bright and the ash was dark.

Verona lifted it, and Miss reached in to take a pinch, raising it to her face.

She left the same way she’d come.

The rattling of metal drew Lucy’s attention. The knife had come free to the ground, and like a compass, pointed at John, who stepped into the knife’s arch.  It tracked his feet, shuddering toward a middle-point when both were touching the circle, and pointed after him as he ventured further in.

He made a deposit of what might have been oil, black and contained in a small glass vessel.  Then he walked around until he was near Lucy.  He indicated the bread, torn up and arranged in the bowl.  The rye crust was almost black, the bread itself luminescent.

She offered him the bowl.  With that dark look conveyed even with his eyes nearly cast in shadow, he took a chunk of bread and put it into his mouth, chewing, before departing the circle much in the way he’d come.  In by blade, out by blade.

The woman with the wings came in past the thread, which seemed larger and brighter.  She placed a chunk of glass-like crystal before approaching Avery.  Honey and honeycomb, which gleamed like gold.  As Avery held the bowl, the woman lowered her mouth to the lip, sipping from the edge as Avery tilted it.  She left by way of the coin.  That was different.

The goblins came after, in through the knife-door.  They took separate paths once they were there, the little one traveling almost a three-quarter circle around, hitting two dead ends before finally joining the others by Lucy.  Their offerings were thrown down.  Packets of spices and spices in plastic containers with labels peeled off.

Meat for all four of the goblins.  The raised edges of the meat glistened like ruby in this special darkness.  They scattered again.  Toadswallow left by hourglass.  The other three by skull.

The giant, tan and long-haired, with chiseled features partially hidden behind long hair, entered through the hourglass, almost stepping on Toadswallow.  He approached Avery, who held up the bowl.

He reached out and laid a hand atop Avery’s head, crumpling her hat and disturbing her mask, which had turned white.  With ginger care, he adjusted the bowl in her hand, rotating it ninety degrees before taking the bulk of the honeycomb from it with fingertip and thumb.  He exited by way of the sewn thing.

The girl with the filthy hair moved like a spider did, her movements too quick and jerky, her body low to the ground.  She navigated her way across by darkness, not the paths of the light.  In through the thread, giving oil.  Verona and Avery both reached for the bowl of molasses, blacker than night, and it was Avery who picked it up to offer it, tipping it into her mouth.  The girl left the same way she’d come.

Edith and Matthew entered at the same time.  Edith by skull, Matthew by the timepiece.  Their paths didn’t see them cross or intersect, as he contributed holly, and she placed a reddish gemstone by the glasslike stone.  He took wine that glistened like gemstone.  She took vegetable ash.  Edith exited by coin.  Matthew exited by skull.

Leaving the creepy singing children, the milk…

The Children came in past the arch with the skull, filing in one after another.  Fifty, a hundred.  There was no singing, only silence.

They took meat from Lucy’s bowl until she was sure it would run out, but even with twenty chunks of jerky and pepperoni sticks in the bowl and perhaps fifty hands, there seemed to be enough that it only ran out as the last hand reached in.

They filed out by way of the coin.

When she looked down, all the bowls were empty.  Even the milk.

“Close your eyes,” Miss said, from the shadows beyond the bounds of the diagram.  The Others weren’t visible anymore.

Lucy did.

There weren’t enough other sounds, sights, or things to go by, for Lucy to keep good track of time.  Even her racing heartbeat wasn’t any help.

“Open your eyes,” Miss said.

When Lucy did, she was in the clearing again.  Charles and the Others were there, in their arrangements, and she assumed friends stuck by friends.  John with one of the goblins and the giant.  The filthy-haired girl with the faerie with wings.  Toadswallow with his proteges.

“Open your eyes again,” Miss said.  “Don’t think too hard about it.  Just do it.”

She did.  Like the raising of an eyelid, she lifted up a veil that was entirely of her will.

The world was painted by watercolour, favouring dark blues and grays for the snow, dark greens and black for the trees.  More startling was the red.  Like bloodstains, the red was everywhere, sinking into snow, into trees, and even dirt, though it was hard to make out.  As if to facilitate that bleeding or bloodstaining, blades, swords, and shafts of wood impaled everything.  Ribbons, sashes, and tatters of cloth were tied to handles, blades, and shafts, and each blew intently in a different direction.

Even people had sashes, but it was hard to tell the origin points.  When she got closer she found things got blurrier, harder to make out, as if it was the opposite of the way things worked in reality.

“I might have overdone it, doing the double knife thing,” she said.  “I’m seeing knives everywhere.”

“I…” Verona said, with mirth in her voice, “am loving your hair.”

Lucy had to bring one hand to her afro-ponytail to push it to where she could see it.  Pink?

“Why the hell?”

Verona laughed.

She closed her eyes, much as she’d opened them.  Her hair was normal.  Light brown, glossy, with the highlights of blonde she thought of as the only thing she’d inherited from her dad, and total pain to take care of.

“What’s all this?” Avery asked.  She took tentative steps like a horse that had just been born, hands out for balance.  She waved her hand out to indicate the woods and the path back to the city.  “It feels like the harder I focus my eyes, the less I can see details.”

Matthew spoke up, “The Sight is something you can train.  With practice and specialization, you may learn to see connections that thread between people, to see things like dreams or the approach of Death, or more easily track the spirits and how they move.”

“Which segues nicely into my next question,” Miss said.  She stood by a tree.  “Where would you like to begin, young practitioners?”

Verona was moving this way and that, taking things in.  Lucy had a gut feeling that Verona would get to grips with a lot of this with a surprising speed.  Her friend was always so smart when it came to the things that didn’t matter, and all of this seemed like it took those things and made them matter.

Avery was still working on finding that grit.  That speech, and what she’d talked about, it had shown more courage and strength than Lucy had managed to summon up in the last few years.  But it would take a short bit.  The first steps with Avery were always shaky and hesitant, then she ran, either toward or away.  Hopefully all of this would serve to close the gap, make Avery more confident from those very first steps.

Lucy drew in a deep breath.

“We need the lay of the land,” Lucy said.  “What happened, who’s close to it-”

“We have a witness,” Miss said.  “A Louise Bayer.”

“After,” Lucy said.  She was thinking of the cop dramas she’d seen, how they structured things.  What else?  “We won’t even know what questions to ask, yet.  We need answers, first.  Who was the victim, this Carmine Beast, what was the victim, possible whys.  We’re going to talk to all of you, but not here.  Not now.  We’ll come to each of you or call you to come to us.  We want to know how you work, what you do, how you relate to the victim.  Hmmmm.  What else?”

“You’re on top of this,” Avery said.

“I’ve been thinking about it since before the ritual,” Lucy said.  She glanced at Verona, saw the look of interest in her best friend’s eyes, and remembered.  She addressed the Others.  “Be prepared to teach us or give us something, for our practice.”

“We should start from the basics,” Verona said.

“Who can teach us the basics?” Lucy asked.  “Both for practice and how this world works?  Matthew?”

“Edith can,” Matthew said.  “And Charles?”

Edith, with the toque, nodded.  She’d been so quiet, throughout.  Interesting.

Charles, who looked like a homeless man, rose to his feet from the rock he’d been sitting on.  He held one hand to his lower back, wincing.

“No need for the rest of you to stick around,” Lucy said.

“We don’t mean to be rude.  Thank you for this,” Avery said.

It was nice to have Avery around, if it meant she didn’t have to try to be nice.

“If you need me, call for me three times,” Miss said.

“Will do,” Verona said.

Lucy watched as Others left, searching for those telltale human signs, like nervousness, wariness, in things that didn’t have much or any humanity.

“Charles,” Lucy said.  “Can you write down the Others of Kennet?  We’ll need a list to work off of.”

Lucy was already formulating a suspect list.  She needed the names to go with the faces.

She wouldn’t be calling Miss, if she could help it.  Not when Miss had just jumped to the top three on her mental list of suspects.

[1.2 Spoilers] Notes on Others

Lucy’s Notes

Charles Abrams
Type:
Ex-practitioner, forsworn
Appearance: Sketchy looking dude.  Kind of guy who grows his hair long to make up for what he’s losing on top.  Greasy.  Dirty.  Skinny.  Brown/Gray hair & scraggy beard.
Appearance with Sight: Same?
Awakening:  Didn’t participate.


Notes: Priority to interview.  Need to work out questions to ask.  Means motive opportunity?  Alibi?  Verona wants to know why/how he got forsworn.

 

Matthew Moss
Type according to Matthew:
Host
Appearance: Human I guess?  Brown hair + beard.  20-35?
Appearance with Sight: His eyes are in shadow.
Awakening:  Hourglass → Gave holly, took wine → skull


Notes: Interview Later Verona wants to wait until he’s taught us before we spook him any.  More chance of catching him in lies?

 

Edith James / Girl by Candlelight
Type according to Matthew:
Complex Spirit
Appearance: Human?  Bleached blond hair.
Appearance with Sight:  Eyes glow like fire
Awakening: Skull → Gave red gem, took ash → coin


Notes:  Have to interview around the time we interview Matthew.  Couples talk.

 

Alpeana
Type according to Matthew:
Mare
Appearance: Filthy hair, totally black eyes, ragged clothes.
Appearance with Sight:  Same?
Awakening: Thread →  Gave oil, took molasses → Thread


 

 

Maricica

Type according to Matthew: Faerie, Dark Autumn
Appearance: Pretty.  Smiles a lot.  Long brown hair.
Avery thinks she has moth wings.  Verona thinks she has bat wings.
With Sight: Nothing after (she left too soon) but Verona says she saw something scary out of the corner of her eye mid-ritual.
Awakening: Thread →  Gave crystal, took honey → Coin



 

 

Guilherme

Type according to Matthew:
Faerie, Summer Above
Appearance: Handsome.  Long, pale hair, tan skin.  Chiseled good looks.  Muscles.  I’ve seen people as tall as him and people as muscular as him but never both together like that.
With Sight: Left too soon after the ritual.  Nothing special during.
Awakening: Timepiece →  Gave myrrh (according to Avery), took honey → Thread


 

 

John Stiles

Type According to Matthew:
Dog of War
Appearance: Blond buzz cut.  Scary look in eyes.  Deep lines in face.  Age indeterminate.
With Sight: Same?
Awakening: Blade →  Gave oil, took bread → blade


 

Toadswallow, Cherrypop, Bluntmunch, Gashwad

Type According to Matthew: Goblin
Appearance: Toadswallow is fat, bellybutton-high, monocle, spiky belly, dresses nice.
Cherrypop is red, ugly, big nose, squinty, messy hair.  Rat-sized
Bluntmunch is human sized but slouches, muscular.  Underbite, warty like a toad
Gashwad has a huge nose, glaring, beady little eyes, yellow-brown skin instead of pink like others
With Sight: No change?
Awakening: Blade → Gave spices (?), took meat → Skull for all except Toadswallow, who used hourglass.





 

The Hungry Choir

Type According to Matthew: Ritual Incarnate
Appearance: 50+ people, mostly young, varying clothes, varying appearance.  Some have bloody mouths or broken/missing teeth.  Lots of singing when they’re around.
With Sight: No change?  During awakening ritual, they were silent.
Awakening: Skull → Gave ? /  Took Meat → Coin


Note:  Interview soon, once we figure out how.  They might have shortchanged us in the ritual, taking but not giving.

 

Miss

Type According to Matthew: Unknown
Appearance: Woman, age indeterminate, face and hands always hidden
With Sight: Same?
Awakening: Thread → Gave Myrrh, took ash → thread


Note:  We may have to be careful with this one.  Too smart.  Too connected.  I can probably think of 2 things that are alarming or suspicious for every thing that’s legit.

Lost for Words – 1.3

Avery

(Posted Last Thursday – Notes On Others)


Avery and her friends sat in the back of a beat-up old pickup, Avery with one hand on her hat, her mask in her lap, and a blanket thrown over her and Lucy’s legs, weighed down at the ends by their bags.  The wind blew past them, not as cold as it should have been.

Avery could finally let herself believe that all of the scary moments had been worth it if things could be this good now.

Not that things were excellent.  Just good.  Excellent would require someone she could cuddle up against, and less of the mind-numbing, stomach-gnawing anxiety that came with being in the back of a relative stranger’s truck as they drove down little-known roads into the Canadian wilderness, the sky black and moonless and the streets unlit by anything but the truck’s headlights.

It being ‘good’ despite everything said a lot, as far as she was concerned.  The awakening was done and she had her friends with her.  There was anxiety, yes, but there was also relief and excitement.

“Verona,” Lucy said.  She’d had a flashlight about as long and thick as a finger in her lips, and she had to pull it out to speak.  She shone it on her notebook.  “Give me one observation about Miss.”

“You’ve been on this for hours, Luce.”

“I want to finish her section.  I’m almost done here.”

Hours.  We’re going to go to sleep tonight and I-” Verona stopped.  In the dim light of Lucy’s flashlight and the light of the truck’s cabin interior, Avery could see Verona rolling her eyes, her lips moving for a second before she continued, “-can imagine myself hearing you in my dreams, tonight.”

“Almost screwed up, huh?” Lucy asked.

“I think I’m one hundred percent so far for truth-telling.”

“Then open your mouth one more time, continue that win streak, and tell me one observation about Miss.”

Verona groaned.  “Give me one observation about Matthew’s truck.  Give me one observation about that black bear out in the woods.  Give me one observation about that unicorn you dreamt of.”

“You do not seem like the type to dream about unicorns,” Avery said.

“Come on.  I don’t like leaving things unfinished,” Lucy said.

Verona reached for one of the chocolate bars they’d got from the last rest stop, and Lucy lunged for it, upsetting the blanket and letting cold air beneath, chilling Avery’s legs.  Lucy seemed to want to take it hostage, but when Verona got two fingertips on it, pinning it down, Lucy stuck her foot out, kicking it away.  The chocolate bar slid down the length of the pickup’s bed to the tailgate at the end, stopping there.

Avery watched Verona huff, clearly annoyed by the fact the chocolate bar was now a matter of feet away, out of easy reach.

“Tell me, and maybe I can reach it,” Lucy said.

“I’m not going to answer your question until I have a chocolate bar,” Verona said.  “Ideally that one.”

“You-”

“That’s now fact,” Verona said.

“You shouldn’t use minor oaths for chocolate bars, Ronnie.”

“Already done.  Hey Avery, you realize you don’t need to hold onto your hat?”

“I don’t want it to blow away,” Avery said.  Her position, now that she was done fixing the blanket Lucy had disturbed, was skewed sideways, one leg extended to the bulge at one side of the truck bed where it accommodated the wheel beneath, her back was to the bag she’d placed between herself and the truck’s cab for cushioning, one hand on her hat, and one arm around the lip of the truck bed, holding the cool metal.  It didn’t leave her a lot of freedom of movement, but riding in the back of a pickup, exposed to the elements, on four sides, no seatbelt or anything, she liked claiming the security she could.

Verona rolled her eyes, picked up her own hat, and turned it over.  She had a bit of chalk, and began drawing.

“Ave, ignore her,” Lucy said.  “Give me one observation about Miss.”

“She keeps things hidden,” Avery said.

“Already had something like that down.”

“I mean, she told me during the ritual that she picked me first?”

“Can you expand on that?”

“It just feels like she can’t help but keep a lot of cards up her sleeve.”

“Good enough,” Lucy said.  She moved the narrow flashlight to her mouth, shining it on the book she was writing in, and began taking her painstaking notes.  Verona leaned in closer to try to borrow some of the light, and Lucy leaned away.

Verona used the light from the truck’s cab, instead.  She’d drawn a circle on the brim of her hat, and within that circle, she had drawn a triangle with a line through it and a line beneath it.  Now she drew branches off to the side, with curved arms.

Edith had given them the quickest of rundowns before they’d left.  Four symbols, all triangles, some with lines through them, each with ‘underlines’ to indicate orientation.  They’d been encouraged to stick to air for the time being.  They had organized themselves in the back of the truck, Lucy had started to write the symbols down before she could forget them, and she’d nearly lost her notebook to the fierce wind, before scribbling over the simple symbol and stopping the effect.

They’d sat there, cold and disappointed, debating about whether they should knock on the window and ask Matthew to stop.  They’d sat in dissatisfaction for about forty five minutes before he’d pulled the truck into a rest stop.  They’d peed, ordered hamburgers and pogos from a place with more bare wood than paint on the sign, had Edith explain runes and particulars again while waiting for their orders, and then hit the road again.

The second time around, they had tried out some of the basics.  How you could draw a circle with a rune within it and have lines radiating out, to emit that thing, or have a ‘bar’ perpendicular to the radiating lines to block that thing.  How a square or triangle could be used, but a circle was often best because it was equally strong around its perimeter.  Triangles could impart more force on the rest of the world because they pointed outward, but had points of weakness and points of strength, and could thus ‘collapse’, especially if the diagram was imbalanced.

There were air signs along the side of the truck now, drawn in chalk on the textured plastic.  Triangles pointing up with horizontal lines through them, enclosed in circles.  Each circle had a line extending up and away from it, with a ‘bar’ at the top.  Essentially a circle with a capital ‘T’ at the top.

Block the air.  After they’d drawn that, the chilly wind had stopped being a problem.

Verona seemed to be doing something more complicated.  Avery watched as Verona experimented, creating three radiating lines that bent at right angles, curved in quarter-circles.  There was already some chalk on the hat, like there was on the underside of Avery’s.  Edith’s work.

“What are you doing to your hat?”

“Experimenting,” Verona said.  “This should work.”

“Your hat is-” Lucy started, mumbling around the flashlight.

Verona’s hat flew out of her hands.  As the truck continued barreling down the road, the hat flew the opposite direction, and the dark material disappeared into the darkness in about one second.

Lucy reached up and pulled the flashlight out of her mouth.

Verona raised one hand, reaching up.  She raised her voice, “Come on!”

The hat, caught by strong wind, came from off to their left, blowing straight into Verona’s waiting hand.

“Yeah!  Whoo!  Thank you, spirits!” Verona called out.

Inside the cab, Avery saw, Charles was turning his head to peer through the back window at them.  Noticing the commotion.

Verona brought her hat down to her lap, spat on the part she had drawn on, and started to wipe the diagram away with her sleeve.

“That could have gone badly,” Lucy said.

Verona folded the hat so the circular brim was a half-circle, point caught within, and then stuck it into her bag.  “Maybe.  But Miss said earlier that this is about deals.  Words, actions, and routines.  They’re listening now.  Paying attention to our words, watching what we write down.  If you do something confidently, there’s a better chance it’ll work.”

“There’s also a chance you lose your hat and we spend three hours looking for it off the side of the road.”

Verona smiled.  “Maybe.  But it’s about routine, too, right?  According to Edith, these symbols for wind have been used by a variety of cultures for hundreds of years.  They were written about  by ancient people, they were passed on, taught.  So the spirits know how to recognize them.”

“Uh huh,” Lucy said.

“And it’s the same with our words, the longer we go without telling any fibs, the better we get at making ourselves heard.  They said that it’s a regular thing with practices.  Habits become patterns become expectations, for us and for the world.  We can set our own small routines.  If we do stuff and it works, it makes it more likely it’ll be a real pattern in the future.”

“And?”

“If we make a habit of doing a lot of practice and pulling off minor stunts and tricks, then that should become a pattern, and the pattern…” Verona let the words hang, a hand extended.

“Becomes expectation,” Avery finished.

“I think if I need to do something like toss my hat away and have it come back, or whatever, the spirits are more likely to give me a thumbs up and carry on doing what we did before, if I’ve done it a lot.”

Avery and Lucy exchanged a glance.

“Are you going to call me an idiot?” Verona asked.

“No,” Lucy said.  “I had a feeling you’d be annoyingly good at this.  But let’s talk to them before we make too many assumptions.”  She pointed the lightless end of the flashlight back toward the truck cabin as she said ‘them’.

“Sure,” Verona replied. She looked pleased with herself.

“I think it’s smart that you can do that… and it’s a dumb thing to do,” Lucy added.

Verona twisted around, then knocked on the narrow glass window at the back of the truck cab.

It was Charles who slid it open.  Avery could hear music playing from within.  Charles didn’t ask a question or speak.

“Can we ask questions?” Verona asked.

“We’re stopping soon,” Matthew said.  “You could ask then if it’s easier.”

“Quick question for now, then,” Verona said.  “I don’t want to jump to conclusions about stuff.  If I act a certain way with the spirits, practice a lot, it’ll become a… working relationship?”

“Yeah,” Charles said, his voice rough around the edges.

“Avery’s holding onto her hat, but if she has it protected from the wind, would it be good to trust the spirits?  Is that a good thing for practicing?”

“If you’re sure you drew it right,” Charles said.

“Thanks.  How long until we get there?”

“Getting where we’re going takes a day,” Matthew said.  “We left at six oh five, we should get there at seven oh five.”

“That’s very precise,” Lucy said.

“Didn’t hear that.”

“Very precise!” Lucy raised her voice.

“I’ll explain after.”

“How long until we stop?”

“Couple of minutes.”

“Thanks!”

Charles motioned like he was going to shut the window, checked they didn’t want to say anything more, and then slid it closed.

The road was long, flat, and straight, with the trees set very close to the road’s edges, the vast majority of them evergreens.  Avery pulled off her hat, checked the rune, and then took her hand off of it.  It moved here and there with the wind, but it wasn’t pulled off her head and lost in the darkness.

Her hands freer, she opened a bag of ketchup chips.  Even though it was a small bag half-filled with air, she didn’t finish it before the truck slowed and they began to pull off to a side road.

A campsite.

The truck pulled into a parking space.  The place was desolate, probably because there were still a couple places here and there where the sun didn’t reach, where there was still snow on the ground.  There were two other cars in the parking lot.

Matthew got out of the car and headed straight for the office.  Avery and her friends took a second to disengage from their blankets and bags, standing and stretching.  Avery had put a folded blanket beneath her and a blanket on top, and arranged her bag so the padding and the clothes inside were behind her, and she was still stiff and sore.  She was faster to get to her feet and get moving than the other two, and surreptitiously made her way to the end of the truck, where the candy bar had come to rest against the tailgate.  She pocketed it.

“Share after?” Verona asked.

“Maybe.”

The truck had been awkward, and the riding in the back illegal, but Charles didn’t have a license, and Matthew and Edith didn’t have room for six people in the truck cab.

Their bags had been strapped down, and Avery undid the straps before handing the stuff down off the sides to the two adults.

“Campground?” Lucy asked.

“It’s private, the weather shouldn’t be an issue, and it keeps us on course,” Edith said.  “Watch your step.”

“I’m fine,” Verona said.  “I can kinda see in the dark if I use my Sight.”

“What?” Avery asked.  She did as Miss had instructed earlier in the evening, and opened her eyes to the Sight.  She could see the flare of Edith’s eyes, and the world partially dissolved.  On trees, on cars, there were a multitude of handprints and footprints.  Bands extended like clotheslines or spider’s webs across everything, including a band from the truck to the office, another band to the truck, and another band that extended down into the woods, wrapping around trees on the way there.

Where there weren’t handprints and footprints, things were damaged.  Bark was peeled and broken, grass black to the point it looked like there was nothing there, and sections of wall around the camp buildings were splintered and shedding paint.

The bands were the interesting thing.  They were almost like old film negatives, partially transparent, silhouettes standing up and looking around.  Almost like paper with sections cut out.  Almost like something quilted, layers stitched on.  A middle-ground between all three.  Where there was too much negative, too much cut-out, or too little material, the bands looked like they could snap.  She felt like she could look at those scenes that formed the band and analyze them, but she couldn’t get close enough.  When she moved, they moved.  If she walked towards one, it rose higher until it was well above her head.

She remembered why she’d used the sight, and tried to analyze the world around her.  Movement and motion provoked shedding of bits of grass, bark, or paint, to the point she could tell that there were things out there, but… she couldn’t see in the dark.

“I can’t,” she said.

“Me either,” Lucy said.

“You could train your eyes to See that way,” Edith said.  “For now, I would guess your Sight is exaggerating your natural abilities, preferences, and your way of looking at the world.”

“You’d guess?” Lucy asked.  “You don’t know?”

“No,” Edith said.

“You weren’t a practitioner, then?”

Edith picked up Lucy’s spare bag, bringing it to her shoulder.  Matthew was exiting the building, having paid.  “Let’s get settled first.”

“Were you tired?” Avery asked, hefting her bag.  Charles extended a hand, like he was going to carry one, and she shook her head.  The man’s expression was unreadable as he started walking.  “I know my mom gets bad road hypnosis, when the roads are straight and monotonous.”

“It doesn’t matter much how long we stop for,” Matthew said.  “So long as we’re sticking with the journey.  It takes a day of travel to get to the Carmine Beast’s… domain, I guess it would be, or have been.”

They’d agreed they needed to know about the victim before they could start assessing the people who might have done the victimizing.  This, apparently, had been part of the plan and the timing.  It was why they’d been told to free up their weekends.

“Just to be clear,” Lucy said.  “It takes a day.  No matter what?”

“If you take a detour or aren’t doing something that’s part of the singular journey, you may have to start over,” Matthew said.  “Stopping to rest is part of a long journey.”

“We could have walked?”

“Provided you were walking away from civilization, yes.  The destination is wherever you are when you’ve been traveling for the full day.  But your feet would be sore after a full day of walking, and the directions call for not just a day’s travel, but a day’s travel in directions that take us further from civilization.  Taking a car north makes it easier to go somewhere without traveling toward a hub of civilization.”

“Huh,” Avery said.  “Then what?”

“When we get there, there will be a cue.  One that only the lost and desperate are likely to follow.  From there, it is a short distance to her domain.”

Lucy was using her flashlight to shine the way.  Matt had another, bigger one from the truck.

Edith turned her head to look off into the trees.  Avery, her Sight still active, could see the band that wound through the trees and along a path, extending to the distant campsite that Edith was looking at.

Edith pulled hairs from her head, twisted them together, and snapped her fingers at the frayed end.  A flame appeared, brighter than either of the flashlights.

“Campsite nine,” Matthew said.  “Here.”

They walked down the short path to the site.  Matthew set down a large bag.  Avery dropped her own stuff near the bench.

“So.  Can we ask questions?” Lucy asked.  She had her notebook with her, but it was closed.

“Go ahead,” Matthew said.

“You and Edith.  This isn’t a formal interview, but…”

“It’d be nice to know who we’re traveling with,” Avery said.  They’d agreed to wait to interview the pair.  A casual conversation was better.

“My name is Matthew Moss.  My father taught me some of the practice when I was young.  I did a ritual that resembled what you did earlier today when I was ten.”

“When we asked your name and what type of Other you were, you said Host.”

“It’s most accurate, but I trained as a Heartless.  A practitioner who gives up select fragments of their mortality or takes from others in pursuit of life everlasting.  My father was caught and killed by witch hunters while trying to take the last years from people at a palliative care home.”

“Witch hunters are a thing?” Avery asked.  She pulled off her hat, placing it on the bench next to her, looking over one shoulder.

Edith, kneeling by the concrete-ringed campfire, ignited the wood that had been left there, cold and damp, by past campers.

“Witch hunters are a thing.  I wasn’t interested in obtaining more youth when I was already young, especially after losing my father.  I carried on, with basic practice under my belt.  Some shamanism, some of the heartless practices that made life easier without needing to prey on others.”

“I taught you the basic runes and ways of interacting with spirits using diagrams because they’re very good to know as fundamentals,” Edith said.  “You can tap into forces like wind, fire, earth, but spirits can represent anything and everything in this world.  A single twig has spirits of wood, of the color brown, of life, pine, and nature touching on it and affecting it.  A heartless practitioner can benefit from knowing how to interact with spirits of life or death, how to recognize them.  A binder might pay closer attention to spirits related to certain emotions.”

“Like knowing your math or spelling.  There are very few jobs where you won’t benefit from being able to write a coherent email or add up your paycheque,” Matthew spoke, staring into the fire with eyes that were cast in shadow the firelight didn’t touch.  “There are very few practices which can’t benefit from something like ‘I need a little bit more of this’ or ‘I need this out of the way while I work’, when ‘this’ could be anything from heat to hate to a bit more Self.”

Avery was glad for the fire.  She put her hands out.  The night was dark and the woods darker.

“I bring up the shamanism because I noticed a disturbance and I found the Girl by Candlelight.  A complex spirit.  Remember how Edith just said you can have all those individual things in a twig?  Those things can fall away or separate, and attach to something else.  An echo, or a ghost if you prefer to call it that, or whatever event shook them loose shook enough free that the stray spirits were able to clump together.  They form into something coherent, and the complex spirit that results can be a fleeting existence or a concrete one that gets its rougher edges sanded off by time.”

“Were you more concrete?” Verona asked.

“I was and am fleeting,” Edith said.  “Practitioners have a responsibility to tidy up messes and keep ordinary people from being inconvenienced.  Matthew followed a trail of small fires and sightings to me.  The ghost of a girl who suffocated on smoke in a house fire.  The emotions and spirits shed in a roadside, candlelit vigil for a teenage girl who died in a car accident.  A child’s pyromania, manifested in anxiety and confusion, cast away as the child grew up.  These things and other, smaller things found each other and were bound together.”

“She was the most interesting thing I’d run into with my practice in years.  I tried what I could to keep her fueled and together,” Matthew said.  “I talked to her for hours, sometimes, trying to bring out the responses that helped her take more human shape.”

“Seven years ago, a girl named Edith James tried and failed to end her life,” Edith said.  “She suffered severe brain damage and necrosis of the intestinal lining.  It wasn’t pretty, especially with the grief the family suffered in the wake of the attempt and the hospitalization.  There was next to nothing of her left, so… I moved in.  The two years I was learning to operate a brain and a body were excused as Edith James’ recovery.  Her family was overjoyed, and that fragment of her that remains inside this body is content that they aren’t grieving.”

“And you?” Lucy asked Matthew.

“We found each other again.  She needed help.  The darkness that haunted Edith, the doom, had become complex in its own way.  It wanted fruition, and was trying to attach itself to the Candlelight Girl within.  I made the transition to being a Host, a practitioner who takes spirits and other immaterial things like ghosts or elementals into their body.  Done well and carefully, hosting something lets you draw on its power and qualities.  I carved out a hole in myself to take it in using the practices I was taught as a youth, but Edith’s darkness is too large and unwieldy for me.  I have power if I need it, I can draw on its strength, but I have to be very careful.  I can’t really practice and haven’t practiced for seven years, and the practices I can do are all touched by the force I hold inside myself, or directly related to it.  Darkness, pain, doom.  At this point I would better be considered a human turned Other than a practitioner.”

Avery leaned forward.  “So you’re both kind of the same, but…”

“But different.  In the end, I, Matthew Moss, love the Girl by Candlelight.  She, I hope, loves me.”

“I do.”

“And the darkness I house wants to finish destroying her flesh and what remains of the original Edith James.”

Lucy’s finger tapped a pattern on the notebook’s hard cover.  She seemed to be considering.  Avery was about to ask something, when Lucy came out and said, “You kept your last name, Edith.”

“We got married in hopes it would make her stronger against the darkness,” Matthew said.  “And because we were and are in love.  We decided stability was more important than redefining who ‘Edith James’ was.”

“Yes,” Edith said.

They’re still kind of doing that thing where Matthew does the talking for Edith, who is quieter.  Like my second aunt, Avery observed.

“I guess this became more of an interview after all,” Verona said.  “This is interesting.”

“There’s a bunch more questions I want to ask, actually,” Lucy said.  “But I think they should wait until we know more about practice and the Carmine Beast.  Charles?  Can we ask you things?”

“It’s why I’m here,” Charles said.

“About your past, I mean.”

“Oh.” He heaved out a sigh.  “Go ahead.”

“How did you get forsworn?” Lucy asked him.

“I broke an oath,” he said.

Avery wasn’t exactly keen on having Charles with them.  When she imagined an axe murderer, she tended to imagine someone who looked kind of like Charles, but with more muscle.  Now, being here and watching him, it seemed to her that the kind of person who would be that unhinged wouldn’t be doing pushups or lifting weights.  It made sense they’d be as gaunt as this man was.

She wanted to feel sorry for him, but she would have much rather felt sorry for him from a distance, without him sitting across the campfire, his freaky face lit from below by the flames, shadows dancing across creases and old scars.

“What oath?” Lucy asked.

“I had a friend over.  A fellow practitioner.  He was… a tricky friend.  The kind you have to make excuses for, or warn friends about before you introduce them.”

“Hmmmm,” Verona made a sound, her chin on her hand.  She turned her head toward Lucy.  “Hmm.”

“And?” Lucy asked, putting a hand out in front of Verona’s face.

“He was opinionated, he didn’t like to let things go.  He came so we could talk about the process of creating an Other.  A kind of summoning.”

“Tell us more about that?” Verona asked.

“Maybe put a pin in it for later?” Lucy asked.  “Let’s continue with the basic story.”

“It’s not a long explanation.  I wanted an invisible presence that would look out for trouble.  Something like a roving eye, that could check that certain dangerous things hadn’t escaped, or notice if a bogeyman or vicious goblin were out there preying on people, so someone could be notified and the monster stopped.  My friend was an augur.  He would have handled the part that let it watch and observe.”

“Did it work?” Verona asked.

Lucy elbowed her friend.  “Are you going to get us sidetracked every single time someone talks about practice or Others?”

“It’s interesting and worth knowing,” Verona protested.  “It tells us about who Charles is as a person.”

“We never got that far,” Charles said.  “I made dinner.  We talked, we drank, and the conversation changed several times.  It got onto the subject of politics.”

“My grandfather is really political,” Avery said.  “It seems kind of miserable.”

Charles huffed out a small laugh, in what might have been the first glimmer of anything  like amusement or positivity from him since they’d met.  “Miserable, and it feels more miserable every year.  Our talk got heated.  He argued for the sake of arguing, I argued out of passion.  He needled me, using topics he knew I was sensitive about, and I’d been drinking.  He said something unconscionable, I picked up a glass to throw it, saw the look on his face, and he looked victorious.  I threw it against a wall instead.”

“How do you get forsworn from that?” Verona asked.

“I didn’t even remember back then, but the look on his face told me there was something.  Around the time we’d first met, he’d had me promise him he’d be safe from any harm at my hands or the hands of my guests.  I hadn’t thought we’d have a long-term friendship, then.  I’d needed him for one thing.  But it was enough, and it still counted, later.”

“Note to self,” Avery said, quiet.  “Remember my oaths and promises.”

“Be sensible about the ones you do make,” Charles said.  “That one wasn’t so bad, but it was too broad, too long-lasting.  If you think you might forget, put a time limit on it.”

“Miss chocolate bar,” Lucy said, looking over at Verona.  She turned her attention back to Charles.  “I thought you didn’t hurt him.”

“I realized he’d been trying to corner me or pull something.  I told him to leave.  Angrier than I had been.  He was, and I have to imagine he still is stubborn.  I pushed the table, enough to force him to take that one step toward the door.  He did, and he stepped on broken glass.”

“That was enough?” Avery asked.

“Yes.  Especially considering the ways of the spirits, Others, and old traditions.  For much of human history, hospitality and respecting one’s guests was one of the most important things.  Turning away a traveler in need could kill them.  Disrespecting a guest or host could be disastrous.”

“How does it work?” Verona asked.  “What does it look like when you’re Forsworn?”

“When someone calls you forsworn, as he did, there is a process.  He looked me in the eye, he named the oath, and he named the wrong.  If there’s no person to do that, then the world has a way of telling you.  A crack of thunder, a tremor in the earth, a vision.  It can depend.  Then the person forsworn gets an opportunity to answer it.  It’s a heavy thing to name someone forsworn.  If the person answers and they didn’t actually break the oath, the person trying to forswear them is forsworn instead.”

“He was playing with fire.”

“He knew what he was doing,” Charles said.  “I couldn’t answer it.  His blood was drawn by my violent actions.  I immediately took steps to mitigate the damage.  Protections and practices I’d set in place were coming undone.  My demesnes was collapsing in on itself and I had things within to rescue.  I would later find he’d taken some of my things while I was distracted, before he left.  He could get away with it too, because when you’re forsworn, you become a karmic sinkhole.  Open season for everyone, with no rights.”

“When did all of this happen?” Lucy asked.

“A decade ago.”

“What was the political argument?” Lucy asked.

Charles raised bushy eyebrows above eyes with deep circles beneath them.  “Is it important?”

“You tell me.”

“It was about prisons.  The government then was making noise about privatizing Canadian prisons.  Following the god-damned American model, when we once had a prison system that was top three to top five in the civilized world.  It seemed so important then.  Now, if it weren’t tied to my being forsworn, I might have forgotten that argument entirely.  Stupid.”

“What was your relationship with the Carmine Beast?” Lucy asked.

“I see.  We’re going there?” Charles asked.  “I’m a suspect?”

“Everyone is, not just you,” Lucy said.

“There was none.  I only got a few glimpses of her.  I reached out once or twice, after being forsworn.  There was no answer.”

“Were you angry there was no answer?”

“I’m angry at a lot of things.  This world is happy to make you a part of it until you stop being useful, and then it discards you.  Remember that.  Keep it in mind always, and maybe you’ll avoid getting what I got.”

“Easy does it, Charles,” Matthew said.

“No,” Charles said.  “No, there’s nothing easy about this at all.”

“Were you angry at her?” Lucy pressed.

Charles, still looking at Matthew, still fresh off the retort, seemed to need a few seconds to gather himself.  He sounded tired as he muttered, “Not especially.”

“Why did you reach out to her?” Verona asked.

“Because, among the Others around here?  She’s close to the top.  If anything or anyone could change my situation, it’d be something like her.  When you’re facing a life sentence, Veronica, you appeal.  You write the governor.  You do whatever you can.”

“Verona, not Veronica.”

“It’s not short for-”

Verona was already shaking her head.

“Sorry.  And what I said stands.”

“Where were you that night?” Lucy asked.

“I was with Matthew.  He brought me things.”

“Magical things?” Verona asked.

“Some groceries.  Things for putting up a shelf.  He wanted access to the books I still keep around.”

“Why?” Verona asked.

“Can you verify, Matthew?” Lucy butted in.

“I went over that night.  Trading some basics for information.  I’m always engaged in some form of research, in hopes I don’t have to lug this ugly thing inside me around for the rest of my life.  One of the goblins came by to tell us the Carmine Beast was dying.  They’d followed it to the edge of the city, but couldn’t go further.”

“Why?” Verona asked.

Matthew cracked his knuckles.  Beside him, Edith laid a hand on his leg.  She looked more comfortable and not like the diminished, abused wife now that she was by the fire.  Matthew answered, “Because they’re goblins, and to put it in the simplest terms, the more civilized an area is, the harder it is for them to venture inside.  I left, I caught up with the others there.  I took note of the witness.  We figured out our next steps.”

“And you?” Lucy asked Charles.

“I stayed home, I put up my shelf.  I made a late dinner.  The goblin was there.  Bluntmunch.  I fed him some of my dinner, gave him some booze.”

“He can corroborate?”

“He’s not as dumb as he looks.  He should remember.”

So he has an alibi?  Or either Matthew or the goblin can lie?

“So you’re saying you didn’t, and others will back you up in that.  You say you didn’t want to,” Lucy said, speaking very carefully.

“Uh huh.”

“If you did want to… how would you go about it?”

“If I did want to…?”

“Kill or vanish the Carmine Beast.”

“It’s at or near the top of the food chain, girl.  It’s-”

“Don’t call me girl.  Don’t do that,” Lucy said.  “Just like you wouldn’t call my brother ‘boy’.  Don’t be that guy.  Don’t diminish me.”

“Didn’t mean anything by it.  So soon after getting her name wrong…”

“Just don’t.  I’m Lucy.  Lucille if you want to be formal, but I hate that.”

“Lucy.  I can’t seem to win, ever.”

“You were saying?”

“I’m saying it’s at the top, I’m so far down that I need to rely on people like Matthew here to ensure I can stay fed.  The universe is against me, I can’t hold a job, I can’t keep a place of my own, and the karma hit that comes with being forsworn means I’m on everyone’s shitlist.  I have no earthly idea how I’d do the deed, even if I could still practice.  Like this?  Impossible.”

Lucy’s head turned slightly.  Matthew and Edith were nodding.

“What could?” Avery asked.

“I don’t even know,” Charles said.  “But I haven’t been paying a lot of attention.  Mostly I’ve been trying to survive.”

“Matthew?  Edith?” Lucy asked.  “Who or what could?”

“It’s a very short list,” Matthew said.  “We can talk more about the Carmine Beast tomorrow.  It’s the point of this trip, after all.”

“Should we turn in?” Edith asked.

“If there’s no objections,” Matthew said.

There weren’t any.

“A bit of a lesson, while Matthew sets up the tents,” Edith said.  “We’ve talked about some of the ways a simple circle can be elaborated on, when drawing diagrams.”

“You sense this stuff on a fundamental level?” Verona asked.

“I do,” Edith said.  She reached into the open fire, which hadn’t gotten any smaller or more diminished by the ongoing burn, and she pulled out a stick.  She began drawing in the dirt, walking the perimeter of the campsite to create a large circle.  “The ‘T’ shape forms a bar, if you remember.  What happens if we turn it upside-down?  The circle sitting on the ‘T’ shape instead of the other way around?”

“Holding something in?” Avery asked.

“Yes.  Insulating.  Triangles serve much the same function, but we’ve already talked about how triangles are shorthand for the various elements.  They point, and are more driven,” Edith explained.  “What do you think would happen, if we were to drive heat in?”

“We’d cook?”  Verona asked.

“Possibly.  We don’t have a defined power source yet, and no nearby source of heat, so it’s possible and likely the circle would break, instead.”

Verona began taking notes, while Edith continued working on the diagram.    Blocks for the wind at the north, east, south, and western points, while insulation for heat were set at the northwest, northeast, southwest, and southeast.

Charles lay down across a bench, and seemed to be getting himself settled to sleep there.  Matthew shook out the tents.

Lucy had pulled out a sleeping bag, and was watching all of them.

“Luce,” Avery said, quiet.

“What’s up?”

Avery’s eyes fell on Charles.  “Want to sleep in shifts?”

Lucy followed her gaze.

“They’re strangers.  This is all strange,” Avery said.

“What time are we getting up?” Lucy asked, her voice loud enough it startled Avery.

“The sunrise will probably wake us,” Matthew replied.  He seemed to know what he was doing with the tent, with one already almost put together.  “If we sleep in, the sleep stops being part of the travel, and we’re delaying or interrupting the journey.  So it’ll be sometime soon after we wake up and eat.”

“In eight hours?” Lucy asked.

“Something like that.”

“Two-and-a-half hour shifts?” Lucy asked, quieter.

“I can take any extra, if we gotta,” Avery said.

Lucy nodded.

Avery got herself settled, her sleeping bag was thin enough it was probably for summertimes, not winters, but the diagram was finished, and she could already feel the area getting more cozy, the warmth from the fire gathering within.  She situated her bag to where she could sit up against it and watch everything.

Verona was sitting inside her sleeping bag, rummaging around.  Avery wasn’t sure what she was doing until Verona pulled out a sock.  She averted her eyes as Verona pulled out her pants, as well.

This would all be so cool if it weren’t for the gnawing fear that hung over everything.

It would be nice to get stronger, learn more, and be able to defend herself.

The tents were set up, and Edith and Matthew got inside theirs.  Charles slept outside, lying on the bench with his face skyward, the crook of his elbow at his nose.  Avery sat at the aperture to her tent, watching Matthew and Edith’s tent, and the sleeping ex-practitioner.  Behind her, Verona and Lucy got settled in to sleep.

Avery used her Sight.  It made it easier to see moving things, and to see the threads that tied one thing to another.

Two hours was a long time to kill, but she didn’t mind much, and while she was doing it, she imagined, it was good to get the practice in, and train this Sight of hers.

Verona was very good at the practice.  Lucy was on top of the investigation.  Avery knew she didn’t have a lot going for her.  So she’d do her best at this, at the very least.

Avery was woken by a shake.  Her first thought was alarm, that she’d fallen asleep while on watch.  But she was further inside the tent.  She’d swapped places with Verona, who now was beside her, already waking up and pulling on pants again.

She could smell food.

Avery was in full zombie mode as she got up and got ready to leave the tent.  She made her way to the bench and accepted the offered food, giving it a long, hard look with her Sight before digging in.  She wasn’t even sure what she’d See if there was anything strange in there.

“Can I see your hat, before we get going?” Edith asked.

Avery had placed it with her main bag, and that was just through the tent flap.  Plate still in her lap, still chewing, she leaned back until she had to put a hand on the ground to keep from toppling back, reached through the flap with the fork, and managed to hook her hat.  She got it close enough to grab it, then sat up again.

She gave it a once-over, noting the diagram they’d put on it before leaving.  The wide brim was useful in a way, because it provided a lot of drawing area.

The idea of this particular bit of chalk-drawing, like the one on Lucy’s hat and Verona’s hat, was not to work on spirits, but to work on the bands she could see with the Sight.  Every relationship between a person and a person, place, or thing had a band or a ‘connection’.

The main drawing on the brim served to temporarily sever the connection between her and her home.

“It’s faded,” Edith observed.  “We should redraw it.”

“Okay.”

“There may be a rebound, especially if they’re the type who would have called.  Expect to get an awkward phone call the moment I wipe this off to put something new down.  Try not to panic, don’t lie, just keep the conversation going until I finish redrawing it.  Once it’s done, try to end the conversation.”

“My parents wouldn’t call, I don’t think,” Avery said.

“I’m sorry,” Matthew said.

“It’s faded, meaning there’s been some resistance,” Edith said.

“I really don’t think they’d call,” Avery insisted.

Matthew gave Edith a look.  He was still cooking.  Pancakes and bacon in the same pan.  Avery’s dad was the type who really hated that, because he’d say the bacon would taste like pancakes and the pancakes like bacon.  As far as Avery was concerned, it was all the same in the end.

“Even if they don’t love you, they might feel like they should call.”

“Nah.  My parents love me.  They’re great.  They’re just busy and distracted.  My grandfather might ask about me, though.”

“That could be it.  If he’d ask, miss you, or wonder how you’re doing, and that’s being blocked.”

“Feels a bit lonely,” Avery said.

“It is, a bit.”

“My dad never calls when I’m at Luce’s,” Verona said.  “It’s early Saturday so… he’s probably working, and he might even be glad he doesn’t have to bother with me.”

“Ronnie comes over most weekends,” Lucy said. She was prodding at her hair, which had gotten squished in the night, “If you wanted to start coming over whenever, that’s cool too, Ave.”

“Thanks,” Avery said, smiling.

“Were you comfortable last night?”

“I wasn’t cold, if that’s what you mean,” Lucy said.  “Not sure about the others.”

“No issues,” Avery said.

“First time ever that I’ve been camping.  Was neat,” Verona said.

“Good,” Edith said.  She smiled, and there was a bit of warmth in her eyes that had nothing to do with the spirit of candles and fire inside her.

The smoke and the sleeping outdoors had made Avery bleary-eyed, and she was frankly happy to keep a blanket around her, fill her belly, and then do what was necessary to get packed up, conserving all energy and staying half asleep throughout.

The tents were dismantled, their stuff gathered.  They got into the open back of the pick-up truck again, secure from the attentions of any police by the same connection-blocking practice that kept their parents from calling to check in and finding that their daughters had skipped town.

At the last second, Lucy knocked, asking them to stop.  She hopped down from the back, ran over to the office where they’d gone to pay for the spot at the campsite, and went to the vending machine there.  She made her way back, climbed in, and handed Verona and Avery a chocolate bar each.

Verona laughed.  “Is this because of what I said yesterday?”

“I don’t want you to make stupid oaths like that again.  Promise.”

“I’ll be more careful,” Verona told Lucy.

“Why do I get one?” Avery asked.

“Because you’re not a pain in my ass.”

The truck rumbled back into motion.  They resumed their journey.

“Got some stuff for you, Lucy,” Avery said, doing what she could to get settled.

“Let me get my notebook.  What stuff?”

“The farther we get from Kennet, the happier Edith seems.  Not getting that vibe I was before.”

“That’s good,” Lucy said.  “Might have something to do with her being a spirit.”

“We should write down the stuff about her background.  And what Matthew said.”

“And Charles,” Verona offered.

“Help me remember,” Lucy said.  “Be really, really sure, speak up if you have any doubts about any piece of information…”

A knock at the window disturbed Avery’s read of the book she’d grabbed from the last rest stop.  She sat up, and she twisted around.  When she couldn’t see through the truck window and out the windshield, she stood, taking hold of the rack at the top of the pickup to stay balanced, in case the truck started moving all of a sudden.

The sun was setting, and the sky was red.  The trees were thick here, and the road was dirt.

At the top of the hill at the far end of the road, there was an animal that could have been a stray dog or coyote.  Too small and long-legged to be a wolf.  It looked like it had been hit by a car.  It was injured.

“Aw!” Avery exclaimed.  “Poor thing.”

“This is it,” Matthew spoke through the open window, as he turned off the engine.  “The cue we’re supposed to follow.”

He opened his door.  He, Edith, and Charles climbed out.

Avery and her friends climbed out.  Her hands were gross from not having showered and the dust that had gotten on them.  They’d put down more signs on the plastic lining at the rear of the truck, warding off the dust, but just the grit that had already gotten in there was bad enough, when she wasn’t in a position to wipe it off.

They ventured forward, and the bloodied animal slinked into the trees.

Matthew explained, “The only people liable to follow a random animal are those with nowhere to go, or people who know what the animal is about and want to find the Carmine Beast.  Essentially, the only people the Carmine beast wants at its doorstep in the first place.”

“What kind of people does it want?”

“Hunters and the hunted,” Charles said.

Following the animal wasn’t easy, but it was bleeding, and the blood trail helped.

Until it didn’t.

There were more places here where blood had stained the ground or painted green leaves, grass, weeds, and moss with crimson.  Blood in the traces of snow that spring hadn’t yet erased.  Blood in soil, in sand, in what might have been peat.

Until there was more bloody ground than ground without blood.

“It says a lot that the animal we’re following is injured,” Matthew observed.  “Our witness described following a giant canine, it was howling in pain and mourning, and it was injured.”

Avery spoke up, “So the Carmine Beast was a beast?  I know that’s a dumb question, maybe, but-”

“Not a dumb question,” Edith said.  “Its shape is variable.  Many spirits are similar, though complex spirits like myself tend to be firmer, either because we’re too knit-together, or we can’t afford to change because we’re that weak.”

“It’s a spirit, then?”

“It’s more than a spirit.  By taking on this role, it is elevated.”

“A god?” Verona asked.  “Or a lesser god?”

“A role,” Matthew said.

He pushed past some foliage, and held branches out of the way for Edith and the girls.

Past those branches was a bit of a cliff, and then a clearing.

In that clearing, the ground was so blood-soaked, so much more red than anything Avery had seen, that the leaves couldn’t hold color, and were whiter than snow.  Trees were cast in blacks and greys, and moisture, where it appeared, beaded crimson and thick.

Bones had been dragged to a central location, and the bones had formed an arrangement, crushed or pushed into place by a weight and framing that Avery instinctively knew.

That something belonged here, in that nest of bones, and it was absent.  There were animals here, all carnivores, but they were listless, bowed.  Lacking.  Again, they were missing something.  She could feel the absence like a weight on her chest.

A throne without its Queen.  Servants without a master.

She understood now why they’d needed to come and see this.  To understand the magnitude of what they were trying to fix.

A sharp growling behind her made her jump and skip forward a solid three steps.

Other animals had crept in through the bone-white foliage.  They continued to growl, advancing.

“Charles Abrams,” a woman said.

“I know,” Charles said.

“There is no shelter for you here,” the woman said.  “No quest, no passage, no currency.”

“I know,” he said.

“Charles is forsworn.  He gets no court or audience,” Edith murmured.

There were Others present.  Others who passed through the trees without needing to bend for branches or get out of the way.

“Court?  Do we bow?” Verona asked, quiet.

“No,” Matthew said.  “No need.  That’s a human custom.”

Avery pulled off her hat, and held it to her chest, all the same.

One woman, dressed in white furs.  A man in a black suit.  And off to the side, sitting atop the head of a centipede, an older teen or younger adult with long hair and flowing clothes in gold.

“In many places around the world,” Matthew explained, his voice low.  Their group parted as the three Others made their way past them and deeper into the clearing.  “There are totems, fixtures, or assumptive forces.  In one part of Asia, I’m not learned enough to place it exactly, you might have the Azure Dragon, the Vermilion Bird, the White Tiger and the Black Tortoise.  In some places, it’s only one.  Often, their role is similar.”

“We have four, here?” Lucy asked.

“Three, at present.”

“You’re not the first to come here,” the woman in white said.

“I know,” Matthew said.  “We inducted some new practitioners.  There’s no Lord in our area, so we thought we’d make introductions.  Let them see the Carmine Beast’s domain, and get a sense of what they’re doing.”

“Who came before?” Lucy asked, twisting around.

“Other practitioners from near Kennet.  The ones who would be investigating if we didn’t bring someone in,” Matthew said.

“They know very little,” the man in the flowing gold robe said.  He still sat cross-legged on the centipede’s head.

“They’re fast learners.”

“Can they bring her back to us?  Or name the culprit?” the one in black asked.

“We’re going to try,” Lucy said.  “Can we ask questions?”

“Ask,” the woman in white said.

“What are you, what is this?”

“When the practitioners of an area organize to a sufficient degree, they tend to put Lords in place.  Others or Practitioners strong enough to oversee an area, mete out judgment, and deal with problems.  But not all areas have these things,” the man in the black suit explained.

“For other areas, there is a hierarchy.  The Others self-organize, they handle threats, they keep things in balance,” the man in gold told them.  “But sometimes, it’s not enough, or there’s nobody and nothing suitable to fill a role.  If something needs to be laid to rest and there is no Death nearby…”

He indicated the man in the black suit, who said, “I might step in to handle duties.”

“You’re a higher authority?” Lucy asked.

The man in the black suit answered, “A court of appeals, a final stop, or very rarely, a first stop, when a problem needs handling, a specific individual may find their way to us for a first meeting.  People on the most desperate of quests, those seeking answers, those seeking shelter, and people needing salvation… they often find their way to us when they’ve exhausted every last option.  Each of us take on a different role and share of the duties.”

“I suppose if we say no, they could pray to gods, for all the good that often does,” the man in gold said, smiling wide enough it looked like his face could crack in two.

“The Carmine Beast was one of you?” Verona asked.

“She was.”

“What was her role?” Lucy asked.

“She handled monsters and those who kill monsters,” the woman in white said.  “She handled matters of war and murder, carnage, blood, and execution.  Justice, in its bloodiest form.”

“Was…” Avery started.  She was suddenly very aware it could be a rude question, considering these things were like the Carmine Beast’s family.  She decided to ask anyway, because the question would bother her.  “…was she evil?”

“She was too fundamental a thing to call good or evil.  But she did not have many friends.”

This was a little too much.  This felt too big.

It was starting to dawn on Avery that the reason Matthew had said they didn’t have to solve this was because it was far more immense than the three of them could hope to wrap their heads around.

“I don’t mean to offend, but I’m going to be blunt,” Lucy said.  “Do you know anything relevant?”

The man in the black suit and dress shirt answered, “We know very little.  It only recently came to our attention.  I suspect we don’t know much more than you.”

“Do the others agree?”

“Agreed,” the woman in white furs said, at the same time the man in gold said, “Yes.”

“Did you have any part in this?”

“None.”

“No.”

“No.”

“How strong would you have to be to kill her, or make her vanish like this?” Lucy asked.

“To give an idea of the scale and difficulty, could you end all violence in one area of one Canadian province?” the man in gold asked.  “Even for a short while?”

“It’s more about having the right information and leverage than having the strength… though strength certainly wouldn’t hurt,” the woman in white said.

“Why would someone hurt her?  Because she didn’t have many friends?” Lucy asked.

“She didn’t, but you could look at it as the vacating of a position.  There’s a power in taking someone from that seat, and there’s a power in the seat.  Right now, the seat is empty, and it must be filled.  By filling it, one Other or Practitioner will take on the responsibility and the power that comes with it.”

“It’s like the supreme court, then?” Avery asked.  “Once you’ve worked your way through all the lower courts, if the case is compelling, you end up here?”

“As you say.”

“And by taking the role, they get that final say.  They get to make the laws, essentially?”

“More or less,” the woman in white furs said.

“Are there any limitations on the kind of person or Other?”

“They’d need to fit the role, to a certain degree.  The role would then mold itself to them and they’d be molded in turn.”

“Has anyone applied?”

“Nobody has stepped forward.  This isn’t surprising.  If one declared themselves for the seat and the role as the next Carmine Beast, there would be a brief period they could be cut down or supplanted.  It is easier, especially among the murderous and dangerous types that would take this role, to let someone else make the first move.  We may be forced to select someone, which would make them vulnerable, force them to prove themselves.”

“And who are the candidates?” Verona asked.

“You know them because they are in Kennet.  The first is John Stiles, who is not especially strong, but we think he would serve with a mind to balance, making him our preference.  The other is your Hungry Choir.”

“And how would they serve?” Avery asked.

“We have discussed it and concluded they’d serve in a disastrous fashion, with an uneven hand,” the man in the black suit said.  “Their reign is likely, because they are strong, and it’s likely to be short.  We’ll adapt, whatever happens.”

I guess we know who we’re talking to nextTwo suspects with something to gain.  Others who could be the next Carmine Beast.

Lost for Words – 1.4

Avery (again)

Their travel plans hadn’t allowed much leeway.  From six in the evening on Friday to six in the evening on Saturday.  Then they’d left at about eight in the evening on Saturday.  Shorter stop for the night, more pressure on the gas, and now they were back at Kennet, the sun yet to set, making it… maybe five o’clock?  Five thirty?

Lucy had exhausted herself of questions, and Verona was reading the book Avery had finished last night.

It was hard to shine when the other two were so good at their own things.  Hard to stand out, hard to be anything but the third wheel.  She was practicing with her Sight, which made the scenery more interesting, at least, but she felt a kind of anxiety as they got closer to home.  She didn’t want to end this trip feeling this useless.

If patterns were as important as Verona had been saying, then she didn’t want this to be her pattern.

She didn’t want to ask Verona or Lucy, because she felt like asking them would put her back in the second or third place position again.  But then the next person was… Charles.  If she turned her head and peered through the dirty window, she could see the back of his head.

Reluctantly, she knocked on the window.  Both Lucy and Verona turned their heads.

Charles opened it.  “Need something?”

“Can I ask some questions before we get where we’re going?”

“It’s why I’m here.  Just ask.  You don’t have to ask permission first.”

“Um, okay,” she said.  His tone had been stern enough she could feel her brain momentarily freeze up.

She hadn’t really dealt with jerks before last September, siblings excepted.  This wasn’t a sibling vibe, and she didn’t know how to handle it.

“Did you decide on your questions before asking?” he pressured her.

“Um,” she said, before clearing her throat.  “What would you do if you were us?”

“That’s at least one hell of a question.  If I were you, I wouldn’t have done the ritual.  Wouldn’t have gotten stuck in all of this.”

“But we did,” Lucy said.

“But you did,” Charles said.  “It’s done.  You’re stuck in it.”

“Then… can you help us?  Tell us what to watch for?  The people at the ritual can’t hurt us, right?”

“No.”

“There’s no way of cheating it?  No way around that?”

“There are ways around it.  Not participating in the ritual.  Faerie are tricky.  Maricica could, for example, send an effigy to participate.”

“Effigy.”

“Or an illusion, or a doll, or something false.”

“Would, um, the big guy, Guil…”

“Guilherme.  He’s not the trickster type, he’s a warrior, but when it comes to the Fae, you can assume that if they aren’t obvious tricksters, that will make the moments they do pull the rug out from under you all the more dramatic.  I wouldn’t rule anything out with either of them.”

“And if someone didn’t participate fully in the ritual?” Avery asked.

“Why?” Charles asked, and his voice was harder.  He twisted around to stare at her.  “Did you see something?”

“I don’t know,” she said.  “I’m trying to figure this out.  Um.  Lucy’s really good at the investigation and moving forward stuff.  Verona’s really good at the practice already, I think.  I thought maybe I could play defense.”

He made her nervous, and she hated to admit it, because she hated to be judgmental of anyone, but he really did smell, especially after two days in the truck.

“Defense.  Matthew was saying you played hockey, earlier.  Was that your role?  Goalie, or defense?”

They’re talking about us in the same way we’re discussing and dissecting them.

“No, not at all,” Avery said.  “Forward.  I’m fast and I’ve got endurance.”

“Hm.  I won’t say you’re wrong to be defensively-minded.  If the most reckless of you was being as careful as you’re being now, and the most thoughtful was spending hours poring over every sentence, then…”

“We’d be okay?” Avery asked.

“No.”  Charles sounded exasperated.  “No, child.  Some of the forces you’re now dealing with have been figuring out and perfecting means of attack, deception, and manipulation since a time before man wore shoes, and the stakes are your very mortality, your Self, your future.  When the stakes are that high, you don’t sit down to a game of chess with someone that’s been playing since before you were born.”

“Oh.”

“We shouldn’t sit down to a game of chess with those guys, you mean,” Verona said.

“Don’t can mean should not.  But you’re right, I should be more precise, especially when instructing you.  I’m out of practice since losing my practice.”

“What hurts us?  If the Others from town can’t touch us, what’s the risk we should be worried about?” Avery asked.

“Off the top of my head?  You, yourselves.  Lucy’s statement to ensure your long and full life was a good one.  It’s open ended enough that they should be encouraged to steer you away from your own ruin.  Without that rule, the danger would be that they would let you destroy yourselves, the moment you became inconvenient or got close to them.  There are too many stories out there of people who are given a gift with a warning, and the warning is of course defied.”

“We should make a deal then,” Avery said.  She looked at her friends.  “What if we agreed to not practice unless at least one other person agreed?”

“Uh, no,” Verona said, at the same time Charles said, “No.”

“Why not?” Avery asked.

“Because then all your enemies must do is separate you.”

“Nothing major, then?” Avery asked.  “Nothing that would change us or nothing big?  We could ask when getting practices and powers, what’s minor and what’s major, and make rules about anything major.”

“Not keen,” Verona said.  She put down the book Avery had given her.

“Why?” Lucy asked.

“Because life before this sucked enough with the rules, expectations, the structure, the other garbage.  So much of that crap that I couldn’t and still can’t really see any point in enduring it all.  I’m pretty sure I don’t know one adult who I can definitively say is actually content and secure and happy with where they are in life.  So why?  Why am I sitting through class every weekday, doing chores, and stuff?  So I can become a teenager and get a car I can’t afford, with a part time job I’m going to hate?  To get work experience that’ll let me get a slightly better job later, and buy a house that I’ll have to upkeep?”

“This is different,” Lucy said.

“It is!  But I feel like if we’re making deals to limit ourselves and structure all of this, we’re going to make this into that.”

“We’d be making these rules to keep ourselves safe,” Avery said.

Those rules about going to school, doing chores, or paying bills are to keep us all healthy and safe, or because there are other reasons.  And I bet the people who enforced them thought they were important and good.  But they add up to a system I find very depressing to think about.”

“I think my parents and Ms. Hardy are happy,” Avery said.

“No offense, Avery, I don’t want to dump on the people you obviously care about, but I’m more likely to think they’re doing a good job of hiding how unhappy they are, than that they’re really, genuinely happy.”

“Maybe,” Avery said.  “I hope you’re wrong.”

“Look,” Lucy said.  “Is this really that big a problem?  Can you focus on what exactly is wrong with the rule?  Because Avery’s wanting to have input and we’re going to be doing this with her for a long time.  This is her suggestion and I don’t want to shut her out.”

“It’s not the rule, exactly.  That seems okay, but… it’s the first step on a road I don’t want to go down.  Already we need to have our hat, mask, and-or scarf with us.  Then we need to have partners for the major stuff.  Then what?”

“Then if there’s anything else, we discuss it.”

“Can we think on it?” Verona asked.  “No hasty deals, remember?  We’ll put it down on paper or exchange emails, and think of loopholes or possible traps?”

Lucy looked at Avery, who nodded.

“Okay,” Avery said.  “Sorry, Charles.”

“Don’t be.  I was thinking about what else might qualify.  They promised no willful harm.  That raises the question, then, what harm can they do when they don’t will it?”

“Is there stuff like that?” Avery asked.

“I wouldn’t rule it out.  Dealing with goblins, for example, may make you a worse person by the regular association.  Our goblins are mild, at least.”

“Sir Toadswallow stuck his hand down the back of his pants to collect his own crap,” Lucy protested.

“That’s mild.  There are other kinds of taint or change.  I don’t think there are any Others in Kennet who would taint you that badly.  Matthew, perhaps, if he loosened the bindings on the Doom he’s keeping caged inside himself.”

“Good to know,” Lucy said.  She had her notebook out and was taking more notes.

“You could ask, then, what Others might be a danger, if they revert to instinct.  That wouldn’t be willful.”

“Which are?” Avery asked.

“Most.  Even Edith comes from a place of pain and fire.  Put into the wrong situation, the human side of her weakened, she could harm you and it wouldn’t violate the oath.”

“And because she’s not an outsider…”

“The collective promise to protect you from outsiders wouldn’t force Others to intervene.”

“Can we handle that?” Lucy asked.  “Force Others to clarify the pact, agree to help, or… whatever?”

“Yes.  But keep in mind, Others may not like being constricted by a closing net of restrictions any more than your Verona does.”

“Good to know,” Lucy said.  “Case by case basis, maybe.”

“Be careful.  Even the suggestion of it may turn a good working relationship into a hostile one.”

“Is there stuff we can read about this?” Avery asked.  “You said you had books.”

“Had.  Past tense.  I can’t practice, and like what happened with my once-friend the Augur, having books or materials makes me a target for people who want those things.  I gave them and traded them away.  Matthew has a few.”

“I’ll see about digging them up,” Matthew said, from the front seat.  “I was looking for specific things about my specific dynamic, and once I verified there wasn’t anything useful, I put them away.  A few might be in a box in my basement with some ritual supplies and Christmas decorations.”

“That’s great,” Verona chimed in.

Was that sarcasm?  Or was it true?  If Avery had to ask, did it matter?

She wasn’t even a sarcastic person, and she was going to miss sarcasm.  It was very interesting if Verona could make it work, because that meant Avery could too.  Charles, at least, wasn’t saying anything.

Lucy was still taking the notes.  Without looking up, she said, “I’ve been thinking about things in terms of the order we need to conduct the interviews, but we’re not just conducting interviews, right?  We’re gathering power.  Tools.”

“I’ve kind of been saying that from the start,” Verona said.

Lucy nodded, her hair bobbing out of sync behind her.  With Avery’s sight, the hair was pink at the ends, and Lucy’s eyes were a rosy brown.  Lucy twisted around, to face the window.  “Charles, if we’re worried about someone or something losing control and being able to hurt us… who or where would we go to get something to protect ourselves?”

Charles sighed.  “The best defense is running away, avoiding that fight in the first place.”

“You made it sound like a bad situation was unavoidable,” Avery said.

“I might’ve, but it might be better to say that a bad situation is inevitable, unless you stop.  If and when that happens, the tragic outcome might be what’s unavoidable.”

“Let’s assume something or someone’s going to pick a fight with us,” Lucy said.  “Who do we go to about self defense or getting what we need to stop them?”

They’d made their way down the winding road and they were into the upper portion of Kennet now.  There was a fair amount of traffic at this hour and time of the week.  The highway cut through the town, and the upper end of town had a ton of fast food places and rest stops for people to pull off or go to the bathroom.  A lot of the signs were crummy or had unlit letters, but the fast food places and other franchises at least had head offices ensuring that they were keeping everything top notch.

Avery looked at it with the Sight.  She could see the distinction, now that she’d been gone and come back.  The handprints and footprints that her Sight painted on everything were keeping this place in good shape, but an awful lot of them were bloody.

The bands that connected things were touched with blood here and there too.

Now she had another question, but the others were talking.

“…would suggest John,” Charles said.  “He’s a fighter.  Goblins if you want to hurt something, but that’s… again, practice is political as much as it’s anything.  Something like Munch from downtown might give you a win, but you hurt yourself in the long term.”

“And which Others are most likely to lose control and hurt us?”

“John,” Charles said, again.

Verona laughed.  “That’s, uhhhh…”

“We want to talk to him soon anyway,” Avery said, pushing her way back into the conversation.  As they got closer to their destination, she felt more and more like she wanted to do her share, or make her contribution.  “What do we need to know?”

“He’s easy to find.  He lives in the burned out house at the southeast of town.  At the intersection of Lily and Henry.  He’s a good man, but… avoid sudden moves.  Don’t push him, and avoid all signs of violence.”

“Like a big, scary dog,” Avery said.

“Essentially.”

“What is he?”

“He’s a Dog of War, known in some circles as Dog Tags.  I think his name is an older equivalent to John Doe, but for soldiers.  When warzones are at their ugliest and most chaotic, and people start losing track of who is where, who is alive and who is dead, certain Others may crop up on the battlefields.  Ones that fight, so long as there is conflict around them.  If the soldiers in that war are killing innocents, so will the Dogs of War.  If they commit other atrocities, so will the Dogs.  They don’t sleep, they keep the battle going, and as long as the battle continues, they don’t stay down.  Related to Revenants, but Revenants are the province of Death, not War.”

“Did he- does he commit atrocities?” Avery asked.

“I don’t think so,” Charles said.  “But he came with a friend, and the friend suggests things, because of what she was.”

“Clarify that for us?” Avery asked.

“I don’t know much.  She was gone before I was a practitioner, and she’s a touchy subject for him.  Dogs of War have a multitude of subcategories and varieties.  Labels are rarely tidy, and Dogs of War are something that emerges naturally, for lack of a better way of putting it.  Dog Meat emerge from multiple killings at the hands of serial killers or more violent goblins, Hang Dogs from lynchings and hate, Blast Dogs from areas that have been traumatized, and Sick, Famine, and Black Dogs are rare ones from the more vulnerable innocents killed in those crises, usually the leaders or guides for collected packs and combinations of Dogs of War.”

Avery looked out over the congested traffic.  People were lining up to pass through the fast food drive throughs, with lines extending out onto the road.  It meant that traffic was reduced to one lane at places, and that traffic was stop-and-go.

The world felt so much bigger and more intimidating than it had last Thursday.

“Are there a lot of these things out there?” Verona asked.

“By their nature and where they come from, they’re hard to count.  All it takes is that the dead pile up in the midst of greater conflict and violence, people start becoming statistics instead of names, and the numbers stop adding up.  John’s companion was a Sick Dog type.  It looked like any child you could find on a warzone.  He smuggled it here, it took care of him, he took care of it.  But by its nature, it spread sickness and tainted everything around it with malaise.  It had to be dealt with.  John decided to do it himself.  Before my time here.”

“Dealt with?”

“He executed his companion.  I think that might be why the Alabaster, Sable, and Aurum liked him for the role.  He does what’s necessary.”

“You were listening in?”

“Matthew recapped for me.”

“Okay, so… just so we know, how do you deal with a Dog of War or any of its variants?” Verona asked.

“By putting a bullet in them, or some other means of execution, after cutting them off from their power source.”

“How do you cut them off?”

“Draw a circle around them.  I can teach you the basics of binding Others at a later date.  With John, don’t bother trying.  The act of finishing the drawing of the circle gets harder the greater the source of power is.  His source of power is a big, long-running conflict with no sign of ending, even if Canada pulled out six years ago.  Like a large body of water with a narrow hole feeding out the bottom to this particular output, the pressure is immense and the stream violent.  You’re not positioned to put that conflict to rest and you’re not equipped to close a circle.”

“We might have other options if we can figure that out, if it comes to that,” Lucy said.  “Was he upset?  After killing his friend?”

“John has two modes.  Hurry up and wait, and opening fire.  He hasn’t opened fire yet, and it’s been a decade.”

They’d hit the residential area now.  They weren’t far from being dropped off.

“What about the Hungry Choir?” Avery asked.  “Are they something we can use to protect ourselves?  I’m thinking of the knives that appeared in the ritual, and they seem to be a common thread.”

“They aren’t.  Too unpredictable, you can’t communicate with them, and by their very nature, they tend to bite the hand that feeds.  They’re not servants, summons, or assistants I would have wanted as a practitioner.”

“What is their nature?” Verona asked.

“Ritual Incarnate,” Lucy said.  Her phone rang, startling her.  “Sorry.  It’s my parents.  Crap.”

Verona grabbed her hat, which was in her lap, flipping it over.  The chalk diagram to break connections had worn out to the point they were almost gone.  “Our connection breaking stuff ended.  Because we drove through a populated area, and a lot of people would notice kids riding in the back of a truck.”

Lucy motioned for Verona to shush, putting the phone to her ear.

Verona twisted around, and pushed past Avery to get to the window.  She spoke into the window so she wouldn’t be too loud for Lucy.  “My house is a block away. Stop?”

Matthew pulled over.

“Yes, no, I figured I’d reheat something if you hadn’t cooked,” Lucy said.  “Less than five minutes.  Okay, cool.  Thanks.”

Verona hopped out of the car, and Avery handed down the bags.

Verona leaned in closer, all wide-eyed, hair messy from not having showered or brushed it.  It suited her, honestly.  In Avery’s Sight, Verona’s eyes were bright with a purple tint that wasn’t reflecting anything nearby.  Was that because Verona was using the Sight too?  “Get the rest of the info and fill me in later?  Or fill in Lucy and I’ll read her notes?”

Avery nodded.

“Thanks,” Verona said.  She turned to look in the direction of her house.  “Sucks to go back home.  I kinda hoped I wouldn’t have to, but I guess that doesn’t make sense, huh?”

“I guess,” Avery said, not sure what to say.

“I’ll see you at school tomorrow,” Verona said, before quickly adding, “Probably.”

“Later,” Avery said.

Verona started to leave, then turned.  “I’m glad you stuck with it.  Thanks for the book.  Let me know if you want it back.”

“Nah,” Avery said, a little caught off guard.  She raised a hand as Verona ran off.  The truck started up again as Avery settled back into her ‘seat’.

“What were we talking about?” Avery asked.

“Ritual Incarnates,” Lucy said.  She’d finished her call.

“There are ways you can ask to play chess with Death,” Charles launched right into it.  “Or one Death.  War, Innocence, Pain, Hope, Mischief… all are forces that can take form in this world, you can meet them, you can deal with them.  They’re more solid and tied into things than a spirit, which influences, or an elemental that impacts the physical and natural world.  Incarnations represent particular human realities.  When these incarnations want to spread their influence, sometimes they set things in motion.  On the rare occasion, they happen naturally or by accident.  All we know about the Hungry Choir is that they arose somewhere else and they’ve settled here, at least for a little while.  Perhaps some locals are tied up in it.  The Other you call Miss could tell you more.”

“What is it?” Avery asked.  “Like, what did these Incarnations or accidents set in motion?”

“An Incarnation of Poverty might try to spread poverty.  Sometimes that would be with a cursed item; innocents handle it, they ignore the warnings printed on the item or shared by the seller, they lose their earthly belongings and fortunes, they die or suffer a dark fate, the item gets passed on, having strengthened Poverty, until someone figures out a way to deal with it.  Other times, it’s a ritual that finds its way to people’s hands.  In this modern era, when urban legends can gain traction and the internet is a thing, it’s getting more and more common.”

“But they’re not practitioners?” Avery asked.

“This is my house!”  Lucy knocked on the window.  Matthew pulled over again.

Lucy made no motion to get up, still listening.  In the background, Matthew turned off the engine, turning around to look and listen as Charles talked.

“No, they’re not practitioners.  And that’s the gamble, of sorts.  Will the ritual pull in enough to be worth the cost of inducting an innocent?  If the ritual brings in enough poverty, for example, or brings in enough other people who fail, it may be worth paying the penalty or assuming the karmic responsibility.  But if the people participating thrive, succeed, and ‘beat’ the ritual, it’s costly.”

“Beat?” Lucy asked.

“Often, the karmic cost of bringing in innocents is tempered.  If it’s just, if someone must opt in, and if there’s a possible way out, it’s less costly.  Remember what I said earlier about the warning given with full expectation that the warning would be ignored?  One such example.  The Ritual Incarnate may be a game, or a pattern people willingly participate in, with enough traps or enough of an uphill climb that failing at the game is expected, and they may be difficult enough that by the time the participant is done, they are no longer capital-I Innocent, or even no longer human.  These things tend to end when enough people get the hang of it.”

“The Hungry Choir is strong, so… nobody’s figured out how to beat it?”

“Not consistently.  I’ve heard about one where a notebook described how to find the location of a tunnel entrance, which regularly moved.  An Incarnate Ritual of Time.  Going through the winding tunnels would take the participants back in time.  They could alter their pasts, but while in the past, they had to arrange events so a specific scene would come to pass at a specific point in time, years in the future, as depicted on a mural along the way.  They got three tries and if they failed to replicate the scene, they were unwound from Time altogether.  The notebook was mass produced, some practitioners in the States got ahead of it, and used their expertise to beat it enough times it ran out of steam.  In another case, an Incarnate Ritual of Envy, participants could log into a website, and would join as a group, engaging in a game of several rounds of swapping minds with bodies among members of the group, similar to musical chairs.”

“What happened when a chair was taken away?”

“I don’t know.  The easiest and most obvious answer would be that that specific mind and body pairing were snuffed out.”

“Do they all end horribly?” Avery asked.

“They tend to, but typically, there’s incentive to win, a reward for the winner, that draws specific kinds of candidate into the ritual,” Charles said.  “Be careful with the Hungry Choir.  Have some protection if you’re getting close.”

Lucy got to a standing position, moving her bags to the side.  Avery stood as well, ready to help.

Avery gave Lucy her bags.  “I’ll catch you up on any other info, after.”

“You did good this weekend, Ave.”

Avery wanted to protest, but she worried calling Lucy out on being a liar would hurt them both.  She shrugged instead.  “You too.”

“We’ll talk soon,” Lucy said, giving the side of the truck a pat.

“Sure.”

Lucy lifted up her bags and cut cross-wise through someone’s lawn to head to her house.

“Remind me where you live?” Matthew called back.

“Over the bridge, turn right.”

“Got it.”

It felt weird and worse, being in the back of this truck with the strangers in the front, nobody at her side now.

“Any more questions?” Charles asked.

The way she was sitting, her back was almost to his, separated by the back of the truck cab, his seat, and her bags that she was using as a back-cushion.

“How do we talk to the Choir?  We have the location for John Stiles, but…”

“You don’t.  You can’t.  But ask Miss.  She may be able to point you in the right direction.  Prepare first, or better yet, skip them.”

“Skip them?”

“They can hurt you,” Charles said.  “They’re a small, localized hurricane, except instead of wind and flying debris, they’re patterns and rules.  Don’t get mired in it.”

“Alright,” she said.  “Thanks for the advice.  I do mean that.”

The car reached her house and passed it.  She told Matthew to park.

“What you said about being fast?” Charles ventured, as she picked up her bags.

“Yeah?  Fast and high-endurance.”

“If those parts of you on the rink are you, your capital-s Self, play into that.  Pursue that.”

“I’ll think about that, and how to make it work.”

“Careful,” he said.  As it got quieter, his voice took on a crackle that reminded her of her grandfather.  “I’m karmically ruined.  It makes it easier to ignore my advice, so don’t tell me you’ll think about it unless you will.”

“I will,” she said, as much to nail down the idea for her own benefit as it was for him.  “Thanks Charles.  Thanks Matthew.  Thanks Edith.”

She grabbed her bags and hopped down, the added weight adding more crunch as her running shoes hit the grit, salt, and gravel that had been deposited at the road’s edge, yet to be fully washed away.

Three cars in the driveway.  Reason enough to believe everyone was home.  The garden had been watered and a puddle had yet to dry out by the spray-hose, which had been left draped down the length of the road.  Someone was earning the bonus chore money, it seemed.  From the fact it hadn’t been picked up after, a good one dollar deduction, she was guessing Sheridan or Declan.

She let herself in, squeezing in past the screen door to the front door, with a bag slung over one shoulder and another at her back.

“Grumble, do you mind if I take the Ion!?”

The answer was unintelligible.

“It’s so cute you call him Grumble,” Laurie said.  The woman, twenty, slim and dark haired, was already standing in the front hall.  Laurie reached in to hold the screen door and let Avery squeeze through.  Avery ducked her head down, feeling heat at her face as she had to pass in such close proximity to the woman.  It wasn’t that her brother’s girlfriend was her type, but Avery’s height put her head at the same level as Laurie’s chest, which meant she had to work to not headbutt her, and she was very cognizant of the smell of her shampoo and the fact she was wearing a low-cut top.  If she’d had any warning, it would have been fine, but it was a lot to suddenly find at eye level, and she was very aware she hadn’t showered.

“Thank you.”

“Hey, skates,” Rowan said, touching Avery’s head.  He was tall, skinny as a rail, with freckles, with an actually nice haircut, which Avery kind of envied.  “Good weekend?”

“S’alright,” she mumbled, still a bit flushed.  “Going out?”

“Date, yeah.”

“Rowan,” Avery’s dad said, “can you wait two minutes to let me write up a list?  I’ll give you money, you can grab stuff on the way home.”

“Aw, dad, that’s really not the direction we’re going, and your two minutes is closer to ten minutes in reality.”

“Two minutes, I promise.  You can keep the change for gas money.”

“Avery!” Kerry exclaimed, voice high.  The six year old threw herself at Avery, latching onto the gym bag and nearly pulling Avery off balance.

“Ow, let go.  Let go!”

She pried Kerry’s fingers off and twisted away, doing a half-step to avoid whacking Laurie in the knees with the bag as she turned. She hurried to the stairs, where she had to twist to let Declan by as he hurried down the stairs.

“Avery!” her mom called from the downstairs kitchen.  “Can we touch base!?”

“Yeah!  Give me a minute!”

“Have you eaten!?”

“Not since lunch!”

“Can we touch base!?”

“I said give me a minute!”

She made her way upstairs, and had to stop at the door to her room.  Sheridan was exiting as she entered, and looked very aggrieved at the minor inconvenience at having to wait for Avery to step aside and let her pass.  Wearing pyjama pants and an oversized shirt even though it wasn’t nighttime yet, running a brush through black hair -the only person in Avery’s family without red hair besides grandpa- Sheridan strode to the stairs, tossing her brush onto the bathroom counter as she passed it.  Sixteen year olds.

“Don’t leave that stuff in the way!” Sheridan called out, from the top of the stairs.

“Yeah.”

“You leave your gym stuff around all the time.”

“Stop stressing out!”

“Laurie!” Sheridan called down.  “Hey, where are you guys going out-”

Avery deposited her bags on her bunk. She rolled her shoulder where the strap had been digging into it, especially with Kerry hanging on, and she heaved out a sigh.  The bunkbed was relatively new.  Declan was ten, and her parents didn’t want a ten year old boy sharing a room with a six or thirteen year old girl, so they’d been sorted by gender instead.  Avery’s bed had gone to Declan, she got the top bunk, and Kerry slept below her.  Sheridan’s half of the room remained intact, on penalty of all the wrath a sixteen year old could bring down on one’s head.

“Avery!” her mom called from downstairs.  “Tout suite!  Dinner’s ready in ten!  I want to chat before then!”

She put her bags on her bed and in the closet, and made sure none of her stuff was in Sheridan’s way.  She picked up one of Kerry’s stuffed animals that she almost stepped on, a dog with a fat tongue sticking out, and situated it on her sister’s pillow, before posturing it so it was licking itself.

Kerry would laugh, probably.

Her head being down, she got in her dad’s way as he crossed the hallway.  He stopped in his tracks, hands going out to the walls so he could brace himself instead of walking into her.

“Whoop,” he said.  “Looking for a pen.”

She had one in her pocket.  She handed it over.

He bent down to kiss her on the top of her head.  “Thank you.  Good weekend?”

He was already heading downstairs.  She followed.

“I think so,” she said.

“That sounds very ambivalent.”

“Just… a lot going on.”

“No idea what that’s like,” he said, a twinkle in his eye.

“Yeah.”

Sheridan got out of dad’s way, but when Avery moved to get by, stuck her butt in the way.

“Did you leave your stuff on the floor?”

“I didn’t!” Avery protested.  She was annoyed she couldn’t help but sound childish, saying it.  She tried to get by, but Sheridan stuck her fat butt out.

“Why don’t I believe you?”

“Avery!” her mom called out.

“She’s coming,” her dad said.  “Sheridan, let your sister by.”

Sheridan obeyed, but only as long as dad was looking.  As soon as he turned away to add to the list he was writing, she moved to block.  “I thought you were a hockey player.”

Avery saw the sympathetic look that Laurie shot her, but Rowan, dad, and Kerry were all in the front hall, and she couldn’t speak without interrupting.

Avery climbed over the railing, put one foot on the top of the chair by the stairs, and stepped down onto the seat, then to the ground.  She jogged through the living room, evading Kerry’s clutches, and paused by the chair her grandfather sat in, giving him a hug.

“Heya,” he said, his voice mushy and ten times as gravely as Charles’ had been.  He’d had a stroke a long time ago and had mostly recovered, but his voice wasn’t what it had been, and his movements were sometimes limited.

“Heya Grumble.  Have a good weekend?”

“Surright, yeah,” he said.  He gave her cheek a pat with a stiff hand, the movements rough and the hand rougher.  He indicated the television, which was showing the news.  “I dunno what these guys, what they’re doing.  They’re idiots.  We’ve got idiots in charge.”

“Love you, but I gotta go talk to mom though.”

“Mercy on ya.”

“She’s not that bad,” Avery said, smiling, as she walked backwards.  “I don’t think I’m in trouble.”

“No trouble,” her mom said, overhearing the tail end.  She wiped wet hands.  “Backyard for a second?  Connor!  Can you watch the stove?”

“Yeah!  One second!” Avery’s dad called back.

“Sheridan’s not doing anything,” Avery volunteered.

“Sheridan!  Stove!” Avery’s mom called out.  “If I look back in five seconds and you’re not on it, I’m going to be ticked!”

“Yep!” was the answering call.

Avery and her mom stepped into the backyard.  Her mom shut the door, which immediately opened, six year old Kerry wanting to come outside.

“Nope, back inside,” mom said, ushering the kid in, before closing the door and standing with her back to it.  “Whoo.”

“Whoo,” Avery said.

“How are you?” her mom asked.

Avery shrugged.  “Doing okay.”

“Where were you?”

“Was hanging out with Lucy and Verona.  We slept in a tent.  Studied.  Verona made a boomerang hat.”

“Never heard of that.  I know it might not seem like it, but I miss you when you’re not around.”

“I miss you guys too.  I don’t tend to miss… all of this, though.”

“Haha.  Your mind might change when you go away to university.  Your dorm or apartment will feel very empty.”

“If.”

When, please and thank you.”

“We’ll see.”

“I guess we will.  Plenty of time to figure it out,” mom said.  “I’m proud of you, you know.”

“Um.  Thanks?  Can I ask- what’s this?”

“This?”

Is it a screwy connection thing?  A rebound from the connection breaking ritual?  If it is, I feel kind of sorry for Lucy and Verona.

“You, me, talking here.  I know you said I’m not in trouble but I feel like I’m in trouble.”

“No, honey.  Usually, when you’re around, I feel like I make a few minutes at a time to check in, or see how you’re doing.  But when you’re away, I do want to take a bit more time to catch up.  I don’t want to go back to where things were last winter.”

Aha, this was something far more boring than connection weirdness.

Avery was pretty sure that Ms. Hardy had called her parents, because a short while after she’d opened up to Ms. Hardy, her parents had turned things around a bit and started talking to her more, asking her how she was, taking her out for treats or one-on-ones.

She kinda really resented that it had taken that long and that much, though, which made this uncomfortable dialogue a little more uncomfortable.

Which she summed up in a shrug.

“Are you in a good place?  Your friends are good to you?”

“They can be a little bit much, but… they’re good.”

“Did we do you wrong by homeschooling you?”

Avery shook her head.  Homeschooling had been easier.  The forced social interaction with the meets with other homeschooled kids.  They’d been so mindful of the risks of not giving her enough socialization that they’d gone the other direction.  Museum trips, hangouts.  It had been nice.

She’d still asked to go to regular school.  She’d been wrong to, kind of.  Rough few months.

“Want anything particular for dessert?” her mom asked.  “I think we have ice cream, brownie bites, hmmm…”

“I don’t really care about dessert.  I snacked out all weekend.”

“Hm.  So long as you finish your dinner and you had a good weekend.”

Avery shrugged again.  “Um.  But can we not watch the singing show?”

“Oh, honey.  That might be a losing battle.  I’ll be in your corner if you really want it, but…”

“Literally anything else.  Please.”

“We’ll pitch it.”

“Okay.”

“I’ve got to go check on dinner.  Have you finished your homework?”

“No.”

“And I thought you said you studied, hm?” her mom asked, smiling like she’d just played a trick or caught Avery in a minor lie.  “After?”

Avery nodded.

“Alright.  Dinner in… maybe five.  Go, sort out your things from the weekend.  Make sure your laundry is in the pile or it won’t get done.  Get clothes ready for tomorrow.”

Avery nodded.

Back into the house, where Kerry was waiting by the door, trying to peer through the window.  Mom scooped Kerry up, grunting as she lifted her, and leaned her on one hip.

“Can’t do this for much longer.  You’re lucky you’re so tiny, Ker.”

Avery watched as her mom situated Kerry on the kitchen counter, and set her the task of spinning the salad dry.  Sheridan was on the stove, and Laurie had left with Rowan.

“Pen,” her dad said, as she passed him.  He was in the front hall, plugging in his phone at the hub, which had what looked like ten different wires and chargers sticking out of it.

She reclaimed her pen, then jogged up the stairs.

Declan was in her room, holding her deer mask.  Her clothes and other stuff from her bag were on the floor.

“Declan, you’re such a little penis!”

She stopped after saying it, that moment of regret and realization washing over her.

Of course she’d be the lame-ass loser who’d be the first in her trio that would say something that was technically a lie.

“Where’d you get this?” he asked.

“Give it back!” she told him, with a little more volume and anger because she was mad at herself.  For the lie, for not considering that she had zero privacy.

“Did you make it?  I saw you carving something in the backyard but it wasn’t like this.”

“It was a gift, like my carving was a gift, and don’t you dare drop it.  Give it!”

He held it at bay, using Sheridan’s wheeled computer chair as a barrier.

She used her Sight, because she didn’t have many other options.  She could see him, see the bands of connections.  She could tell her dad was on his way.

A band connected her to her mask.

On impulse, she grabbed for it.  The band moved out of the way of her hand, but she grazed it with her fingers, which pulled it closer-

And Declan, standing on one of the legs that extended from the base of the computer chair, slipped and slid a bit closer.

She snatched the mask from his hand.

Flushed with victory and anger, she gathered herself.  She could do things.  This was more than just stopping the wind, postponing a phone call that probably wouldn’t have come, and keeping her hat on.

She had another issue to fix.  The lie.

“You little penis,” she pressed.  “You’re- you’re runty, you’re sticky and snotty, you’re annoying, I don’t want you in my face, ever, and I definitely don’t want you poking randomly through my freaking stuff!”

“Avery!” her dad said, behind her.

Was that okay?  Did saying that stuff, drawing those parallels, did it work?  She didn’t care if she got in trouble with her dad, so long as it wasn’t hurting her practice or her friends.  Was it like giving an argument after being forsworn?

Whatever.  She’d work it out after.  There were other battles to be fought.  It was a question of sanity and siblings.  “The little creep was going through my stuff!”

“Was not!”

“Why are you even in my room?  Isn’t the whole point of Kerry moving in and me losing my actual bed so we wouldn’t have him perving his way through everything?”

“I wasn’t perving!  I was just curious!”

“Declan, time out.  I’ll talk to you in a minute.  Avery, calm down.”

She shut her mouth and she shut up, fuming.

Still mad at herself, because she should have known.

“How long am I in time out for?”

“Until your mom and I decide on a punishment.  You should respect your big sister’s privacy.  Avery… clean up, breathe?”

She huffed out a breath, bent down, and began picking up her dirty laundry and stuff.

She used her Sight, and she tracked the connections.  She looked at one band that was particularly slack and frail, paused as she noted that the bloodstains and bloody handprints extended to her brother, her dad, and Sheridan, who was out in the hallway.  Small, occasional, but definitely there.  A thing in Kennet alone.

But… that one band.

“Pat him down, dad?”

“You’re not serious.”

“I am,” she said.  “I’m-”

She marched over to Declan, reached for his pocket, and found it empty.  She checked the other- the connection wasn’t that clear.

She fished out the chocolate bar.

“Stealing has to be extra punishment, right?” she asked.

“Your mom and I will work it out.  This house would descend into anarchy if you got input on each other’s punishments.”

“Dinner!” the call came from downstairs.

Avery huffed.  She waited until people were out of her room before finding a quick hiding place for the chocolate bar.

Downstairs, the TV had been turned around so everyone at the table could watch.  It was already tuned to the previews of the talent competition.  Spotlights, judges, and the endless litany of new singers, dancers, and jugglers.

She hated it.  She gave her mom a look as she sat down.

“What would you guys think about a movie instead?” her mom offered.

The protests were loud and immediate, from Kerry, Declan, Sheridan, and even dad, who was now bringing over plates from the kitchen.

“Or, novel concept,” her mom said.  “We could turn off the television and talk like human beings.”

“This is Avery, right?  You’re saying it because of her, because I know you love this stuff, mom,” Sheridan said.

“It’d be nice to have a change,” mom said.  She gave dad that ‘back me up’ look.

“It could be,” he said.

If I ever have a girlfriend and she’s that bad at backing me up, she’d get the silent treatment or something, Avery thought.

Sheridan pressed the argument, “You’re not saying no.  It’s always Avery that’s whining about having to watch this, she’s the only one who doesn’t.”

“I don’t whine,” Avery said.

“You whine, you complain.  You don’t even try to like it.”

“It’s just so samey, and it’s always on.”

“See, whining.”

“Whiner,” Declan said.

“Stop, right now,” mom said.

“Let’s not forget you’re in trouble, Declan,” dad added.

“We’re missing the start!” Kerry said.

“I need the recap on whatever happened.’

“After, after.”

“If this was in any way fair, every eight days, at least, we’d get to watch something I like,” Avery said.

“We’re missing the start!” Kerry raised her voice.

Avery looked at her mom, helpless, with three siblings lined up against her, one older, two younger, all annoying.

“No, Avery’s right.  Movie,” her mom said, as she put a bib on Grandpa.

There were groans across the table.

“Jenniston’s on tonight, mom,” Sheridan said.  “Your favorite, quarter-finals.”

“I can survive, I think.”

Dad changed the channel until he found a movie that looked safe for Kerry.  Romantic comedy, it seemed.

“What, did this take two dollars to make?” Sheridan asked.  “Look at that set.”

“This looks awful,” Declan chimed in, picking up on Sheridan’s cue.

“I don’t even recognize this actor,” Sheridan said.  “How do you have a romance movie without an attractive guy?”

“I can’t hear what they’re saying,” Avery said.

“Guys, be quiet.”

“Avery talks all the time when we’re watching our show.  Which, I should mention, has something for everyone.”

“Not really for me,” Avery said.

“Oh my god, do you even like this?” Sheridan asked.

“Enough, Sheridan.  I will ground you.”

“It’s better than Singfest Canada,” Avery said.

“I want to see Jenniston!” Kerry raised her voice.  “And the box boys!”

“They got eliminated last week, remember?”

“I still want to see them!”

Much as her grandfather was doing, Avery focused on eating, enduring the onslaught.  Dinner was good, at least.  She was hungry.

“Avery, are you even watching?” Sheridan asked.

“Stop heckling your sister.”

“I don’t-” Avery said, stopping short.  “Whatever.  Change the channel.”

“Are you sure?” her mom asked.  “Because if you’re doing it because they’re behaving this way-”

“It’s not worth it.  Just…”

Avery got up from her seat, changed the channel, and sat back down, to the cheers of her siblings.

“I’ll make it up to you,” her mom said.

She continued to endure, to eat in silence.

God, she hated this show.  The judges, the performers, the fakeness.  She’d never even liked it a bit, but… ever since last fall, when there’d been three different talent shows on TV, and other shows the family liked to watch, when she’d been so lonely it got hard to breathe sometimes, the dinners had been some of the worst parts.  Worse than school.  Because people that should have reached out and connected to her hadn’t.  They’d watched their stupid show and barely talked and then went and did their own things, ignoring her while she was suffocating.

And yeah, she was to blame too.  That was what got her.  She could have always said something or piped up or whatever, but… she hated that they all made it so hard, sometimes.

“See?” Sheridan said.  “Something for everyone.  Cute boy for you, Avery.”

Avery looked at the screen and at the boy, and her initial reaction was sheer disinterest mingled with her hatred of the show, which settled on a wobbly feeling of general revulsion.  Then, worried it had shown on her face, she glanced at her grandfather, who was looking at her, and down at the table.

She wondered if she could muster enough sheer dislike for it all that the screen would crack.  Was that a thing she could do with her sight?

Wetting her hand with condensation on her glass of ice water, she drew on the table.  A circle, herself, and then spurs pointing to each member of her family.

She spat on her hand.

“What are you doing?” Sheridan asked.

She smeared it in the center of the circle.  That was enough of her, wasn’t it?  DNA?  People spat on their hands and shook, and so that had to mean something.

The young teenager’s singing had just started.

Avery realized nobody was fixated on her.

Shoveling a few more bites of food into her mouth, she stood, bringing her plate with her.  She kept an eye out, but they were stuck watching the screen.

There was no way she was sitting through another episode of this crap.

She cleaned her plate and put everything away, and jogged up the stairs to her room.  She did another, cleaner connection breaking circle that wouldn’t evaporate, sent a text to her friends, and then went to the bathroom to wet her hair under the showerhead.

She got a reply, and, water still running, checked.

Giving her hair a brief towel, she pulled on a hat, got her stuff, mask and hat included, and made her way out the door.

She spotted the house at the corner of the intersection.  It had burned in a fire, and nobody had gotten around to replacing the walls.  There was only plastic sheeting.

“That’s a good trick, though,” Verona said.

“I wish I knew exactly how I did it.  If we got good at it, maybe it’d let us do the hat boomerang thing without having to draw something.”

“It might be worth asking one of the Others about that, before we do it too much,” Lucy said.  “What if it degrades the connection to pull on it all the time?  Or if it costs something?”

“Sure,” Avery said.  “I don’t see myself objecting if you say we need to be more careful, especially after what Charles said.”

“What kind of Other, though?”

“The thread ones,” Verona said.  “Maybe… Miss?”

“I don’t trust Miss,” Lucy said.

“Alpy?” Avery asked.  “She seemed cool.”

“Based on a single smile?”

“Nevermind that.  We can figure it out.  I want to know what happened next?  How did he react?” Verona asked.

“It wasn’t like that,” Avery said.  “Declan tipped my way naturally.  Like it was always going to happen.  I just grabbed it.  He looked annoyed, then I had to handle the penis thing.”

“The penis thing.”

“I called him a penis, and I didn’t want that to be a lie.”

They stopped at the far end of the intersection, waiting for a car to pass.

“So what did you do?”

“I named all the ways I could think of, that he was like a penis.  I did pretty well I think.”

“Want to do better?” a voice cut in.  Trying so desperately to be a purr and sounding more like a person choking.

What did he hear?  Avery wondered, as she backed away from the bush.

Toadswallow and Cherry were within, crawling forth.  Toadswallow was wearing a vest with a tie that didn’t quite cover his belly.

“What are you doing here?” Lucy asked.

“We’re friends with John.  We were going to hang out,” Toadswallow said.  “Come on.  You were going to talk to him anyway, weren’t you?  Hang out with us, and Cherry and I here will teach you how to make a swear count, as one of my gifts to you.”

[1.4 Spoilers] Notes on Practices #1

Lost for Words – 1.5

Verona

(Posted Last Thursday – Notes on Practice – Circles & Diagrams)


Verona watched the goblins as they led the way.  Toadswallow was round, with legs a bit too short to be practical, and he crossed the street at a run that required him to rock from side to side to get his legs up enough, while periodically touching the ground with one hand to keep from tumbling or sprawling.  Cherry moved on all fours.

Not in a straight line, either.  They avoided the light from nearby buildings, cutting diagonally across the intersection, then crossing the street further down.  If she hadn’t been watching, she might have mistaken them for a racoon and a small rodent crossing the road.

“Ready?” Lucy asked.

“Yeah,” Avery said.

Verona nodded.

Seeing the goblins be so careful with how they crossed the road made her look both ways before crossing, even though there weren’t any cars on the road.

At this corner of town, there were some scattered businesses and stores, a trio of big concrete buildings that might have been factories, and narrow neighborhoods of houses.  The houses were different from the ones in Verona’s area.  A house that had been a barn once had extra stuff tacked onto it, like a wooden staircase and a second floor addition.  A nicer house was sandwiched between a house with grass and weeds so long that strands had grown wheat-like feathering at the top, and a house with peeling paint and next to no lawn at all.

Her dad was in a mood tonight, and she was so glad Avery had called.  Verona threw an arm around Avery’s shoulders.

“Wah,” Avery said, more like a word than an exclamation.  “You scared me.”

“How was it, going home?” Verona asked.

“Noisy,” Avery said.

“My mom ordered takeout,” Lucy said.  “She wanted to ask what we did all weekend, so I told a partial truth, that we had a short camp-out.  I think she imagined we had it in the backyard.  What about you?”

“My dad’s being a bit…” Verona floundered for a word that was both the truth and accurate.  “You know him, Lucy.  How do I put it?”

“I don’t know him,” Avery said.

“Lame?” Lucy offered.

“Yes, but… more than lame.  I want a word more profound than that, and…” she floundered again.  “…Sad.”

“Is sad more profound?” Lucy asked.

“It is the way I’m thinking it,” Verona said.

“He’s depressed?”

“I dunno,” Verona said.  “Maybe, but I feel like most adults are.”

“Agree to disagree,” Avery said.

“Sure.  But if you asked that because of what I said, I meant sad the other way.”

They’d reached the foot of the house.  It was a narrow building, and much of it had burned, with the edges of plastic siding having charred and melted.  Plastic sheeting had been nailed down to minimize the water damage.  Whoever owned it didn’t have the money to make the extensive repairs, and they couldn’t or wouldn’t sell it, probably.

This close to it, Verona could smell the burned plastic, even though it had been like this since before winter.

Toadswallow crept up onto the stairs in front of the house.  He didn’t give Cherrypop a helping hand, as she fought to climb the scraggly bush next to the stairs.  Instead, he walked over to the front door, reared back enough it looked like he was going to tip backwards onto his ass, and then kicked it with surprising violence.  The door swung open, a bit of wood dropping from where the latch met the frame.

“We heard John Stiles was twitchy, so maybe-”

“Please pardon our rude intrusion!” Toadswallow hollered into the house.

“-Don’t be too noisy?

Only silence answered them.

It looked like older teenagers had broken in at one point to have a party, and there were remnants everywhere.  Stuff was written on walls, and there was debris littering the area.  Surprisingly, not a lot of alcohol.  There wasn’t much light outside to begin with, and the boarded up windows let only dark grey slices of light through around the edges, while the plastic that covered the other windows allowed a dull glow that barely reached past the frames themselves.

Verona shrugged out of one strap of her bag, pulled out her mask, and pulled it on, because it helped with her Sight.  The sources of light seemed to reach further, and details melted away, like everything had been covered in a thin film.  Connections were marked out like spiderwebs or hairs, glistening wet and bright in the gloom.  She picked up her feet more to avoid stepping on anything like a can or a bag that might have held organic trash, before melting or being trampled down into a sketchy black patch on the floor.

She reached out to pluck at Avery’s sleeve, gently pulling Avery away from a course that would have seen her walking into a shin-high pile of trash.

Lucy kicked a bottle she hadn’t realized was there, producing a loud clatter.  The clatter extended as Cherrypop flung herself at the rolling bottle, propelling it further across the floor, until it reached a wall and audibly broke.  Both goblins stuck to the shadows, only visible for fleeting moments, even with Verona’s sight.

“This is a good haunted house aesthetic,” Verona whispered.

“Where’s John?” Avery asked.

There was light down the hall, dull and red.  Lucy took the lead, her back running along the side of the staircase that led upstairs as she inched closer to the room with the red glow within.

Verona used the same staircase to lean against as she pulled a pack of longer post-its from her pocket.  Putting one foot flat against the wall, her knee pointing out, she laid the post-its across her leg, and penned out a quick, simple diagram, one that was badly imbalanced, a triangle atop a circle, atop a triangle, each triangle pointing the same way.  Within the circle, she penned the simple ‘fire’ rune, underlining it.

“He was here recently, I hope,” Lucy said.  “Looks like he was cooking.”

It might’ve been that there wasn’t enough heat.  She tried pressing her thumb to the bottom end of the diagram.  Pull in heat, feed it to the rune that defined the function, then push it out.  She could feel the rune at her fingertip, uncomfortably numbing and kind of painful.  The end of the slip of post-it turned orange, smoking.

“What are you even doing?”

“Trying to create a light source,” Verona said.  The end of the paper ignited in flame, spitting out the occasional spark.  It wasn’t as much light as she’d hoped.  The fire extended to the diagram, and traced out glowing orange lines as it burned through, the entire thing coming to pieces, with fire rushing to the fingers that held the paper.  She tossed it up into the air rather than at the ground.  It was ashes before it reached the floor.  “Didn’t work.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said, shaking her head.

“I wonder if there’s a good ‘light’ rune.”

“Focus, Ronnie.  Please,” Lucy said.

“What’s he cooking?” Avery asked.   “That can doesn’t have a label.”

Verona looked past the pair.  There was a hotplate sitting on the kitchen counter, which was tidier than other areas of the building, and a can sat on the plate, glowing red near the bottom.  The glow from within cast light onto the cabinets, that was more than the light elsewhere in the house.

“Makes sense to remove the label, if you don’t want it to burn,” Lucy said.  She entered the kitchen, heading for the hotplate.  “Where is-”

The kitchen door slammed shut, almost in Avery’s face.

“Hey!  Lucy!” Avery raised her voice.  She pushed at the door.  A heavy mass bigger than Lucy hit the door, slamming it shut yet again.

Verona backed away a few steps, alarmed.

Lucy.

She bolted, running back into the front hall, avoiding the heaps of trash, and took a hard right.  The house had rooms off to the left and right of the front hall, and they’d been cutting straight down the middle.  Verona took the right route, hoping that the rooms off to the right reconnected to the kitchen.  She grabbed a door frame to help swing herself around in a sharper left turn.

What could she do?  She had the post-its.  The fire hadn’t been much but it had at least been fire.  If she wrote something down, she could slap it down and the post-it part of it would make it stick.  She reached for her pocket, trying to extricate the post-its again.  Hard to do when running.

She circled around, saw the open kitchen door, and paused to pull the post-its free.

He came out of a dark corner, rising from a crouch so swiftly as he closed the distance that it seemed like he grew to triple height.  One-armed, he reached past her to take hold of her wrist, drove the length of his arm into the side of her neck, and stepped in close enough that he could place a foot in the way of one of her legs, when she tried to step backward and catch her balance.

Verona tipped over, half-spinning on her way to the ground.  Her mask fell ajar, obscuring the part of her vision that was normal, while leaving the general bleed of light, shadow, and the strings mostly visible when she looked through the mask’s material.  She shook her head until it fell into a position where she could see with one eye.  She felt a weight press on her chest.

He was leaning on her, pinning her down.  She had a hand beneath her and another hand in his grip.

John had used only one arm to take her down, and he used one thumb from the hand that held her wrist to pry the post-its free.  They flopped to the floor.  His eyes were all intensity, but he barely looked at her, his head angled more in the direction of the front hall.  Avery.

Verona looked past him.  His other arm held Lucy, who had her chin about as high as it would go, her eyes shut.  She was breathing hard.

Her eyes adjusted again, the Sight helping to clarify things in the gloom.  John Stiles had a gun, and it was pressing up against the underside of Lucy’s chin, his elbow hooked under her armpit, holding her close to him.  Lucy’s hands were out in front of her, fingers splayed, not facing anything in particular.

Verona pressed her lips together, tight.  She didn’t move as he let go of her wrist, brought his hand closer to his chest, and then pulled out a knife.  The blade touched her mouth, where her lips would be if she wasn’t already pressing them together enough they were barely out there.

“Hands out, fingers splayed,” he said.  His head didn’t move, but his eyes did, falling on her.

Verona obeyed, moving just enough to slowly free her trapped hand.  She put them out where he could see them.

“Uhhh, guys!?” Avery called out.  She might have called out a second ago, but Verona was too busy being thrown to the ground.  “Lucy?  Verona!  If this is a joke, it’s a really sick one!”

Verona couldn’t even move, because the blade being where it was made even the tiniest of movements hazardous.  She could feel her skin rasp against the blade’s edge.  If she had any hairs on her lip, even the tiny white fuzz hairs, then some were getting shaved off with the movements that the tiniest of breaths forced.

Lucy’s hands were shaking.  Verona’s were shaking, more for Lucy than for herself.  The reality of a gun being there, a gun, and that his finger was on the trigger.

If there was any way she could let her mouth get cut open, and with where the knife was, it looked like it would be nose to chin, and somehow save Lucy from that… absolutely.

“Anyone!?” Avery called out.  “Toadswallow?  Cherrypop!?  What was that thump?”

Avery sounded so scared.

He didn’t move.  Verona’s tiny movements were making skin rub against the blade’s edge, not quite enough to cut, but enough that she could feel it, but John Stiles was statue still.  Even his hair was short enough it didn’t move.  His eyes were open, whites visible, and he didn’t blink.  His eyes didn’t water.  Heck, even the tiny movements of his eye didn’t change.  His clothes weren’t the sort that shifted or settled.

He really wasn’t human.

“Um, guys!?” Avery called out.  Her voice sounded closer.

“Stop!” John called out.

There was a pause.

“Stopped,” Avery said, quieter, and not quieter because she’d moved away.

“Name.”

“Avery Kelly.”

“Full sentences.”

“My name is Avery Kelly.  Where are-”

“Stop.”

Lucy made a sound of protest.  The gun shifted, pressing further into her chin.

The knife moved, pressing in.  Verona realized her hands had moved involuntarily, on seeing Lucy’s distress.

For a while, Lucy had been the only person she could stand.  Lucy and Avery were maybe the only people she really cared about.

“Speak only when spoken to.  Don’t go off topic.  Words are a weapon in a practitioner’s hands.”

There was no response.

“Where were you this morning?”

“A campsite, with Matthew, Edith, and Charles.  I don’t remember the name.”

Bethlehem, Verona thought.

“They dropped you off?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Around a quarter to six.”

“Tell me your movements since.”

“I was dropped off at home, after my friends were.  I dropped off my things, I started dinner, left early, I called them.  We thought we’d move into the interviews.”

“Are you under any compulsion?”

“No, pretty sure.”

John shifted, and Lucy made another involuntary sound.  His voice was loud and crystal clear, no doubt audible through the entire house.  “Why only pretty sure?”

“I mean, I don’t- I don’t want to say anything for certain when I could be wrong, like… what qualifies as a compulsion?  ‘Any’ is a strong-”

A violent crash interrupted Avery, and made John move, throwing Lucy to the ground beside Verona, the gun aiming at another target.

Toadswallow sat on the dining room table, which he had just cleared the bottles from.

“Toadswallow,” John said.  “I nearly shot you.”

The plump goblin cackled.

The knife was no longer at Verona’s lips.  “Toadswallow, vouch?”

“Let ’em go, John,” Toadswallow called out.  “No reason to think anything’s up.”

“Can I trust you?” John asked the goblin.  “Practitioners have your name.  All it would take to sell the lie would be to summon you and compel you to a course of action.”

“I haven’t been.  Rest assured.  Not in months.”

John pulled the knife away, then stood, backing up a step, leaving them to get to their own feet.

“Avery, I think it’s okay now” Lucy called out.  She backed away from John, and walked around the end of the badly abused dining table, keeping it between her and John.  She was still breathing hard, and she had a shine of sweat on her face now.

Verona stayed put, moving her mask to the top of her head.  Staying where she was meant that John was less likely to move around or approach Lucy.

Avery stepped through the doorway.  She stopped short as she saw John standing there in the dark.  “What happened?”

“Why do that?” Verona asked.

He put his gun into his waistband, and put the knife into a pocket sheath.  He stood there for a moment, too still, too intense looking, his eyes fixed on a distant point in space.  He was wearing a black sweater with the sleeves rolled up, cargo pants, and boots.  He had circles under his eyes and his hair was sun-bleached blond and buzzed to an even shortness.  The only decorations he had on him was a narrow black label on each sleeve and the dog tags he wore- six tags and a gold loop that stood out against the fabric of the sweater.

He turned, striding out of the room and into the kitchen.

“Hey, John!”  Verona called out.  She approached, saw him at the hot plate, grabbing the hot metal with his fingers.  She heard sizzling.  He turned, coming right toward her, red hot metal gripped in one hand.  The contents were smoking.  He opened a cabinet and pulled out a plastic container.

“Out of the way,”

She scrambled back.  She could smell something acrid and awful in the smoke, and the chemical smell from the bucket.

He went to the window at the end of the dining room, pulled away the wood covering, and tossed the contents of the can into the backyard.  The red hot can was draped over the stem of a glass vodka bottle at the top of a trash pile.  He reached into the bucket, pulled out a cigarette, and dropped it into a beer can before sloshing the bucket’s contents out the window.

“Okay,” he said, like that was done.  He approached the table, and stood there, hands on the back of a chair.  Avery was inching closer, drawing nearer to Lucy.

Verona went to the back window, moved the wood out of the way, and looked at the glowing contents of the can, which now sat on dirt.  Metal that might have been a steel scrubbing pad, long narrow things that might have been nails and screws, and…

“You eat batteries and metal?”

“No.  I don’t need to eat, though I like the routine,” he said.

“Why, then?”

“Boom,” Toadswallow said.

“If our discussion had continued for much longer, if you had forced a stalemate or initiated a binding, it would have interrupted things.  The can would explode.  If you handled the can, there was still the bucket, with a longer timer.”

“Geez.  You’re that nervous about having us around?” Lucy asked.

John didn’t give her an immediate response.

“Not us,” Verona guessed.  “I think he thinks we could be hypnotized?”

“Or disguised, or bound, or compelled,” John said.  “I’ll assume it was after he dropped you off, but Matthew addressed some of us, to let us know other Practitioners had found out about the Carmine Beast.  There are good reasons to be careful.  We should be able to tell if they enter Kennet, but there are never any guarantees in times like these.”

“Are we going to have to deal with this every time we come see you?  Or any others?” Lucy asked.

“No,” John said.  “We can hold to an approach where each meeting ends with an agreement on a time and place for the next.  If you need me sooner, use trusted channels, like Matthew or Toadswallow.”

He’s trusted?” Lucy asked, indicating Toadswallow, who was plucking cigarette butts out of the top of a beer can, before tipping the contents into his mouth.  “He nearly got us killed, making that noise when you were ready to shoot me or cut Verona’s throat.”

“Careful, careful,” Toadswallow said.  “Don’t lie now.  The deal was struck, we can’t harm you.”

“Charles said that he thinks Others can,” Lucy said, louder, raising her voice more.  “If they’re acting on instinct.  And it sure looked like John was, there.”

“Don’t bunch up your undies there, dear, how was I supposed to know that?”

“Don’t tell me what to do, especially when you almost got us killed!” Lucy called out.  She advanced toward Toadswallow, who scrambled back, pushing more trash and bottles from the table to the floor as he scrambled across it.

“Kick his ass!” Cherrypop shouted, from a dark corner.

“Shut up!” Lucy shouted.  “Or you’re next.”

“Kick my ass!”

It was chaos, the goblins escalating things.  Verona took a step, ready to try to grab Lucy, but Avery was already on it.

“Easy,” Avery said, intercepting Lucy, stopping her.

Lucy stopped, breathing hard, face a bit shiny.

“Did you do it intentionally, Toadswallow?” Verona asked.

“Huh?  What?” the goblin asked, in his frog’s croak of a voice.  She wasn’t a judge of character, but he did sound genuinely surprised at the question.

“Sir Toadswallow, did you make that noise with the idea that John would hurt us, and we’d be out of your way?”

“No,” Toadswallow said.  “Gob bless and perish the hecking thought.”

“Did you have any inkling it was a possibility?”

“I thought it was a done deal, none of us can’t hurt any of you!”

The aristocratic act had slipped a bit.

“Did you have anything to do with the Carmine Beast and the disappearance-murder?”

“Some,” he said.  “Not like you’re implying, though.”

“Elaborate,” Lucy said.  “Now.”

“We saw it from a distance, saw it hurt.  Goblin noses, they’re good for sniffing out trouble, and she was in trouble.  We four met, ran into a dame who was bleeding from the eyes.”

“The witness,” John elaborated.  “Louise Bayer.”

“We followed her as far into town as we could get before it got tricky to go further.  Then we split up.  Told people.”

“Which people?” Lucy asked.

“Uhhh… I saw to Miss.  Munch went to Charles.  Gash went to Matthew and Edith…”

“Munch apparently found Matthew at Charles’ place.”

“Yeh,” Sir Toadswallow said.  “Yes indeed.  And Gash said Matthew called Edith about picking her up in his truck while he was filling her in.  Choir knew already.  Could smell ’em coming.”

“You could smell them coming, or they were already there?” Lucy asked.

“Couldn’t say, dearie,” Toadswallow said.

“Why not?”

“Because they’re not a group or anything like that.  They’re like a storm or a clog in the sewer.  The kids you see?  They’re just the raindrops or the bad smell that comes with.  The whole thing?  Bigger and vaguer.”

“The storm was already there?  Gathering?  On its way?”

Toadswallow shrugged.  “Don’t know.”

“Good to keep in mind,” Lucy said, meeting Verona’s eyes.

“Where’d you go that night, Cherry?” Toadswallow asked.

“The worst place!”

“Ah, yes,” Toadswallow said.  “Cherry went to the Faerie’s hideaway.  The poor little abortion of a thing is too dumb to know to stay away from those things.”

“I’m so dumb.  So ugly,” Cherrypop said, rustling through trash.  She sounded mournful, like it was assumed to be a fact.

“You’re-” Avery started.  “That’s- you shouldn’t say stuff like that, Cherry.”

“She’s fast enough to escape alive, and we thought it’d annoy them more if it was her.”

“I laid a trap while I was there,” Cherrypop whispered, right beside Verona, making Verona startle and step back.  The goblin had climbed halfway up the wall.  Louder, Cherrypop went on, telling Toadswallow, “Used condom on a tree branch I tied back.  They walk by, thwap.  Right in the kisser, if it’s the girl twit!  Right in the belly button if it’s the jock!  Thwap!”

Toadswallow cackled.

“Don’t laugh,” Lucy said.  “We’re a long way away from being cool, Toads.”

“What if I say I’ll make it up to you?” he asked.  “Dear me, I don’t want a practitioner as an enemy.  I thought I’d mess with you and give you a scare.”

Lucy didn’t answer.

“Luce,” Verona said.  “We’ll have to work with them for a while.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “Okay.”

“Then I’ll make it up to you,” Toadswallow said.  “It’s so.”

“Okay,” Lucy said, again.  She had her hand near one pocket, where her knife was still in the sheath, and she seemed to be trying to calm down.

“Thwap,” Cherrypop said, quiet, before making a tittering sound and dropping down from the wall to the detritus of past parties.

Verona looked back at John, and was surprised to see him smiling a bit.

“You don’t like them?” she asked.  “The Faerie?”

“I don’t mind them.  Guilherme can be good to have drinks with, exchange war stories.”

“War?  Farce,” Toadswallow grumbled, before spitting.  “Real war is waged knee-deep in a mix of mud, blood, and bowel evacuations from the dead.  My dears, the closest you get to glory in real war is sitting in the trenches with your fellow soldiers, telling dick jokes and pretending not to notice when your buddy old pal cries.”

“Agree or disagree?” Verona asked John.

“I think Toadswallow’s seen a few too many movies of the World Wars.  There’s not nearly as many trenches or battles spent knee deep in mud these days.  But… right direction, I think.”

Toadswallow was getting worked up.  “To hear that tumescent lug of a faerie tell it, it’s all glory, all the time.  What’s the fun in that?  I’ll tell you this, and you can hold my ass to the fire on this one, the only people who come back from war talking like it was the best thing ever are the liars and the sickos.”

“It’s the people,” John said.  “Nothing tempers friendships like traveling to another continent and having to trust them with your life.  Or meeting someone like a guide who doesn’t speak a word of your language, you don’t speak a word of theirs, and getting to the point where they want you to eat dinner with their family.”

“Or idiots who’ll tie a condom to a tree for a laugh,” Toadswallow said.  “While you do double duty pegging some jerks who need to be knocked down a peg.”

“I think you phrased that wrong,” Verona said.

“Maybe.”

John shifted position.  He seemed more relaxed now.  “It’s reasons like this that about seventy percent of my time spent hanging out with others is spent with the goblins.  They’re colorful but… I think they get it.”

“You were smiling when Cherry was talking about her prank on the Faerie,” Verona noted.  “Why?”

“Because of what he said, reminds me of stories from old squads.  The more regimented the system you’re in, the more you find yourself needing the occasional laugh or testing of acceptability.  And this?  What you guys signed up for last Friday?  What the goblins, the Faerie and I all deal with by the very nature of our being?  A lot of it’s regimented.  A lot of people and non-people are watching you for the slightest slip-up.”

Verona shifted, uncomfortable.  “There are a lot of freedoms too, right?  New things you can do.  A whole new world to explore.”

“There are.  But if I were you, given similar choices, this isn’t the road I would have taken.  There’s lots of other things to explore and things you can do.”

“But like… I don’t know if you understand me, here,” Verona told him.  “The sheer scale of it?  A whole world of Others and places to go… there’s like… there’s literally no way the life of the unawoken can come even close to opening that many new doors and new possibilities.”

“Careful,” Avery said.

“No, Verona isn’t wrong,” John said.  “But I can tell you, a lot of doors have closed as well.  If you’re not careful, virtually all of them close, like they did for Charles.”

Verona frowned.

“What you said about old squads,” Lucy said.  “You were actually in the army?”

“No,” John told Lucy.  “But I have scattered memories.”

“Alright, hm,” Lucy said.  She swallowed.

Verona looked at her friend, and she was pretty sure that even Avery, who hadn’t known Lucy since kindergarten, was worried about the girl.  Lucy was still shaky, still had that bit of sweat on her brow, and wasn’t as together as she sometimes was.

“We came here to interview you, John,” Verona said.  “We want to do it with all the Others in Kennet.”

“Okay,” he said.  He stood a little straighter, feet shoulder-width apart, hands clasped.

“Okay,” Lucy said, kind of cutting into the conversation.  She was getting her bearings too.  “Can we move this elsewhere?  Somewhere with more light?”

“I can bring light.  If you’ll give me a second?  I’ll be back ASAP.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.

Verona took the opportunity of John leaving to circle around the dining room table and join Lucy and Avery.  She kept an eye on the other room.  She could see a bit of John Stiles, and it didn’t seem like he was doing anything more than grabbing lanterns.

She glanced at the others.  Avery seemed to be most together, but Avery hadn’t been manhandled or held hostage.  Rather than deal with the stuff John had brought up, Verona wanted to make sure Lucy was okay first.  If it came down to it, she could help provide the guidelines and structure.  The fun stuff and the anxiety-inducing stuff could wait.

He entered the dining room and set the lanterns down around the edges of the room, before placing one on the table.

“Better?”

“Yes, thank you.  I may be blunt,” Lucy said.  “I hope you don’t mind.”

“No.”

“Did you do it?”

“No.”

“Do you know who did?”

“To be precise, I might know the person who did.  It even seems likely, if the power is still in Kennet.  But I don’t know who it might be.”

“Do you have suspicions?”

“No.”

“Toadswallow?  Same question.”

Toadswallow narrowed his eyes.  “Faerie.”

“Can you give us something more than just that one word?” Lucy asked.

“When things get messy, they like to stick their noses in it.”

“But… no evidence?  Nothing you’ve seen or heard?”

“Nah,” Toadswallow said.

“Okay, maybe uh, just hold back on the unsupported guesses until we ask.  Back to you, John.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“John.  It’s my understanding that you’re a… super soldier?  A Dog of War?”

“No,” John said.  “Yes, about the Dog of War label, no, I’m strong but I’m not a super soldier, like they appear in movies.  I’ve been told I’m… a stained glass mosaic of a soldier, each segment pulled from someone.”

“A… Frankenstein?” Verona asked.

“I’d hope my brain wasn’t labeled abnormal, but…” he shrugged, smiling.  “Sure.  Maybe there’s some cherry picking going on there, with what pieces go into the mosaic, but…”

“Are you stuck on that bit of it because you don’t like being called a super soldier, specifically?” Avery asked.

“I don’t mind but… I don’t want to mislead you or be called a liar,” he said.  “It’s more accurate to say I’m many fragments adding up to a whole.  If I’m good at what I do, it’s because it’s more or less all that I do.”

“So when you can improvise bombs and think those three or four steps ahead,” Lucy said, “it’s because-”

“It’s because that’s the way I think, when I have a free moment to think.  I’m this, twenty-four seven, seven days a week.  I don’t sleep, I don’t ever fully relax.  If I do find distraction, it’s only a small share of me that’s distracted.  The rest is ready.”

“Are you entirely made up of Canadian soldiers?”

“No.  Canadian, American, ANA, armed citizens, others.”

“Why Kennet, then?”

“I think the part of me that thinks of ‘home’ came primarily from a man that thought of Kennet or a place very much like it.”

“Can I?” Verona asked.  “Ask?”

“Stay on target?” Lucy asked.

Verona nodded.  She was focused on Lucy and making things easier for Lucy right this minute.  That Lucy was so guarded about that, it was another sign Lucy wasn’t all the way okay.  Other stuff didn’t take priority when that was the case.  “What’s your day to day like?  What do you do?”

“I walk around at an hour before people are really awake.  I clean and sharpen my weapons.  I watch some TV.  I read and play video games.”

“Feels like you’re just whiling away the time,” Lucy said.

“Waiting, watching.  I don’t get bored in the same way you do.  There’s a stasis in it.  A… lack of anxiety.  I expect to live a long, long time, so there’s no feeling that I’m wasting my time.”

“Not yet,” Toadswallow said.  he was shaking various cans and bottles now, trying to find the ones with trace contents in them.  “Most of the Faerie have been around long enough to go a little loopy from it.  John might eventually.”

“I’m getting the impression you’re not the biggest fan of Faerie,” Avery said.

“Nobody worth talking to is, dearie-sweet.”

“Maybe you’re a bit biased?” Avery asked.

Toadswallow cackled.

“What’s so funny about that?”

“Oh, if you keep on saying stuff like that, it’s your funeral, deerface.  Your funeral, and only if you’re lucky enough to die at their hands.”

Deerface?  Verona found that interesting.  Avery wasn’t wearing her mask.  Just her cape thing, which she was wearing more like a scarf, now that the weather was cold.

“Do be careful with the Faerie,” John said, cutting into the conversation.

Lucy nodded.  She looked at Avery.  “A lot of people are saying to watch out, so maybe…”

“We’ll try to watch out,” Avery said.

“We were saying?” Lucy asked.

“Routine.  Boredom.”

“In the evenings, if I’m alone, I’ll drink and I practice my awful singing and guitar playing.  If I can, I meet with others.  The goblins, usually, if they’re awake,” John told them.  “And usually Munch.  If there are new goblins in town who won’t listen, any monsters, any Bogeymen getting close, or any new Others who might be problems, sometimes Munch and I handle it.”

“How?” Verona asked.  “What can you do, exactly?  You come back when you’re killed?”

“More like I don’t die in the first place.  I can always keep fighting until I’m badly wounded enough that nobody would believe I could keep fighting.  If I get obliterated, you wait a couple days, I’ll show up again.  I get stronger with every life I take.  It clarifies me.  I and the other ones like me began with no names, no real faces.  Just… uniforms.  Piecemeal, like each part of the outfit was taken from one body.  After one very bloody, prolonged fight, I and two of my squadmates took on handles.  Then names.  Then specializations.  Skillsets.”

“There were others like you?”

“We rarely appear alone.  When the conditions are met for one of us to appear, the conditions are met for several.  After three years of bitter conflict, the conditions had been met enough for there to be twenty of us.  Usually… numbers vary, but for every five like me, there’ll be one more that’s a… they have a few names I’ve heard.  Dogs of Flame.  Frag Tags.”

“Hot Dogs,” Cherry piped up.

“They are…?”

“They burn, they use explosives.  They cover other bases.”

“Like?”

“Like if a practitioner wants to bind us using something like a circle, item, fencing us in?  They’ll do like I did with the can and the bucket of paint thinner, but… much bigger.  If they blow up an area… something like me will survive it.  The practitioners trying to bind us usually won’t.  Someone like me, I can collect grenades.  I won’t magically always have one, but if I wanted to set out to get a gun or a grenade, I’d know just the direction to walk.  The easiest path to take to find or acquire one, whether it’s on a corpse or in a hiding place.  The Frag Tags, they always have explosives or ways to start big fires.  They don’t come back so easy once they’re properly put down.  Gotta start a big enough fire or wait for one, and they come walking out of it.”

“Kind of getting the bigger picture,” Lucy said.  “There were twenty of you, so… four of these guys?”

“Sixteen like me, three of them.  One other.”

Careful, Verona thought.  That other one was his friend, wasn’t it?

“A leader?” Lucy asked.

“Another kind.  For every twenty or so of the rest of us, you might see one Black Dog, one Rag Tag.  They come from civilians like I come from soldiers, but… they come from wrongs, from pain, attrition.  They’ll look like kids.  Or like old men or women.  Kill them, you get sick, or something twists inside you and you can’t eat enough anymore, or… you get cold and you can’t warm up.  A curse.  The strong ones, you can’t even hurt them or say an unkind word without them laying something on you in turn.  And they come back too.  They protect us, walk into firefights, stop other kinds of binding than just the circles.  They give us direction, motivation.”

“What happened to them?  These others like you?”

“Some came from nearby conflicts that ended for long enough, then took a bullet.  Others were bound by War Mages.  Combat-focused practitioners that like a good soldier and know special ways to bind us.  Others were stopped by other practitioners, caught in other traps.  To some, we’re like cockroaches.  Pests to be exterminated.  We fled.  They got two more of us while we were fleeing.  In the end, it was just me and Yalda.”

“Yalda?”

“Our Black Dog.  My friend,” he answered.  “She filled the empty hours of the day and kept me entertained, she watched terrible shows.  Not, uh, not so clarified.  Black Dogs, they don’t take lives, not easily.  Only if they give someone a curse of revenge and that curse kills.  But what was there was… rich.”

“Did you love her?” Avery asked.

“I don’t know if I can love.  I think so.  She was my last friend.  Then I was the only one left.  I’m lucky I found Kennet.  That it’s safe here.”

“Do you hate them?  The people responsible for taking your comrades?” Avery asked.

“No.  It’s the way it is,” John said.  “And I was the one who took Yalda’s life in the end.  I was cursed.  I carried it with me for years.  Then Charles carried it for a short while before they figured out how to break it.  If I was going to hate anyone, I’d hate myself, and I spend too much time on my own to spend it stewing in hatred.”

He said all that, Verona observed, but he had a dark look in his eyes.  Sad, in a much different way than her dad was sad.

“You’re in the running to be the next Carmine Beast, if someone doesn’t get there first.  Are you excited about that?” Lucy asked.

“No interest,” he said.

“No…?”

“I don’t want it.  I’ll take the role if I have to, but I’d rather serve a quiet life protecting this place from errant goblins and bogeymen than an important life keeping all of Northern Ontario and part of northern Manitoba in balance.  I’ve served enough.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  She looked a little caught off guard by that.

Verona jumped in, “If you did want it… how would you do it?  Kill the Carmine Beast.”

“Explosives?  A big gun?” John asked.  “She’s too… important.  The forces of this world wouldn’t want to let you, and if you did manage it, I feel like it might hurt.”

“Hurt how?” Avery asked.

“Like killing Yalda, except… not as obvious.  I could be wrong.  But this death feels bitter in the way hers did.  I don’t know what it would look like, but I feel like that would be something that would demand an answer or put something on the shoulders of the killer or killers.  You could look for that.”

Verona nodded.

“Do you have an alibi for that night?” Lucy asked.

“I wasn’t in town.  I was walking forest trails, looking to see if anything was encroaching too close.  Guilherme can corroborate.  I saw him when I left and when I came back.  I saw Miss when I came back as well.  She can confirm I was away and why.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.

“Anything else?”

Verona cleared her throat.  Lucy shot her a look, rolling her eyes a bit.

“It’s awkward to ask about, but…”

“Tricks and treats!” Toadswallow exclaimed, clapping his hands together before rubbing them.

“The boons and teachings,” John said.

“If it’s no trouble,” Avery said.

“You told us to think about what we could give you.  I’m sure the Faerie and Goblins could give you something.  Alpeana, Edith, they can make things, or know enough to teach things.  I’m not sure what I could give.”

“If I may interject,” Toadswallow said.  “I heard them talking outside.  I heard about the deerfaced one laying a penis on her kid brother.”

“Uhh, I called him a penis.”

“So!” Toadswallow exclaimed.  He started to rise to his feet, struggled with his belly and short legs, and only managed on a third effort.  “Want to make it count?”

“I’m not sure,” Avery said.

“Anything you can teach us is great for our magical toolbox, kinda,” Verona butted in.  Lucy seemed to be more okay, they were into the interesting stuff now.

“The rule of three, my dears.  I dare say it’s why we picked three of you, see?  Threes count.  Calling someone a name?  That’s introducing them to the idea.  Giving it to them again?  That’s establishing a pattern.”

“Two points make a line,” Avery said.

“And three points?  They make a shape, something you can lay on them.  The trick is you need to make it abundantly clear what you’re doing.  Stick to a theme, if you can’t use the same word three times.  And nail it in.  You!  Useless rat in the corner!”

He shouted off at the empty end of the dining room, Cherry falling from her perch on his head as he rose to his feet.

Verona turned her head.  There was indeed a rat in the trash, visible with her Sight.  It had frozen at the noise.

“Repugnant beast!” Toadswallow shouted, and slapped his hand down on the table.  He turned his head.  “The slam or physical action helps nail it in.  If you can make it personal, that helps make it hurt, get them in the heart instead of the shoulder or leg, that helps.”

“Makes sense,” Lucy said, her arms folded.

“Does it?” Avery asked.

“Revolting filth!” Toadswallow shouted, louder.  He pushed bottles from the end of the table to the floor.  He pointed at the mess beneath, “Nailing it.  Make it louder each time.  If you can make the insult more creative, bring out the really bad words, which I can’t do because of promises I swore, then it’ll stick in more.  Memorable swears won’t ever want to come away.”

“I don’t know any great swear words,” Verona observed.

“Gotta pick some good words and tie them together.  You could ask Gash.  He hasn’t sworn anything about kids, I don’t think.  Now, ahem,” Toadswallow cleared his throat, then flung himself off the table, knocking over a chair and crashing into bottles and “You malmsey, detestable shit-lick!”

The rat bolted, tried to go for a hiding place, and failed.  Toadswallow crashed through more trash, tearing his way toward it.  It finally escaped into a hole somewhere.

“Always fun,” John said, observing from the other end of the room.

“I don’t got much,” Cherry said, looking up at them.  “Some gobs of stuff.  You could rub ’em in someone’s face.  And a condom I was gonna use.”

“Uhhh… we’ll take a rain check, maybe,” Lucy said.  “Think on it some more?”

Cherry nodded.

“Do you know what you need?” John asked.  “Things I could provide?”

“Protection,” Lucy said, looking uneasy.  “We need to check in with the Choir.  Figure out what they are, try to interview them.”

“Even if those kids are raindrops from a storm,” Verona added.

“Tough,” John said.  “But if you need me there, I’ll be there.  I’ll do what I can.”

“I need- we need power,” Verona said.

“Power?”

“I was trying to do a rune earlier.  I don’t have a power source.”

“I don’t have much,” John said.  “I don’t even know if this would count, but… let me go find it.”

They remained where they were, standing in a trashed, abandoned house that smelled like burnt plastic and paint thinner, while John ducked into the back.  Toadswallow continued tearing through the room, agitating the rat.

“Can you please leave it alone?” Avery asked.

“It- Excuse me, I wanted to demonstrate the fecking thing!”

“It’s fine!” Avery said.  “Just finish explaining?”

“It’s a-” Toadswallow started.  He nearly fell over, tripping over trash.  “Third one sticks.  It’s a minor curse.  Turning an insult into something that means something, by driving it in.  That rat’s going to be grosser.  It works with all kinds of things.  Faerie use it with fancy words and phrases.  If you do a contract with them, they’ll work in repeated words and phrases that imply crap and make other stuff more important.”

“Guilherme has mentioned something similar about fights.  I think you could turn it around,” John explained, as he re-entered.  “Use words while beating someone, three times, escalate the drama of it.”

“I’ve done that,” Toadswallow said.  “Calling someone names while kicking in their… ahem, their asshole, like I kicked in the front door here.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “Good to know.  I’m going to try not to visualize that.”

John approached, and Verona was aware that Lucy backed off a bit, reflexive, before steeling herself and standing her ground as he closed the distance.

He held out a hand.  Verona placed hers beneath it.

It was a slug from a gun.  It was uncomfortably hot against her palm.

“It’s always had an energy to it.  Heat that wouldn’t go away,” he explained.

“What’s it from?”

“Putting down an elemental that was causing engine blocks to overheat, sometimes to burst into flame.  I don’t know how you’d tap into that power, but it’s yours if you want to try.  Keep it in a container that won’t burn.”

“It’s painful to hold.”

“It’s not real harm.  Don’t put it in your pocket.  It won’t burn through so long as it’s carried, but no matter how you carry it on you, it’s uncomfortable.”

“Got it,” Verona said.

Lucy made an inquisitive sound.  Verona handed it over, saw Lucy’s expression change at the contact.

“And…” John said.  He pulled off the simple necklace that the dog tags and the singular ring hung off of.  He removed three tags, each of them partially melted, gouged, or otherwise scarred, well past the point that the labels could be read.  “For you.”

“What do they do?”

“They’re connected to me.  Throw one down, stride forward into conflict without looking back… I’ll be right behind you.”

“Like…”

“No more than five steps behind, armed.  I’ll give it back to you after, or give you another one, provided you aren’t being frivolous in calling me there.”

Lucy nodded.  Verona ran one finger over the one she’d been given.

“Thank you,” Avery said.

“It’s appreciated.  I imagine these mean a lot to you,” Lucy said.

“Yes.”

“Are they from your squadmates?” Verona asked.

“They are.”

“And the ring is Yalda’s?” Avery asked, her voice gentle.

“It’s not available.  I’m not offering it.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean to imply that.”

“I know,” he told them, his voice hard.  “I believe you.  But I’m being as clear as I can.  No.  It stays with me.”

The hardness of his voice and the intensity of his gaze was a lot, like there was a promise that there was a fight to be had.  A reminder of what he was.

And Lucy looked scared.  Lucy, who hated to look scared or weak.  Lucy, who would go ballistic sometimes, or go over the top, whenever she was anxious.  Like how she’d threatened to curse Avery before the Awakening.

“I think that’s all we need for now,” Verona said.  She reached out for her friend, holding the dog tag in her closed hand.  She retreated a step, and the others took her cue.  “Thanks for cooperating.  Thank you for this.”

“Thank you for stepping in as Kennet’s practitioners,” he said.

“Toadswallow,” Verona said, trying to think of what Lucy would want to say if she was more herself.  “We may be talking to all of you goblins later, I think, for a more complete interview.”

“As you wish.  I’ll have some trinkets and gifts ready, I can help Cherry pick something fun.”

“Great.  Fantastic,” Verona said.

They left out the front door, and compared to the gloom from within, with the focused lights of the lanterns, it was bright outside.

Verona looked back at the way they’d come.  An Other that lived in a house that made sparing use of light, and only cleaned up select areas like the kitchen, because he wanted to keep a low profile.

She sighed.

She looked at the others.  At Lucy.

Lucy’s hand went to her upper arm, near the shoulder, like she was trying to find a place to put her hand, and she settled on higher ground rather than lower.  The hand moved, agitated, like it couldn’t find purchase.

She reached out, laying a hand over Lucy’s, pressing the hand into place.

“Well,” Lucy said, her chin rising, her voice making an effort to sound nonchalant.  “Got a gun pulled on me for the first time in my life.  Wasn’t expecting that.”

Verona’s free hand, still holding the tag, moved up to her mouth, touching her lip.  She wondered if her skin was red where the blade had rubbed it.

“Kinda got real,” Lucy murmured.

Avery hugged her, one arm.

“Kinda unreal,” Verona echoed her friend.

Lost for Words – 1.6

Lucy

Lucy paused at the foot of her front steps.  Each step had a potted plant at the end, half of which were just sprouting new green.  Her mom’s car was in the driveway, which wasn’t always a certainty.

Pulling her sleeve over her hand, she wiped at her face.  Fingers plucked at her hair, fixing it where it’d be lopsided from being crushed.

She was hoping that every interview wasn’t that intense.

She rocked forward, almost taking a step, then stopping herself before her foot rose from the ground.  The entire way from Verona’s house, she’d felt like she wanted to cry.  It wasn’t that she was sad, or that she could say for sure what made her upset, but she’d held herself together for the interview with John, she’d talked to the goblins, had dropped off Avery and then Verona, and… then she’d lost most of her reason to hold herself together.

Most.  She couldn’t walk in her front door crying or having just cried.  She couldn’t have a neighbor or someone look out a window and see her walking down through the maze of shitty houses with shitty gardens, having a stress cry.

She couldn’t walk into her house and start crying either.  Her mom would demand to know what was going on.

She’d almost died.  Or- Or she’d really thought she was going to die.  How was she supposed to deal with the feeling that had left her with?  Like… it wasn’t a lump in her throat.  It was bigger, and she couldn’t swallow it, couldn’t ignore it, couldn’t digest it, couldn’t throw it up.  Crying might help but wouldn’t fix it.  Breaking down and throwing things and screaming might be a big enough action to match the big feeling that was sitting with her, but it might not.

And breaking down and screaming would diminish her.  Worse, it wouldn’t make sense.  It would be reacting to something that she couldn’t process by being random, flailing.  She’d done it before and she regretted it.

No.  Not allowed.

She pressed her hands over her eyes, head turning upward, like she could somehow, at least, seal them, and keep herself from crying.  At least until she was out of her mom’s sight.

I almost died, she thought.

She could at least give that heavy feeling a shape.  It was still hard to bring herself to actually walk up to the door.

Get through the bit with mom without crying, I’ll treat myself to something.

She lifted one sneaker off the brick path leading up to the front steps, and took the stairs two at a time, letting herself in.

“Lucy?” her mom called from the other room.

“Yeah.”

“That was a long walk.”

“Swung by Verona’s,” Lucy answered.  She had.  Was her voice too monotone?

Her mom was in the living room, sitting on the couch, the coffee table in front of her, loaded down with papers.  She was still wearing nurse scrubs.

“Can I see you?”

“Yep.”

Lucy walked into the living room, approaching the coffee table.  The papers were all from the same company, with a really artificial looking header, swoopy and colorful, the company’s brand name printed in white next to a medical cross.  It was her mom’s latest job, which was mostly better than the last one.  She’d heard mom explaining it to Alison, their neighbor and her mom’s friend.  She traveled around to different houses, sometimes in nearby areas like Swanson, and taught old people how to take the company’s drug, the side effects.  Each client had a different schedule, and they had to be monitored for the first six applications or whatever.  It meant her mom was gone at completely random times.  Sometimes before school, sometimes when Lucy went to bed.

“Did you get snacks?”

“Didn’t go into the store.  We uh-” Lucy paused for a second to mentally fact check.  “-Mostly talked and walked, I guess.”

“I was hoping I could get a bit of whatever snack you grabbed.  Especially if there’s any caffeine in it.  I’m so sick of coffee.”

“Sorry.  I was thinking I’d get a snack, but…” Lucky thought.  “Do we still have hot chocolate in the cabinet?”

“It’s been a long time since we’ve had that.  Is that going to make it too hard for you to sleep tonight?”

“I-” Lucy stopped herself before the hitch in her voice actually reached her words.  Dangerous, when her voice might have cracked.  “-really wanted a hot chocolate.  I’ll manage.”

“Make me some too?”

Lucy nodded.

She went to the kitchen, turned on the oven ring, filled a pan with a couple cups of water, and set it on the ring. Once it was at a near boil, she poured some into a bowl, set another bowl inside, and put a good amount of cacao oil in the small bowl to warm.

With the rest of the water, she whisked in a bit of cocoa powder while it heated up, crushing the lumps.  Then the milk.  She emptied three mugs worth in.  Last was the chocolate.  Some cooking chocolate was in the cabinet, a little white at the edges from age and lack of use.  She crushed it and whisked it in.

It’d take a few minutes, she knew.

Looking at the creamy mixture made the feelings well up again.  Like she could freak out right here.  She distracted herself with the whisking, periodically pacing, roaming the kitchen.

There were a lot of envelopes from the local hospital.  Her mom was applying again, it seemed.  There was supposedly a shortage of doctors and nurses, especially in places out in the middle of nowhere, like Kennet.

But that had been true the last time her mom had been applying.

Her current thing was better than her stint as a homecare nurse.  That had been last year, and she’d been gone every night and most mornings, always trying to time it so she left right after Lucy was in bed, and right after she’d gotten Lucy to school.  She’d seen her mom change over the months, becoming more washed out, more frustrated with the little things.

Verona had said that every adult she knew was unhappy and Verona knew Lucy’s mom.  She wasn’t wrong.  Things were a bit better for her mom now, but this drug injection thing wasn’t what she wanted to do.

The chocolate in the milk and cocoa had melted enough that it had smoothed out.  She carefully portioned it out into two mugs, got the whipping cream from the fridge, and portioned it out, giving each mug a swirl.

She considered her next steps.  Oil, hot chocolate, her mom’s hot chocolate… she dug into the lower drawers to find a rigid plastic silly-straw, which took the contents of whatever was sucked down on a course shaped like a peace sign.  It had been long enough since it had been used that it was a bit sticky and dusty, so she rinsed it off, before making her way back to her mom, carefully holding the bowl of warm oil, two mugs, and straw, her backpack slung over one shoulder.

“Oh, where did you even find that?” her mom said, taking her mug.  “You shouldn’t use a straw when drinking something hot.  You’ll burn your mouth more easily.”

“I was going to do my hair, because I was outside a lot this weekend.  I thought it’d be easier with the straw.”

“Do you want me to?”

Lucy considered.  She had been bracing herself, telling herself she only had to look normal for a few minutes.  She’d distracted herself with the making of the hot chocolate, but…

“Come on,” her mom said, rising to her feet.

“Don’t you have work to do?”

“Just trying to figure out my schedule for next week.  What I don’t do today, I can do tomorrow.  Let me take that.”

She gave her mom the bowl.

Lucy’s room had two walls covered in art from CDs and subscription boxes.  Her brother had been subcribed to one service that sent music samples, promotional materials, and the rare ticket from new artists and whatever every month, and he hadn’t canceled it after he’d moved out.  She’d convinced her mom to keep paying when it had lapsed, because she’d gotten into it.  Less that she loved music and more that it reminded her of her brother.

The other two walls were mostly empty.  There was a cot folded up in the corner, for when Verona stayed over, a bookshelf with mostly graphic novels, and a desk with a mirror built in, a few minor cosmetics, some wide-tooth combs, and homework she hadn’t one hundred percent finished.

She sat down at the desk, mug in front of her.  Her mom put the bowl down, and undid the ponytail, before starting to quadrant off her hair.

It was nice, and it was nice in a way that weakened her defenses.  Made her feel like she might do the crying thing.  She focused on the hot chocolate, eyes down on the homework.  She took a sip, put it down, picked up her pen and penciled in an answer.

Her mom’s hands rested on her shoulders as she leaned over to look at the answer.  Rather than comment on the homework, she said, “You’re tense.”

“Mm.”  Almost always.  But especially after I almost died.

“Don’t want to say why?”

“Not sure what I’d say.”

“Okay then.  How’s Verona?” her mom asked.  “Don’t let me interrupt you, if you want to do homework.”

“I don’t, and it’s mostly done.  Um, Verona…”

Lucy thought of Verona, a knife pressed against her lips.  The look on Verona’s face, like she didn’t even really care.  When had Verona stopped being the person she knew and understood?

Scratch that.  She’d never entirely understood Verona, but… she definitely didn’t understand this Verona, who seemed to be so full of the idea of everything about spirits and practice and everything else that it had pushed out parts that Lucy recognized.

“She’s always a bit weird.  Weirder now.  I think her dad is getting to her.”

“Should I say hi to him?  I could find an excuse, maybe give him a nudge if he needs one.”

“I don’t know if it’s the kind of thing you could nudge about.  More like they aren’t even related, and they’re stuck in the same house.”

“Mmm.  Hard to disagree.  Does she take after her mom?”

“You’ve met her mom.”

“But I don’t know her.”

Her mom’s hands were gentle, working through a few tangles and knots.  Lucy’s hair was in four simple braids now, each sticking out a bit from her head.

“I look like a derp.”

“You’re a beautiful girl, Lucille, and that’s not my mom bias talking.”

“A bit of mom bias.”

“Really, no.  All my friends remark on it, okay?”

Lucy shrugged.  She didn’t think she looked bad, but she wasn’t remark-worthy either.

“And just so we don’t get distracted from the topic, you know Verona can come over whenever.  The house feels empty with Booker gone.  It’s nice hearing voices in the other room.”

“Okay.”

“How’s Avery?”  Lucy’s mom hand-massaged the oil into Lucy’s hair.  “It’s easy to forget you’re a trio now.”

She could imagine Avery, standing in the dark, barely visible, while Verona had a knife to her face and Lucy had a gun to her chin.

They’d strongarmed Avery into this, a bit.  That point when they’d been walking up to the clearing, and Avery had wanted to go.  Would Avery have wanted to do this without that push she’d given her?

The Others had said there was a kind of responsibility when they brought someone into this world.  It felt to Lucy like that was the case.  That she’d brought Avery into that Other world, at least a bit, with that push.

“She’s cool.”  Not answering the question, but a technical truth.  Lucy sipped more of her hot chocolate.

Things continued for a bit, her mom massaging the oil into her hair near the roots.

Lucy penned another answer.

“Reasons for Canadian confederation,” her mom observed, leaning forward.

“Ugh.”

“Come on.  You’re almost done.”

“Blame America.”

“Phrase it better.”

Lucy, her head rocking a bit with the movements of her mom’s hands through her hair, penned down an answer.  Threat of American invasion.

“Five more reasons.”

“Trade.  Hudson’s Bay Company couldn’t use the rivers for the ongoing fur trade, they wanted a railway…”

“Good.”

“Is it right?”

“It’s been a long time, and my mind is fried.”

“So you don’t know.”

“It sounds right.”

Lucy penned it down.  She reached for her hot chocolate, but didn’t pick it up, only holding the handle.  “Any luck with the hospital applications?”

“A few positions were open.  We’ll see.”

“If you don’t get it, and if your current thing doesn’t work out, is there a chance we’d have to move?  There might be openings at other hospitals in other towns, right?”

“Don’t worry about that.  I don’t want to separate you from your best friend.  From your friends, still have to remind myself you’re a trio.  I will figure it out, Lucy.  It’s not something you need to worry about.”

“But what if I want to worry about it?  Like, you deserve the job.  You’re a good nurse, the people who you used to work with at the other hospital said so.  You know your stuff, I know you study.”

“Really, Lucy, don’t worry.  We’ll be fine.”

Lucy made herself shut up by picking up her mug and sipping from it.

Her mom used a paper towel to hold her mug and also drink from it.

“I want to know, if there’s an explanation.”

“And I want you to let me handle my stuff, while you focus on handling Lucy stuff, okay?  As a teenager your job is to do your homework, do the occasional chore-”

“More than occasional.”

“-and if you can figure out who you are and where you want to go in life before you need to make decisions about University, then that’s a bonus.”

Lucy thought back to that dark house.  How cool to the touch John Stiles’ hand had been, the metal of the gun even colder.

Why was it, she found herself wondering, that whenever she got a glimpse behind the curtain, it was so very dark out there?  Seeing her mom with that same look in her eyes as John Stiles.  Seeing the blood, the swords.

Her eyes were open, and she opened them again, to view the world in dark watercolors.  The yellow of the oil in the bowl in front of her was surprising in how bright it was.  She looked up to see herself in the mirror, and there were angles where she could see herself wearing the fox mask.  Sometimes the mask was a stark white, barely resembling a fox.  Other times it was like Avery had carved it, painted a rosy color, but with real fox eyes.  Another time, it was almost a real fox’s face, but with her eyes.  Her hair was highlighted with enough pink that it didn’t look real.

She could see her mother dip fingers into the bright yellow oil, then run those fingers through her hair.  The pink almost flared, as the oil set in.

Third quadrant done.  The hair that had just been oiled was bound into a tight coil.

Onto the last quadrant.  Braid undone.  Her mom leaned over to put the elastic that had held the braid together on the desk, sipping from her own mug of hot chocolate.

With the change in posture and the bending over, Lucy could see her mom’s reflection in the mirror.  A sword, short and rusty, with a broken tip and a sash-like rag tied to the handle at her back, was stuck through her upper body.  Penetrating her heart, the blade sticking out her front.

Lucy shut her eyes at the sight of it, and for a second, her head trembled in a way that her mom would have noticed if she wasn’t preoccupied.  Lucy clasped her hands in her lap, eyes still shut.

“Falling asleep on me?” her mom asked.

With her eyes closed, she couldn’t be sure that she had actually turned off the Sight.  And there was no way she wanted to risk opening her eyes and seeing that sword sticking through her mom again.

“I’m tired,” she said, and that admission almost made her break.

She kept her eyes closed and drank the rest of her hot chocolate.  The chocolate had settled in the bottom as a delicious sludge.

The last quadrant of hair was bound up, and her mother stepped out of the room.

Lucy let herself open her eyes.  She shut off the Sight.

Her mother returned with freshly washed hands, a towel, and a silk scarf.  She wrapped up Lucy’s head in the towel, then secured it with the scarf, which she knotted at Lucy’s forehead.

“Thank you.”

“This was nice, I don’t get the chance to do it myself,” her mother said.  Her mother’s hair was cut close to her scalp.

“Lucky,” Lucy said, smiling.

“I wish you smiled more.  You used to be so warm and happy.”

I used to be more of a softball than Avery or Pamela O’Neill.

“Maybe I’ll work on it.”

Her mother kissed her on the forehead.  “Homework, then bed.”

“I usually finish my homework in class, before it starts.”

“If you think you can.  I trust you.”

Lucy stood from the chair.  She handed her mom some of the things, like the elastics, the bowl, and the paper towels with oil, hot chocolate and whipping cream on them, but when it proved too much for one trip, she followed her mom out, carrying the rest.

Halfway back to the kitchen, she said, “I love you, mom.”

“Wow.  It’s been a little while since you’ve said anything like that.”

“I really do love you.  You’re great.  Thank you for doing my hair.”

She felt so awkward saying it, especially now that it had been pointed out.  But after what had almost happened earlier… she felt like she needed to say it.  Just in case.

“My genuine pleasure.  I love you so much my heart hurts, you know that, right?”

Lucy glanced at her mother’s heart, where the sword had been, looked away.

That hadn’t been for or about her.

“Yeah.  I know.”

Her mom dropped stuff off at the sink, rinsing some, then headed back to the coffee table and couch to resume working.  Lucy rinsed one bowl, and while she rinsed, turned her head back to the pile of envelopes from the hospital on the kitchen counter.

She looked with the Sight.

Dark stains discolored the paper, like watercolor or mold.  She couldn’t say for sure if there was more of it there than there was elsewhere.  Every time she felt like she could decide for sure, she noticed more untouched space or noticed more staining.  Tricks of the eyes.

She shut that eye, leaving her ordinary eyes open, and washed her hands before heading back to her room, turning off some of the lights as she went.  She sorted out her homework, then collapsed into her bed.  The taste of the hot chocolate and warm feeling of a moment with her mom sat high and thick in her lower throat and upper chest, kind of like heartburn.  The big ball of emotion from earlier was still there, and it was like it wasn’t letting the rest of it by.

She stripped out of her sweatshirt and changed her pants out for some pyjama shorts, then collapsed onto her bed, one hand keeping the scarf in position around her hair.

The red of the clock seemed so bright in the gloom, penetrating her awareness to inform her it was ten oh seven at night.

At ten thirty, she turned over onto her side, reached down for her bag, fished out her notebook, and turned her bedside light onto its dimmest setting.  She pored over her notes.

The moment she’d heard Charles talk about practitioners who dealt in war, she’d been intrigued.  Now… she wasn’t sure.

She penned down some more questions she wanted to ask, then connected them with lines.  Who fit best?  Who should she ask?

It was clear now that they were out of their depth.  They needed the means to defend themselves, and she didn’t want to trust something like John Stiles to appear and protect her if she had the option of protecting herself.

Guilherme?  The warrior faerie that John liked?  She was leery, because of how everyone else had acted about faerie.

None of the others seemed to really be about self defense.  Edith, maybe, if she wanted to work with fire.

The problem was that she couldn’t trust any of them until she knew for sure which ones she could distrust.  A lot of the questions and details were things she could posit to Miss, but Miss seemed to be actively untrustworthy, hiding, staying quiet, controlling when she wasn’t quiet.

At eleven fourteen, she heard her mom quietly go to bed.  She remembered that she’d told herself she would let herself cry if she needed to after she was out of the way of her mom, but even with that heavy, awful feeling that seemed to have swelled inside her until it felt like something should have broken, she couldn’t bring herself to.

At eleven fifty five, she realized this was going to be a long night.  The frustration at her inability to sleep began to make it harder to go to sleep.

She mused for a bit on various insults she would level at some of the people in her life who had really pissed her off, using the goblin magic and the rule of three.  Sling some bottom-tier curses out there to some specific people.

Mrs. Fowler, her grade two teacher, who had berated her in front of the class because she kept writing her nines like they appeared in the textbook, with curved tails.  Nothing really said to Logan who had writing so indecipherable the letters looked like wingdings, or to Melissa, who took similar, intentional liberties with her ones, sevens, and zeroes.  Lucy just hadn’t known better, and she’d gone home crying that day.  Mrs. Fowler hadn’t let up either.

She remembered reading in a book once that growing old was like being a baby again.  Being in diapers, having trouble walking, sometimes even having trouble speaking.  She wished there was a good word or thing to say to Mrs. Fowler that would make her like that.  Old and helpless and totally alone, singled out and going back to her bed in the old folks home, crying.  She hated that woman.  Lucy had never really loved school again after that.

There was Logan who had proclaimed in fifth grade that boys were stronger than girls, and when she’d offered to fight him, had agreed.  While he hadn’t trounced her -it had been a really sad fight on both sides, really, with other kids cheering them on, more pulling on hair and clothes than actually fighting- he’d turned around and told a teacher she’d bullied him.

That would’ve been after.  After Paul.

She put Paul out of mind.  He was after.  He was last.

Logan needed to be marked out as the stain he was.  Gross and sweaty and embarrassing.

There was the boy at the lake, when she’d gone vacationing with her family.  That had been so long ago she couldn’t remember for sure if Doug was his real name in her memories or a name she’d stuck with him.  He’d made fun of her watercap and pushed her into the water, and then didn’t let her out, pushing her down and in every time she tried to slosh through and get by.  Booker had come by and Doug had fled, and she just… she remembered being so indignant, shaking from it and from the cold of being wet.

She hoped he got a disease that made him have to crap in a bag for the rest of his life.

She was working herself up, her mind going in circles, sometimes going back to the same curses and curse ideas.

If she had the power to apply curses, could she do something that would satisfy?  Because everything that came to mind was like a story that hadn’t been finished yet.  It felt wrong that there was no final chapter, no moral to the story except that things and people sucked sometimes.

When they’d had to pee in cups for a health test in school, Kirsten had spilled her cup, splashing Lucy’s leg and sneakers.  She hadn’t apologized and had made insinuations about Lucy smelling like pee, later.  She remembered scrubbing at her shoe and leg and feeling so gross.  Just a small curse for something like that, right?  Like a recurring ulcer on Kirsten’s peehole so she’d writhe in pain when she peed and end up on the bathroom floor, still peeing.  Once or twice a year, maybe, until she did something to make up for it.

Eve had borrowed a graphic novel that she’d bought and got signed while in Thunder Bay to do some city shopping, and had never returned it, but… Eve had been held back a grade.  She’d bug Eve about it when she ran into her again, but she had mercy.  No curse, imagined or otherwise.  That was a shitty enough thing to have to deal with, without cursing her with a propensity for papercuts and sharp bits of food between her teeth.

The curses that she imagined weren’t like the ones that the goblin’s trick would let her apply, but… it was satisfying.  It got her worked up to imagine the events all over again, but… the lack of fairness in it all ate at her.  The heaviness of the emotion that was sitting with her wasn’t one singular event.

When she ran out of new, inventive swears and people she had a grudge at, she looked at the clock.  Twelve thirty five.

She got her phone and fiddled around with it, watching some of the recommended videos, revisiting the app to check that the class’s votes hadn’t come out yet… not that it mattered.  She put on some music, put her earbuds in, and lay with her face smushed into her pillow, arms out to the sides.

One eleven.

She was exhausted and she felt like sleep was never going to come.

I almost died.

And they think the Hungry Choir is scarier. 

They act more scared of the Faerie.

Have to take this seriously.  Have to get Verona to take this seriously.

Avery, at least, I can trust.  She’s a ditz sometimes but she’s cool.

She found and put on a video by Mr. Lai.  One of the kids in school had found his channel when he’d left his computer unlocked, and spread it around.  A lot of people had been laughing, because Mr. Lai was this short, super-clean cut teacher who’d been born in China, and his channel had a ton of videos where he was dressed like a lumberjack and building a cabin from scratch, somewhere up north.

But like… it was actually kind of cool.  That single-minded focus.  The skills involved.  It was neat to see someone into that, and it kind of reminded her of some of her memories of sleepovers with Verona, when Verona was super into something obscure or weird, like a craft project.  Those had been some of the best weekends, really, because that kind of steady enthusiasm was infectious.  A part of her still hoped this practice stuff could be more like that.

Mr. Lai’s accent was pretty tough, but if she didn’t really listen, like she wasn’t really listening now, then it just became a steady, pleasant noise, sometimes over the sound of saws and hammers.  He kind of put her to sleep, like he had last year, but that was a plus right now.  And watching like this gave him some views.  Win-win, wasn’t it?  He might not be super thrilled to know students were falling asleep to the sound of his voice, but… whatever.  Win-win.

She hit the like button and lay there, trying to let her mind wander and picture what he was putting together from the sounds of his voice, even if she couldn’t always catch the words.

She heard a thumping noise, and picked up the phone with the video still playing, her eyes still closed and face still pressing into the pillow, and blindly thumbed at the screen until she could rewind the video a few steps.

The video went back, then continued toward the point where it had been when she’d heard the thump.

There were more thumps, dull and hollow, at a point in the video where she definitely hadn’t heard anything.  She paused it and pulled out her earbuds.  She flopped over onto her back, looking toward the door, the closet, the cot in the corner.

One forty-seven.

The time on the clock changed to gibberish, then flickered.

She could hear it.  Scrabbling and thumping, elsewhere in the house, rapid, almost like a lunch table worth of hands drumming at a table in anticipation of pizza.

Except… there was nobody.  The house was dark and quiet.  The only light was from her alarm clock and phone.

Thumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthump.

Something in the house creaked and banged.  It wasn’t a door.

Thumpthumpthumpthumpthump.

A face appeared at her doorway.  Pale, framed by long, dark hair.

Alpeana, peering in from the upper corner of the door, face at a diagonal.  The face rotated two-hundred and seventy degrees.

“Is this a threat?” Lucy asked.

Alpeana lunged, crawling across the ceiling with rapid movements.  Thumpthumpthumpthumpthump-

Crawling across the ceiling to a point directly over Lucy’s bed in about a third of the time it would take Lucy to walk from her doorway to her bedside table.

She hung there, suspended, fingers straining, curved backwards as fingertips seemed to dig into the ceiling itself.  Her head twisted, rotating, like she was trying to get a better view.

Show no fear.  Give her nothing.

Never show weakness.  It’s never worth it.

Lucy remained stock still, watching.

Alpeana’s mouth yawned open, and black fluid oozed out, multi-layered, thick with debris that could have been anything, but with shapes like rotted leaves turned black by a winter spent under the snow, or the stringy guck pulled out of drains.

Her hair turned liquid, doing something similar, just in much greater quantities.  Drainstuff, rot, mold, mixed with liquid as thick and black as oil, refusing to flow straight down so much as it stuck to itself.

“I had a bad night.  I’m not in the mood for this,” Lucy said.  As the stuff reached down from the ceiling and toward her head, she grabbed a spare pillow and held it up in the way.  “You’re not allowed to hurt me, by the deals made.”

The stuff touched her sheets, just over her chest.  Heavy, soaking in and pressing down.

It touched her pillow, that she held up as a shield and barrier to keep it away from her face.  Strings, rivulets, and clumps oozed down around the edges, sides, and more of it piled on top, making the pillow difficult to hold up, even with both hands.

No fear.  No weakness.

“You’re not winning any points with me, Alpeana.”

Is this her acting on instinct?

A white shape pressed into the curtain of black stuff that draped down from the pillow’s edges.  It took Lucy a second to realize it was a face, poking through, with eyes as dark as anything.

“Ye’re due a nightmare, lassie,” the Mare said, her voice young, but thick with a Scottish burr.

“No thanks,” Lucy answered.  The stream from above had eased up.  The curtain of dark liquid had pooled around her, soaking into her sheets and pillow, but now that what was coming from above wasn’t so thick, she could see that what had piled up on her stomach and chest was the rough silhouette of a person.  Alpeana’s face lifted up to find a home roughly where the head should be.

“Yeh,” Alpeana said.  “Tha’s wha’ I thought.  I’ll spare ye that.”

“Okay.”

“Can’t go and say ye won’ have a bad dream now, but it won’ be a fancy Mare dream like ye might be havin’ if ye were’n protected.  I’m suppose ta pass on a message.”

“Pass it,” Lucy said.  In her efforts to keep from freaking out, she was holding her head so rigid that her chin was rising by fractions.  Her breath came in small intervals, with the weight on her chest.

“Miss wants ta talk.  Get an update on yer findin’s and all tha’.”

“Miss is a suspect.  I mean no offense, but… we’re not at her beck and call.  If there’s any oversight, I think it’d have to be from the Alabaster, Sable, and Aurum, and I’m not even sure about that.”

“Tha’s a no then?”

“No.  Sorry.  I’ll discuss with the others, though.  We may want to talk to her anyway, but it shouldn’t be like that, us answering to her and filling her in on everything.”

Alpeana leaned forward, darkness pressing in close to Lucy’s head.  Then she scampered up the wall, then to the ceiling.  As she pulled away, the rags and dark strands of her hair pulled up the stains and dark gloop that she had left behind her, leaving the bed and everything pristine.

“Alpeana,” Lucy called up.

The girl, already at the door to the bedroom, turned around, then sat down, positioned upside-down, bare legs and dirty toenails visible.  She idly pushed at the door, which was right by her head, and it opened further, creaking.

“What would you have done if I’d been asleep?”

“Ah, I’d have left ye be, like I did the other two.”

Lucy nodded.

Alpeana flipped over, climbed over the top of the doorframe, and disappeared out into the dark hallway.  Thumpthumpthumpthumpthump.

Lucy remained where she was, her phone still glowing with the video paused on it, the alarm clock reading two fifteen in the morning.

Her heart pounded, each of the beats heavy enough that they jarred her vision.  After two minutes of it, it hadn’t eased up, and she felt nauseous.

Her eyes remained open for most of the time until it was three twenty, when she finally eased down, pulled the covers around her, and let herself close her eyes.

She didn’t look at the clock, but it was probably closer to four thirty when she finally slept.

Lucy stood by the fence by the school, watching the students approaching, and the long, long, long line of cars on the road.  The school had been set in an area without a lot else nearby, possibly with plans to expand or use the space nearby for more fields or whatever, and that opportunity had never been capitalized on.  The building was boring and the area around it was just as bad, with tall grass cut short so kids didn’t get ticks, some trees, and not much else.  Some kids were cutting across that area.

There was one road that people could take to get to the school and it tended to be clogged.  Half the kids took the stubby half-size school buses that cars couldn’t legally drive past, the other half that didn’t walk it got driven in, their parents parking somewhere along the road to drop them off, then pulling out to cut off or clog up traffic.

Add in the kids who walked or even ran across the road when traffic was at a near-standstill, the kids who biked and cut off everyone, and it made for a lot of stupidity.  A lot of parents dropped their kids a five or ten minute walk away from the school to avoid the whole thing.  Lucy’s mom had offered the option of getting a ride annoyingly early or making her own way, and Lucy had taken the former.  She’d done it enough times before that she knew how this whole setup tended to evolve.  The jams, the kids getting dropped off, the dynamics.

Today it was a little worse, because she’d slept like crap and she was grumpy.

Verona’s dad, in contrast to Lucy’s mom… Lucy recognized the beat up old Corolla.  Inching along, fighting with traffic.  Verona didn’t talk to her dad, her head down as she played with her phone or read.  Maybe one day out of the week, Lucy would see the two of them talking.

The Kellys had parked at the end of the road, and the kids were unloading.  Lucy watched Sheridan get out, followed by Declan and little Kerry Kelly.

No Avery, which meant…  Lucy turned, sticking her toe into the criss-crossing wire of the fence and hopping up to get a better look past the fence and to the point beyond the schoolyard.  She was pretty sure she saw Avery back there, biking across the uneven field.

She turned, walking down the sidewalk, against the current of students, to get closer to where it looked like Verona would get out.

Rather than pull over, Mr. Hayward stopped in the road and Verona scrambled out, bag hugged to her front, slamming the door behind.  Lucy raised a hand in a wave, and Mr. Hayward gave her a wave back.

“Don’t draw attention to him,” Verona said.  “It’s embarrassing.”

“He’s not that bad.”

“My dad got anal last night.  Avery got in trouble, too, for being out past curfew.”

“I saw the messages when I woke up this morning.”

“You?” Verona asked.

Lucy shook her head.

“Did you draw the connection breaker when we went to John’s house?” Verona asked.

“Nah.  Told my mom I was going out for a walk and that I’d hang with you, said I’d try to be back before curfew.”

“I think Ave and I got slapped down for using it too much.  Extra and unwanted parental attention.”

“How bad?”

“Just annoying.  Have to get the details from Avery,” Verona said.

“Speaking of.  I wanted to talk with you guys.  Want to head over and see if we can’t catch Avery and chat for a min before we go inside?”

Verona nodded, smiling.

They had to take a roundabout route to get through the gate and then around to the side of the school, while Avery biked over.

“Your siblings got a ride, Avery!” Verona called out.  “What are you, the red headed stepchild?”

“Ha.  Ha.  I’d rather do this…” Avery panted.  The grass was not good for riding on, even with her mountain bike.  “…Than subject myself to the back seat.”

“How much trouble did you get in?” Lucy asked.

“My parents aren’t really good at laying down punishments, and even when they do stick to it, I usually get it easy because I don’t cause much trouble,” Avery said.  “But I’ll have to watch out for that.”

“We have to watch out for other things,” Lucy said.  “I think we’re being monitored.”

“Monitored?” Avery asked.

“Toadswallow was right there, wasn’t he?” Lucy asked.  “He was in the bush, keeping tabs on us.  And Charles… they brought him along when we went camping?”

“Yeah, but… what’s weird about that?” Avery asked.

“The entire time, I was thinking, alright, well, he can lie, so we have to be careful.  Can’t listen too carefully.  They might have brought him along to slip us a key piece of misinformation.  Every time he said something, I was kind of going through it in my head, wondering if it was the trap he was trying to slip us.”

“Yeah,” Verona said.  “Same, kinda.”

“And… that’s not the full story.  What if they brought him along because he could hurt us?  Like, if we immediately set out on a direction that they weren’t comfortable with.”

“That’s a little paranoid,” Avery said.  “He seemed kind of shocked that we were kids.”

“Teenagers.  What if he was shocked that we were teenagers because he made a deal before he showed up, that he’d go along on any road trips and put an end to the new practitioners if they turned out to be trouble?  Like… he gives off creepo vibes, but that’d give most people pause, wouldn’t it?”

“Can’t really blame them,” Verona said.  “Like John said, a practitioner can enslave with words.  We can curse with words.  They have a lot at stake.”

“Uh, sure,” Lucy said.  “Maybe.  But… so do we, right?  You do get that?”

“I get it,” Verona answered.

“Alpeana showed up in my room in the middle of the night.  She said she stopped by to see you two, too.  So you know, like… I assume your houses are locked up, but she’s showing up while you’re asleep.  Let that sit with you for a second.”

“Was she nice?” Avery asked.

“She was… Scottish, I think?  Didn’t expect that.  I think she said she spared me from an especially bad dream.”

“Aww.”

“It was a pretty creepy visit, Ave.  She had a message from Miss, but… it’s pretty obvious they’re keeping a close eye on everything we do.”

“Like I said, it’s understandable,” Verona said.

“It’s understandable, but… are there any Others that could turn up at the school?”

“Hungry Choir?  Maybe?” Avery suggested.  “I’ve been trying to train my Sight, ever since we first went camping, and I probably have a long way to go, but I don’t see anything.”

“Training is a good idea,” Lucy mused.  “Okay.  This might have to be our place to compare notes and discuss.  It might be too much civilization or too many people for the goblins, I don’t know who else would show.  We’ll watch out, maybe head out to the field or meet somewhere private between classes, compare notes and come up with plans.  That way they can’t anticipate us too much.”

The other two glanced at each other.

“Yes?” Lucy pressed.

“Sure.”  Verona shrugged.  “I’m happy to talk more about this stuff.”

“No objection,” Avery said.

“Thank you,” Lucy said.  She meant it.  She’d been prepared for a fight, or for resistance to the more aggressive precautions.  The last few attempts had been debates.  “Keep an eye out, and we should start thinking about what we do to protect ourselves.  If someone like Alpeana can decide whether we do or don’t get nightmares, can she do other stuff to our dreams?  Where else are we weak?”

“Stiles really spooked you last night, huh?” Avery asked.

“That’s not it.  It’s a small part of it.”

“I want you to be safe,” Verona said.  She looked at Avery.  “Both of you.”

“Uh, all three of us, Verona,” Lucy said.

“Yeah.  For sure.”

“Say it.”

“I want all three of us to be safe, intact, sane, whatever,” Verona rolled her eyes as she said it.

They made their way into the building through the side door.  There were some students around, but they seemed caught up in conversation.

“I still don’t know how you were able to stay so calm after having a knife in your face,” Lucy said.

Verona laughed as she retorted, “You had a gun in yours.”

Lucy smiled for Verona’s benefit, but she really didn’t feel like smiling.  That heavy feeling was there.

“Hey!” A voice, male.  It was Jeremy, from their class.  He jogged up a couple stairs.  “What game?”

Ah, damn.

“Huh?”

“What game were you playing?”

“It was real,” Verona said.

“Ha ha.  Seriously, though.”

“Totally real,” Verona said, again, a half-smile on her face.  Then she jogged up the stairs.

Lucy looked back at Jeremy and shrugged, before following, Avery right behind her.

They took three desks at the back of the room, putting their bags down.  Lucy had to remind herself to be careful, because her mask was in there.

“Guess we can’t talk about this stuff in school,” Avery said, sitting in her chair sideways, back to the wall, head leaning against the window.

“Not easily,” Lucy admitted.

There were no cliques in their class, not like there were in mom’s old movies.  Whatever there had been way back then had seemed to splinter and combine over time.  Other students made their way into the class.  The Dancers were the biggest contingent, but even they had their subdivisions and blurred lines.  They had thirty three students in their class, and ten were Dancers.  The other class in their grade had twelve.  Girls who were super into the gymnastics, dancing, and cheerleading things that were taught at the place down near the bridge.

But there were people like Melissa, who was on Avery’s soccer team, as well as being a Dancer.  As she entered the room, Verona looked at her, and Melissa pressed her hands together in a pleading gesture.  Verona shook her head, making a face.

Sharon was an arty kid, like Pamela, but also a Dancer.  Jeremy was an arty kid and a ‘nerd’, and was someone Lucy wished Verona would talk to more, because they probably had a lot in common.  Wallace was a gamer and a nerd.  And so it went.  Being a nerd didn’t mean someone wasn’t cool.  Amadeus was super into science and computers, but he was maybe the most popular guy in class… helped by the fact he was cute, with long black hair and a dimple at his chin.  George was popular, but Lucy was pretty sure he was what Lucy’s older brother had once termed a ‘pebbler’, a baby stoner who hadn’t actually gotten stoned yet.  But George was a bit of everything.

No hard cliques, no specific sections at lunch tables like that one movie from years before Lucy was born, but Avery had had a tough time, and there were reasons for that.

For one thing, the class was kind of cut in half, because they were combined grade eights and nines.  For another, when put together with the other grade nine class, they had all known each other since kindergarten.  She could count the kids who had moved away and the kids who had moved here midway through on the one hand.  The friendships had been established, and barring invitations like the one Verona kept getting, that was hard to butt into.

Three of the dancers walked in near lockstep along the back of the class, before turning down past Lucy and her group.

“Hey,” Hailey said, as they stopped, standing behind where Lucy, Avery, and Verona sat.

“Hey,” Verona said.

“Melissa really wants you to join us for dance.  She says you’re a natural.”

“I wish she could take no for an answer.”

“No?”

“Really, no.  I did the one dancing thing two years ago when the instructor from Wavy Tree came to teach a gym class, and I hear about it way too often.”

“Some girls were saying you’re arrogant, and you’re looking down on us,” Mia said, accusatory.

“What?” Verona asked, shocked.  “Haha, no.  Really.”

“Really?”

“It’s just really not my thing.  I find it boring to do and keep doing until you get it right.  I’ve rooted for you guys when you do an event or a parade or whatever.  Just… not for me.”

“Hm.  Want us to tell her to knock it off?”

“Please.  Please, please, please.”

“Cool,” Hailey said.

Lucy felt her pocket vibrate.

Before she could reach for her phone, she saw others reacting.

All together.

There was an energy to it.  The tension, the emotions.  With everything that had been going on, she felt like it was the kind of thing that someone might want to harness, or already be harnessing.

She used her Sight, looking out over the class, while she got her phone free of her pocket.

Some kids with knives in their heads or bodies.  Some kids with blood-red watercolor at their hands.

But they were ordinary students.  And the phones themselves… nothing.

She looked.  There was a notification from the app.  Class_RankR.  Their class had ranked everyone, each student picking a first and possible second person they liked.

“Huh,” Hailey said, still standing behind them.

“Hey,” Mia said.  “Go Avery.  And Verona-”

Hailey elbowed her.  “Let’s go sit.”

Lucy looked over the list.

Kids who had been out in the hall were staying out in the hall, talking and looking at the results.  Some looked into the room, and Lucy felt the gaze of more than a few people fall on her.

Her face flushed.

“Just me, huh?” Avery asked, quiet.

Lucy was already staring at the bottom, but she scrolled down a bit more, to the stats at the foot of it.

By the results, two anonymous guys were gay.  Another was bi.

One anonymous girl was a lesbian.

“There’s the other class,” Lucy said.

“Already asked, and no.  One guy, no girls,” Avery said.  Her face had fallen, and to Lucy’s Sight, she had a dark watercolor stain spreading across her chest, like a growing hole.

There were others in the room who seemed brighter, others who seemed hurt.  There were a few swords and blades represented in Lucy’s sight.

As people entered the room, murmuring, Lucy felt conspicuous, her face felt hot.

“There could be girls that haven’t figured it out yet,” Verona whispered.

“That doesn’t do me any good now, does it?  Feels lonely.”

Verona nodded.  “Yeah.  But like Lucy said, the whole thing’s stupid, right?  There’s lots of people like me who don’t really give a shit and put in whatever.  It doesn’t matter, so let’s just ignore it and wait for it to blow over.”

Verona made a hand motion Lucy couldn’t see.

“Sure,” Avery said, putting her phone away a little too quickly.

Lucy watched the room, avoiding eye contact, because everyone that was looking at her right now was thinking the same thing.

It would have been a relief at this point, she felt, if the entire stupid thing was magical.  Some kind of curse, or some kind of shitty stupid magic puzzle or whatever.  But she didn’t see anything like that.

She wondered if she could somehow see the blade that was sticking through herself, or the watercolor stains that were spreading across her, what would they look like?  How big would it be?

That heavy, overwhelming feeling that she hadn’t seemed to be able to process all last night had come with her to school today, and it had expanded by inches over the last few minutes, until it kinda hurt constantly.

She sighed, slumping down over her desk, her arms extending forward and over the other end.  Head on one arm, she looked over and murmured, “Am I ugly?”

“Nah,” Verona said.

“Avery?  Expert opinion?”

“I’m not an expert,” Avery said.  “You keep saying my taste is terrible.”

“I’ve said it maybe three times.”

“You’re pretty, Lucy.  Not my type, and I’m pretty sure you’re not gay, which makes you very not my type, but… people are dumb, I guess.”

“You could be a lot of people’s third choices,” Verona suggested.  Then, “You’re kind of intimidating.  Maybe that’s it.”

“I’m a bitch, you mean.  And I don’t want to be a lot of people’s third choices,” Lucy said.  “I want to be someone’s first choice.”

“Sorry.”

“Whose dumb idea was this?” Lucy asked.  “I might have a few choice words for them, said three times, nailed in.”

“Don’t say stuff like that.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “Ugh.  I feel like I’d be like, twenty times more able to deal with this if I’d slept more than two and a half hours last night.”

At the far corner of the classroom, Gabe rose from his seat.  Lucy noticed primarily because of the twisted skewer of metal that her Sight put in his midsection.  As she followed him with her eyes, she saw him pick up his bag, and it was soaked with the red watercolor, impaled at the same point by three smaller blades.

She watched as he left the classroom, reaching for her phone, and flipping over to check the boys’ ranking.

Gabe was at the bottom.

She rose from her seat.  A lot of eyes followed her, as they’d followed Gabe.

“Luce?” Verona asked.

“I’m cool.  Checking on Gabe.  Something’s off.”

She went back for her bag, grabbing it as a just-in-case.

She almost missed Gabe, who was ducking into the boy’s bathroom.

With only a moment’s hesitation, she followed him in, finding him by the sink.  He was the only one in.

“Gabe,” she said.

Gabe wore glasses and dressed like he was going to church, and aside from a sorta lame haircut and a really skinny frame, there wasn’t anything offensive or exceptional about him.  He was one of the homeschooled kids who’d come over when High School had started.  He hadn’t really come to the school with any hint of social skills, had struggled like Avery had, and instead of finding a way forward, had taken to hanging around with kids two and three years younger than him, who sometimes seemed annoyed that he kept turning up.

It kind of sucked that she was being put in the same bucket as him.

“What the-  You can’t be in here!” Gabe said.

“If I get suspended, I’ll deal.  You okay?”

“It’s whatever.”

“It sucks,” she said.  “What’s in your bag?”

“What?”

“Your bag,” she said.  She approached him.  He backed up.

She closed the distance, grabbed him and spun him partially around.  Pulling down his backpack’s zipper, she fished inside.

He seemed more confused than defensive.

Moving a paper, she saw the blades rattle.  She pulled it out, and the red staining immediately began to fade from the fabric of his bag.

One paper, a grey-pink color, with a less than great photocopying or print job, like two things superimposed onto the same paper, with the end result being near-gibberish.

Most of it was faded and stained in a way that persisted even with her Sight removed.  Most distinct was the website at the bottom.

“Where did you get this?”

“I found it.  What the hell?  How did you know I had it?”

“Have you done it?”

“Done what?  I logged in, but I didn’t sign up.  I couldn’t figure it out.  It has to be on certain nights.”

“Don’t.  You might get really badly hurt, or worse,” she said.  “When’s the next night?”

“Tomorrow night.  Why?”

“Where’d you find it?”

“In the cafeteria.  You’re not answering my questions.”

“Not really, not so far,” she said.  She left the boy’s bathroom, pausing at the door.  “I’m around if you want to talk or whatever, I guess.”

An older high schooler whistled as she left.  She rolled her eyes.  Whistles were better than the looks she’d gotten back in the classroom.

“Avery, Verona,” she whispered.  She used her sight, and reached out, finding the ribbons that seemed clearest and most inclined to drift her way.  Would that work the same way calling Miss had?

The two girls emerged from the classroom.

Lucy looked down, ready to show them the paper, and found her hand empty.  She spun around, looking with the Sight, and found the paper, folded into a square, tucked into the slats of an unused locker.

“Don’t run away,” she told the paper, unfolding it again.  She showed the others, moving to stand beside them as she pulled her phone out.

“The Hungry Choir?” Avery asked, tapping the paper.

“Sending out feelers, found Gabe, who’s vulnerable, I guess,” Lucy said.  “As the stupid app just demonstrated.”

“It’s nice to have a distraction,” Verona said.  “How did you even see this?”

“I think I can see hurt and danger,” Lucy murmured.  She punched in the website address.

USER BLOCKED.

Verona tried next.  She was in the middle of typing when the bell rang, signaling the start of class.

“Blocked,” Verona said.  “So is this the Hungry Choir itself, or…?”

Lucy shook her head.  “Part of it.  Like an arm or a finger, or…”

“You can’t see the connections?” Avery asked.  “More than one arm or finger, here.”

“I see…  sashes, but that’s all.”

Gabe walked past them.

“Bands,” Avery said, once he was past.  She turned, craning her head, looking at windows, both inside classrooms and at the end of the hallway.  “I can see stretching through the school.  This paper is tied to four things in our school.  I think there might be others, faint, that extend outside our school, maybe outside of Kennet?”

The teacher stood in the doorway, whistling sharply to get their attention.  He motioned for them to get inside the classroom.

“Lunchtime,” Lucy said.  “We need to call and talk to Miss.  I don’t like all this bloody watercolor I’m seeing in Kennet, when there wasn’t much outside of it.”

“Bloody handprints for me.”

“Meaty things pressing against the inside of the plastic sheeting,” Verona added.  “Yeah.”

They made their way into the class, past their homeroom teacher.

“Between the bloodiness and the Choir, I get the feeling there’s more going on, like maybe not having a Carmine Beast is making things worse somehow,” Lucy whispered, as she took her seat.

“Do we really want to tackle more?” Avery asked.

“If it’s tied to the Carmine, we might have to,” Lucy whispered.

Between them, Verona had the paper, which she folded into a square.  She drew out a diagram with a surprisingly circular hand-drawn circle, setting up a group of blocks pointing inward, toward the folded-up paper.

The teacher was getting the class to quiet down.

Lucy leaned over, to whisper one last time before class started, “Miss might be the person to ask, because Gabe said the next stage of the Choir thing happens tomorrow night.  We might need to get involved, or people could get hurt.”

[1.6 Spoilers] Flyer & App

Lost for Words – 1.7

Avery

Last Thursday: Flyer & App


Low-quality shoes squeaked on the gymnasium floor as the other kids ran, stopped, changed direction.  Avery twisted, running through a gap between Melissa and Alexa as they tried to block her.

She was faster, she could run for longer.  All she had to do was break through, force them to run after, and tire them out.  Thirty minutes into the game, they were already walking half the time and halfheartedly running the other half.

There were three basketballs bouncing intermittently, which made it hard for her to train her ears and use her situational awareness.  On the other half of the gym, the boys were playing.  Wallace was sitting out, which he did a lot of the time.  She didn’t know how his phys ed marks were, or if there was a reason, but for right now, her main concern was that he was killing time while sitting on the bench by dribbling a basketball.  Periodically he’d do something wrong and have to chase it a few steps.

It meant she had to use her eyes and twist around more to keep track of the ball, so the auditory illusion of the other balls bouncing didn’t communicate something else.

“Ave!” Lucy called out.

Lucy’s pass went high.  Avery caught it, then took off.  Immediately, she realized she was surrounded by three players.  They converged on her as a line, trying to force her off the court, or force a retreat back toward her own hoop.

Frustrating, but not in a bad way.

Avery’s eyes opened wider, her pupils narrowed, and the ‘real’ world peeled away.  The floor was shrouded in the faintest of mists, the unimportant details flaked away like peeling paint in a high wind, and it was just her, the people on the field, a court of handprints and footprints, and a mess of the bands all around her, strung between players and between herself and the others.  The ones from herself were harder to see.

“Pam!” she called out.  She saw one of the bands stir.  Using it as a guide for general direction, without really looking, she spiked the ball into the ground, halfway between Melissa and Alexa.  It carried on, straight toward Pam.

“Ah!  Scared me!” she heard Pam.

Caught the other team off guard too.  Melissa and Alexa were distracted by the pass, Emerson was in her way.  She squeezed past.

“Pass to Avery!” Lucy called out.

Verona was out there.  That band seemed familiar, stronger, and clearer.  Verona was on the other team.  She would be closing in on Pam.

“But-”

Hailey was closing in on Pam too.  Hailey could actually steal balls in a way that didn’t suck.

“Pass!” Lucy called out.

The remaining three girls changed direction, converging on Avery.

Avery saw the movements and reactions, the bands that stretched between things rippling, as a single action made each one change, bend, and adjust.

One tenuous band connected to the ball, a wisp of something that could be mistaken for a long, dark cobweb in this gymnasium, where the ground was misty and the air above the mist was thick with dust and flecks of the ‘paint’.

She was ready as the ball came at her, and caught it.  Emerson right behind her.

And she was close to the hoop.

She made the easy shot, a layup off the backboard.  Even though it was an easy shot, there was still a moment where she thought it would be a miss.  She wondered if she could say something and influence the outcome.  She kept her mouth shut, eyes wide, breathing hard through her nose.  It tilted and went in.

“God damn it!” Emerson complained.

“Language!” the gym teacher barked.  “I think it’s time to rotate!  Avery, Pamela, and let’s see…”

“Me!” Verona called out.

“You can stay out there a bit longer.  I want to see you trying more, that goes for the rest of you whose names I don’t call!”

Melissa, bent over, hands on her knees, raised one of her hands over her head.  She was panting for breath.

“Melissa, Alexa.  Mia, lose the jersey, switch teams.”

The four players on the bench, Mia included, got up, jogging out onto the court.  Avery turned sideways to navigate between them, giving Verona a nod as she walked by.

“Cheating?” Verona asked.  Her eyes flashed that weird almost-purple color.

“How do you even cheat at basketball?” Melissa complained, undoing the band that tied up her ponytail.  Her hair had been crimped, and was tied back into a high ponytail that still touched her shoulderblades.  With the ponytail undone, it came closer to the middle of her back.

“She practices at stuff.  For fun.  It’s ridiculous and I’m calling it cheating,” Verona said.

Avery shook her head.

The way the gym was set up, the two courts were set up so they could be separated by a divider.  There were benches arranged, and right now the boys on the bench sat so their backs were to the girls as they took their seats. Some boys twisted around to look or watch the girls play.

That fact reminded Avery that she had gotten those ‘likes’.  It reminded her that her own like had gone unanswered.  That she was alone.

Today was going to suck.  It might even suck more than yesterday, and yesterday –last night– was the day they got ambushed by John Stiles.

It sucked.  It really sucked.  It confirmed what she’d suspected and feared and she really wanted to talk to Ms. Hardy about it at some point during lunch or after school, but Verona and Lucy wanted to do something at lunch and she couldn’t really talk about the app with Ms. Hardy without getting people in trouble.  Adults went nuclear about the dumbest things.

She sat at the end of the bench.  Pamela seated herself beside Avery.

The thrill of that fact blurred into the fact her heart was still racing from running around, the whiplash of thinking today would suck to thinking today might not suck, to being very aware that Pamela radiated body heat and was right next to her, to the half-thought internal debate that Pamela might have sat next to her on purpose.  Was that just because Pamela was nice?  Had there been empty seats on the bench before Pamela sat down?

Her Sight was more farsighted than not, which was a pain, because she really would have liked to see and study the band that stretched between her and Pamela.

She leaned forward, elbows on her knees, to put Pamela out of her peripheral vision and try to find an equilibrium when her number-two crush was sitting next to her.

“You’re good,” Pamela said, huffing for breath.

“Thank you,” Avery said, her eyes closed as she focused on breathing and sounding normal.  She wasn’t really sure how to answer, but hearing Pamela say something nice about her was so… so nice.  She felt a bit dizzy from it.  “I’d be better if I could get the ball through the hoop, or run full speed while dribbling.  Hailey’s way better than I am.”

“Hailey plays basketball regularly,” Melissa said, from further down the bench.  “You’re really good, considering it’s not your sport.”

“I’m-” Avery responded, couldn’t find the words or the breath, and just shook her head, eyes on the ground.

She looked up to the side, further down the bench, and saw Pamela looking at her.  Making eye contact with her.  Surrounded by a nimbus of the bands that connected her to others.  Avery’s eyes dropped to the floor again.

It was criminal that Pamela hadn’t gotten more votes with the stupid app.  When Avery had come to this school, because Sheridan was already going, Kerry wanted to come because her friends were attending for first grade, Avery had thought it would be cool, that she’d meet new people.  It would be a distraction from Olivia abandoning her to go play for Swanson.  Then it had been worse.  It had been distilled loneliness.

One of the things that had kept her going had been this girl who really did light up the room.  Who gave out compliments and said positive things more often than most of the girls in class smiled.  Who never had a mean thing to say about anyone.  Just seeing her around gave Avery something to look forward to.

Avery couldn’t understand how girls could talk about boys like dimples and hair were what mattered.  She had the feeling boys were the same or worse.  Why would anyone want to go out with someone and spend time with someone just to look at them more, when they could spend time -or the rest of their lives- with someone who made the days brighter?

It wasn’t even that Pamela was unattractive.  Avery had heard Pamela saying something self-depreciating in class once, about how she was fat and clothes didn’t sit right.  That had been back when Avery herself hadn’t opened her mouth in class for weeks, and she’d wanted so badly to say something to Pamela, to convince her that no, she was cute, she was curvy.  That she loved the way she changed up her hair color every couple of weeks, that she liked her body more than… more than just about anything.

Avery had thought she might be gay or bi before that, but after that thought process she’d been ninety five to one hundred percent sure about a lot of things.  Her interactions with Ms. Hardy had turned that ‘sure’ to ‘certain’.

She wished so badly she could say a lot of things to Pamela, so this girl that didn’t even know she’d helped Avery through the worst time of her life could shake off some of her demons.

Avery had mostly caught her breath, now.  She glanced up- saw Pamela was looking at her again, and made her eye slide to the side, to look at Melissa and Alexa, who were talking.

On the bench behind her, Gabe sat with some of the other boys.  They were crammed in, kind of.  More boys in the class, more boys on the bench.

“Hey, Avery?” Pamela said.  There was a rising note at the end, like maybe Pamela wasn’t one hundred percent sure of Avery’s name.  That wasn’t super uncommon.

“What’s up?” Avery asked.  Did I look at her too much?

“You kept passing to me,” Pamela spoke the words with a breathless laugh.  “Scared me.”

“Sorry,” Avery said.  She made herself look away.  Watched Lucy cut Alayna off.  Verona was hanging back, occupying space on the court where there weren’t many players.  She wasn’t trying very hard, so Avery’s team wasn’t trying very hard to cover her.  “Uh, you were there.”

Verona caught a pass and passed to the next player almost immediately.  Not really paying much attention to the flow of the game so much as she was avoiding doing much.

“I don’t mind, I was just surprised.  You’re a good player, I kind of thought you’d ignore crappy players like me.”

“You catch the ball, you pass it.  That’s most of the game, isn’t it?” Avery asked.

Pamela smiled.  Avery experienced a deer in the headlights moment, hyperaware of the fact that looking away would be way too obvious, and staring would be weird, and-

She settled on an answering smile, before a shout from the coach rescued her.

“Lucy!  Stop being aggressive!”

“I haven’t touched anyone!  I’m not breaking rules!”

“Stop.  Being.  Aggressive!  Or you can spend the lunch hour with me-”

The boys were causing a commotion, with some shouting and talking over one another.

“-in the staff room, talking about bullying and ways to conduct yourself with classmates.  What’s going on over here?”

“Brayden got fouled!” Xavier complained.  “Blatantly.”

“He stopped dead in his tracks right in front of me!” Logan retorted.

And the gym teacher hadn’t seen.

“Enough!  There’s a few minutes left of class.  I want Logan and Brayden to run laps around the gym’s edge.  Quick now!”

“But!”

“Now!  And anyone who complains or mentions it again is running laps as well.  Go.  Back to the game.  Ian, Bryan, off the bench.”

There were a chorus of complaints.

Avery watched the room, saw girls taking notice of the thing with the boys, and with her Sight, she could see the variations in the bands that connected them.  She’d noticed the parts of the app where the girls and boys had gotten mutual likes, and now that she knew which girls to look at, she could See the differences in those connections.

It made her acutely aware of how few connections she had.  Lucy, Verona, and then tethers extending elsewhere, for the various members of her family.  The bands that stretched from the boy’s side of the gym reached for her back, thinning out as they got closer to her, until the ragged ends only barely brushed against her back.

Sucked.  It really sucked.

Lucy had mostly given up on playing, for the most part.  Could she even risk detention, if she’d said stuff earlier about her plans for lunch?  That was something they’d have to be careful of.

Lucy had to feel at least as bad.

The ties that connected Lucy to her classmates seemed to be stronger, or… older, maybe.  They’d been classmates for a long time.  They knew each other.  But there wasn’t a lot else.

Verona’s positioning on the court put her close to the bench.  She got Avery’s attention, then indicated Gabe, who was sitting behind Avery.

Avery twisted around, looked at Gabe, then back to Verona, giving her friend a shrug and a look of confusion.

Verona gestured, motioning for her to say or do something.

I can’t read your mind.

“Move along, Verona!” the gym teacher barked.

Avery felt multiple eyes on her, and flushed.  One set of eyes was Pamela, who mouthed Gabe’s name.

Avery shook her head, shrugging.

So dumb.  It felt like everything she did was making her feelings blatant or creating misunderstandings.  How many times had she passed the ball to Pamela?  She’d been in the zone.  Then the weird eye contact when she’d looked Pamela’s way.  Now Verona was so stuck on the other stuff that she was putting the spotlight on Avery.

Sucked.  So frustrating.

She was aware of the glances she got, and the connections that radiated out from her to connect her to classmates seemed more intense than they had been at the start of the match.

And there was only one connection she really cared about.  If she looked, really focusing her eyes, she could sorta see the band that extended between her and Pamela.

It wasn’t like it was with any of the mutual like ones, and that stung, but each band had translucent images or cut-outs in them.  Like a row of pictures.  She wanted to interpret, to make them out, and find out if there was anything useful in that, but they shifted every time her eyes moved, like dust on the surface of her eye.

More than anything, the texture and consistency of the band was a reminder that this awesome, warm, likeable girl didn’t like her.

She shut off her Sight, pressing her eyes closed.

Opening her eyes again, she saw the world as she normally would.  Wood covered in track marks from cheap sneakers skidding on it… and a tether, in the corner of her eye.  Mist, handprints.

Alarmed, her head moving, she looked for the part of the Sight that hadn’t gone away, and it moved with her head.

One third of her left eye was stuck on the Sight, like a blurriness that wouldn’t go away, but it was a different picture, darker, mistier, with handprints, some bloody.

She rubbed at it with her thumb, and it didn’t correct.  She rubbed harder, using the heel of her hand.

“What’s wrong?” Pamela asked.

“Um.”  Avery tried to will it away again, then rubbed harder.

A little panicky now.

She didn’t want to turn on her sight and turn it off again, if that could be the next step to things getting weirder or worse, but she didn’t know what else to do.

“Mr. Bader,” Pamela said.

“What’s wrong?”

“My eye,” Avery said, quiet.  “It’s… weird.”

Boys in the background were making another commotion, hooting and jeering and being loud.

“Do you need to go to the school nurse?”

The school nurse couldn’t do anything.  “Just… can I go to the bathroom?”

“Go.”

She stood, and Pamela stood with her, one hand on her back and one hand on her arm, to steady her and give her direction.  In any other circumstance it would have been so nice, having Pamela be nice to her in specific, but right now she just wanted her eye back to working like it was supposed to.

What did she do wrong?  Was it a lie she told before, that made something break?  If it was, was it broken forever?

She was aware of Verona and Lucy giving her concerned looks.  In that one corner of Avery’s eye where her Sight was stuck, she saw Verona’s eyes as purple again.  Lucy’s as red where they should be white.

“Pamela, if her eye is still bothering her, take her straight to the nurse?”

“Okay.”

“I’ll be right with you.  Okay guys and girls!  We’ll end a minute early! Balls in the bins, take your jerseys off and in the laundry.  Then change and shower.  Emphasis on the shower!  Your afternoon teachers will kill me if you’re sitting there all afternoon reeking of B.O.”

She and Pamela left the school gym and in the short L-shaped corridor with the bathrooms and change rooms, took a detour into the bathroom.  She reached for the taps, turning them on.  She splashed her eye, trying to get as much water in it as she could.

“Are you okay?” Pamela asked.  Her hand rubbed Avery’s back.

“I don’t know.  A little freaked,” Avery admitted.

“Can you describe it?”

“I don’t know.”

Was it better?  She couldn’t tell, with the way the water stuck to her eyelashes.

“I know sometimes my eye will get this muscle twitch and it freaked me out when it first happened.  Is it like that?”

“No.  It’s blurry and misty and intense, stuck that way, no matter what I do.”

“Maybe a retinal detachment?  That happened to my mom once.  She had a dark blot in the middle of her vision for a while.  I think you have to get immediate help if that happens.”

“No.  It’s not…” Avery stopped, and focused on just washing her eye.

There was a commotion as the rest of the class left the gymnasium, heading to the change rooms.

“Avery?  How’s it?” Mr. Bader called through the door.  It was cracked open, and she could see a bit of his shoulder and shorts.  He stood with his back to the door.

“Better, I think,” Avery said, quiet, before washing again.

“She says it’s better,” Pamela said, moving away from Avery so she stood halfway to the door.

“Are you positive?”

Avery washed for a second, holding up one finger for Pamela.

“One second,” Pamela said.  “She’s rinsing.”

“Okay.”

The door opened, and Verona and Lucy came in.  They went straight to her side.

“Do you want me to stick around?” Pamela asked.

Yes.

“…Because if you want it, I’ll stick around for whatever you need.  I’ve got a lunch date with my dad, but I can postpone or cancel.”

“I think we’ve got it,” Verona said.

“It’s fine,” Avery said.  “Go to lunch with your dad.  Thank you.  Really.”

Pamela nodded.

“Can I get an update?” Mr. Bader called in, as Pamela exited.

“I think it’s-” Avery tested.  Her vision was normal now.  “It’s better.”

“Alright.  Come find me if you need me.  I can take you to the nurse’s office if you decide it’s not better enough.”

“Thank you, Mr. Bader.”

“Lucy, Verona, don’t forget to change and shower.  Avery, same thing, when you can.”

The door closed.

“Dick,” Lucy muttered.

“I think he’s nice,” Avery said.

“Who would forget to change?” Verona asked.  “And what happened?”

“My Sight got stuck in one part of my eye.”

“It’s better?”

“I said it’s better.”

“Were you looking at anything specific?” Lucy asked.

“No.  Nothing special.”

“Weird.  I think that’s all the more reason to talk to Miss right away.”

“Let’s,” Avery said.

“You good?” Verona asked.

“I hope so.”

The three of them left the bathroom and entered the girl’s change room.  Avery brought her hand to her eye to shield part of her view, with the excuse it was still awkward, her eyes dropping to the floor.  She navigated through the girls of her class, not looking at anyone or anything, to where her bag was hung up on a hook.

She felt too many eyes on her, especially after her little commotion a few minutes ago.

Grabbing her bag, she slung it over one shoulder and slipped back out, heading back to the bathroom.  She went into a toilet stall, and did her change of clothes there, stepping on the tops of her shoes to avoid stepping on the bathroom floor.

Her lunch usually had napkins or wet wipes, and she was grateful that there was a wet wipe in hers.  She fished the ziploc of wipes out of the brown paper bag, then wiped herself down before getting changed back into her regular clothes.

The feeling of having something wrong with her eye and knowing there was no doctor, no greater support structure, it had shaken her, like being as alone as she’d been back in the winter and start of the year.  Combined with being the odd one out, no pairings in the app, knowing from the Sight that Pamela didn’t return her feelings, and then the change room, the showers, feeling like she was one wrong look away from being found out…

She’d never felt so out of place.

She ran a comb through her hair.

Mia, hair wet, stepped into the bathroom, walking up to a sink two sinks down from Avery.  She got out a makeup kit, and began fixing up her face.

“Hows your eye?” Mia asked, as she put on mascara.

“It’s okay now, I think.  I wish I knew what happened.”

“Spook.  I hope it’s a one time thing.”

“So do I.”

There was silence.  Avery could hear the commotion of boys in the little L-shaped hallway.  Too numerous to all have showered.  Not that she was in a position to point fingers, but she’d done something.

Avery didn’t really have anything to do at the mirror but didn’t really want to go out there into the middle of all that.

“Are you the lesbian?” Mia asked.

Avery didn’t move a muscle.

“From the app,” Mia asked.

“Uh, what?” Avery asked.

Mia turned her head, the little pad of foundation held up an inch from her cheek.  “My friends were wondering aloud who it could be.  I thought maybe it was you, and I don’t want to be a jerk or anything, so… don’t feel like you have to respond.”

“Awkward,” Avery said, quiet.  She kind of wished she was in a position to draw a connection breaking diagram right now, and keep it up forever, just to get away from this.

Mia resumed putting on her makeup.  “Yeah, like… there’s this girl at the dance studio, seventeen, I think.  And she’s great.  Great dancer, does acro gymnastics, acro dance.  She’s gay and like, nobody cares.  So if you were gay and you were avoiding the showers because of that, I wouldn’t worry about it.  You don’t have to make up eye problems.”

“Wasn’t made up,” Avery said.  She looked at Mia.

Mia winced.  “Ew, yeah, a bit bloodshot.”

“Yep,” Avery said.  Probably from me rubbing it too hard.

“I hope that people are cool if the lesbian in class comes out.  I know if anyone talks shit, me and my friends will give them the hard time, not her.  Same goes for the boys.”

“Makes sense.  That’s good of you.”

Mia smiled at her, before packing up her makeup stuff.  “You’re cool, Avery.  There’s next to nothing to do in this town, so we throw parties sometimes.  If you want to be in the loop, just ask.  I can fill you in whenever we’re at the planning stage.  Standing invite.”

“Ah, thank you.  Sorry, I’m still freaked out about the eye thing, I’m not really processing everything.”

“Nah, that’s cool.  But like… give me an objective opinion.  When my friends are wondering aloud about the lesbian in our class, should I try and throw them off the trail?”

“I don’t know,” Avery said.  “I’m not like…”

She stopped.  Mia looked at her.

“…Not really trying to hide it,” she said, quiet.  She stared at her eye, half-bloodshot, in the mirror.  “Not broadcasting it either.  Don’t want it to get back to my family, kinda.  My siblings are a pain sometimes, and my grumble- my grandfather.  Best case scenario is he’d worry and fuss and I don’t want him to worry and fuss.”

“What’s the worst case scenario?”

Avery shrugged.  “Maybe I wouldn’t be his favorite anymore.  Just the opposite.”

Mia frowned.  “I know it’s like, really tone deaf, but it’s cute as hell that you call him Grumble.”

Avery shrugged.

“Sorry.  Do your friends know?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m glad you’ve got them, then.  And you’ve got me if you need anything.  Ask whenever.”

The door opened, and Avery jumped a little, despite herself.  Melissa, who went straight to one of the stalls, closing the door.

“Standing invite,” Mia said, picking up her stuff.

“Standing invite to what?” Melissa asked, from the stall.

“To parties or whatever we’re doing,” Mia said.

“Oh, I thought you were asking her to come to the dance studio,” Melissa said, through the door.

Avery rolled her eyes a little.

Mia gave her a small wave, then stepped out into the hallway.  Mia, who was so adult-like sometimes, so together, that she made Avery feel like twice as much of a kid.

Thing is, Avery thought, as she got her bag together, making sure her lunch wouldn’t empty out in her bag, since she’d opened it to get the wet wipes, I don’t want to be ‘the’ lesbian.

She felt more alone and out of place than before she had gotten Mia’s overture of friendship and support.

Feeling awkward, she left the bathroom.  The boys were lined up at one side of the hallway, the girls at the other.  Avery glanced at Mia, who was talking to Hailey.  She’d had a niggling worry that Mia would be talking to a cluster of the Dancers, laughing at her.  She wasn’t.

Mr. Bader did his thing where he touched everyone’s head, counting the students.

“Did you wash that hair, Jeremy?  Looks like you wet it under the tap.”

“I washed it, my hair dries fast,” Jeremy said, looking innocent.  The moment Mr. Bader was past, he smirked and shook his head ‘no’.

Mr Bader moved on to counting the girls.  Avery felt him touch her dry hair.

“How’s the eye?  Still good?”

“It’s better.”

“Good.  I don’t want to see you skipping any more showers.”

“Yessir.”

He moved on, counting Verona and Lucy, at the tail.

“Did you wash your hair, Lucy?”

“I don’t wash it at school.”

“You need to at least run it under water.”

“No I don’t.”

“Excuse me?”

The bell rang, and the assembled students immediately broke rank, some almost running in their haste to get to lunch.

Avery took Lucy’s hand and tugged her along.  They fled Mr. Bader.

“Dick,” Lucy muttered.

“Were you actually being aggressive, back in class?” Avery asked.  “I was distracted.”

Yeah, kinda?” Lucy answered.  “Hailey’s really good, but it’s easy to put her off her game.  Get in her way, get in her face.  I wasn’t touching her or breaking any rules, though.  Mr. Bader’s still a dick.”

“You said that three times,” Verona said.  “Curse?”

“Didn’t nail it in.  Gotta drive the point home.”

“Too bad,” Verona said.

Most of the kids were heading to the lunch hall, but there were some who made the rather tight trip to the fast food places.  Especially the teenagers.  It was a twenty minute walk there and a twenty minute walk back, and they only had fifty minutes for lunch.  Those with bikes or cars could usually make it.  For the others, there was a risk that the line would be too long, forcing them to choose between going hungry or being late back.

Avery, Lucy, and Verona left the school.  As they passed the parking lot, Lucy made a hard detour.

“Luce?”

“I see someone.”

“I was talking to Gabe after changing,” Verona said.  “We weren’t sure where you went.  I thought I’d ask him about the flyer.”

“I wish you hadn’t,” Lucy said.

“I also asked Caroline, since she was next to me in line.  Gabe can read the letters and Caroline couldn’t.  I think it depends on who reads it.”

“Good to know,” Lucy said.

“Where are we going?  I thought we’d ask Miss about my eye and stuff.”

“Soon,” Lucy said.  “Shh.”

They approached some teenagers, who were gathering around a car, ready to drive off.  They looked like eleventh or twelfth graders.

“Excuse me,” Lucy said.

“No rides.”

Lucy reached for Verona, opened the back flap of her bag, and pulled out the flyer, folded into another piece of paper.

One of the teenagers, a dark haired girl with sunglasses on, pushed her way past the others, reaching for Lucy.  Lucy backed away.

“Woah!  Back off!”

When she couldn’t get a grip on Lucy’s wrist, the teenager grabbed Lucy’s shoulder, and tugged her away from the car.  Avery and Verona followed, anxious, Verona reaching back to close up her bag as she jogged to keep up.

The teenage girl grabbed the flyer and unfolded it.  A second later, she grabbed Lucy’s wrist, pushing up Lucy’s sleeve.  If Lucy was going to fight back, she seemed to hesitate.  The hand that gripped her had only a thumb, index finger, and middle finger.  The rest was smooth skin over bumpy tissue.

A moment later, the teenager turned on Verona, who backed away a step, pushing up her own sleeve to show her arm.

“I’m keeping this,” the teenager said, holding up the flyer.

“We’ll need it back, actually,” Lucy said, “And we have questions.”

“Leave it be.  Ignore it.”

Verona lunged, and her hand moved a bit, grabbing at nothing, before the paper partially unfolded on its own.  She managed to snag the corner of it and pluck it out of the teenager’s hand.  Avery blocked, stepping into the way before the teenager could follow up.

The teenager’s friends were just standing back, watching.

Avery really wished she could use and trust her Sight, just to get a better sense of what was going on.

“Show us your arm?” Lucy asked, indicating the teenager’s long sleeve.

“No.  You need to let this go.  Walk away from it.  Don’t have anything to do with it.”

“Full moon tonight?” Verona asked.  “Kennet.  What does it mean?”

“You’re not listening to me.”

“We hear you.  As of right now, we’re not planning on participating.  But we need answers.  There are more like you in our school alone.”

“I know one of them.  Listen to me.  Don’t visit the website.  Don’t reserve.  Don’t get involved.”

“Full moon in Kennet?” Verona asked, stepping forward.

“I’m not answering your questions.  I’m doing you a favor when I’m telling you to leave this alone.  It’s bad.”

“Full moon in Kennet?” Verona asked again, reaching out to grab the teenager’s sleeve.  The teenager jerked back, hesitated.

Relented.  “It’s better to go there, than to make them come get you.  The moon’s the date.  The place is the location.”

The teenager wrenched her sleeve out of Verona’s grip, pushed it up.

There were four circles there.  One white, one with a crescent in it, the rest filled in black, one half-filled in with black, and one with a dark crescent in it.

“One for each phase of the moon?” Verona asked.

“I’m halfway through.  People turn up, different counts.  I haven’t seen anyone make it through all eight nights.”

The guy in the driver’s seat honked.

“What happens?” Verona asked.

“It’s on the website.”

“The website’s blocked for all three of us,” Verona said.

“Great!  Fantastic!” the teenager said, “Never heard of that happening, but I’m glad.  It means you’re not in it.  Leave it alone.  I’m not an awful enough person to give you the ropes to hang yourselves with, okay?  I’m not telling you more.”

“But-” Verona started.

“Listen!” the teenager hissed, leaning in close.  Her voice became a harsh whisper.  “I probably won’t last the full eight rounds, so do me a favor.  Unless I get crazy lucky, I’ve got a bit over two weeks left, max.  It could be that today and tomorrow are my last days I can spend with my friends and family.  Let me enjoy them without being bothered.”

“You really believe you won’t make it,” Lucy said.

“I’ve seen people better than I am in every way fail,” the teenager told them in that harsh whisper.  She stood straight, then began to retreat back toward the car with her friends in it.  She moved with a bit of a limp, Avery noted.  At a normal volume, she said, “Better than you.  So don’t even try.  Tell yourself it’s a bad prank.”

She slammed the car door after her.  Avery watched the girl field questions from her friends.

“She’s missing an eye,” Verona said.

“What?” Avery asked.

“She’s missing two fingers, you probably noticed that.  But behind the sunglasses, she’s missing an eye, I think she’s missing an ear.  The skin’s smooth, like it’s been like that for a while.”

“She walked with a limp,” Avery said.

“Yep,” Lucy said.  “You shouldn’t be using your Sight, Verona.  Not until we know what happened to Avery.”

Verona shrugged.

“And how did you know it said ‘full moon in Kennet?'” Lucy asked.  “Did Gabe say so?”

“Nah.”

“Nah,” Lucy echoed.  “You’re just annoyingly good at stuff that doesn’t usually matter, which makes you weirdly good at all of this.”

“Yeah,” Verona said.

Avery shifted her weight from foot to foot.

“Um… can we go talk to Miss?” Avery asked.  “Please?”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “Sorry, was just… they were right there.”

“I don’t mind, but I’m really ready for some answers, now.”

Avery ate her lunch as she walked.  The sandwich was the chicken from last night, shredded, with dad’s barbecue sauce, some greens, and a really dark whole wheat bread.  She couldn’t help but feel like any one ingredient could be changed out for something similar and it would make the sandwich ten times as good.

With the way every single kid at school kind of fanned out, especially as they finished eating, it was hard to find a place secluded enough.  They settled on the trees at the edge of the grounds the school technically owned.  There were a lot of small trees nearby that had probably grown naturally from saplings, that could stand to be cleared out.

“Miss!” Verona called out.

“Miss!” Lucy called out.

Oh, we’re doing it like that?  Avery choked down her bite of sandwich.  Dry.  “Miss!”

There was no rustle of wind, no music, no sound or lights.

“I’m here.”

Avery turned, looking.  She wanted to use the Sight, but she was scared to.  Miss stood by the tree, only the edge of her body visible, while she looked out toward the rest of Kennet.  When the wind picked up, it made her hair move.  She was wearing what might have been a long pleated skirt and a long-sleeved shirt.

Lucy paced left, and Verona paced right, trying to get a better look.

“What’s happening in Kennet?” Avery asked.

Miss stepped out of sight behind the tree as Avery’s friends got to the point where one of them would be able to see her.

“A lot of things are happening in Kennet,” Miss said, from the edge of another tree.  Avery’s friends stopped in their tracks, and stopped trying to intercept her.

“I’m seeing bloody handprints, and they’re only really in Kennet.  Lucy’s seeing bloodstains and swords all over the place.  Verona sees…”

“Everything in wrappings like really wrinkled plastic wrap or spider webs.  Flayed, meaty things on the other side.”

“A kingdom without a king will be in turmoil.  Even if it is a peaceful area and the people are content, there is a tension and an omnipresent anxiety that is only eased when the next someone takes the throne.  A region without its Carmine Beast is… similar.”

“But more focused on blood and violence?” Lucy asked.  “Aggression?”

“More focused, yes.  It will get worse before it gets better.”

“What happens when it gets worse?” Avery asked.

“Others of that type that emerge naturally will emerge more often, or find their ways here from Other places, or from other regions.  They will tend to be violent, messy Others.  Many will be fleeting and desperate.  The Carmine Beast… just by being in position, she encouraged a system where Others more in line with her disposition will appear and find stability.  When something else takes the seat, it will do the same, depending on who and what it is.  Nearly anything taking the seat will be better than what is presently happening.”

“Even the Hungry Choir?” Verona asked.

“The Hungry Choir is strong, but it is defined by its ability and desire to sustain itself, more than most living rituals.  It has to know it wouldn’t hold the seat for long before being spent or being challenged and beaten by something else.”

“So it has the means but not the motive?” Lucy asked.

“It is, by all reports, doing remarkably well for a living ritual of its size.  It doesn’t get anything, as far as I can tell, from harming the Carmine Beast.”

“Isn’t that a bad thing?” Avery asked.  Beside her, Verona was digging in a pocket.  The flyer.

“Some of us have exerted influence to disarm it, to discourage some people from finding the ritual.  It’s large enough a phenomenon that any slack we create here will be picked up by someone halfway across Ontario.”

“We want to talk to it,” Lucy said.

“It doesn’t talk.”

“How do we communicate with it?”

“Talk to the people who are caught up in it.  Put the pieces together.  Living rituals tend to build up a mythology, like a plant setting out roots.  They anchor it in this world, give it ground by which it can spring back up later.”

“At the cost of giving up more information?” Verona asked.

“Yes.  More information on how it can be riddled out or beat.”

“You call it a living ritual, but Matthew Moss called it a ritual incarnate.”  Lucy sounded a bit accusatory.

“I’m sure that’s more accurate.”

“This stuff,” Avery said.  “That’s throwing everything off.  Is it responsible for my Sight acting strange?”

“What happened?”

“You don’t know?” Lucy asked.

“I don’t.”

“My Sight wouldn’t go away.  It stayed in one part of my eye.”

“My theory was that it’s like straining a muscle,” Lucy added.

“Have you been using it a great deal?” Miss asked.

Avery shrugged and nodded.

“The part of you that connects to the Sight isn’t physical.  It’s your Self, your soul, your ‘you’.  The complex spirit or fingerprint that makes up all the parts of you that are distinct and unique when put together as a whole.  It adheres to patterns, adjusting and adapting by scales that have nothing to do with muscles or physical health.”

“What happened?” Avery asked.

“It adjusted.  As spirits do, your spirit worked off of underlying patterns and assumptions, that you were someone who always used the Sight, so you always wanted the Sight available.  There are many practitioners who do this on purpose, refining their Sight so it is something they can always have available, for specific purposes, and keep their vision clear for other things.”

“Uh, so how do I tell my Self to not do that?” Avery asked.

“That might be something that Charles can help you with better than I can.  Intuitively, it makes sense that if you don’t want it on most of the time, don’t use it most of the time.”

“Are there any other ways?” Lucy asked.

“You could make the pattern more elaborate, so it is harder to fall into by unconscious habit.  Saying a particular word or wearing your mask or a pair of glasses when you want the Sight available.”

“Does this happen with other things?” Avery asked.

“Absolutely.  Use of a particular tool or practice might wear down a path, that path becomes a requirement, then becomes something inexorably tied to you.  I wouldn’t panic.  Nothing that is done in this sort of way is likely to be impossible to undo.  It might be very hard to undo, but not impossible.”

“I feel like there should be a rulebook or handbook for this,” Lucy said.

“There is.  They call it Essentials and many novice practitioners who are born into families that teach the practice tend to get it before they awaken.  Unfortunately, we’re not practitioners, and we’re not in a position to give you one.  I asked around, and Charles had given away his copy.  Matthew didn’t keep his after his father died.”

“You know they told us their stories,” Avery said.

“Yes.”

“Are you having us watched?” Lucy asked.

“Yes.  Part of the reason is for your protection.”

“And the other part of the reason?” Lucy asked.

“I decline to say.”

“That’s… a bad look, Miss,” Verona said.

“I know.”

“I’ll be blunt here.  Did you have anything to do with the Carmine Beast’s death or disappearance?” Lucy asked.

“Not to the best of my knowledge.”

“Is your knowledge potentially tainted or warped?” Verona asked.

“I have no reason to believe it is.”

“Do you know or suspect who is responsible?” Lucy asked.

“I have strong suspicions.”

Avery gave Lucy and Verona nervous looks.

“Who do you suspect?” Lucy asked.

“I decline to say.”

Why?

“Calm down,” Avery said.

“Why?” Lucy asked, again.

“Because the moment I do, the guilty party or parties are likely to know.  Two events are likely to move us to the next phase.  The first is that I tell you, you get too close, or outside practitioners act, and the guilty party hurries to claim the seat.  The second ties into what I told you earlier.  If the fleeting dark, violent, and bloody Others keep escalating and drawing near, the Carmine Beast’s kin may force someone to take the seat.  My guess is they would pick John.”

“What happens then?”

“The Alabaster, Sable, and Aurum would pick the Dog of War John Stiles, someone else would step in while bearing the power they took from killing the Carmine Beast, they would irrevocably destroy John, and then they would take the seat instead.”

“It sounds almost inevitable,” Verona said.

“It may be.  You’re under no obligation to solve this mystery.  This may be a puzzle best left unsolved.  I can’t and won’t tell you to solve it or not to solve it.  Trust your collective instincts.  You shouldn’t be blamed for the outcome, not by us, no matter the outcome.”

“John and the Choir… they’re the Candidates, right?” Verona asked.

“They are the top contenders I know of.”

“And they’re both from Kennet?  But John said the region the Carmine Beast covered was all of Northern Ontario, and some of Manitoba.”

“Yes.”

“That’s… weird, isn’t it?  That the Carmine Beast dies here, and the two major candidates are from here?”

“Certain regions are disqualified, because they are already under the power or sway of Lords or other Practitioners.  Thunder Bay, for example, is managed by an elemental.  Perhaps that elemental is violent and powerful enough to rule, but it is beholden to other interests and roles.  Other areas are too messy, to untouched by humanity.  They have less strength than John and offer less stability or longevity than the Choir.”

“This is a perfect middle ground?” Avery asked.

“It’s a good middle ground.  The other side of it is that these two may be candidates strictly because the Carmine Beast died here.  You’ve noticed the blood, the staining, and how the effects of her death are concentrated here.  All of us here may have more of a claim to the seat because we’re touched with her blood.”

“Could someone intercept it?  Use that and claim the seat?” Lucy asked.

“I do not think that that someone could easily survive the competition that came immediately after.  Not unless they were strong.”

“Like the Choir is strong?” Lucy asked.

“Potentially.”

“The Hungry Choir appears tomorrow night,” Verona said.  “We were thinking of trying to intercept it.”

“Do you have protection?”

“We have John, and some basic symbols and runes we can use.  A power source.”

“It’s scheduled to appear in Kennet next.  If you open up your ears like you opened your eyes to the Sight, you should hear the song.  You can follow it to the epicenter.”

“Epicenter is an ominous word,” Lucy said.

“It should be.  Do not participate.  Stay quiet, observe, and think hard before interfering.”

Avery spoke up.  “Charles said an Other that is acting on instinct may be able to harm us, in defiance of the deal we made on awakening.”

“Yes.  The Choir is a pattern, a ritual.  If you get caught up in it, it has to follow through on its own rules.  That is its ‘instinct’.  Be careful.”

“Can we trust you?” Lucy asked.  “About the Choir?  About anything?”

“That is up to each of you, Lucille, Verona, Avery.”

Should we trust you, then?” Lucy pressed.

“Based on the facts as you have them now, no.  In the bigger picture, I would hope, yes, you should trust me.”

“Why are you making this hard?” Avery asked.

“Because what is happening is hard, and is going to get harder.  We’re far from the point where someone forces someone to take the seat, and my suspicion is you need to find your own ways there.”

“What are you?” Verona asked.

The question cut through the conversation, the tone of it disconnected from everything else.

“What do you think I am?”  Miss asked.

“No straight answers, huh?” Lucy asked.

Miss was silent.

“Are you a complex spirit?” Verona guessed.  “Stable?”

“No.  I wish I could be.  Spirits can find hallows and homes, they can break apart into constituent elements, or draw in other things.  I am what I am.”

“Bogeyman?” Lucy asked.  “Whatever that is?”

“No.  I’m not of the abyss.  You can recognize Others of that type by the darkness that stains them.”

“Like the stains of darkness I see with my Sight?” Lucy asked.

“Very possible.”

Avery drew in a deep breath.  Again, she had that feeling, like everyone present was fixated on her.

“Why do I feel like each of us only get one guess?” she asked.

“You can guess as many times as you like, but as Toadswallow explained to you last night, third times make a charm.  They make things more meaningful.”

“Can I save my question for later, then?”

“You can.  It won’t be as effective as three guesses happening in a timely manner, but if you’re right, then…”

“Then what?” Lucy asked.

“Then I suspect you get a better answer, with things flowing into and out of the occasion in a more satisfying way.”

“Then I’ll save it.  Until I understand things more.”

“Why don’t you just tell us, Miss?” Lucy asked.

“Because, Lucille, I’m afraid I don’t trust you three.”

“You picked us,” Avery said.

“In this world, knowledge is power.  To give you knowledge of what I am, with just a bit more research, is to give you an idea of how to bind me.  To enslave me.  All around the world, humans are fathoming the unfathomable.  They are riddling us out and raveling us in bindings, unraveling us into our constituent elements, or riddling us with holes by way of blade and bullet.  The Others of Kennet are for the most part fair and friendly.”

“Even the Choir?” Lucy asked.

“Technically it is fair.  It offers a deal and people take the deal.  Arguably, it is not of Kennet, but over a large area that includes Kennet.  Controversially, it isn’t something we could easily handle in the first place.  We manage it, contain the damage.  It pulls most of its targets from outside of Kennet.  Kennet acts as a regular staging ground, while the other stages change.”

“Can you give us more specifics?  How it works?” Verona asked.

“No,” Miss said.  “Because I am uniquely and unfortunately prone to being tangled up in traps such as that.  I have avoided particular knowledge and acted from a distance when I must act.  I’d explain more, but…”

“But you don’t trust us,” Lucy stated.

“I’m sorry.”

“We swore we wouldn’t be a threat to you unless you deserved it,” Avery said.

“And, acting with intent, you shouldn’t be.  Acting with instinct, or if you take leave of your senses, or find yourself vulnerable and at the disposal of other, greater practitioners?  You’re a danger.  The blade cuts both ways.”

Lucy looked miffed.  She checked her phone, then looked back toward the school.  “We should be heading back.  We’ll get in trouble if we arrive late.  Sucks.  I had so many more questions.”

“I should be available.”

“That reminds me.  Where have you been, the last few days?” Lucy asked.  “You were hovering a lot prior to our awakening.  Then you were gone.”

“Giving you space.  I’ve occupied myself keeping outside practitioners at bay.”

“Are they something we need to worry about?” Verona asked.

“I don’t know.  But speaking of worry… my gifts and teachings.  I should give them to you now.  Before tomorrow, and so you have more time to get acquainted with them.”

“Something we can use against the Choir?” Verona asked.

“There is no effective ‘against’ the Choir.  Observe, don’t oppose.  It won’t be worth it.  Verona?  If you would approach, my gift is tailored to your interests.”

Verona took a hesitant step forward, then walked around the tree. She passed around the left of it, emerged at the right, and had a paper in her hand.  There was no indication she had seen or interacted with Miss.  A black feather stuck out of the paper.

“The first part of my gift to you is unfortunately aimed at the long term,” Miss said.  “All of you girls will benefit.  There is a small school for practitioners to the east.  It takes time to get there, it takes time to return.  When and if you know more about what you want to do, you can go there, and attend by loopholes suggested there.  Or else you may need to go there, to field the outsiders, if they start to get too close.  Any families or individuals in the area will have some points of contact there.  If you ask it, they’ll teach you specifics about binding and defeating Others, depending on what Other you’re needing to deal with.”

“Why can’t we go now?”

“It takes time?” Lucy asked.

“You may need to wait until summer,” Miss said.  “To have the time needed.”

“What’s this feather?”

“A quill pen.  It lets you pick up written words and put them down.  I thought it suited you.  I would be careful about moving words into or out of practices, at least until you have power, protection, and a solid understanding of exactly what you’re doing.”

“Hmm,” Verona made a sound.  “Cool.

“Avery.”

Avery approached Miss, who was now at a different tree.

She saw a slice of Miss’s silhouette, and chased it around the tree, before finding herself face to face with the others.

“Verona’s gift is given with an eye to the long term, with a second component that will take time to master.  Yours is not so far away, but it is not something you can or should do tonight or tomorrow.”

She looked at her hand.  There were papers there, like she’d been holding them all along.

She unfolded it.

“The Forest Ribbon Trail.”

“You wished to travel.  This is a place you can go that is as far from the earthly as you can safely go.  It is not easy, it is at the razor’s edge between safety and ruin, and it may leave you changed.”

Avery skimmed the instructions.  There was a ritual.  Capture a wild prey animal that has not shed or tasted blood, taking it unharmed and without drugs, and bring it indoors.  Bind it in ribbon…

She skipped ahead.  You must not step off the path.  You must not look down.  You must not step back.  If you do, you will be Lost…

She skipped further ahead.  Dealing with the Wolf…

Those capital letters in Lost and Wolf were ominous.

The very last lines… Done right, you will find yourself at the edge of losing your life, with the chosen gift in hand.  Done wrong, you will be Lost.

“Much as the loophole I gave Verona as a gift is a gift to all of you, any of you can walk the path, but I think you’ll get the most out of it, Avery.  You may wish to wait until you’re stronger.  The walking is not easy.  The gifts are very much worth it, and more doors will be open to you after.”

“Thank you, I think.”

“Lucille.”

“You can call me Lucy.”

“Lucy.  At your feet.”

Lucy knelt, reached into the grass, and picked up a ring.  It looked awkward, with a long, narrow bit built into it.

“What is it?”

“A gift for the now.  For your protection.  Wear the ring, draw it and your hand along any object.  You’ll have a weapon at hand.  Be aware this costs something, and if you do not have a source of power at hand, it will drink a bit of the Kennet Others and a great deal of you.”

“Of my… Self?”

“Less of your Self and more of your blood, your personal power.  Your strength.”

“So I’ll have a weapon and I’ll be in too bad a shape to fight?”

“That is a risk.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “We can call you again?  If we have questions?  We have the rest of tonight and tomorrow to prepare, I think.”

“You can call me anytime.  I can’t guarantee that I’ll answer, but I’ll try.”

“Thanks, then, I guess,” Lucy said.  She looked at Avery and Verona.  Avery gave her a nod.

They started the walk back to school.  Lucy checked her phone and made a face, before picking up her pace.  Other kids were already filing back in, and ninety percent of them were a lot closer to the school.

“I want more interviews like that,” Verona said.  “Gifts and lots of things to look forward to.”

“Weird gifts.” Avery looked down at the papers, before folding them up into a square and putting them in her back pocket.

“Miss is weird,” Verona answered.

“You’re not wrong,” Lucy said.  “But I have to wonder…”

She trailed off, and she didn’t pick up the thought immediately.

“Wonder what?” Avery asked.

Lucy looked back, as if to check Miss wasn’t listening in.  They were making their way uphill, and there weren’t even any stones or bushes for goblins to hide in.

“…I can’t say for sure if I should be really happy or concerned about my gift,” Lucy said.

“Concerned?” Verona asked.

“My first feeling was that this is great.  Just what I wanted.  Protection, power.  It has a bit of a drawback, but… fine.  Maybe that’s most magic items and trinkets.”

“What’s your second feeling?” Verona asked.

“That after last night, I wasn’t so keen I wanted to go this route, with violence and weapons.  And if Miss is keeping enough track of things to know exactly what Toadswallow taught us… is it impossible that she knows I wasn’t keen?”

“A bit of a monkey’s paw?” Verona asked.  “A gift that seems neat, that you’re not likely to make use of?”

“Well I mean…” Lucy looked again, to check for eavesdroppers.  “What if she gave me something with the full expectation I’d use it… right after telling us we shouldn’t oppose the Choir?”

“A trap?” Avery asked.

“A warning, with full expectation we’d ignore it?” Verona added.

“I don’t know,” Lucy said.  “How do you feel about your things?”

“A really great first feeling.  School for practitioners?” Verona asked.

“Could be neat.  Could be necessary,” Lucy said.

“Could be.  But… when you reframe it as hooray, summer school!?”

“Maybe,” Lucy said.

“The pen is neat, at least.”

Lucy nodded.  “If it isn’t another trap.  And crap, that’s the warning bell.  Run!”

“I’m all runned out after gym class,” Verona complained.

“You barely ran,” Avery said.

Verona laughed, but as much as she’d complained, she did pick up the pace.

And me, Avery thought.  My gift from Miss is a way to go to some magical, mystical place, with the threat or promise that I’d be changed afterward.  And she gives it to me right after my Sight went weird and I was terrified of being changed irrevocably.

“We’ll need to plan and prepare,” Lucy said, as they reached the side door of the school.  “We’ve got tomorrow to get ready, maybe see if we can dig up some of the roots or figure out what the rules are, get geared up, maybe prepare some diagrams.”

“You’re speaking my language,” Verona said, elbowing her friend.

“Ha ha.  I’m speaking English, you dunce.  We get prepped, we get things squared away, and then we meet the Choir.  I’m betting none of those things are as easy as they sound.”

“And hopefully,” Avery said, quiet, as Lucy held the door open for her and Verona, “We won’t be missing any body parts afterward, like the teenager with the sunglasses was.”

Lost for Words – 1.8

Verona

The lawnmower roared, loud enough that she couldn’t really listen to music.  She pushed, working it over the part of the lawn where there had once been a tree.  The stump had rotted away, but there was still a hump where it had been.  As the mower’s wheel rolled over it, the blades bit into the dirt, spitting it out the vent at the side.

The handle was broken and didn’t lower all the way, so it came up to Verona’s neck rather than her chest.  She had to lift and wrestle to get it past the tricky bit.

Which was a lot of wrestling when the mower weighed seventy pounds and she weighed eighty two.  Head down, arms up, using the full strength of her arms, midsection and legs to force the wheel up.

It rolled down that slight slope, the cord pulled, and the extension cord unplugged from the mower.

She was glad she was already using the Sight, because she would have sworn something was messing with her at that point.

Pulling off her sweater, wearing a sleeveless black tee beneath, she stalked her way over the lawn, which looked like spiders had gotten to it, matting it down in cobwebs.  Around the corner to where the extension cord had gotten caught at the short stone wall that bounded the garden, and tugged on the cord, pulling it over the wall instead of against the corner of it.

The Sight at least kept things interesting.  Most things were beneath a layer.  She was still working out what it meant, but for the time being, it was a really cool filter to cast over the world.  Like everything from the trees to her house to the garden were snakes that had shed their skin but not yet wriggled free of it.

The garden was moist, and that moisture had frozen over, a foggy, icy film that made it like a pool of darkness, just barely clouded over.  In that darkness, she could make out a thing that was like a rabbit, flayed, face pressed against the film of ice.

She bent down as she walked past it, reaching for it to tap the ice.  It pulled away, leaving only the moist dirt, so dark it could have been a hole.

Avery and Lucy had confirmed they had the same issue.  It was hard to interact with most things that they saw with the Sight, because it tended to go more normal as they got closer to it.

She plugged the end of the extension cord back into the mower, then pulled back on the part of the handle that started it up again.  Each patch of grass had to be gone over twice; forward, then back.  Three steps forward, two steps back.  There were patches and points in time when it seemed like the grass wouldn’t cut at all, even with two passes of the mower.

Twice, there were branches that had fallen from the neighbor’s tree that she had to pick up, each branch wreathed in pale, loose bark, the broken off ends red and ragged.  Two more times, she just ran over branches, letting the blades chew them up.

She fantasized about using the mower to cut a giant circle in the lawn.  Inside that circle, she could mow a triangle, and underline it.  Could she feed a giant fire rune with the power from the extension cord?  Did that work?

She supposed that at that point, there wasn’t much difference between that and cutting the end of the extension cord and using the frayed wire to start a fire.  But if she did the rune, wouldn’t there be a giant plume of fire?

She would love a giant plume of fire right now.

Her Sight revealed the bugs and small rodents that fled from the noise and chaos of the stupid frigging mower.  You don’t need to run, little guys.  This monster is slow.

Three steps forward, two steps back.

Across the street and halfway down the block, she could see Wallace from her class, out on the driveway with his parents.  It looked like he was bringing in groceries.  She tried not to look like she was looking at him, and tried to not look super lame while struggling with the mower.  She’d only just brought it from one corner of the lawn to the other.  One row out of…

She tried to estimate.

Sixteen?

She turned it around, and as she did, the extension cord was pulled back because it was connected to the handle.  It draped itself nicely at the edge of the unmowed grass she had been intending to cut.

Verona stopped, grabbed the cord, whipped it to get it to re-drape itself along the dark, spiderwebby lawn, re-plugged it in because the pulling had unplugged it again, and took a second to try and knot the extension cord around the handle, so it would stop pulling out of the shorter cord with the socket embedded in it.

She hoped Wallace wouldn’t wave or call out to her or anything.  At a distance, he was a smudge, with near-white hair, a dark jacket, and dark pants.  He’d see a smudge with sweat and grime probably visible at a distance, hair all messed up.

He looked at her, but then he grabbed the bags from the back, sticking his arms through bags so he was carrying at least four plastic bags on each arm.

She really hoped he wasn’t trying to impress her.  She really hoped he wasn’t the guy who had given her a like on the stupid app.  For that matter, she hoped Jeremy wasn’t either.  She never should have voted for either, but now that she had, one of them had voted for her and knew she’d voted for them and ugh.

It wasn’t that she didn’t think they were okay looking.  They were.  When class had been slow and a teacher was droning on, spending twenty minutes badly explaining something that was spelled out very simply, clearly, and succinctly in the textbook, she’d let her mind wander, and sometimes it had wandered in the direction of the boys.

Like, she kind of wished she could approach a boy and ask him straight-up if they’d kiss her, no strings attached, so it meant nothing.  When she imagined that, she sometimes thought of Jeremy or Wallace.

Well, George too.  If she had to pick a face she liked, she’d pick George, but a lot of girls liked George and that meant hassle, and hassle was the opposite of the point.  Killed the appeal a lot.

She kept pushing the mower.  Three steps forward, two steps back.  There were parts of the lawn that animals had gotten at, where the wheels got trapped, which meant the pushing was hard.

Wallace stepped back outside.  Again, she hoped he wouldn’t wave or do anything.  She watched as he got more groceries, while she pushed the mower.  Halfway through the second row of maybe sixteen rows.

The second trip was less bags, but they seemed heavier.  Again, he carried them all in one go.  Wallace’s mom touched Wallace’s head with a bit of tenderness as she passed him, then got a case of bottled water out of the back.  His mom didn’t carry much, but Verona knew she had some nerve problem and had a tough time with it.  Wallace had mentioned it in passing at this stupid home-ec thing they’d had to do before school, once.  That he was worried he’d get the same thing when he grew up.

She hadn’t known what to say, but Jeremy had said some reassuring things, and she’d been kind of impressed that he hadn’t been stunned into silence like she had.  That this dorky guy who’d gotten paint on Katie’s clothes in grade one could actually be cool.  That Wallace could sound like he cared about his mom, and talk about her like Lucy talked about her mom.  She’d put Wallace into a mental bucket back in grade two or so, back one time when he’d worn a short sleeved shirt under a sweater and the bottom of the short sleeved shirt had stuck out like a dress.  After that day in home ec, she’d had to adjust where they sat in her head.

Which was part of why her head went to them when she thought of things like asking them about kissing.  Or like… if she approached him or Jeremy, and offered to let him put his hand up her shirt, in exchange for him taking off his pants and letting her examine, poke at his bits a few times, and ask maybe fifty questions.  She’d even worked up a script of bases to cover, ground rules, and the questions she’d ask if she could.  Like how there’d be no strings attached.

But there would be.  She could imagine they’d say yes because guys were curious, too, right?  They’d probably be decent because they weren’t shitty people.  If it was just that probably, with a chance they’d blab about it to their guy friends, maybe she’d even go forward with it, just to fill in those blanks in her understanding about the other half of the human race.  But… no.

No, there was no way that she could trust them to make it a one time thing followed by them treating her exactly the same after.  They’d want to go on dates to go grab ice cream or something, or exchange things on Valentines day, or they’d want to sit and cuddle like Avery talked about wanting to do.

She couldn’t imagine many things more boring than that.  More obligations, more people nagging at her about things she should be doing.  Chocolates on certain days, anniversaries, and having to date every few days or feelings would be hurt.  And for what?  To build what?  The literal only adults she even kind of knew who weren’t alone, divorced, abusive, unhappy, or widowed were Avery’s parents, and she couldn’t be positive that they weren’t staying together because a divorce with five kids would be a nightmare.

Wallace stepped outside yet again.  She really hoped he wouldn’t wave.  That he wouldn’t walk over, and offer to help.  That would be awkward.  Nice, and very like him, but awkward.

He shut the back of the car.  To Verona’s sight, it shed a wave of ‘skin’ with the impact.  Then he went inside, closing the front door of the house after him.

She felt weirdly disappointed that he hadn’t come over.

The stupid app had confused things, made things awkward, and had everyone thinking about things in the worst, most boring ways.  It had hurt Lucy so badly, Verona knew that, and she had no idea what to say like she’d had no idea what to say when Wallace had said he might one day end up having to use a cane, or even sometimes a wheelchair, or he might go temporarily or permanently blind, or have seizures, because that was the sort of thing his mom faced.

Lucy’s hurt was different than that, but it was still real.  Avery’s hurt was closer to Wallace’s.  More of a dread.  It sucked and Verona didn’t know what to say and it was all because of that stupid app.  That stupid-

The lawnmower reached the other side of the awkward bit of lawn where the stump had been, and got stuck again.

She wrestled with the mower’s handle, full-bodied fighting it for a good ten seconds to get it over and past the hump.  It reached the other side, then rolled over and down from the side of the lawn to the too-dark driveway, where it stirred the film like plastic sheeting that covered the drive.

-Stupid frigging fucking piece of technology!

She was sweaty, the dust and grass kicked up by the mower was sticking to the sweat, and her hair was probably sticking up in five places.  She turned the mower around, and the act of turning it around pulled on the extension cord, pulling it into the mower’s path.

She gave serious consideration to running over the extension cord.  She would have to figure out what to say that wasn’t technically a lie, but… nah.  There was a chance she’d electrocute herself and she didn’t want to die.

Getting the mower up the slight slope at the edge of the lawn took some effort, and she had to do it three times to get the grass mowed near the hump.

The rest of the lawn wasn’t quite as bad as the first part.  The occasional branch.  The occasional hole where an animal had made its burrow and nature had partially reclaimed the hole.  She could see bones and the meaty faces within the holes, peering up as she passed by.

“Sorry little spirits or whatever,” she murmured, as she pushed the mower.  “Sorta gotta do this.”

It took fifteen runs of the lawnmower, rather than sixteen, but toward the end she was eager enough to be done that she was kind of bullshitting her way through it.  The gravely run-off from the road kind of meant there wasn’t much grass at the end of the lawn, anyway.  Each run had been three steps forward, two step back, in that effort to chop down those tufts that seemed to stubbornly stick up after.

She pushed the mower into the garage, then gathered up the extension cord, now muddy with grass clinging to it.

Job done.  She surveyed it, looked back at the mower, looked back at the lawn, and then marched into the house.

She exited the house, feather in hand, and stalked her way into the garage before flicking on the light.  She sat on her heels, and looked at the mower, wiping away the grass that had gotten stuck to the label on front.  She had to squint and strain her eyes a bit to make out the words through the film.  That was something she’d have to get used to, see if she could train in her Self and Sight.

SCHMIDT LAWN MOWER

She pressed the pen to the edge of the word, and saw the first letter slip in, as if drunk by the pen.  Then another…

She pulled back, then tapped the pen.  Each tap brought the letters out, putting them back where they should be.

With a leftwards stroke, she could drink up a whole word at once.  With a rightward stroke, she could put it down.

With her Sight, it became apparent that doing this tended to tangle up the fine threads that seemed to connect everything, like the threads were attached to the letters and by moving the letters around, they got stuck to her.

She considered that for a moment.

Probably, she guessed, there was something like the Others had talked about at the Awakening ritual.  Responsibility.

If she caused trouble this way, it might tie back to her.  If she messed with practices, then she probably owned that mess.

That was her best guess, anyway.

She would have to experiment more.  And in the pursuit of experimentation…

Verona fiddled for a minute, the point of the feather pen scraping against plastic.

“I’m going to give you a name,” she murmured.  “So this doesn’t qualify as a lie…”

She stood up and stood back, arms folded, being careful not to touch her arm with the point of the quill.  There were still three letters in it, and she wasn’t sure if it would get applied as a tattoo.

Good.

She pushed the lawnmower into the corner, newly christened ‘WARMED COW SHIT’, disposed of the three spare letters on the label for the weed whacker, and closed the garage up.

If her dad asked, she’d say she changed the label to match the name she’d given it.  Which was true.  More likely, he’d never look and it would eventually break down enough to go into the trash.

It still made her feel better.

She stepped back inside, and rinsed off, tossing her clothes into the laundry hamper.  The water in the shower was visually interesting, like it all had a super-thin sheet of foggy ice over it, but it wasn’t that cold.  The dust on the towel seemed to be magnified, stretched out into cobwebs, and the back wall of her closet had more film, barely-visible figures pressing against the film, red and wet.

She reached for one, and it pulled away violently enough that the film sucked back against the hard wall behind it, clinging to the dark wood grain.  Her hand dropped down, landing on an old shirt.

She didn’t have many sweaters or anything, so she grabbed a hooded sweater with a black hood and a grey body from last year.  It had a corset-like lace at the ‘v’ of the collar, with leather thong threaded through, dangling down.  The fit was annoyingly clingy to her body, but it was the best option for something long-sleeved that wasn’t dirty.  She stuck her feather up the sleeve, post-its in the front pocket, and a pen in the pants pocket of her other jeans.

The house felt less confining, with the Sight giving everything a creepy filter over top of it.  She made her way down to the kitchen, idly wondering if the other girls felt as comfortable with it as she felt with hers.  Avery had been using hers a lot.  Was it always like that?

She grabbed a handful of chocolate chips from the cabinet with the stuff for baking, and was scrounging for more things to snack on when her dad came in.  She grabbed more chocolate chips, and turned around to look.

“When you’re doing the lawn, you need to bring the mower across horizontally and vertically, or you need to layer the strips so the part that’s under the wheel for one pass is directly under the mower for the next,” he said, as he pulled off his shoes.

She chewed on chocolate chips.

“Have you done the backyard?”

She shook her head, still chewing.

“Later?” he asked.

She gave him something between a shrug and a nod.

He groaned, long and loud, as he entered the kitchen, leaned against the counter next to her, and lifted up one foot to rub at it.

When he was done, he put out a hand.

She hesitated, then held out hers, releasing her grip on the fistful of chips just enough to deposit a single chocolate chip into his palm.

“I did buy those you know,” he said.  “With my money, from one of my two jobs.”

She gave him a second chocolate chip, then dumped the rest into her mouth.  The points of the chips jabbed at her gums and the roof of her mouth, but she would’ve done it again.

He groaned as he stood up straight, no longer leaning against the counter, leaned past her, and grabbed the bag of chips.  He was tall enough and big enough around the middle that she was almost crushed against the counter by him.  She ducked her head under his arm and crossed to the other corner of the kitchen.  She settled in there, leaning against the broom closet.

“You look so much like your mother sometimes,” he said.  “She used to be so beautiful.”

Verona chewed.

“I used to be thin, if you’d believe it.  I had muscles.”

Her eyebrows went up.

“That’s not a new top, is it?”

She shook her head.

“Cat got your tongue?” he asked, smiling like he was being funny.

She finished chewing, her hand held out in front of her, still covered in traces of melted chocolate.  “No.  It’s old, from last year.  I didn’t have anything else.”

“Do you need new clothes?”

She considered for a moment.  Her pants had been digging into her lower stomach while she was sitting in class.

“Guess I might,” she said.  “Can I order them online?”

“You don’t want to go shopping, go to a fitting room?”

“You can send stuff back.  There’s more options.  Can I have your credit card?  You can say how much I can spend.”

“Can you wait another week?  Your mother’s taking her time with her child support payment, and our household here is a few thousand dollars in debt after paying for the roof last fall.”

“Okay.”

“And I’ll put the credit card information in,” he said, with an expression like he was being funny or trying to catch her in a bit of mischief.

“Okay.”  She licked at her hand, to get the traces of chocolate.

“How are you doing today?” he asked.

Her eyebrows went up.  “Okay.”

“Just okay?  Can I get more than one word out of you?”

“Most of the day was good, interesting.  Classes were fine.  Friends are okay, I think.  Avery did great at basketball during gym.  Mr. Lai’s class got twice as bearable ever since we found out he was a secret lumberjack-carpenter, and Ms. Hardy’s class is fun because a student I know has a crush on her, and it’s funny.”

“Hm.”

“I’m still paying attention.  It’s just easier if there’s… more going on, I guess?  Sometimes.  There’s this app thing going around at school.  Popularity thing, kind of.  A lot of kids were pretty unhappy about it.  Lucy and Avery were among them.  Really sucked, and distracting in a bad way.”

Man, Lucy would be upset if she heard Verona talking about the app.

“Ah, that’s too bad.  At my work, there’s a clique of younger workers… you remember what I told you about the batch of interns that we brought in last year?”

“I remember.”  Yep.  Didn’t matter that I brought the app up.

“They were brought on for full-time positions, and they’ve formed a bit of a clique within the office.  Luc loves them, he says they bring energy to the office, but I really think they bring in bitterness.  They have people they like and they don’t like, and it’s a popularity thing of its own.  They’re passive aggressive, they shut people out, me included, and they’ll make these sniping little comments… like they’re teenage girls and not twenty five year old men, you know?”

“Uh, well, in our case, we’re actually teenage girls.”

“Trust me, it’s worse when it’s grown adults acting like children.  The way they’ll leave the room when I enter, or they’ll make sure to give each other credit, but if I take four hours out of my day to write up a TARPAC report for them and help them out, I get nothing?  They’re pushing for a move to a new database format, because they learned it in school, nevermind that the existing staff have learned the ins and outs of MARCALT.  Small kinds of sabotage like that.”

Verona shrugged.

“It’s a grind, going in every day.  Dealing with them.  Distracting, like you said.  I’m so tired.”

Verona paused, itching to say something sarcastic.  She shifted mental gears, wondered for a second what it’d be like in his shoes.

“Gee, I’m wondering what that’s like,” she said.  “Going in every day.”

“I’ve been in school,” he told her.  “And I’ve worked.  This is worse.  You don’t have to wonder, I can tell you exactly how.”

“It’s fine.  I can guess.”

“It’s exhausting.  You’ve got friends waiting for you at school.  I’ve got nothing.  Benjamin quit.  Julia’s dealing with her husband’s issues.  I’ve told you about those?”

“Yeah.  Sucks.  Um…”  She flailed mentally.  “I’m changing the topic, but uh, about dinner…”

“Dinner, okay,” he said.  He approached the fridge, which she was next to.  “Excuse me.”

She took two steps to the side.  He opened the fridge and freezer, the fridge door swinging into the space she’d been occupying.

“Chicken Kiev,” he said.  He held out a box of pre-frozen chicken kiev meals.  He grabbed a bag of frozen broccoli and a bag of frozen french fries.  “Sides.  Can you preheat the oven?  Set it to four hundred?”

I could go to Lucy’s, she thought, deliberately.

“I was just thinking about going to Lucy’s, actually.”

He put the things back in the freezer.  There was a pause where he stood in the doorway, his back to her.

“Is it a problem?” she asked.

“Are you being a nuisance, going over there all the time?”

“I hope not.  Can I go?”

“Yeah, go,” he said, curt.  The freezer door shut with more force than necessary.  In the gloom of her Sight, the door shed some skin, and faces with empty eye sockets retreated into the gloom beneath the freezer.  He walked out of the room, heading for upstairs.

“Are you sure?” she asked.  “You seem mad.”

“I wanted to have an actual conversation, Verona.  There are still things that need doing around the house.  But go.  It’s fine.  I won’t get in the way of your friendships.”

“We have lots of chances to talk the rest of the time, like on the way to school,” she called out.

“I’m sure you’re right,” he answered, barely audible.

“Why-”

He was gone, out of earshot.

She heard his bedroom door close.

The problem with having an overactive imagination was that she could immediately think of five things that were responsible for his sudden change in mood.  That he was sick, that he might lose his job, that she’d done or said something earlier, that she’d forgotten an event.  When was Father’s day?  Was that May or June?

If he was in a mood now, what happened if she left?  Would he be madder?  Or more hurt, if something was wrong and he’d been wanting to work his way to communicating it?

She chewed on her lip for a few seconds, then lurched into motion, grabbing the chocolate chip bag, tying it in a knot to seal it, and putting it away.

Maybe a year ago, she would have stewed for another twenty minutes, changed her plans to go hang with Lucy, and gone to mow the back lawn.  Trying to make him happy.  In the now, she just got her bag together, got her phone, and dialed Lucy on the way out the door, before he could emerge from his room.

None of this was anything new.  Not predictable.  Never.  But not new, either.

If she didn’t go to his room and knock to ask what was wrong, he’d emerge and tell her.  And she didn’t care.

No, that would be a lie.  She didn’t want to care.  Caring at this point was an involuntary reflex.

She had to think of him like an Other, with rules and habits she could process and work around.  Leaving now meant not falling into the trap.

She hit the ‘call’ button on her phone.

Lucy answered.  “Hey.”

“Can I come over?  My dad’s being lame again.”

“For sure.  Fair warning though, I’ll be cooking dinner.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Don’t say that until you taste it.”

“Haha.  See you in a little while.”

The roads were black, not grey, and the shadowy recesses and ditches off to either side of the road had more of the bloody things.  Houses were similar, with red messes against the windows.

As Verona got to Lucy’s house, she saw Lucy’s mom wearing her scrubs, loading stuff into the car.  She skipped ahead, grabbing the boxes sitting by the car, and handing them up for Lucy’s mom to put in the car.

“Thank you.  You’re a sweetheart.”

“Is it okay if I stay for dinner, Jas?”

“Anytime, Verona.  Can you do me a favor?”

Verona nodded.

“Give Lucy some extra love?  She seems low, and she wouldn’t tell me why.”

Verona swallowed, then nodded again.

“Thank you.  I don’t suppose I could ask if you know why?”

Verona looked up toward the house and the window where Lucy’s room would be.  Covered in film like soap scum.

“Don’t tell her I told you, I’m only really saying because I don’t want you to think it’s her fault or anything…”

Verona paused, trailing off.

Seeing Jasmine nod, she said, “…she said she didn’t sleep well.  Then, first thing at school this morning, there was this popularity contest type thing, um, by the students, teachers don’t know.  Parents aren’t supposed to know.”

She said that last bit in a pointed way.

Jasmine folded her arms, then nodded.

“She deserves way better than what she got,” Verona said.

She could see the hurt in Jasmine’s eyes, like it was Jasmine who’d been the one to get rock bottom results, and not her daughter.

Verona braced herself, getting her mental footing.  A pang of regret for saying anything hit her.

“Thank you for telling me,” Jasmine said.

Verona relaxed a bit.  She found her breath and the words, adding, “I’m surprised she didn’t blow her top at anyone.”

“She does that sometimes.”

“She was working it out in gym class, playing by the rules, which I thought was kind of cool, except she was on the other team and her team was beating mine.”

Eyes still sad, Jasmine did smile.

“Mr. Bader was picking on her in particular.  I really thought she’d lose it, but she didn’t.”

“Is that what happened?  I got an email from Mr. Bader.  I haven’t had a chance to answer, and she didn’t explain when I asked.”

“I’m glad I told you then,” Verona said, quiet.

Jasmine approached, and put a hand on Verona’s shoulder.  With a slight pull of Verona towards her, she asked, “Can I?”

Verona nodded, and accepted the hug that followed.  Warm and comfortable, even with the plastic nametag Jasmine was wearing jabbing at her.

“Thank you for being a good friend to Lucy,” Lucy’s mom said.

“For sure.”

“It’s hard, being a parent, and having your kids reach that age when they no longer reach out to you when they’re hurting.  Booker was kind enough to wait until he was fifteen or sixteen before he did it.  It breaks my heart that Lucy started doing it at ten.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m so glad she has you.  Be kind to her.  And if there’s anything you need, with your dad or anything else…”

“Thank you, Jasmine.”

Lucy’s mom broke the hug.  She brushed the side of Verona’s face with her hand.  “Don’t get into too much trouble.”

“If we do get into trouble, I’ll have her back.”

“Good.  And I’m running late, now.”

“Have fun,” Verona said, as she jogged over to the steps, with plants shrouded in something halfway between cobwebs and plastic wrap.  She gave Lucy’s mom a look over her shoulder, and saw an eye roll.

Yeah.  Work wasn’t fun.

But the practice stuff?

She used the key Lucy’s mom had given her years ago to let herself in.

Lucy was in her room, sitting on her bed with her back to her bookshelf, legs out in front of her.  She had a pile of books and random things strewn out in front of her, along with notebooks.  She flinched as Verona knocked, covering something up, then relaxed.

“Just me,” Verona said.

She walked over to Lucy, and found a position where she could sit on the edge of the bed and hug her friend from behind.

“What’s that for?”

“Your mom said to be extra nice to you.  She knows you’re in a funk.”

“Mm.”

“Remember back when we were kids, and my parents had divorced, and we were so convinced our parents should date and marry and we could be sisters?” Verona asked.

“I remember that.”

“We were such morons,” Verona said.  “What were we thinking?”

“That it’d be cool to be sisters.”

“We’d drive each other crazy if we lived in the same house.”

“Probably.  But sisters do that.  Look at Avery and her sisters.”

“Mm, yeah,” Verona said.  She wiggled forward, and Lucy leaned forward to provide more wiggle room. Verona found a more comfortable seat behind Lucy, and looked over Lucy’s shoulder at what Lucy was doing.

“Want to see?” Lucy asked.  She had the ring and the hot lead.

“I really want to see.”

Lucy slipped on the ring, and used her thumb to hold the lead so it rested at the base of her fingers, touching the ring.

She touched a dictionary, swiping her hand to one side.  The papers scattered, folding and consolidated into a sword shape.

“That is the coolest!” Verona squeezed her friend extra tight, rocking from side to side.

“Isn’t it?”

Lucy speared a toy she’d placed at the edge of the bed.  The point of the rapier-like blade sank in with no resistance.

She made a motion like she was tossing the sword upward, and the papers scattered, unfolding, and landed in order, the cover landing last.  Dictionary reassembled.

“More, more, more!”

Lucy repeated the process, this time with a wooden box.  The wooden parts came apart, folded, reshaped, and settled around her hand, like a pair of brass knuckles, but heavier, larger, and made of ornate wood.  A space was left out for the ring.

Cupping her hand over a can of soda, Lucy moved it slowly from one end to the other, the other hand holding the can, grip rearranging as the shape changed.

When she moved the hand with the ring away, her other hand held a small handgun in gleaming aluminum, with the same color scheme as the off-brand soda can.

“Oh man,” Verona breathed.

“Can only do guns with a few things, I think.  I haven’t had the guts to pull the trigger,” Lucy admitted.

Verona reached around Lucy, doing her best to hold Lucy’s hand and arm, joining her strength to her friend’s.  “What are we trying to shoot?”

“I don’t even know.  See the trash can by my desk?”

Verona saw it.  A metal trash can with some papers in it.

They aimed, pointing the weapon.  Lucy pulled at the trigger by the smallest increments, twisting her face away more and more as the pull increased.  Verona could feel the tension in her arm.

The shot was deafening, the can practically exploding as it seemed to rip in half, flipping end over end.  The base of the wall on the far side cracked.

“Oh man, oh, crap, let go of me, let go-!”

Worried her friend was hurt, Verona let go, letting Lucy stand.  Lucy tossed the gun away, toward the ruins of the can, and Verona had a glimpse of the weapon foaming violently, dripping soda onto Lucy’s legs and arm, and onto the film-covered bed and cobwebby floor.

The moment the weapon left Lucy’s hand, it became a can again, mostly empty.

“I’ll get a towel,” Verona said.  She’d stayed over enough times to know where the cupboard with the towels was.  She tossed Lucy a dry towel, then took another to the bathroom, wetting it under the tap.

“I think that was one shot,” Lucy said.  “Spent everything.  Might be worth keeping in mind.”

“I didn’t think it’d be a legit gun!  I thought it’d fire a BB or the tab of the can or something!”

“I thought it’d need to be loaded with real ammo,” Lucy said, eyes wide.  She took the wet towel and wiped her arm and legs.  “Thank you.”

Verona eyed the towel.  “Can I have the ring and hot lead?”

Lucy pulled off the ring, handing it over.  Verona winced as she took the lead, almost dropping it.

Verona went to her bag, pulled out her cape, and put it on, draping it over her shoulders.  She slipped on the ring.

“What are you doing?” Lucy asked.

“Experimenting.”

Verona gripped one part of her cloak in one hand, then held it close to herself.  She took the lead and held it as Lucy had, then ran the ring from her shoulder, all down her arm, to her hand.  She could feel it change against her skin.

She let go of the cloak, then moved her arm, reaching out.

The cloak reached out, roughly matching her arm.  The end of it formed into a claw shape, matching the positioning of her hand.  She experimented, swiping at the air, using a cloth arm that ended in a claw.  It moved violently enough that it made the whooshing noise like when she swung a tennis racket or baseball bat.

“You’re ridiculous, you know that, right?” Lucy asked.

“What?  Ridiculous why?” Verona asked.  She pulled off the ring.  She felt her cloak flutter as it returned to normal, dropping down to hang normally.

“Nevermind.”

“The lead isn’t as painful to hold as it was, I think,” Verona noted.  She moved it around her palm.

“It’s cooling down as I use it more.  It heated up again when I spent thirty minutes or so talking to my mom.  I think it might have a capacity that recharges over time.”

“We shouldn’t waste it then.  We’ll need it for tomorrow night.”

Lucy nodded.

“There’s other stuff we could prep,” Verona said.  “Should we call Avery over?  Would your mom mind?”

“Nah,” Lucy said.  She picked up her phone, dialing.

Verona found the metal box they’d been keeping the hot lead in, almost lost in the rumpled sheets on Lucy’s bed.

“Avery!  Want to come over?  We’re experimenting and stuff.”

There was a pause.  Verona perked her ears, trying to hear.  When she couldn’t, she drew close.

“She’s sitting down to dinner, she doesn’t think she can get away,” Lucy said.

“Avery,” Verona said.  “Put it on speakerphone?”

“Why?” Avery’s voice came through.

“Please.  Come on!”

“I’m the only one in my room right now.”

“Then go to where your family is, and put it on speakerphone,” Lucy said.

“Fine.”

There was rummaging, then footsteps.

“Entering the kitchen… now.”

“Avery!  Come over!” Verona called out.  “We want you here!  We miss you!”

“You’re so cool!” Lucy added her voice to Verona’s.  “It’s just not as great without you here!”

“We’re doing such neat things!  You’re really missing out!”

Such neat things!”

“Lucy’s going to cook dinner, and I want you to help!  It might be terrible, but you won’t have to watch that awful singing show!”

“We’ll watch what you want to watch!”

“Please!”

“Please come over!”

“Succumb to the peer pressure!”

“Guys,” Avery said.  “Okay.”

There were voices in the background.  Someone sounded like they were laughing.

“Is that a yes, you’re coming over?”

“Yes.”

Verona and Lucy whooped.

Verona smiled, seeing her friend flushed and smiling, the burdens of the day alleviated.

Verona let herself into the house.

Time to face the music? she thought.

“I’m home!”

There was no response.

They’d spent the evening experimenting with runes and the pen, which was so far proving to be more of a novelty than a practical tool.  They’d had to stop when Lucy’s mom had come back, at which point they’d watched a movie, the three of them on the couch with a blanket over them, Lucy’s mom in the armchair.  The movie had been Avery’s choice.

Verona locked the front door, shut off the porch light, and went upstairs.

“Dad?”

She walked to the end of the hall.  Her Sight colored everything, with film, with deeper darknesses, with indecipherable fleshy bits pressing against the film that lined the inside of the air vent.

She knocked on her dad’s door.  There was a sound from within.

“Dad?”

“I’m tired, Verona,” he said.  “It’s late.  Go to bed.”

“Okay.”

“Can you get yourself to school in the morning?”

“Mrs. Ellingson might be able to pick me up.  Why?  You can’t drive me?”

“I had a hard time falling sleep, I was just falling asleep, and then you woke me up.  I’m going to sleep in a bit.  I have my part time job tomorrow night.”

“Alright,” she said.  “I’m busy tomorrow night too.”

She shut the door.

She headed into her room, staying quiet, setting her bag down on her computer chair.

She got ready for bed, then lay down.

The good feeling of the night at Lucy’s had been replaced by something heavier.

“That would be a stabilizing form,” Edith said.

Verona sketched and scribbled madly to try to keep up with what Edith was explaining.  She’d write something tidier later.

“Stabilizing like…?” Avery asked.

“Imagine the fins on the tail of an airplane.  Training wheels on a bike.”

“Okay,” Avery said.  She began to write on the shoes she’d brought.  A battered pair of white, low-top sneakers.

“We’ve made good use of the earth and air runes.  We’ve used fire for the campfire and experimented with emergency lights,” Verona said.  “What about water?  Is it useful?”

“Not all runes are created equal.”

“But if air makes stuff lighter and earth makes it heavier, fire makes it hotter…  Water does what?  Can it make it more fluid?  Flexible?”

Edith frowned.

“She doesn’t know,” Lucy said.

“I could make assumptions,” Edith said, “But I wouldn’t want to lie.  It’s not my comfort zone.”

“Because you’re a candle spirit and water isn’t your jam,” Verona said.  “Got it.  Sorry if that line of questions was offensive.”

“No.  Not offensive,” Edith said.

Avery turned around, showing Edith her shoe.

“Good enough.”

“Can it be better?”

“Probably.  But for right now, you should try getting a feel for it.”

Avery nodded, and kicked off her shoes before pulling on the sneakers she’d written all over.  She began to lace them up.

“Is there a rune for light or for darkness?” Verona asked.  “I did a thing with a fire rune when we went to John’s house, it didn’t work so well.”

“I could show you darkness,” Matthew said.  He was barbecuing.  They were in his and Edith’s backyard.

“What did you do for the fire rune?” Edith asked.

“Um,” Verona said, looking between them.

“Go to Edith first,” Matthew said.

“I want to know the runes and I want Edith’s breakdown,” Verona said, eyes wide.  She looked between them, then picked up her notebook.  “Can you draw the runes, Matthew?”

“I can.”

She handed him her notebook and pen, then went to Edith, pulling out her post-its and pen.

“So prepared,” Avery said.

“We have to be,” Verona said.  “It’s tonight.

“I was going to go home to grab stuff before it started.”

“Me too,” Verona admitted.  “But I like having the stuff on me.”

“I’m keeping the ring with me,” Lucy said.

Avery, all laced up, very carefully set her feet down.  She stood, then dropped into a squat, her arms out to the side for balance.  She tapped her heels together twice.

Everyone present watched, Matthew pausing in his scribbling.

Avery jumped, wind stirring and kicking up cobwebs and dust all around her feet.  She cleared a good six feet, flailed her arms around momentarily, and then landed in a crouch.

“Ow,” Avery said.  “Okay.  The air rune doesn’t soften landings much.”

“That’s cool though,” Lucy said.  “You’re not going to break your face open or snap your leg when you accidentally launch yourself?”

“I hope not!”

“Air spirits are playful and capricious,” Edith said.  “They change temperaments easily.  Giving them power helps mollify them, but be careful.”

“Alright.  This is cool though.”

“Super cool,” Verona said.

“Even with the ability to draw on the assembly of Kennet Others for power, you’ll want to be careful with how often you use that.”

“Save it for things that matter?” Lucy asked.

“It might be better to use it for things that don’t matter,” Edith said.  “They’re not above pranks, and you don’t want to fall awkwardly at a key moment.”

Avery nodded, expression serious.

Matthew had finished writing the runes.  Verona took stock of it, then immediately copied one over to her cloak.

It just made sense to.

Verona got some more notes from Edith, but as Edith went on in her explanations, she got further from the stuff that was practical for tonight.

“Um, this is really helpful,” Verona said.

“I’m glad,” Edith said.  “I really think there’s no point in arming yourself against the Choir.”

“They’re that strong?” Lucy asked.

“You’re better off standing back and watching.  Do nothing except watch.  If you’re to interfere at all, you should understand it in full, first.”

“It’s helpful, still,” Verona said.  “But I’m thinking if I’m going to swing by my place, I should do it sooner than later.  If I time it right, my dad will be at his part time job.”

“Makes sense,” Lucy said.  “I never thought you’d walk away from lessons in magic.”

“We’ll rendezvous?” Verona asked.

“Can we chat for a minute before you go?” Lucy asked.

Verona nodded.

Lucy followed Verona around the exterior of Matthew’s house, casting a look backward toward Avery, who was experimenting with the shoes.

When they were at the garage end of the driveway, Lucy stopped.

“I’m worried,” Lucy said, quiet.

“After all the people who’ve been telling us to be careful, it’s good to be worried.”

“I’m worried about you.

Verona smiled.  “Don’t be.”

“When John had the knife to your face… you didn’t seem like you cared.  You’ve been different and I can’t put my finger on why.”

“Don’t worry.  Really.  I’m more worried about you.  I know you’ve been down, your temper gets up-”

“Don’t distract,” Lucy said.  Her expression was stern, and in Verona’s Sight, her eyes were red where they should be white, pink where the irises would normally be a hazel color.  Loose strands of pink hair that had come free of the ponytail shifted in the light breeze.

“I’m not trying to.”

“I believe you.  I still think you’re doing it.”

Verona shook her head.

“Be safe.  If you get hurt because you’re not taking this seriously enough, I’m going to be so freaking mad at you.”

“I’m taking this more seriously than any of us three,” Verona said.

“Ronnie, I don’t want to call you a liar, but-”

“I am!” Verona said, intense now.

There was a rustling.  Avery had air-leaped over to a point at the side of the house where she could listen in and see.

“Charles had his life ruined by this stuff.  You know how we avoid that?  We learn it.  We don’t forget ourselves in the heat of the moment, which is something you might do.  You don’t forget key stuff at key moments, like Avery almost did the day we did the awakening.  I love you guys.  I really honestly do.  You’re great.  But I want to learn and to master this stuff because that’s how we stay on top of it.  It’s how we’re ready when the important stuff happens.”

Lucy’s hand was on Verona’s shoulder, the grip tight.

“I love you too, Ronnie.  If something happens to you, I don’t know how I’ll deal.”

“I do.  You’ll deal badly.  Which is why I’m not going to put you in that situation if I can help it, okay?”

“That’s what I wanted to hear,” Lucy said.  She released Verona.

“Fingers crossed I don’t have to deal with my dad.”

“You could draw something,” Avery suggested, from the background.

“Nah,” Verona said.

She hurried off.  Back to her house.

It wasn’t a short trip, and it was a little slower than it might have been, as she opened her notebook, where Matthew had written down the runes.

She checked every page, looking over it with the Sight, searching for markings, just to be sure.

Nothing except the two things he’d written down.

She jogged the last bit of the way to her house, to make sure she had time.

She winced, seeing her dad’s car in the driveway.

Damn.

She let herself in, quiet.

The Hungry Choir was supposed to come tonight.

She pulled off the extra stuff, set her bag down by the door, and made her way upstairs, avoiding the middle of the stairs, so they wouldn’t creak.

There were three thumps on the wall, heavy.

Her dad’s way of calling her when he didn’t want to raise his voice or get out of bed.  Supposedly because his migraines made the noise of shouting that bad.  She wasn’t sure how banging was any better.

“Verona!”

Well, seemed he didn’t have a migraine.

She opened his door.  He was lying in bed, propped up by pillows.

“You didn’t mow the lawn,” her father said.

“Got busy,” she said.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, Verona.  I need you to pull your weight.”

“I do stuff.”

“You don’t try.  That’s the problem,” he said.  “Over and over again.  Your teachers say you put in the barest possible effort to get a passing grade.  You’re not dumb, but you seem to put all of your brains to figuring out ways to get out of things, or game the system, or make life as hard as possible on people like me and your teachers, who are just trying to equip you for the real world.”

She shrugged.

“It’s just us, Verona.  Your mother left, I’ve got work, I’ve got thirty six thousand dollars of debt from just the expenses of taking care of you and the house.  She doesn’t pay support when she should.  So I work the extra hours,” he said.  “Two jobs.”

She remained silent.

“My coworkers hate me.  My boss resents me.  I get home and I’m too tired to do anything.  And then I have to fight you every step of the way.  How many times have I asked you to do the lawn?”

“A bunch.”

“A lot, Verona.  The dishes in the sink are empty, the laundry’s piling up- you’re wearing clothes you wore when you were ten, when you could put a load on.”

“I did put a load on.”

“Don’t argue.  Please.  I can’t do it.  I can’t put up with it.  I-”

In the light of his television, she could see the moisture in his eyes.  The tears started flowing.

“I’m so alone, Verona.  I’m trying so hard and I have nothing to show for it.  No friends, no wife- your mother gave me an STD from someone she cheated on me with and then left.  I can’t convey how alone I am.”

She remained silent, standing in the doorway.

Her father sat there on his bed, sobbing.

“Do you want to leave?  Move to Thunder Bay?” he asked, his voice tremulous.

She remained silent.

“Do you?  Answer me!”

“No.”

“Because you don’t seem to want to be here.  You don’t seem to act like you want me as a dad.  If you left to go to your mom’s right now, what do you think would happen?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“I offered her dual custody and she didn’t take it.  She asked for holidays.”

“You’ve said,” Verona said, quiet.

“She hurt me so badly, leaving like she did.  She hurt us,” he said.  He hiccuped a sob.

Verona stood there, watching her dad.

She’d had a reason for not wanting to use the connection blocker.  There was the risk of the rebound, and she’d known from her father’s initial bout of silent treatment the day before that the rebound was already coming.

This… this wasn’t unusual.  This was closer to normal than not.

She turned to go.

“Do not walk out on me.  Don’t do what she did,” he said.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“I want you to listen,” he said.

I have listened, she thought.  If I do all my chores, if I do everything, if I listen to you when you want to vent… we still do this two or three times a week.

If I don’t, it’s more like five times.  And I’d rather put up with this a couple more times a week and put off having to mow the lawn with Warmed Cow Shit.

“I want you to care.”

She wanted to care.

But this had been a thing for a couple years now.  Growing in intensity if anything.

She stood in the doorway and she couldn’t bring herself to care anymore.  The silent treatments, the whiplash of the mood changes sometimes, or the passive aggressive stuff, sometimes it got through.  But this?

This was something she was used to, to the point that she wondered if hardening her heart to an outpouring of emotion like this was what made someone a sociopath… because she cared that little.

She just felt a bit of revulsion, seeing her father grab a tissue to wipe at his snotty nose.

She stared at him, and after two or three minutes, he met her eyes.  He might have even seen that revulsion before she cleared it off her face.

“Go,” he said.  “Leave me, then.”

She turned and left.  She had permission.

She went to her room, getting the rest of her stuff, including a change of clothes, to something more uniformly dark.

At her desk, she ripped off a piece of paper.

On that paper, she wrote some stuff down.  Because tonight was the Hungry Choir.

And despite promises to Lucy, there was a chance something might happen to her.

With everything gathered up, she opened her front door.

“Miss,” she said.

She closed the door behind her and jogged down the stairs.

“Miss.”

She walked to the end of the driveway.

If she listened, really listened, could she hear the singing?

It was there, but she couldn’t place it.

“Miss.”

“I’m here.”

“Thanks,” she said, not looking for Miss or trying to spot the partially hidden woman before she started walking.  “Sorry, I can’t remember if you said to only call you if we needed you.  I had a question.”

“I’m at your disposal.”

“The day you told us about the practice,” Verona said.  “Talked about awakening… do you remember that?”

“I do.  Very clearly.”

“You said there were risks.  That stuff could happen if we did it wrong.  That we could die or worse.”

“That remains true,” Miss said.  The woman walked beside Verona, at an angle where she could barely see her.  There were no obstructing objects except Verona’s own hair.

“You said that, if we pushed too hard or crossed certain lines, we might lose our humanity.”

“Yes.”

“And that’s what sort of happened with Avery?  Her eye getting stuck?”

“In a way.”

Verona looked out over Kennet.  The singing was growing in intensity.

“I heard that and I knew.  I don’t want to be human anymore.”

“I suspected.”

“Lucy… she made a deal, that you wouldn’t stop us from getting to a good old age, having a full life.”

“That does interfere with your wants.”

“Is there a loophole?  Is there a way past it?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Can I find my own way past it?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Okay.  If I could, would you stop me?”

“No.”

“Okay,” Verona said.

She drew in a deep breath, blinked some moisture out of her eyes, and then sprinted, chasing the strings that tied her to Lucy and Avery.

The Hungry Choir sang and the singing reached out over Kennet.

[1.8 Spoilers] Inventories

Lucy

Lucy’s inventory, left to right, top to bottom:


Verona

Verona’s stuff, from left to right, top to bottom:


Avery

Avery’s inventory, from left to right, top to bottom:


Lost for Words – 1.z

Interlude

Last Thursday: Inventories


Gabriel chewed on his pen.  The website, the same color as the flyer, was open.  Unlike everything else on the site that was badly formatted, badly structured, or indecipherable, the submission box was right there on the page.  Clear, inviting.  He’d already typed his name in.  He hadn’t submitted.

He’d started with the idea that this was a multi-platform game with a lot of people contributing to it, improv or acting combined with video, recordings, and various websites.  When photos were shared, they were original.  He couldn’t see any errant pixels or JPEG artifacts, there were no easy explanations, no images he recognized or could find with a reverse image search.  When there were voice recordings, there wasn’t a single voice that felt inorganic, like someone acting badly, and he had a good ear for that.  When there was distortion, it seemed real, and not like something put there by a computer.  The same was true for those limited few recordings he’d found online.  As an experience, it was really well done.

This, as much as the supposed prize, was perfectly tailored to him.  His own background, his inclinations.  He was already thinking of how he might contribute to it, when and if he got around to making something for the fake mythology of it.

But that illusion was falling away.  The idea it was a game.

He clicked around the website.  After the flier had been taken from him, he’d been frustrated.  He didn’t know how Lucy Ellingson had known he had the flier, he’d even revisited that spot in the lunch room and tried to find if there were hidden cameras, after Lucy’s friend Verona had quizzed him before lunch.  No cameras, Lucy hadn’t been there that day, and coordination with other students would require her to secretly collaborate with students outside her friend group.

Both of the two girls had been cagey, too.

He’d waited until the end of the day and all through school today for the next step in the game.  If he’d been set up to be a participant, then there would have to be people showing up to quiz him, to say more, to give that trail of information he could follow.  They’d have to sell him on the next stage in things, while someone watched the interaction with their phones set to record.

The longer it went without that happening, the more he’d felt like he’d missed out on something.  Worse, it was tailor made to him.  Aimed at him.  It felt that perfect for him, yet anyone could have seen that folded up paper wedged between the lunch table and the wall.  If any part of it was real, it spoke to him and promised a prize perfect for him.  If it wasn’t… the fact he knew about computers, video editing, sound editing, and he was a good actor, it made getting involved feel so right.

When the premise had felt so right, each passing hour without someone following up or leading him to the next part of the narrative felt more and more wrong.

He really didn’t feel like it was a game now.

He clicked around the website.  He hadn’t remembered it -the website address was long and nonsensical- and it hadn’t stayed in his computer history, but he’d had the flier since lunch on Friday.  He’d spent the weekend digging into the lore, and had found a site where people were talking about it.  The site had cleared itself from his web history, somehow, but the research he’d done hadn’t.  He’d traced his way back, found a page with the link, and he was back, even without the flier.

His mom was baking downstairs, and it smelled amazing.  It made his anxiousness increase, as he continued navigating the site, looking for angles, possible hidden text.  Nothing lined up, the site design wasn’t intuitive, and there were numerous instances where sections of the site that felt like they should be main pages were separated by multiple clicks, where one click might lead to a broken page, another might lead to a gallery of distorted images with the link easy to miss between two images, and yet another might require horizontal scrolling for thirty seconds before the link appeared at the bottom, easily missed.  All in an outdated interface from twenty-five years ago, on an ugly website the same color as the flyer.

He opened up the source code and found a mess.  He looked through it, searching for anything in numbers, letters, and characters that might be a pattern, then closed the sub-window.  People way better than him had dug into it, studied it, and given their analysis, and they’d concluded that what was on the site didn’t match what was in the code.  The other site behaviors didn’t line up with what was in the code.

He’d tried to copy-and-paste text to a notepad file so it was easier to put together, but only got gibberish and broken characters.  He’d painstakingly tried to copy it over manually, the website on one screen and notepad on the other, and then the notepad file had crashed.  Notepad.

So he’d tried to copy it over by hand.  Simple words for a ritual to be voiced aloud, nothing fancy.  The further he got, the more he found he was transposing words, or misspelling.  When he went back to check earlier stuff, he found more errors he hadn’t even realized he was making.

That one was hard to shrug off or explain away.

Frustrated at the lack of progress or new information, he minimized the window.

A beep made Gabe jump.  He glanced back toward the door, looked back to the computer, and found the notification.  Peyton was online.  One of his friends from school.

Gabriel007: Hi!

Peytowin: o hi
Peytowin: I saw ur movie

He smiled.

Gabriel007: How did you like it?

Peytowin: it was good!
Peytowin: the lion cub was cute!
Peytowin: & u were so cute as a kid!

His smile dropped from his face.

Peytowin: u did a good job!!

He’d been in a movie when he was nine.  It hadn’t made it to major theaters, but it hadn’t been small either.  A lot of the time, according to his cousin, it was shown in Christian summer camps on movie night.

He’d wanted to keep acting.  His parents had supported him, paying for lessons in acting, his parents had paid his aunt and uncle for room and board so he could go to Toronto and go to an acting school for a semester.  They’d paid for singing lessons and lessons in piano and guitar.  There had been a few close calls with other opportunities.  A ‘we’ll call you’ that had actually sounded interested, followed by their production shutting down.  There had been a thing for a TV show, and the director had liked working with him, he’d had good chemistry with the actors, he hadn’t messed up once, and people had even said they were impressed, and then ninety percent of his stuff had been cut in the editing room.

He had told boys in his class about minor celebrities he’d met and events he’d gone to, and they hadn’t believed him.  The friends he’d made outside of class had been equally skeptical, except for Peyton.  Peyton was nice.  Peyton was cute.

Inspired, he typed.

Gabriel007: You could be in a movie
Gabriel007: Your cute

Peytowin: noo

Gabriel007: Do you want to do something this week? You & me?

Peytowin: umm maybe…
Peytowin: when?

Gabriel007: Tonight?

He looked at the minimized tab with the site still on it.  He maximized it to see his name lying there in the white space, unsubmitted.  It would be a scheduling conflict if Peyton wanted to do something.

Peytowin: its 2 late sry

Gabriel007: Tomorrow night?

Peytowin: I got plans with vince & dylan

He itched to type something in response to that.

Vince and Dylan were other guys in their friend group and they were the guys who stuck to Peyton a lot.  They got kind of hostile and crabby, especially if Gabe was hanging around for more than a couple of days in a row, and especially if Gabe was talking to Peyton a lot.  He’d had his one and only blow-up fight with Peyton after he told her he thought they were toxic, and that she should stop hanging around with them.  He was pretty sure that it had been their idea for Peyton to go silent for nearly a week after.  It was only after he found a chance to talk to her without them around that they hadn’t been able to stop her from letting him back into the group.

Vince and Dylan had been hard to get along with since.  Ganging up on him, getting mad at the slightest excuse, and even taking seats next to Peyton so he couldn’t sit next to her.  It was childish.

Childish and frustrating.  It wasn’t like the guys in his own class really talked to him, and his class was all grade eights and nines; when the boys in his class rejected him, they talked to other people in their grades and shut him out.

Gabriel007: Thurs?

Peytowin: I think I have to have dinner with my family.
Peytowin: I’m busy a lot of nights sry

Gabriel007: Friday?

Peytowin: umm
Peytowin: we’ll talk about it when its closer 2 then
Peytowin: no promises
Peytowin: I g2g
Peytowin: I got on to play a game before bed
Peytowin: if I wait 2 long my dad will make me log off mid game & I’ll rank down




Gabriel007: GLHF
Gabriel007: shoot me a message before you log off and let me know if you won

He waited a minute for the response, and then closed the conversation window.

Things hadn’t been the same since Vince and Dylan had stuck their noses in.

He clicked around the sites some more.  Most of his attention was on the preparations page.  A list of things to do before one of the rounds of the ritual.

Rest… he hadn’t slept super well last night, with the ranker thing and the flyer getting taken from him.  Hydration… he could do that.  Clothes…

He got up and went to his closet.  He had a faux leather jacket that he was pretty sure could take a beating.  Jeans were tough.  He had hiking boots.  He also had some old rollerblading stuff in the closet, from back when he’d started at this school.  He’d thought about rollerblading to school every day, but on his first day Alayna had made fun of him for how he waved his arms around while rollerblading around, and after rollerblading home that day, he’d never really taken it out of his closet.

Having poise and posture and presenting himself the way he wanted to was important to him, after so many acting classes, and being made fun of for doing the opposite cut too deep.  Thinking about it gave him a bad feeling, and he felt like it would linger.

If he wore the pads and wristguards and stuff along with the jacket, he suspected it would start to hamper his movements.  Which was better?

There was a knock at his door.

“Come in.”

His mom opened the door.  She had a plate of beignets, apparently jelly filled, and some cookies that might have been shortbread, dusted with icing sugar.

“Brought you a treat,” she said.  She crossed his room and placed the plate on the corner of his desk.  “I remember you said you liked these, and this is a cookie recipe I got from Sharon.”

“Thanks,” he said, eyeing the plate at his desk.  He still stood in front of his open closet.

“What are you up to?”

“I dunno,” he said.  “Trying to decide on some stuff.”

“I was going to ask if you wanted tea,” she told him.  “Or if you want something else.”

Caffeine was something the later parts of the preparations page talked about.  Caffeine and other drugs.  It was hard to strike the right balance with some drugs, but people were pretty positive about caffeine.

“Please.  Thanks,” he said.

She walked up behind him and ruffled up his hair.  Her hand touched his arm.  It was thin, despite his efforts at doing pull-ups and pushups.  He’d had a huge growth spurt, and he was trying to get his body fat down.  He felt like he was getting the worst of all worlds, and at the same time, his mom was getting all anxious at him.

“Are you still bothered about the phone thing?” she asked.

The ranker.  He’d sat at zero with four other boys.

“I was trying not to think about it,” he said, a little more bitter and snappish than he meant to be.

“Sorry,” she said.  “I was thinking of talking to the school about it.”

He shrugged, his back still to her, the closet still in front of him.

“I know you said they didn’t make the phone thing, but they should talk to students and stop people from using it or talking about it.”

“Yeah,” he said.

She rubbed his arm, a concerned look on her face, then dropped her hand.

“I’ll get your tea,” she said, quiet.

“Thanks mom,” he said.  “Love you.”

“I love you too, Gabriel.”

He sat down heavily in his chair, and ate the powdered beignets with raspberry filling, and the powder-dusted cookies.  He smiled at his mom as she brought the tea, and when the door was closed, looked up Peyton on social media, finding pictures and saving them to a folder.

He stepped into his bathroom, adjacent to his room, to wash his face and hands of the powder.  He looked up at the mirror, his face lit harshly from above, dripping with beads of moisture.

With wet hands, he pushed his hair back and away from his face.  He was trying to grow it out so that if there were any auditions or anything, he could go long or tell them he was willing to cut it.  Right now it was in an awkward middle stage where it poofed up, especially on one side.  It took a lot of hair gel to get it to cooperate, and the gel didn’t last most of the day.

A year or so ago he’d started growing up, with an emphasis on the up.  He wasn’t the cute kid he’d been anymore.  His face was taking on a weird shape.

It was feeling more and more like food was an enemy, and it wasn’t playing fair.  If he couldn’t be a kid actor, he needed to fit other molds.  There were guys with weird faces who did really well, but they were also pretty fit.  Having a six pack like they did seemed to be impossible, when it required super low body fat, and he couldn’t even fathom how they did it where they had a six pack and bulging veins all the time.  Not when that kind of muscle required protein, which required eating more.

He felt like he was fumbling along, struggling to find the right answer, while a hundred conflicting expert voices told him different things, and non-expert voices like his mom pushing other food at him.  Everything was unnecessarily hard.  Sleeping, when he was thinking of the phone app.  Eating, when he felt like he was doing something wrong no matter how much, how little, or what he ate.  With Peyton.  With his classmates.

When he’d done the thing for the app, he’d told himself he would do badly, but that internal voice had had a nudge and a wink, like he’d be surprised.  He was an actor, he was thin, he was tall, he dressed nice.  He might even be middle or upper-middle of the list.  That it would open doors and girls could fight over him, and things would be better.

The result hadn’t validated that small part of Gabriel that liked himself.  It had given proof to the insidious and constant voices from the big, ugly part of himself that didn’t.

He had powdered sugar on his shirt.

He pulled it off.  Whatever he did tonight, whether he went to bed or clicked that button, he’d need to change.

Gabe stared at himself in the mirror.  His body hair was starting to come in, but it had started at his nipples, making them look like daisies with black hair instead of white petals.  He had more hairs misplaced in the middle of his chest, halfway between nipples and belly button, and they weren’t even short, they were long and scraggly like the nipple ones.  His face was a weird too-broad shape, his hair was in a weird middle stage, his arms and torso were disproportionately long, and he didn’t have a six pack despite his efforts.

He felt like the person in the mirror was the enemy.  If that person in the mirror could be better, maybe Peyton would accept his offer for a date.  Not just hanging out one-on-one as friends like he’d offered tonight, but an actual date.

Staring at the almost unrecognizable person in the mirror, he felt his expression twist without his wanting it to.  He smeared a wet hand against his reflection, to mar the image, and then picked up the cup.

He drank water, cup after cup.  He was still working on drinking when he opened the cabinet, searching for medications and stuff.  He searched for ‘the pink stuff’, as the website had called it, and had it.  Anti-emetics.  They settled the stomach and stopped people from throwing up.

Nothing.  He’d have to ask his parents, and he didn’t want to field his mom’s questions about his diet and stuff.

Besides, this wasn’t two hours before.

He moved on.  He was acting as if it were a certainty that it would work, he knew.  Because it had to work.

He got dressed, choosing the jacket and a pair of jeans.  He laced up the boots and then walked over to the bathroom where he hadn’t yet put away his old first aid kit.  They took it camping when they went, but in the off-season they kept it in his bathroom.  He found gauzy bandages and wrapped them around his neck, then his forearm.  There were more bandages that were for other kinds of injury, like splints and wrapping sprains, and he used those on his other forearm, where he trapped a magazine against his forearm.  He did the same with his shins, and then his midsection.

This had to work.

He couldn’t wear everything from his rollerblading kit, but he could wear the wrist guards, buttoning up the jacket sleeves around them.  His hand mobility was still okayish.

Then he stretched.  Joints popped and he worried he was doing more harm than good, but he followed the advice.

There were parts of the website that were barred, only for paying members.  In the main chat, they said it was to screen out the people who weren’t committed, and to help keep the site running.  Obviously, though, Gabe didn’t have a credit card.  He wondered if he could ask his mom for one without being suspicious.

No, he’d see if it was for real first.  If it was, it would go for eight nights, spread out across three weeks.

He went to the site, and he read over the ritual while continuing to stretch, going over it.

He finished stretching, and grabbed his rollerblading helmet.  Then he sat down in his computer chair.  It didn’t feel like the next logical action after all the prep, and he almost lost all momentum.  His body was stiff with the bindings and the protection he had strapped on, and he felt overly dressed and overly equipped for the act of dicking around on his computer.

He stared at the screen for a good minute, checked the discussion chat, which was emptier than it normally was, and then returned to the screen.

This had to work.

He had no idea what he was supposed to do if it didn’t.  He needed an answer, an escape, a way to make things make sense, even he had to distort reality a bit to do it.

He clicked.

Gabriel J. Necaise.

Submitted.

Gabriel felt like an idiot.  The feeling only got worse as seconds passed and nothing changed.

There was a bloop as Peyton messaged him.  She didn’t always before logging out for the night, even with reminders, but it would be a quick ‘night’ before logging off.  If she’d finished this soon, she’d probably lost right away.  Too bad.

He didn’t have the heart to look.

He’d get involved on other levels.  It was a cool idea.  He could do videos and contribute to the mythology, he knew.

He still felt devastated.

Had the timing been wrong?  The analysis and collaboration site had said it didn’t matter, but that had never made sense to him.  Had he waited too long in the evening?  Was it better to do it at sundown?

He looked at his alarm clock by his bed and jumped a bit.  The number and arrangement of digits didn’t fit the normal spots or slots for characters on his alarm clock, too numerous, and too crammed in.

It read ‘367.15’ followed by three numbers that were changing so rapidly he couldn’t follow them.  The last two digits after the decimal point could have been seconds, but they didn’t seem to go down at a measured or usual pace.  Faster than seconds.

When the .15 lurched their way down to zero, it changed to 366.75 and continued ticking down in inconsistent amounts and speeds, sometimes three seconds at a time, sometimes one.

He looked back at his computer, and opened up the message from Peyton.  A short word in gibberish, aligned to the bottom right, not the top left.  The gibberish looked like what he’d seen when copy-pasting the text from the website to a notepad file.

And her portrait, shown in the top left of the conversation window.  Her face was missing.

Disconcerted, he closed it.  Behind that window was the open folder with all the social media pictures he’d downloaded of her.  Each one was different, modified.  Faces gone.  He closed that too, his heart racing.

A few clicks told him that websites were now impossible to navigate, like the website he’d submitted his name to had been.  Text was unreadable.  The clock in the bottom right of his monitor lurched downward, a little slower than his alarm clock at first, then racing forward to catch up and surpass it.

It lined up with what he’d read.  They had from midnight until dawn, or until the ritual finished, whichever came first.  Nevermind that he hadn’t clicked the button anywhere near midnight; the time available was supposed to always be midnight to dawn.

And the time that counted down didn’t go by normal rules.

He got up and crossed his room, helmet under one arm.

His house smelled strange, in a way he couldn’t quite put his finger on.  It didn’t smell bad, but it didn’t smell good either.  Dusty, maybe, mingled with an overly human smell.

He headed for the stairs, and something big came at him.

Scrambling back, he bumped into the table at the end of the hallway.

“Ah!” he cried out, half in surprise and half in pain.

His eyes widened, his hand clapping over his mouth.

Too late.  They appeared, tearing out of his parent’s bathroom and from under the table.  Children, a girl with overalls and her hair in braids, and a messy looking boy who was only wearing tighty whiteys and a long-sleeved shirt.  The girl pushed the boy out of the way, sending him sprawling, and grabbed Gabriel’s wrist.

He pulled away, but she was stronger than him.  Her mouth opened, and her broken teeth bit into his elbow.  Her bite strength was enough to get through the jacket, the magazine he’d trapped against his arm, and ground into or through the bone of the elbow in a way that made pain jolt through his arm, back, and the upper right of his chest.

If he hadn’t had his hand clapped over his mouth, he might have made another noise, or swore.  His eyes went wide and his arm jerked.

The ‘miss a word’ rule.  Crying out counted, it got punished, and the result tended to make people cry out more.

She let go of him, snatched the helmet from his hand, and with the pain at his elbow, he didn’t have the hand strength to resist.  She backed away, bumping into the pantsless boy, who growled resentfully at her.  The two children -waifs- backed away, one retreating into one of the side rooms of the hallway, the other further down the hall.

Gabe was cornered, because to his left was the thing in the stairwell, and to his right were the children in the hallway.

The thing ascended the stairs.  It wore his mother’s clothes, it had his mother’s hair, but it didn’t move like her, and like Peyton’s pictures, it had a giant hole instead of a face.  Also like Peyton’s, the hole was framed by teeth, like a mouth stretched open as wide as it could go, teeth large, stretched out from forehead to chin.  The interior was like a mouth’s, but darker.  Small streams of drool leaked out from between teeth and over the lip, making the front of her dress wet.

Not his mom, but one of the Witnesses.  That was on the website too.  They were supposed to be harmless, but people hadn’t figured out everything.

She moved like she was sleepwalking, ascending the stairs, walking past Gabe as he pressed himself backward against the wall.

He hurried downstairs, being mindful of the steps, and pulled off his jacket as best as he could with the pain at his elbow.

Stupid mistake, Gabe, he thought.  You get one.  Only the one.

He used the bandages he’d already wrapped around his arms to bind up his elbow.  Gauze, and then the splinting bandage to secure it in place.  It throbbed more from the pressure.

A waif was in his living room, sitting on the back of the couch.  A long-ish haired child of indeterminate gender, wearing a shirt with a skull on it.  Just next to the child was the back of Gabe’s dad’s head.  His dad’s face had the mouth-shaped hole, and the way it bent back suggested his head had hinged back at one point, the lower half at a different orientation to the upper half, so the mouth lolled open.  The thing’s teeth were ordinary size, but there were two rows of them, in too large a number, with the occasional tooth wedged into the mix so it stood up and out.

The child watched, expression blank, legs kicking against the back of the couch.  Behind the child was the glowing television that provided backlight, displaying a distorted non-channel, like what showed on cable when clicking up into the upper nine-hundreds, flickering, blurring into itself, the colors changing.  The clock by the television marked the countdown.  349.45, with three more numbers after that changed too fast to follow with the naked eye.

Gabe retreated back, stepping into the dining room.

Not the dining room.

The dining room table was gone, replaced with a counter with laundry.  The washing machine and dryer were side by side instead of the washer being stacked on top, and laundry was folded.  An ironing board and clothes rack were set up against the wall.  A dehumidifier groan-hummed in a corner, its display not reading the current humidity level, but the countdown.  348.15.

The kitchen had changed too.  Some of the tools and storage stuff from the garage and basement had been moved here.  The stove was gone, replaced by a secondhand television set.  Tools sat scattered on the counter.

He opened cabinets as he passed them, looking up as a child entered the room from the other door.  Her clothes were old fashioned, her hair dyed with a stripe of green, her mouth ajar.  When he walked around the room, he kept the central workshop table between himself and her.

They weren’t supposed to attack if he didn’t break a rule, but it was hard to let his guard down around a strange kid who stared at him, especially after one of them had attacked him.  He kept one eye on her as he kept investigating.

The contents of the cabinets had changed.  No more cereal, no tuna, no oatmeal, nothing canned.

No forks, no knives, no spoons, no plates.

He picked up an especially long screwdriver with a wedge tip.  There was a bang and the sound of things falling to the ground.  The child on the other side of the table was gone.

He backed up as she came tearing through and past the storage boxes beneath the table, too fast.  One of her hands seized his wrist, the other the screwdriver.  Her eyes were wide open, intense, her breathing hard.

Have no knife, he thought.  He relaxed his grip on the tool.  She took it and immediately backed off.

Not punished with a bite unless he actually used the ‘knife’, or held onto it for too long.  According to the field reports, such a thing tended to involve picking up and using improvised tools in the spur of the moment.

His elbow really hurt.

He checked out more of what was supposed to be the kitchen, and then let himself out the back door, into his backyard.

The lawn had been replaced with gravel.  There was no garden.  There were no bugs flying around the decorative light by the back door.  No birds in the trees, which looked more like concrete than wood.  There was a waif sitting on the fence.  A girl wearing a baseball cap and oversized jersey, with bare feet dirty and raw.  She smiled as she saw him, biting her lip at the same time.  Her eyes were hidden by her cap.  The shadows danced slightly, as if they were beneath a stuttering light.

He looked up.

The moon flickered, like it was trying to hold ten or twelve different positions in the sky at once, the positions close enough to touch one another or overlap, but never sitting still.

Now that he was outside, he could hear the singing, faint, echoing over Kennet.  He could identify the direction that the bulk of it came from.

He turned, heading for the gate so he could get to the main street.

His heart leaped as he heard more scrambling, that mad rustle, with feet crunching through gravel.

Hands seized his pants leg.  The girl with the cap.

He couldn’t speak, but if he could, he would have told her he was going, he had to go through the gate to get there.

Other waifs poured out of the house.  One jumping from the window of what should’ve been the kitchen.  Ten or twelve, including the ones he’d already seen, like the girl with the stripe in her hair and the old fashioned dress, the child of indeterminate gender with the skull shirt, the boy with the underpants, and the girl with the overalls who had blood around her mouth.

More hands gripped him.  If he pulled with all his strength, he could pull them off the ground, or get them off balance, but they refused to release him, and they pulled him off balance.

He grunted as he hit the ground.

Grunts were fine.  He was glad of that.  The rule they’d worked out on the site was that it couldn’t be anything that could be mistaken as part of a word.  ‘Ah’ and ‘uh’ counted.  Grunts and whistles didn’t.

He had to keep that fact in mind as they roughly dragged him, grabbing his clothes, the boy without pants on grabbing the hair at the back of Gabriel’s head.  It was all he could do to keep from having his face driven into the gravel.  His narrow waist made it hard to keep his pants up, so he had to fight to grab his belt.  They took him in the most straightforward direction, straight to the fence, where half of them scrambled up, balancing or hanging off the top, the other half holding him.  They passed him up like he was some inanimate object, got him over the top, the upper edge of the fence scraping against his jacket and pelvis, and then roughly dumped him onto the other side, before leaping down onto and around him.

He tried to get to his feet, but they didn’t care to let him.  Hands with fingernails ranging from the ragged to the black-painted grabbed him and pulled him off balance again, dragging him across more gravel, then concrete.  He heard a splash before he even saw water, and gulped in a large breath.

They dragged him into the neighbor’s pool.  The water was salt water, not chlorinated, and stung his eyes.  He was dimly aware of them jumping in after him, grabbing him while he was under, so he could barely flounder.

They tugged at him intermittently rather than cleanly dragging him, as the air in his lungs began to run out.

Don’t form a syllable when you gasp, he told himself.  He was aware that his ‘armor’ was water-logged, now.  The magazines he’d bound around his shin had come free, and floated out of his pants leg and into the water as he kicked his leg in an effort to get forward.  If I get a chance to gasp.

They tugged and pulled, working as a group, dragging him over the raised concrete lip at the pool’s edge.  He coughed and gulped in air with his mouth wide and tongue stretched out, but he managed to avoid making more sounds.

They were out of the neighbor’s yard and halfway across the street before he managed to get his feet under him and stand up.  The baseball cap girl held onto his sleeve, marching toward the destination, and because of her height, she pulled him down so he was forced to stoop, his back bent.  Another one walked closely enough in front of him that he kept kneeing the boy in the back and stumbling.  The kid didn’t seem to care.

The music grew louder as they got closer.  It reached its peak at the town center, which wasn’t far from school.  The movement through places didn’t seem to follow logic much more than the traversal of the website had.  It was fast, rough, with abrupt changes between environments.

There were Witnesses.  Tons of them.  Standing outside stores.  Standing in the middle of the street.  Sitting in driver’s seats, in cars with the engines off, giant mouths instead of faces.  Messed up teeth.  Sometimes with tongues lolling out of mouths, and sometimes drooling.

One Witness for every person who would have been out this evening.

He couldn’t even guess at the number of the children.  They stood at the edge of rooftops, sitting on cars, in groups.  A few that were close to him as he was pulled along reached out to try to get a grip and add their strength to things.  One succeeded, latching onto Gabriel’s ear, bending him into an even more stooped position.

All together, they let go of him, and he dropped to his knees, soaked, dirty, scraped up and breathing hard, one hand at his ear.

There were five more people present, gathered into a loose circle.  They ranged from a black-haired girl Gabriel’s age to a guy with a beard and belly who could have been a dad.  The nervousness of the group was palpable, with one skinny, older teenager with tattoos pacing, and the beard guy was fidgeting and looking up at the clock a lot.

The intersection they were in formed a T-shape, and the biggest building at the intersection was the town center, big, concrete, with a gazebo-like structure on the tower, which also featured a clock.

There were four hands of the same length on the clock, and they all moved clockwise at different speeds, in fits and starts.  The moon was behind the tower, still flickering violently.

There’s supposed to be eight of us, Gabriel thought, as he undid the buttons at his wrists, temporarily removed his wrist-guards, and adjusted the wraps, getting rid of the most waterlogged magazines that weighed him down more than they offered protection.

Headlights illuminated their group.  Weaving around and through witnesses, the children in the street backing out of the way, a car pulled up to their group.  The door slammed.

Gabriel recognized the girl from his school, even though he didn’t know her name or anything much about her.  Just a face he’d seen.  She always wore sunglasses, and wore them now, along with a real leather jacket and jeans.  She’d strapped on something like a hard wrap of leather around one arm, and the other arm had a covering that extended out over the hand, studded with metal.

She was halfway from the car to them when a child reached out, grabbing the armor at her hand, latching onto it.  She reached down to unstrap it, and left it with the child as she continued walking forward, frowning.  The hand the armor had been covering had only two fingers and a thumb.  She pulled off her sunglasses, and one of her eyes was missing.  She’d drawn on the skin where her eye should be, a winking eye, like a half circle with radiating ‘eyelashes’.

He’d seen that winking eye as an avatar on the site.  He got her attention, then ‘knocked’ the knuckles of one fist against his shoulder.  His elbow protested, every movement pulling torn skin tight, while reminding him that something had chipped or cracked the bone.

She smiled, knocking her shoulder.

Of the seven people present, three more repeated the gesture.  The ones who didn’t were the girl with black hair and the beard guy.

Five of them who’d done research and seen the site, then.  Gabe, Wink, Tattoos, a heavier girl with a big jacket, and a guy who might have been First Nations, who looked pretty ridiculously fit.

Why would you do this if you were already that perfect? Gabe wondered.

The music began to get softer.  The guy with tattoos who was doing all the pacing looked at them, making a hand gesture to be quiet.

There was distant muffled screaming that steadily got closer and closer.

Children dragged someone else.  A woman.  Her screams were muted by her own hand at her lower face, and her other hand held something wooden that the children were grabbing and pulling on, helping with the dragging process.

They dropped her at the edge of the rough circle.  Their eighth contestant, who fell in a heap.  She sobbed, her hand over her mouth, snot at one nostril, tears all down her cheeks, her hand still holding onto a wooden crutch.  A child leaned in, intent on biting her fingers, and she snatched her hand back.

The crutch was taken away.  She continued to sob, stopping only to scream, hand at her mouth.

She was missing a foot, with only a stump terminating halfway down her leg.  The other foot was prosthetic.  Her arm was bare, and she had six circles on it.  Six phases of the moon for six rounds of this ritual.  She hadn’t worn layers, and the narrow strap of her top made her messed up shoulder pretty obvious.  It had ridden up, and the part of her stomach that hadn’t been scraped up by being dragged was red, scarred and dimpled, like serious cellulite covered in burn tissue.

With her arrival, the singing around this weird, altered Kennet had ceased entirely.  It was silent, except for her ongoing sobbing.

His heart pounded, looking down at her.

She screamed again, and he stepped toward her, bending down.  The guy with the tattoos snapped his fingers twice in quick succession, and when Gabe looked at him, shook his head.

Gabe hesitated, partially straightening.

‘Wink’ stepped over the girl, put a hand on Gabriel’s shoulder, and led him away.  She held up a fist in front of her chest, then ‘knocked’ her shoulder.

Rule.  Cooperation.

He looked back at the screaming, sobbing woman.

‘Wink’ tapped his shoulders to get his attention, then made the cooperation sign before holding out her good hand, all fingers and thumb extended.

Cooperation part five.  Injuries.  The website had given instructions.  What to take care of and how.  Injuries changed after the night was over, becoming more like birth defects or injuries they’d had since they were babies.  Memories and attitudes changed to compensate.

And if one person’s injuries got bad enough, they were supposed to leave the dead weight.

The website had made it sound so reasonable.

It didn’t feel reasonable now, but…

He nodded.  Survival came first.

The woman ‘knocked’ at her shoulder.  Cooperation.  One finger extended on her bad hand.

Cooperation part one.  Roles.

They were starting now.

They quickly split up the roles.  Wink took leader, and nobody really seemed upset about it.  Tattoos was designated ‘forward’, Beard Guy and the Big Coat girl that was between Gabriel and Wink’s age were given similar roles.  Gabriel and a rather built teenage guy were tasked with the flanks.  The black haired girl Gabe’s age was designated for the ‘fence’ role.  Gabe got a glimpse of the marks at her arm.  The girl with black hair didn’t really seem to know the hand signals, maybe because she hadn’t found or thought to look for the websites, but she had two marks at her forearm, near the elbow.  She’d done this before and had interacted with this group.

More hand signals.  Cooperation, part two.

Setting the field.

People had driven in and some of the cars nearby were theirs, and they’d brought stuff.  Netting, plastic fence, and mesh.  Tattoo had two orange plastic containers of gasoline, and began to pour them out onto the ground.

The woman lay there near the middle of the intersection, sobbing, as they prepped.  Gabe watched as Wink wordlessly demonstrated how to hang and set up the barriers.  It had to be easy to collapse if they needed it collapsed.

Gabe finished one corner as best as he could with only his left hand, then moved on.

As he rounded the corner of a building to help with the next bit of fence, he saw people looking out to the side.

Three figures were approaching.  They could almost be mistaken for the children that were scattered everywhere, but they were too animated, and too curious about their surroundings, looking around and looking up at the moon, where the children of this place were focused wholly on the ritual’s participants.  They couldn’t be Witnesses, because they had faces…

Animal faces, two of them wearing wide-brimmed hats, the other with a cord tying her hat to her neck.

The cat-faced girl had shadow clinging close to her cloak, to the point it was hard to make her out in the dark, not helped by the dark fur of her face.  Her eyes flashed violet as she looked over everyone and everything.  Her cloak was pulled over her hat, brim and point swept back, and made the hood more pointy behind her head.

The one with the fox’s face was literally smoking, the smoke flowing down her body and cloaking most of it, forming a whorl at her feet.  When traces of the smoke graced her orange-furred face, the glowing of her red eyes extended to the smoke.  Her hair did something similar, fox’s fur becoming long, tight curls with a faint red tint, the ends of the hair impossible to distinguish from the rising smoke.

She set those glowing eyes on Gabe, staring him down, until he looked away.  He almost missed seeing her throw something down at the ground.  When he looked up, he could see that the smoke that rolled off her and down to the ground had helped cloud a figure standing behind her.  A scary looking guy who carried a heavy-duty gun.

Children immediately reached out, seizing the gun.  The man kicked one, hard, saying something Gabriel couldn’t make out, and the children backed off, growling.

The third girl was quicker, moving from a point behind the other two, catching up, and skipping easily over the four-foot high fence of thick plastic netting, finer nets, and the barbed wire that Tattoos was stringing up.  A long cape fluttered behind her before she landed in a crouch, a hockey stick resting against her shoulder.  She hurried forward to the woman who was sobbing.  Her face was a deer’s, with antlers.

Children came after the hockey stick.  She stuck the end of it out, catching one in the shoulder, and it looked like the child had been hit by a car.  The kid went flying, and the stick cracked a bit lengthwise.

She hopped up to grab the railing of a second floor balcony, where the kids couldn’t easily reach her.

“We have questions,” the Cat said.  She climbed onto the roof of the car and used that as a jumping off point, landing on the road on the other side of the fence.  She walked over toward her friend the Deer.

The Fox continued to stare Gabriel down.

Gabriel placed his hand flat over his mouth, shaking his head.

“You can nod or shake your head.  We can play twenty questions.”

Gabriel hesitated.  It was a complication in an already dangerous situation.  A distraction.

He felt a hand on his shoulder.  Tattoos.  It was a guy he’d seen around the highschool, maybe a graduate from last year.  Gabe could see the scarring at the bend of the older one elbow, the circles marking the three rounds he had participated on the other.

The scarring would be from drugs.

The website had said drug users sometimes participated.  A different kind of consumption, maybe.

The older teenager with the tattoos pulled Gabe away from the three girls.

“Don’t be stupid, Gabriel,” the Fox said, the soldier standing behind her.  “Don’t be stupider than you’ve already been.”

She knew of him?  He felt like he should recognize the voice, but every time he tried to put a face to the sound, he could only picture the fox’s face.

Tattoos snapped his fingers twice to get Gabe’s attention.  He pointed up at the clock.

As far as he could interpret it, they’d already used up half of their allotted time, somehow.

Nervousness gripped him.  His hand went to his elbow, which still hurt.  There were so many children nearby.  If he had to guess, there were one hundred and fifty to two hundred.  An assembled crowd.  Maybe thirty witnesses.  The three strangers with animal heads.

But they had to mind the time.  The field had been set.  That was part two of the order of things.

He walked away from the Fox.  After a short delay, others followed.

They had to focus on this.  It required everything.  Mind, coordination, concentration, memorization, fitness…

People formed a loose circle once again.  Fence girl stood a little back and away.

With hand signals, Wink pointed at herself, then slowly went clockwise around the group, pointing at each person in turn.

Gabe nodded.  People nodded.  Even the sobbing woman with the two kids behind her.  Gabe felt Tattoos’s hand pat his shoulder.

He’d never thought he’d be so gratified to get that kind of support from someone so different from him.

Wink turned her face skyward.  To her right, her injured hand was shaking so badly it was twitching, almost closing into a fist.  Her left hand did something similar.

Her nervousness was contagious, everyone’s was.

She took a deep breath.

Gabriel found himself doing the same.

Her voice was high and sweet, the words drawn out, the notes perfect. “A song for your supper.

Small hairs on Gabriel’s arms and neck stood on end.

A morsel for a melody,” Tattoos sung.

A ballad for your board,” Gabe sung.  He was pretty proud of his singing voice, even if the lyrics of the ritual song were simple.

A chorus for your collation,” the sobbing woman’s voice was broken with emotion.

A tune for your tuck,” the Beard Guy had a deep voice.

A refrain for your refreshment,” Fence girl sung.

A piece for the potluck,” Big Coat rejoined.

Repeat, Gabe thought, his heart pounding.  Do not forget the damn words.

“A song for your supper,” the muscular teenage guy who might have been First Nations sang.

They all sang together.  “A morsel for a melody.  A ballad for your board.  A chorus for your collation…

At the one part of the fence they’d left undone, there was a snort.

“…A tune for your tuck…”

A bull with short, glossy brown hair entered through a gap in the fence.  The girl they’d given the fence role to gave it a wide berth, still singing, and closed up the netting behind it.

“A refrain for your refreshment…”

Tattoos put his hands to his head, the fear and stress apparent on his expression.

A bull was bad.  From some of the examples on the site, it was not one of the worst possibilities.

It was still bad.

“A piece for the potluck.”

He’d thought the little variations would be the snarl here.  The difference between ‘a melody’ and ‘the potluck’.

A song for your supper,” they sang, all together.  Tattoos kept moving his lips, swearing without actually forming the words as the bull passed by him.

But the bull was huge.  Probably not unusually large for a bull, but its shoulder came up to almost where Gabe’s chin was, and it seemed like it had more muscle than twenty Gabriels might.  He could see the muscles moving beneath the short hair, which was already damp with sweat.  The horns were off-white, and a good foot and a half long.

Wink put her hand up.  She sang, voice high, “If the tune is merry enough, will the dish be sweet?

Fence ignited the gasoline, creating a fire barrier, then jogged over to the next patch.

Gabe almost jumped in with the next line, but the hand she’d raised had dropped, and she was indicating the Beard Guy.  Part of her job as leader.

If the song is jolly enough,” the Beard Guy sung, voice deep, “will the plate be neat?”

The Deer was avoiding kids, who seemed intent on the hockey stick.  The Cat, meanwhile, was crouched low, her dark cloak partially extended around the woman who had been sobbing, hiding her.  They conversed quietly.

The voice in the background was distracting, threatening to throw Gabe off his rhythm.  He had no idea how the woman could sing, listen, answer, and nod without messing up, especially with the bull so close.

The muscular guy sang, “And if the ballad is lively enough, can we hope for meat?”

That’s the starting gun.

The bull had just reached the center of their little circle.  It reared, snorting, and charged Tattoo.  Flame roared as Fence girl ignited another patch of gas.  Gabe gasped, almost saying something.

A song for my supper!” they sang together.  Next verse.

It heaved its bulk around, charging for a gap in their lines.  The website had said they should cluster, trying to get that initial, crucial bit of damage in.  Not so easy, here.

Big Coat started forward, hesitating as the horns swept in her general direction.  She jabbed out, scraping with fingernails for the bull’s eye.  Missed.

It shifted position, jerking sideways, and bowled her over.

There was a sharp whistle to Gabe’s right.  He turned his head, only to hear that heart-stopping series of feet slapping against road.  Wink had been trying to signal him.

His line- he was stuck for a half-second, and he was already late.

The children latched onto him, fingers grabbing at his belt and pulling his pants partway down, while teeth sank into his hip.  The pain froze the air in his throat, and she bit again- a third time.

How shall we cut it,” he sang, his voice strangled.  The child released him. He hiked up his pants again, his leg twitching in reaction to the damage further up.  “If we have no knife?

With our teeth, and with our nails,” Fence sang.  She ignited the last patch of gasoline.  The fox-faced girl and her gun-toting guardian had stepped inside the fence, and the fire was to their backs.

Digging in, and singing out!” the muscular guy sang.  He was trying to get close to the bull, but it was rearing around, its back to a corner, horns sweeping, looking for the most likely threat.

Gabe joined his voice to the others, his voice strangled, as they all sung, “How glad we are to dine!”

He was anything but ‘glad’.

They weren’t doing enough.  The bull was practically untouched, and the ritual was not that long.

“A song for my supper!” they sang together.

Gabe tried to stand, and the damage to his side made it too hard.  He dropped to all fours, landing with his hands on the ground, and the pain at his elbow nearly made his arm give out.

I’ll come to the table,” the woman without feet sang, her face tear-streaked.  “Every phase this moon.

And ne’er again find myself picking-!” Tattoos sung, as he tried to duck under the horns while the bull was distracted.

The bull hit him with head, not horn.  Tattoos stumbled back, and the bull followed up, hopping forward, head dipping sharply down, then up.  The horn-tip sank into Tattoo’s chest.

Gabe was stunned, seeing the man die so very easily.  The horn came free with a wet sound.

-up a spoon!” Wink finished the line, her voice strangled, expression twisting.  She indicated Gabe again.

Nor fork, nor blade!” he sang, his voice hollow.

Nor plate, nor cup!” Fence sang.

Gabe was supposed to fill in the gaps.  He managed to get to a standing position.  The girl with the heavy coat had thrown herself at the bull’s neck, so the horns were beneath her and point out to her side, and it was strong enough to lift her up so her feet weren’t touching the ground.  She grunted, scrabbling to try to get her fingernails past the short fur while keeping her grip.

Oh I’ll have stayed fully supped,” the Beard Guy sung, “and sated since this tune.”

The bull was trying to lift its head with the girl’s full weight resting on its head.  It reared up a bit, trying to dislodge her, and she slipped, her body sliding along the horns.  In another move like that, she’d have her full weight on the horn-points.  He wasn’t sure if the coat was tough enough to withstand that kind of force.

Gabe stumbled forward, his one leg weak, and he knew he didn’t have it in him to jump up.

A song for your supper!” they all sang, Gabe’s voice a grunt.

The girl on the bull’s neck hadn’t sung, she was so busy trying to stay in place.  Children leaped down from one of the nearby rooftops, landed on her back with a two impacts that made her slide down the horns, and bit into her.

I shall not miss a single beat,” the woman who was with the Cat sung.  “Or else I’ll offer tonight’s treat.

I shall not miss a single word,” the muscular guy sang, as he closed in.  He and Gabe each approached the bull from one side.  “Or else I’ll be the one who’s served.

Gabe tried to grab one of the bull’s forelegs.  The bull reacted to the muscular guy doing something similar, and pulled back, out of Gabe’s reach.  Gabe collapsed onto all fours, right in front of the beast.  Partially blind, head weighed down, the bull’s head was down near Gabe.

He jabbed at its eye, hard, and it snorted, making a pained sound.

They don’t think the animals are real, he told himself.

And we’ll tell you,” Wink sung, “that on these nights.  Oh, we shan’t fail to take a bite.

To you alone,” the Beard Guy sung, voice low, “I’ll share this…

The guy grabbed some of the fencing, and started to drag it around, clearly intent on wrapping up the bull.  Children closed in, snarling, teeth bared, and he abandoned the idea.

If a single meal I miss…”

Threatened, the beast backed away, got close to the smouldering fire from the gas, and reversed direction, charging forward.  Gabe, halfway to his feet, did his best to meet the bull, throwing himself at its leg.

Then I shall be but skin and bone…

There wasn’t enough time.

…And I will be a mess,” the Beard Guy finished.

He was supposed to sing, Gabe realized, at the moment of impact.  The bull was huge, and he imagined the impact was like being hit by a car as it pulled out of a parking space.

Gabe grunted, heard the others singing in unison, while he didn’t have the air in his lungs to join them.  If it hadn’t been for the magazines he’d wrapped around himself, he might have cracked ribs.

Oh, this shall be a mess!

He didn’t hear the children coming, between the sound of the big-coat girl’s cries -she’d missed words too- or the snorting and huffing of the bull.  Children were already on top of her.  His voice was late.  “-Be a mess!

He felt hands grip his leg.  Teeth bit through his shoe and into his foot.  Pain made his leg buck, and the kick tore what the teeth hadn’t fully bitten through.

Missed a damn beat, Gabe, he thought, as horror ran through him.

How was he supposed to get through the rest of tonight and seven more nights like it with only part of a foot?

“Oh god,” the Deer said, somewhere behind him.  “They all need to eat it.”

He barely had the breath to do this, let alone sing.  He held onto the bull’s leg, trying to limit its movements.  Blood pouring from his foot made traction hard. He twisted, desperate strength driving him and giving him the strength to put his shoulder in its armpit, his leg by its leg.  The coat girl was still holding onto its head, and the muscular guy was at the others  side, doing something.

It stumbled, hoof not meeting the ground flat,  and dropped to one knee with an audible crack.  For a moment, he thought it would fall on top of him.

A song for your supper!

A ditty for some din!”  The voice was close.  Someone grabbed him, pulling him away.  Wink.  She jumped to helping the girl who had been bitten a dozen times, who still gripped the horns and neck.

Now that he was further away, he could see that the muscular guy had grabbed on at the other side, and had bitten deep into the bull’s neck.

Others piled on.  Wink, the Fence girl, the guy with the beard.

“By when?  How long?” the fox-faced girl asked, her voice overlapping with the muscular guy singing, his face pulled away from the wound, bloody, almost gurgling as he tried to get the words out with his mouth full , “A crooning for some chow.

Gabe tried to block its legs from kicking anyone, wedging himself between body and the knee.  He waiting for his chance to eat.

“How long do these guys have!?” the Fox raised her voice.  “Some of these people aren’t in a position to eat!”

He gave her a head-shake.

Not long.  They were about two-thirds of the way through.  He sang, “A helping for a hymn.

A song for your supper!” Wink sang, before tearing in as best she could, fingernails and teeth trying to sever a bit of raw meat.  Once she had it, she rolled over, her weight still on the bull’s neck.  Fence girl pushed past Gabriel to get at the wound.

A morsel for your melody!”

In the chaos, he could barely tell who was singing.

The bull lurched, throwing some of them off.  Fence girl slipped.  The bull, lurching forward, managed to kick Fence girl, and caught her in the side of the face.  She fell against Gabriel, more like a doll than a person.

These are the closing verses.

Gabriel looked at the woman who had been sobbing.  She looked more at peace than she had been, at least this close to the end.  She nodded, in response to a question from the cat.

A ballad for your board!

Gabriel felt a flutter of panic in his chest.

The rush that gripped him let him put his weight on his injured foot, even if it didn’t function as well as it should, mechanically.  He hobbled forward, his pants leg soaked from hip to ankle with blood from the earlier wound.

A chorus for your collation!” he sang, voice raw.

The bull, head low, horns level with Gabe, was in just as bad a shape as he was, one leg twisted with hoof held up off the ground, blood pouring from a neck wound.

He thought of the prize.  Simple, multifaceted.

If someone with the prize wanted food, it was easy to get.  Winning products for life, restaurant owners offering them food free of charge.

A tune for your tuck!

If a winner didn’t want food, they didn’t have to eat.  Gabe had paid particular attention to one woman who modeled, with a body that didn’t move from her ideal whether she ate nothing at all, or glutted herself.  It became impossible to starve.  The body disconnected in every respect from what it took in.

Addicts found their ‘sustenance’ freely available and didn’t ever have to worry about overdose.

A refrain for your refreshment!

Put at its most basic, never needing to worry about what one took into their bodies ever again.

It would be, he knew, one less thing for him to worry about.  One less futile struggle.

Making one thing easy in life, in a way that other things followed.  Of the five winners he’d read about, all had gotten money.  Inheritances from long lost relatives, payouts from class action suits, other things.  Two of the five had figured out how to keep the money coming.  So long as they spent it on indulgences, particularly food, they kept getting more.

He headed for the bull, hobbling.

He looked back, seeing if he had help.  There was only the Deer girl, her dark blue cape fluttering behind her.  In response to a shout, she twisted in the air, and caught a flying object, wincing as she caught it.  Another object hit the ground to her right, and she scooped it up as she ran past.

She didn’t have the hockey stick anymore.  She brushed her hand along her cloak, and it straightened, going flat and hard.

A piece for your potluck!

Children mobbed her.  They dropped off the roof, darted out from across the street.  She leaped forward in sharp horizontal bounds, clearing ten or more feet at a time before her feet touched the ground.  The children were faster.

Gunfire ripped out.  The man with the gun.  He picked off the kids as they got closer to the deer-faced girl.  A few of them managed to get their fingers on her cloak, tugging and breaking her momentum, just in time for her to be in the bull’s reach.

A flash, brilliant, shone out from behind Gabe.  He saw the bull react, its good eye closing, head twisting away.

A gunshot hit a kid in Gabe’s way.  He looked back to see the Fox holding a gun.

Bullets were still flying and hitting children within arm’s reach of the Deer, the noise of it so loud it rattled Gabriel’s brain in his skull, the Deer met the bull’s horns with the edge of her rigid cape, and the edge of the cape bit into the horn, embedding there.  It didn’t really stop the bull so much as it gave her something to hold onto that was between her and it, so its forward thrust pushed her back instead of impaling her.  Twisting, she reached out, grabbed, and tore off a tatter of flesh at the neck.

He ducked under, and grabbed his own bit, stumbling and falling.  Children around him were getting to their feet.  They’d been shot, but only the impact of the bullets seemed to matter.  They hadn’t died or even been appreciably hurt.

He looked up to see the Deer standing over him, using the edge of her rigid cape to cut her bit of meat in half.  Seeing he already had some, she turned and dashed away.

A song for your supper!

The words were drawn out more than ever before.  To buy time.  Him and the sobbing woman and… who else?  Had the girl with the big coat eaten?

He gulped down the bloody rag, practically inhaling it in his desperation.  He almost choked.

The bull had no fight in it.  It huffed and snorted as he walked back to the main group, but it didn’t charge him.  Blood continued to pour from its neck wound, running down its neck to its leg.

The girl with the big coat sat against a wall, bleeding a pool of blood that expanded beneath her, but she had blood around her mouth, which suggested she’d had something.  It didn’t look like the horns had gotten her, but the kids had.

The fence girl lay face-down on the road.  Wink stood over Tattoos, who had a hole through his chest.

Come moons eight, I’ll be surfeit,” Wink sang, emotion thick in her voice.

The Deer girl leaped, and her forward bound was uneven.  She fell, rolling hard.

He followed, hobbling, one eye on the bull.  People standing near the Deer girl didn’t offer a hand.

Have to let the dead weight go, Gabe thought.  It felt wrong.  The girl who’d been crying and talking to the Cat didn’t even have feet at this point.  How could she help, next moon?

He skirted around rather than get involved.

I have to do this for seven more nights?

The children mobbed the Deer, clutching at her cape.  The Fox and the man with the heavy gun opened fire, shooting to try to get rid of them, or keep them from getting that far.

Full even when I’m emp-ty,” the Beard Guy sung.

“Take the ring off!” the Fox called out.

The children backed off, stepping away.  The Deer got to her feet and started running again, her cape no longer rigid.  She didn’t bound or leap.

The Deer reached the woman who had been sobbing.  She gave her a scrap of meat that was visibly covered in hair, even on the meaty side.  The woman gobbled it down.

“Don’t growl at us,” the Fox told the children nearest her, drowning out some of the final verse.  “Teeth, nails, and diplomacy are fair game.  She used diplomacy.”

The woman on the ground gagged, trying to choke it down.

Hairy meat…

Gabe, shaky, hurting, his guard entirely down, gagged sympathetically.  The taste of the raw meat he’d consumed was rich in his mouth.

He gagged again, and it became more than a gag.  His meal slipped out of his mouth, splattering onto the ground, amid tea and cookies.

Eyes fell on him.  People stayed where they were.

Nobody helped.

He dropped to his hands and knees with a force that might have broken something in his wrist if he wasn’t wearing the guards.  At the same time, his accumulated bite wounds made him sprawl when he’d meant to crawl.

People were more fixated on themselves, grimacing and wincing as their arms smoked, new circles burning their way into their flesh, to mark their night’s success.

He scraped with fingernails, digging into the road, trying to find the meat amid his own puke.

The girl with the deer’s face and antlers ran toward him, her hand cupped.  She still had something.  Even a morsel would do.

He could hear his group singing, like they were very far away.  The last words of the ritual song, inaudible.  They’d drawn it out as much as they could, but they’d reached the end.

With tears in his eyes blurring his view, he knew he didn’t have the time.  He mashed his face into his own vomit, sucking, trying to consume what he needed.  He gagged.

As the Deer girl ran toward him, she had ended up somewhere that wasn’t where he ended up.  It was like she had faded away.

No mark surfaced on his arm.

Beneath a flickering moon, Tattoos and the Fence girl screamed.  They’d been dead, he was almost positive, and now they weren’t.  Children fought one another for the chance to claw and bite at them.  Flesh came away like meat from the tenderest rack of smoked ribs.

The others.  The Deer, the Fox, the Cat, the other participants, they were gone.  The bull was there, but it was turning to smoke.

The song was picked up more than a hundred children who weren’t close enough to grab a meal.  More than a hundred small voices.

Come moons eight, they’ll be surfeit.

A narrow, small arm that was covered in what might have been temporary tattoos was pulled from the meaty mess, pushed aside in the mob’s haste to get to the rest of their meal.  Food was swiped away where it dangled from chins, stolen from hands on the way to mouths, dozens of children fighting for an opportunity to eat something.

Full even when they’re emp-ty.

Children saw him, and they made their approach.

Or else I’ll be…” he joined his voice to theirs as they sang, though they said ‘they’ll be‘ instead.

The first children reached him, grabbing him.  He fought back, pushing them away.  A losing battle against hundreds.  He couldn’t sing as he struggled, only listen.

He knew the words.

…forever a waif, barred from the horn of plen-ty.

Stolen Away – 2.1

Lucy

“I don’t know what to say,” Lucy admitted.

They’d walked out to Heros, the sub shop at the north end of town.  Their allotted time for lunch wasn’t that much, and the lineups at the various fast food places got long, so they’d had to walk at a good clip.  Now they walked a little more leisurely.  Lucy had finished her sandwich but felt queasy.  Avery had only eaten half, before stuffing the rest in her bag.  Verona had just gotten the smallest size of poutine with chicken, even though the poutine at Heros wasn’t that good.

The conversation on the way had been casual, intermittent, mostly focused on the events of school and the morning, with a pointed avoidance of any mention of practice or Others.  At first, at least for Lucy, it had been because they were surrounded by a mob of students, then in the middle of a line.

Now, on the way back, on a grey sidewalk, by a slope of grass that was grey with gravel and the winter’s run-off from the road, beneath a blue sky that didn’t seem to fit everything else, they had a bit more elbow room.

“I don’t know what to say either,” Avery said, looking back to make sure nobody was in earshot.  “I’ve been feeling so lame, trying to figure out what to say to break the silence.”

Lucy shook her head.  Her hair swung left to right, moving out of sync with the rest of her head.  “It’s not just you.”

“I’ve been thinking about what we need to study next,” Verona said.

“Really?” Lucy asked.  “Really?

“And about the other stuff,” Verona added, looking over to the side of the road.  “Last night stuff.”

“I would have been seriously worried if you didn’t care about what happened,” Lucy told her friend.  “Seriously.  It’s normal to be freaked out by um, stuff.”

“Yeah, but-”

“People dying,” Lucy added, as an addendum.  “And what happened to Gabe.”

“We don’t know for sure what happened to Gabe,” Avery said, quiet.  “It was like a cloud was blocking the sun, and then it moved on, and it took everything crazy with it.  It took Gabe with it, along with the bodies.  It took the others.”

“It’s freaky,” Lucy said, and she tried for a quieter, whispery tone, and only achieved a creaky hitch, like her voice had cracked.  She cleared her throat and stuffed her hands into her sweatshirt pockets.  Nobody drew any attention to it.

“He looked scared,” Avery said.  “He’s not on our phone app, he’s not in our class.  His friends from the younger class were hanging out and playing and laughing, and it’s like they don’t know or care.  What do his parents think happened?  Is he dead?  Does he just die, but not get a tombstone or memories?”

“I don’t know,” Lucy responded.  She had a bit of a lump in her throat.  From the moment she’d broken the silence, she’d known that bringing this stuff up would be hard.  “All I know is that he’s an idiot.”

“I think we’re the only people who remember him being in our class,” Avery said.  “If we’re the ones keeping his memory, I don’t want that memory to be just that he’s an idiot.  That’s callous.”

“Maybe I’m a bit callous, hm?” Lucy asked.  Her throat was tight.  “Look, he messed up right at the finish line-”

“If I’d been faster-”

“You were plenty fast,” Verona added.  She’d fallen quiet during the last exchange.

Avery had walked a bit ahead, agitated and focused on what was going on in her head, rather than keeping pace with the group.  She turned around, walking backwards.  “But if I’d gotten the meat I was holding to him, or given him the chunk before going to the woman on the ground, he could have made it.  If he just held onto it and didn’t eat it.”

“And if you delayed,” Lucy said, “The woman on the ground might not have made it.  Or other small things might have gone wrong.  The bull might have hit you and then you would be hurt or dead.  Don’t blame yourself.”

“But-”

“No,” Lucy said, her voice harder.  “Stop.”

When Avery’s expression changed into something that might have been offense, might have been her on the verge of tears, Lucy took a quick step forward, grabbing Avery by the shoulder.  The two of them stopped.  She cast a quick glance back.  The nearest students behind them were about six boys from a year younger, who wouldn’t be close enough to hear much.

“You did so well,” Lucy said, her eyes locked to Avery’s.  When Avery looked down and away, Lucy jabbed Avery’s chin with the thumb of the hand on her shoulder to get her to look back up.  “You were the one who jumped up to help first.  And I’m on board.  I’m glad we did.”

“Yep,” Verona said, off to the side.  “Me too.”

“For that key minute there, you were the bravest and coolest I’ve ever seen anyone be,” Lucy said.  “You don’t get to be that awesome and then blame yourself, because if you do, I’m going to feel worse.”

The boys from behind them had caught up.  Lucy could hear them chattering.  Lucy and Avery moved to the side to let the herd by.

“Why would you feel worse?” Avery asked.

“Because I hung back.  You were in the middle of it and you did more.”

“It’s like a hockey game,” Avery said.  “You can only really go for it if you can trust your team to be where they’re supposed to be, doing what they’re supposed to be doing.  We agreed on roles, in case it got messy.”

“I know, but you were doing more.  If you’re doing twice as much as me and still kicking yourself for not doing enough, then what am I supposed to do?”

Again, that little bit of emotion.  She cleared her throat again.

Avery pulled her shoulder free of Lucy’s hand.  “So I’m not allowed to feel bad?”

“Feel how you want to feel.  But if you’re going to kick yourself, get twice as mad at me, first.”

Verona stepped closer, almost losing her balance, because she’d stopped abruptly and they were walking on a slight slope.  “And five times as mad at me.  I didn’t do much more than crouch there interrogating the lady.  I used the one card.  I would have used another but I didn’t want to set you on fire while trying to get those kids off you.”

“Thank you for not setting me on fire, you’re fine,” Avery said, to Verona.  To Lucy, she said, “I’m not mad at you.  Either of you.  I’m not going to blame you, I’m not going to get mad.”

“Then don’t blame yourself, either.”

“I’m not going to not blame myself!” Avery raised her voice.  She blinked a few times in quick succession. She took a deep breath.

Lucy opened her mouth to say something, but Avery threw up a hand, fast enough Lucy thought she was about to get slapped.  It was just a sign to stop.  Avery huffed.

Lucy stopped, waiting and watching while Avery took another breath, steadying herself.

Avery’s voice was overly level, her words measured out.  “Look, I don’t like getting mad.  I get disappointed and hurt, maybe, when someone’s got a job and they don’t do it, like a teacher not caring enough to be a good teacher, or a person on my team who stops trying or quits on us.  But there aren’t levers you can pull to change other people or other people’s feelings.  It’s hard enough to change ourselves and our own feelings, and sometimes it’s not even possible.  I’d rather focus on being better and doing better.”

“Okay,’ Lucy said.  She took in a breath, measured, like Avery had done.  Avery’s hand was still up there, in that ‘stop’ gesture.  Lucy reached up to Avery’s wrist and pushed the hand down.

“Okay?” Avery asked.

“I just want to say one thing before we drop this,” Lucy told her.  “I used to be a lot like you.”

“What?” Avery asked.

“Kinda,” Verona chimed in.  “Until Lucy was like, ten.”

“If feels like you’re calling me a kid.”

Lucy shook her head.  “No.  Listen, people would do crappy things and be crappy to me, and to people I care about, and my first thought would be, what did I do wrong?  What should I have done?  What did I do to deserve this?”

“Sure,” Avery said, her voice terse.

“I was so confused sometimes.  What, what, what?  Why, why?” Lucy’s voice felt hollow, too airy.  “There were so many times people were awful or things went wrong, and I never learned the reasons why.  Was it because I was a girl?  Was it the look on my face?  Was it the color of my skin?  Did I not have the right friends?  Was I not strong enough?  And I had to wrestle with it.  I’d… I don’t even know how to put it.  I’d go easy on them while giving myself the hardest time on all of those things, like they were all true and all my fault.  I gave them the benefit of a doubt, and I wore that blame.  Until I hit the point where I had to change up how I looked at it or I would have lost it.  Okay?”

Avery didn’t answer.

Most of the kids were coming from the Burger Bin, filing down the sidewalk on the other side of the street.  Others were on bikes.  The students who were around them now looked like they were the last of the stragglers.

There was a good chance they were going to be late to class.  Maybe if they ran, but…

This mattered more.

Lucy went on, “Sometimes life sucks, Ave.  Sometimes people or situations… or fucking singing rituals… are ugly.  Too ugly to think about for too long.  You say there aren’t any levers to pull or anything to change them, but… no.  Not in literal reality but you can get angry, you can make them change.  You should deal with them, or make life harder for them, so they’re a little weaker or more hesitant the next time they want to ruin someone’s day.”

“I’m not sure I like the implication,” Avery said.  “Like I’m some baby version of you and I’m supposed to grow up to be you.  I think you’re great, but I don’t want to become you, not like that.”

Frustration welled in Lucy, with just a bit of hurt.  That wasn’t what she was trying…

She let it go.  Deep breath.  She clenched her fists in her sweatshirt pockets.  “Sorry.  That wasn’t what I was trying to say.”

“If I need to feel bad about what happened, can’t you just let me?”

“I just… I don’t want to let you, any more than I want the me of back then to feel bad when she shouldn’t.  That doesn’t mean I think you’re a baby.  You might be the coolest person I know.  You’re kind, you’re brave.  I said that before.  But I admire you.  I’m glad to count you among my best friends.”

“Seconded,” Verona said.

Avery’s eyes were moist.  She still looked upset, and some of that was aimed at Lucy.  “Thanks.  But-”

“But!” Lucy interrupted.  “Feel what you need to feel.  Deal how you need to deal.  If you need anything, I’m here.  We’re here.  We’ll try to help.”

“Yeah,” Verona said.

Avery seemed to waver, like there was more she wanted to say.  Then she nodded.  “Alright.  Thanks.”

Lucy swallowed hard and nodded.

“We should get walking again,” Verona said.

The last of the kids who had gone to the stores for lunch had already passed them.

They started walking.

The mood was a bit uncomfortable.  Lucy felt like starting up the discussion again, trying to smooth over wrinkles and clarify misunderstandings, but she felt like it would make things worse.

“You’ve been pretty quiet, Ronnie,” she said.

“Processing.  Digesting.”

“Yeah?  I figured.”

Verona stared off into the distance.  “The same ideas keep running through my head, like if I think the same thought enough times maybe I’ll get desensitized to it and it won’t be as hard to deal with.  Mostly all it’s doing is giving me this lump in my throat that’s been there since last night, and I feel like I don’t have any patience for school.”

“We can’t not go.  We’ll get in trouble.”

“I know.  It’s just… I dunno.  I’d get into it more, but I don’t like dwelling on stuff or dumping on you guys.  It’s more helpful to hear you two debate it.  Kinda feel bad, hearing you guys talk about who did how much, and I didn’t do much.”

“You got info?” Lucy asked.

“I did.  I couldn’t record it on my phone, but I took notes.”

“It’s why we were there.  It’s good,” Lucy said.  “Don’t feel bad.  If it gives us the answers we need, it might end up being the most important contribution.”

“Okay.  That makes me feel better.”

“That flash of light was you?” Avery asked.  “Back when I was near the bull?”

Verona nodded.

“It helped a lot.  There was a heart-stopping moment where I thought I’d get the horns.”

“Good,” Verona said.  “I’m glad.”

Lucy had the sense that Avery might have liked to talk more or hear more in response from Verona, but didn’t really know Verona.  This was pretty usual, and it was kind of comforting.  It had taken her a little while to figure out that Verona was someone who dwelt on things.  Just because she was quiet didn’t mean she didn’t care, or that she wasn’t going through a tough time.

The flip side of that, though, was that Verona could sit with something for a while and then come right out of left field with a surprise hug… or shutting down, or doing something dumb.

It had been a while since the last time, Lucy realized.  When?

The last dumb was after her parents’ divorce.  Verona had tried to set fire to a family album.

The last shutdown was… march break last year?

March Break.  Verona’s mom had taken her to Vancouver to see distant family over the break.  Lucy had gone over a few days after her friend was back, and arrived to find one of Verona’s shelves of art supplies and finished art pieces on the floor.  Clay models and stuff broken, cast down in way that made it look like they’d been swept from the shelf in a single motion.

Apparently, and she hadn’t wanted to poke too hard or ask, Mr. Hayward’s birthday was mid-March, and she’d come back toward the last third of the month.  Verona had lost track of the days and hadn’t called or anything on the day of, and hadn’t come back with a present.  Mr. Hayward had taken it badly, the same night Verona had gotten back.

In the end, that day she’d stopped waiting for Verona to call, had called herself and gone over, it had been lying there for three days.  Verona had salvaged the things that hadn’t broken, torn, or been stained by ink or paint, and left even the things that were barely affected or damaged.  Then for three days, she had walked on or kicked around the bits that weren’t, including sharp bits of clay.  To make a point, or because she couldn’t bear to throw it out or put it back in a place she could look at it.  Lucy wasn’t sure, and Verona’s head was a puzzle sometimes.

Mr. Hayward had been in the middle of giving Verona the third day of silent treatment, Verona was apparently waiting for him to apologize, and the tension was thick in the air.  So Lucy had had Verona over for a straight week.  Her mom had managed to get the basics of what had happened out of Verona, and had talked to Verona’s dad.

She’d thought things would be okay after that, had gone with Verona back to her dad’s house, and the mess had still been there.  In the end, Lucy had been the one who knelt down to pick up the pieces and clean it up, while Verona sorted out her laundry.  Mr. Hayward had looked in while she was dumping stuff into a trash can, and he’d just commented, ‘She can buy art supplies for herself, but she can’t buy a gift.’

It was, to the best of Lucy’s knowledge, the worst he’d done or been.  She had told Verona to call her right away if there was ever anything like that again, and Verona had promised to.  They hadn’t been forbidden from lying when that promise was made, but she did feel like Verona would keep that promise.  She was also pretty sure that Verona’s dad hadn’t apologized or brought it up since.  Verona would have mentioned it if he had.

Verona hadn’t picked up art or done arty stuff since then, unless it was for school, a side project, or the stuff they were doing with the practice now, like the watercolor pictures she was doing of the local suspects.

This… this Verona felt like she was maybe three-quarters of the way to being where she was then, in that week she’d stayed with Lucy last year.  Like she was lost in thought, quiet, and staring off into the distance a lot.  Lucy didn’t know if she should be relieved that Verona wasn’t worse, considering what they’d seen last night, or worried that Verona wasn’t worse, considering what they’d seen last night.

“Want to stay over?” she asked.

Verona looked over at her and nodded.

“Asking the both of you,” she said.

“Is that okay?” Avery asked.

“I’ve got a cot in my room.  Verona can sleep in my bed, right?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll have to ask my parents,” Avery said.  “It’s a school night.”

“We could beg and plead again,” Verona said.  She had a slight smile.

“I think that only works once,” Avery said.

“We’ll try.”

“Cool,” Avery said.

Lucy was glad Avery didn’t seem as bothered as earlier.  Maybe Avery needed time like Verona did.

They made their way to the school, walking quicker as they got along.  Once they reached the main doors, Lucy hesitated.  At the edge of the parking lot, two teenagers were kissing.

Lucy had her suspicion, as the car was different, but… she used her sight.  The world was cast into sharp contrast, swords and daggers found their homes, embedding in various surfaces, and watercolor stains in blacks, dark browns, greys and reds bled out. Sure enough, the girl in that couple had multiple knives sticking through her, and more swords through her bag, her stuff in the trunk… yeah.

“That’s something that gets to me,” Avery said.  “When my mom has a bad day, my dad runs a bath for her, and fields Declan and Kerry, while telling us older kids to stay out of the way.  He pampers her, they talk, they snuggle.  When you’re a little kid, you can crawl into bed with mom and dad.  But what are we supposed to do?”

Verona hugged Avery from behind.

“That’s just not the same.”

Lucy looked over, and tapped her finger to her lower eyelid.

Verona’s eyes turned purple in a way that caught the light.  Avery’s eyes got misty, literally, in a way that brought out details, rather than hid them.  They looked.

“Oh, it’s her.”

“I’m going to go.  You don’t have to come,” Lucy said.

It was, it turned out, pretty hard to approach.  The couple were making out.  She settled for a seat in the grass by the parking lot, a bit out of sight, her back turned so she was facing three-quarters the other way.

Avery and Verona remained by the door, Verona hugging Avery from behind.

The couple parted ways.  Lucy stood up as the guy jogged over to the side door of the school.

“You,” the teenager with the sunglasses said, as she saw Lucy.  “Peeping?”

“We’ve been trying to follow what’s going on.”

The teenager moved stuff from the back seat into the trunk, using her good hand.  Her movements were more of a limp than they had been two days ago.  “I don’t suppose you know a certain fox, deer and… what was it, cat?”

Lucy nodded, once.

“What’s that all about?”

“Do you really want to know?” Lucy asked.  “With everything else on your plate?”

“Does it help me?”

“I don’t think so.  Answering our questions might,” Lucy said.

The teenager sighed, walking around to the back.  It looked like she’d bought a lot of stuff.

“Collins had his problems, but he was a nice guy,” the teenager said.  She opened a case of something in the trunk and took two soda cans out, before slamming the door.

“Collins?”

“Old school tattoos on his arms?”  She limped on her way to the front seat, leaning over to get inside and put them in the drink holder.

“Yeah.  I remember.  I’m sorry,” Lucy said.

“Second friend I’ve lost.  Every couple of years, it seemed like he’d get a new, life-changing allergy.  Couldn’t eat a crumb of gluten or he’d end up in the hospital or in the bathroom all night, couldn’t eat certain citrus or strawberries, couldn’t eat sugar, couldn’t eat artificial sweeteners.  MSG, eggs, alcohol, I can’t even remember the whole list.  In and out of the hospital so many times he looks like a junkie from the IV insertions.  His body would throw a dart at a dartboard and all of a sudden he’d be having full-blown immune system responses to foods he’d been fine eating for years.  He said if he didn’t do the ritual, he’d eat the wrong thing and die in a few years anyway.”

“But at least he’d be remembered,” Lucy said.

The girl with the sunglasses shrugged.

“Gabe was our classmate.  He disappeared,” Lucy said, looking toward the school.

“New kid?”

“Yeah.”

Behind Lucy, Avery and Verona walked up.

“Mm.  I thought New Kid had it in him to get at least a few rounds in.  The bull was… a good six out of ten on the scale of what you can draw, I think.”

“What’s worse?” Lucy asked.

“I’ve heard about a flock of pheasants inside a barn, with doors closed.  One flew into the one lightbulb in the barn when they were halfway through the song.  For me, first one was a stag.  Third was mice, fourth was a trio of dogs, covered in pustules, foaming at the mouth.  We think how well you sing helps with how the table is set, and we didn’t have good singers that night.  Waifs bit off part of this one guy’s jaw.”

“You skipped the second night,” Avery observed.  She looked nervous.

“A friend of mine,” the girl with the sunglasses said.  “Smart.  Strong.  Clever as dammit.  People on their eighth night get a different song, different rules, letting them bring certain things, and a head start.  The rest of us got a slight alteration.  Instructions to sing until dawn, and… it’s not worth getting into.”

Lucy inhaled, exhaled.  “What happened?”

“I gave him my eye.  No fight.  We thought he needed one eye from one person, meat on the bone from another, a- we were wrong.  When he realized the real requirements, he gave up.”

“You gave him your eye?” Avery asked, horrified.

“I’ve been blind in my left eye since birth,” the teenager said, her voice soft and sad.  “It felt like it was meant to be.  He was like a brother to me.  Got me into the devouring song game, when we thought it was easier than it was.  I wanted my parents to not have to worry about feeding my little brother and I, and this prescription I need to stay level isn’t covered by healthcare after I turn eighteen.  It’s not super expensive, but… when your family is deciding whether to eat or pay the power bill every month, fifty bucks a month is a lot.”

“Damn,” Verona said.  “Fifty bucks every month?  Rough.”

The girl shrugged.

“You could have sold your car, maybe?” Lucy asked.

“Don’t have one.  This is my boyfriend’s,” the teenager said.  “He lent it to me.  I’m just here saying bye to him, then heading to the next arena.  Auld Kirk Scotch.  It’s easier if we go, instead of making them come get us.”

“I want to help,” Avery said.  “I think we want to help?”

Lucy nodded.

“You may have already helped us lots,” the teenager said.  “The girl without feet is on her eighth night.  I don’t know how that’s supposed to go, when she can’t run.”

“That wasn’t what I was thinking of,” Avery said.

“What are you thinking of, then?  Huh?  Are you going to head over there?  Can you drive?” the teenager asked.  “Because it’s a little over eleven hours of driving to get from here to there.  And what are you going to do when you get there?  Are you going to help her, or help us?

“I don’t know. Can’t we help both?  Or try to unravel it, or… something?”

“If she wins, I can’t,” the teenager said.  “So no, you can’t help both.  Unraveling it?  I don’t even know what you’d do there.”

“I’m not sure there’s anything to do there that we couldn’t do here, Avery,” Lucy said.

“But-”

The teenager slammed her car door, limping around the front to the driver’s side.  “I can’t do this.  I’ve got an eleven hour drive ahead of me, and I want to cover as much ground as I can while it’s light out.  Maybe it’s better if you just stay out of it.  If we’re lucky, it’ll end on its own.”

“I don’t think it will,” Verona said.

“Then… I don’t know,” the teenager said.

“Can we get your number?” Lucy asked.  “If you think of anything.  Things we could follow up on, weirdness…”

“Weirdness that isn’t three kids with animal’s faces showing up in the middle of a ritual?” the teenager asked.

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “Can’t hurt, can it?”

The teenager, standing by her open door, nodded.  She didn’t come to Lucy, but pulled out her phone as Lucy approached.  They exchanged numbers.

“I’ll send you some links,” the teenager said.  “Sites where we compiled what we know.  Some people were going over site code and trying to track down recurring images in the flyers and on the site.”

“Thanks… Reagan,” Lucy said, reading the name that was attached to the number.

“You’re welcome, Lucille.  Save the links I send you somewhere good, in case you want to go back to them.  Depending on how Friday night goes, there’s a slim chance I won’t be in your contact list anymore, and the message history might be gone.”

“Good tip,” Lucy said.

“Don’t wish me luck back, but… good luck.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.

The teenager climbed into her boyfriend’s car, and started it up.

“We’re so late for class,” Avery said.

“Yeah,” Lucy said, turning away.  The three of them headed for the doors.

“We might get banned from going out for lunch.”

“Maybe,” Lucy said.

“Last semester, after two kids took too long to come back after lunch, they talked about banning everyone.”

“I think that was to scare them,” Verona said.

“Probably, but a good share of the school were giving them stink-eyes for a while after,” Avery said, as she opened the door.  “Social death.”

“You could’ve just let me handle it,” Lucy said.  “I would’ve recapped.”

“Hey,” Verona said.

“What?” Lucy asked.

“Not feeling so hot.  Can’t see myself with my Sight, so can you do me a favor and check me with the Sight, before we get up there?”

Lucy looked over Verona.  There was a cloud of dark watercolor that grew at her head and flowed through her hair, becoming an almost total darkness at the outermost edges of that hair.  Another bubbling darkness swamp through the stomach area of her grey sweatshirt.

“Stomachache… headache?” Lucy asked.

“Yes and yes.  Am I cursed?  Did interfering last night mess us up?”

Lucy blinked a couple of times.

Blots, not swords.

“I think that’s just you, Ronnie.  Not a curse.  That’s just my guess.”

For Avery, there was a red-black darkness at one side of her stomach, and a pink-red blotting around her shoulders.

“Are you going to be okay?” Lucy asked Verona, keeping one eye on Avery.

“Probably.”

“I think it’s stress and fatigue.  Let me know if I can help.”

“Distract me.  Or help me figure it out.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “Figuring it out sounds like a good game plan.”

They finished climbing the stairs, and walked to the classroom.

Ms. Hardy saw them in the doorway, and held up a finger, telling them to wait, while talking to a student.

They loitered, watching and waiting.  Students had pulled desks around to groups of six.

Lucy noted Gabe’s empty seat, not moved or anything.  Just… there.

She wished she’d been able to pep-talk Verona and Avery a bit more.  She wished she could dwell more on the problem.  Sitting through class was going to be hell.

Ms. Hardy approached them, closing the door behind her.  She wasn’t tall, but she had broad shoulders and broad hips.  In her efforts to be charitable to Avery, Lucy supposed Ms. Hardy was heavy but didn’t have a real gut, and instead had the kind of frame and distribution of weight that made her mostly just… big.  Their teacher’s hair was buzzed short on the sides and back, and was in glossy, blue-highlighted curls at the top, draping down to graze one eyebrow.  She liked colorful clothes, with today’s being electric blue slacks, a simple white top, and a colorful, mostly-blue see-through top worn over the white one, left unbuttoned except for the bottom corners, which were knotted near her belly button.  She had a tattoo at her wrist, a circle partially covered by bangles, one at her bicep, really severe red lipstick, and eyeliner that slashed out to either side, with perpetually half-lidded eyes, like she was a bit bored and disdainful of everything.

Try as she might, Lucy couldn’t see what Avery found so appealing.  Maybe that Ms. Hardy paid a lot of attention to her hair, clothes, and makeup, she was a young teacher at… maybe twenty-five to thirty five.  But… nope.  Anything past that point was a guess.

Avery fidgeted, as Mrs. Hardy loomed before them.  Lucy wasn’t even looking straight at Avery, and she could tell her friend’s face was turning pink.

“Verona isn’t feeling well,” Lucy said.

“I saw you in the parking lot,” Mrs. Hardy said.  She looked over each of them, stern.  Avery withered, looking more ready to die than Verona, who might’ve been a bit green around the gills.

“Something messed up happened last night,” Verona said.

Lucy gave her friend a sidelong look.  How was Verona supposed to spin that, without lying?

“Explain that for me, please?” Mrs. Hardy said.

“We were out in the general direction of Swanson,” Verona said.  “We think we saw some people die.”

Ms. Hardy raised her eyebrows.

Direction of Swanson?  Lucy thought, wondering how that was the truth.

Or… well, she supposed Swanson was north.

“There were cars around, we didn’t get a chance to see what really happened before we went a different way, and nobody really gave us any straight answers.  But… pretty sure they’re gone.  It looked really grisly.”

Avery winced at that phrasing, but didn’t say anything.

As Verona had admitted that, she’d looked a little greener around the gills.  To Lucy’s sight, the blot was darkening, getting more concentrated.

“The teenager from the parking lot was there,” Lucy said.  “She said it was a friend of hers.  Verona might be feeling queasy because it’s… a lot.”

“You should go to the nurse’s office.”

“I was thinking about it,” Verona said.  “But if I go and they make me lie down until my dad comes, I’ll just be thinking about stuff.  I’d rather distract myself.”

“Or the guidance counselor’s office?  Mr. Cohn can talk you through it and refer you if you need it.”

“I don’t know about Lucy and Ave, but I’m not so keen on talking about it more, after talking about it all through lunch,” Verona said.

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “I don’t know what I’d say.”

“It would help.”

“I’d rather not get into it.  We might be talking to someone tonight, depending on what our parents say,” Verona said.

Ms. Hardy sighed.  Her bangles jangled as she folded her arms.  “Can I trust you?  You’ve told fibs to get out of schoolwork or get out of trouble before, Verona.”

“Ms. Hardy,” Avery said.  She fidgeted more, plucking at the bottom edge of her shirt.  “I love your class.  I wouldn’t miss it or be late if I could help it.  What she said is true.”

The door opened.  Brayden was there.

“Can I go to the washroom?” Brayden asked.

“Go,” Ms. Hardy said.  He jogged down the hall.  “And walk!”

Brayden slowed down.

“Ms. Hardy?” Melissa called from one corner of the class.  “We had a question.”

“One second,” Ms. Hardy said, before closing the door.  She sighed, before looking at each of them in turn.  “We’re doing the fake nations project in groups.  Are you able to contribute?”

Each of them nodded.

“The groups already drew their cards, for size, politics, GDP, natural resources, neighbors, and everything else from the pamphlet I gave out yesterday.  Today’s class project is to find nations similar to the one your group got.  The nines have some additional requirements.  Use the stacks of textbooks on the desks, trade with other groups if you need to.  Each person has to write a paragraph about one of the similar nations and what you might expect in the next few weeks of the project.”

She opened the door, letting them into the class.  “Verona, Lucy, join Melissa’s group.  Avery, join Xavier’s.  Take the spare desk.”

Avery stopped in her tracks, then resumed moving, her head a little lower, face not clearly visible with the angle she was traveling, before she took Gabriel’s old desk and dragged it over.

Lucy took a seat by Melissa, opposite George.  Verona took a seat off to her left, putting her bag down and pulling out a pile of papers and narrow notebooks.

“We’re Cocoatoa,” Melissa said.  “Because of our main export.”

“Makes sense,” Lucy said, as she got herself sorted, her attention divided between the materials spread across the desk, Verona, who was holding papers with partial spell diagrams on them, and Avery, who looked pretty depressed.  The pink-red of the watercolor at her shoulders was bright red, now.

Verona laid down papers, each with the partial diagram.  Lucy recognized the interlinked diamonds of the connection symbol, the blockers, the labels.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m-” Verona started talking, at the same time George said.  “We’re going through textbooks-”

“Trying to find similar nations?” Lucy finished.  George smiled and nodded, before handing over two unused textbooks.

“Making sure Ms. Hardy doesn’t check in with our parents,” Verona said, once the dialogue was done, scribbling on paper.

“Hmm,” Lucy made a sound.  She grabbed the papers and slid them over to be in front of her.  “Don’t mess things up for Avery.  Ms. Hardy’s helped her out lots.”

Verona nodded.

Lucy passed the connection breaker back to Verona.  Melissa and George hadn’t even looked up.

She didn’t disapprove.  Verona liked being distracted, and from the looks of it, the act of refocusing were helping to clear away that headache and stomachache.

She’d do her part and alleviate the load, focusing on her current task, searching through the books, and do Verona’s part for the group for Cocoatoa.

She couldn’t do the same for Avery.

The temperature was perfect, the windows open and blowing in a breeze that was on the cold side of cool.  The sky was blue outside, and the loudest sound in the school library was a whisper or a bag being unzipped.

The computers in the school library were in cubicles, each cubicle next to another.  Verona sat at one, Avery at another, and Lucy in between, writing in a notebook as they came across stuff.

They’d searched the site that Reagan had sent them, with guides and tips for memorization, which included easy words to miss, or repeated phrases with slight differences in words.  There were the descriptions of the people with mouths for faces, who didn’t interfere, but also played a role in keeping bystanders from interfering.

There wasn’t a lot that simply watching hadn’t told them.

Verona was looking up famines and hunger in Ontario, especially Kennet.  Not much, but eleven point nine percent of households, apparently, had problems with being able to eat regularly, to the point it caused physical, mental, or social problems.  She’d wondered who would be stupid enough to do this stuff, but that was a big number.  There were people like whatshisname with the tattoos…

She checked her notes.

Collins.

Verona highlighted a bit and nudged Lucy.  In some places in the US, the number rose to thirty percent.

Not really relevant though, but interesting.

Avery was trying search terms with music, singing, hunger, and starvation, plus Ontario.

These things could be done by practitioners or by Incarnations.  Was there actual concentrated Hunger in the shape of a person, or Singing in the shape of a person, assuming that was how that worked?  If there was, then maybe there was one location or one event in Ontario where they were there, and they made stuff weird or affected a whole area with more singing or more problems with access to food.

Lucy noted down some questions about incarnations.  Who would be the person to ask about that?

Miss, maybe.

Finding out where it came from seemed like a good way to figure out how to end it.

It still felt aimless, like they needed another piece of the puzzle.

Miss had said there were threads.  That the Incarnation could make roots in this world by leaving information trails.  They hadn’t really found any.

Just that the locations were ghost towns in Ontario… and Kennet.  There was no clarification or illumination on why Kennet was included.

“Nephton’s one of the locations on the flyer?” Avery whispered.

Verona pulled the flier out and tapped her finger on one of the locations, overlapped with the moon phase.

“Coal town,” Avery whispered.  “Became a ghost town after the coal ran out, people must have gone hungry.”

“Bit of a reach,” Lucy said.  “I think that’s ninety percent of any of these ghost towns.”

“I’m going to print it anyway,” Avery said.  “The article has names.  Maybe one person’s tied to more than one or something.”

“Sure.  Remember that we only get a certain number of printouts per year.”

Avery got out her library card, and began typing in the number.

“Balls Falls,” Verona said, to Lucy.  “Ghost town.”

“I don’t think the Hungry Choir went to Balls Falls.”

“Maybe someone hungry named it.  Hungry for balls?”

“Ha ha.”

“Horncastle.  Sodom.  Happy Valley…” Verona grinned.

“Okay, okay,” Lucy said.  “Ha ha.”

A bit of color in her right eye made her turn her head.

“Avery!”  She swiped at the keyboard, shoving it into Avery’s mouse hand.  The keyboard and mouse clattered off the edge of the drawer beneath the cubicle.  Avery went from looking at Verona’s screen to almost falling out of her chair.

Avery looked up at Lucy, wounded, holding her thumb where Lucy had rammed it with the keyboard, then looked at the screen.  The wounded look became horror.

Her email address and library card number and the boxes for those things were on the screen, plain as anything.

But the background was a dull grey-pink.  The lyrics to the song were scattered around the page, along with images, half of them broken or distorted.

It had changed to the site in the moment Avery had finished typing and gone to click, not quite looking.

“Excuse me, girls?” the school librarian spoke up, as he approached, hands on his hips, looking mock-stern.  Except the guy was actually-stern… just used to dealing with kids.  The expression changed more when he saw the dangling keyboard and mouse.

The site had gone back to the library page.

They were kicked out, gathering up their stuff and abandoning the research.  Avery was careful to backspace her name out of the field, just in case, before they fled, leaving the school and heading directly away, into fields and toward trees.

Avery was visibly shaking.

“Good save,” Verona said.

“I guess… we have to be careful,” Lucy said.  Her heart was pounding, even though it had been maybe five minutes.

“They can’t do that, can they?” Avery asked, her eyes wide.  Her hand rubbed her thumb, which looked red.

“They tried,” Verona said.  “If Avery technically…”

She trailed off.

There was singing.

Lucy pulled the chain that had once had the dog tag on it from her neck.  The ring hung from it.  She slipped it on, the chain dangling.

The first children appeared.  Three, from nearby trees and crawling from clumps of grass.

A girl, black haired, grinding her teeth.  She wore a black sweater and pleated skirt.

A boy, with hair buzzed short, wide eyes, wearing cargo shorts and a torn t-shirt with a frowny-face on it, with temporary tattoos all over his arms and parts of his chest.

And… Gabe.  Or a version of Gabe.

He was shirtless, so skinny his chest looked concave.  His hair was messy, taller on one side than the other, and he wore roller blading stuff, without the roller blades, his pants on the cusp of falling down.  His mouth was ajar, his face smeared with vomit.  His stare was wide-eyed and vacant.

Avery made a small sound.

“Get out of here!” Lucy raised her voice.  “Go on!”

Her voice rang out over the field around them.  It seemed to terminate sooner than it should, with the music coming from the distance.

“You don’t get to do that!” she shouted, more intense, angrier.  “You don’t get to guilt us!  You made your damn choice!”

The three didn’t move.

“Don’t you dare mess with us or try that again!  I promise you, you’re not in our good books right now, but if you push us, we will make it our job to destroy you before you can get us!  The deal we made when awakening lets us!”

The little girl with the black hair ground her teeth, then turned, scampering off with too much speed and agility to be natural.  The others followed.

The music faded.

“What you said before, about slowing others down or hurting them, so they can’t hurt others?” Avery asked.

“Oh yeah,” Lucy said.  Her heart was pounding and she was a bit out of breath from the shouting.  “Oh, for sure yeah.”

“Yeah,” Verona said, quiet.

“We stop them even if they don’t push us further, right?” Avery asked.

“We damn well try,” Lucy said.  “Just gotta figure out how.”

“I might have an idea,” Verona said.  “But it’s not a great idea.  It’s dangerous in its own way.”

Lucy looked at her friend.

“Before I got to my house, I called Miss and asked her about things we could do.”

“You talking a lot to Miss on your own?” Lucy asked.

“Some,” Verona said.  “Why?”

Lucy shook her head.

“If we want an education in loopholes, cheating at games, tricks, and that sort of stuff… maybe we should talk to the Faerie.”

[2.1 Spoilers] Interview Notes I

Text- The Victim: Carmine Beast

Who:  The carmine beast.  One of four prominent judge-like Others that oversee Eastern Manitoba & a good chunk of Ontario, where Lords and other powers don’t already have sway.
Manages & influences violent & bloody Others.  By just hanging around & holding the seat, influences the Others who appear & how they act.
Can be a final court of appeals for matters of Other and practitioner?

What: Someone or something violently attacked her.  She was hurt, made her way into Kennet, and disappeared.  Her power/being is still around, but this is blurry; she can’t die, exactly?  Someone or something may have her power/substance and may be able to use it to take her post.

Where: Kennet.  She collapsed near Kennet Arena.  A witness (Louise Bayer) may have more details.

When:  5 weeks ago, C.B. is attacked.
–  Goblins catch wind of this.  Witness & Goblins follow.  Goblins have to stop, turn back.  They split up to find Miss (T.S.), Charles and incidentally Matthew (Munch), Edith (Gash, also expected to find Matthew), and the faerie (Cherry).
–  After people convene at murder/abduction site, they decide to recruit us 3.
– Outside practitioners go looking for C.B.  Miss is tipped off, and we awaken a bit earlier than planned.


Text: Charles Abrams – Ex Practitioner
Forsworn

Capabilities

– Can Lie
– Was a summoner.  Made Others?
– Has materials lying around. What can a forsworn person use?

Means? – Few to none.  Not strong.  See Capabilities, above.

Motive? – Big motives.  Angry & Vulnerable.  Appealed to
the Carmine Beast and was ignored?  Other three
were jerks to him.  Is ‘whipping boy’ for Kennet Others
Possible revenge motive vs. ex-friend, auger.


Opportunity? – No?  Relates to means.
Alibi – Matthew.  Went over to get books.  Timing
suggests Charles was busy when event happened,
Matthew left.  Bluntmunch stayed.


Notes

*  Cared about prisons, politics?

*  Didn’t want us involved.
*  Can/will take curses and stuff.  Took Yalda’s curse.
*  Ongoing dependence.
*  Wanted to summon a watch-dog on the day/night he was forsworn?  Good at heart?
*  Scary/unpleasant vibe



Text: John Stiles
Dog of War / Dog Tag

Capabilities
– Strong
– War Sense?
– Can’t die or be easily bound while the war that created him continues
–  Doesn’t sleep, doesn’t relax.  Vigilant & tactical thinking constantly
– Can appear quickly if summoned




Notes

* Mosaic personality, made up of many soldiers
*  One of twenty that were a group.  16 war, 3 flame, 1 black.
*  Black was Yalda.  A close companion that John had to kill.
*  Routine includes games, early/late walks.  Executes problem Others near Kennet


Means – Doesn’t sound like he is strong enough.
–  Maybe with a big gun?

Motive – The killing of Yalda?
–  Says he doesn’t want the role.  “I’ve served enough.”

Opportunity – Has alibi.  Was out hunting, far from Kennet.
–  Confirm with Miss?

Important – may become the next Carmine, if forced to it.  miss doesn’t think he’d last long before being ousted.

Text: The Hungry Choir
RITUAL INCARNATE (OR LIVING RITUAL)

Capabilities
– Manifests as a kind of storm over Ontario
– Children (“Waifs”) appear as raindrops of this storm, apparently act as eyes?  Face?  Limbs?
– Reaches out to targets in the area, using fliers.  Targets must choose to participate, but are selected from people who really want to?
– Every phase of the moon, creates a variant dimension, similar to our own, in that night’s location.
*  No food, drinkable water (I had to borrow a gun because the soda cans emptied)
*  ‘Witnesses’
*  More active waifs
*  More freedom to enforce rules?
*  Time flows differently.  Website theory – a count of heartbeats?
*  No grass, leaves.









Means – Maybe?  Strongest other we may have seen so far, besides the Sable, Aurum & Alabaster.
–  Isn’t immediately obvious if there is an intelligence behind it.

Motive – Goes back to intelligence
–  Would the waifs attack or eat if they could?
–  Or if someone set it up to happen?
–  It apparently wants to grow & sustain itself, according to miss.
–  Would the beast try to stop the choir as part of its duties?
–  Beast is a big meal.
–  Miss says it wouldn’t want the role of Carmine.





Opportunity – Choir knew or was in the area already, according to T.S.?
–  Hard to pin down, because they occupy/cover a huge area, instead of being within it?

Note – Opening another ‘Investigation notebook’ later, for choir.  Sticking to the C.B. investigation in this book.  If anything happens to us, look for the 2nd book.

 

Stolen Away – 2.2

Verona

Last Thursday: Interview Notes


“Miss!”

“Miss!”

“Miss!”

The three of them stood on the bridge that connected the mostly residential western half of Kennet to the messier southeastern quarter.  Cars periodically whizzed by, knocking as they went over the metal bit that was meant to let the bridge expand and contract.  Avery had taken a seat on the wide sidewalk, her back to the railing. Lucy leaned into the railing, looking out in the direction of Kennet, holding onto a small bag of sour cream and onion chips with two fingers.  As the bag got emptier, it blew more precariously in the wind.  The bag had a ‘skin’ over it, so thin it was translucent, and flakes of it were shed in a constant trail, like a dandelion that never ran out of seeds.

Verona leaned against the railing beside her friend, but her back was to the railing, and she looked in the opposite direction, toward the trees, cliffs, and hills south of Kennet.  Somewhere in there was the clearing where they had awoken.  With her Sight casting the sky black high over them, and a film over the trees, the entire city felt like it was set in a vast cave, not the wide outdoors.

They’d stopped by the convenience store, grabbing snacks.  Avery had suggested it, and seeing Avery now, Verona suspected she’d suggested it to just have something to hold onto.  The girl had a two-handed deathgrip on a bottle of soda.

The river below wasn’t that much of a river, with what seemed to be more bank than water, the banks gravelly and grey.  The water frothed as it ran into and over the rocks.  There were times of year where the water level and flow were much higher.  The bridge had streetlights as extensions of the railing, but it had nothing else on it.  Metal had been painted and parts of the paint were flaking like the bag of chips, never really reducing the amount of paint that was left behind, but losing flakes to the wind nonetheless.

Her stomach didn’t hurt as much, but there was still an empty, gnawing feeling in it, somewhere between the sensation of having done too many situps in gym class and having too much acid in her gut after eating too many toaster tarts.  She’d thought at first that it was because the Choir had laid something on them, like a curse.  It wasn’t.  Regular old stress.

The caffeine of her soda helped with the headache that she’d had since lunch, but she felt like the very fact she had a stress headache in the first place was giving her more of a headache.

It made her think of her dad.  He got stress headaches all the time, and if the Hungry Choir wanted to make her miserable, it didn’t need to trick her into playing its game.  Making her more like her dad in even the smallest ways was the way to do it.

“What can I help you with?”  Miss’s voice had a bit of that British crispness to it.

Verona leaned heavily over the bridge’s railing, until Lucy grabbed the waistband of her jeans to keep her from tipping over.

She could see Miss’s hair and skirt, below.  Miss had found a seat on an angled support strut beneath the bridge.

Verona sighed a bit.  Darn.

“We’re interested in going to see the Faerie, to interview them,” Lucy said.

“It may be unavoidable.”

“We’ve gotten a lot of warnings about them,” Avery said, twisting around a bit.

“Many Others warrant warnings,” Miss said.  “The typical goblin or bogeyman are more obvious as threats.”

“You mean you can see them coming?” Lucy asked.

“The tendency, I find, is that you see a Faerie coming, you have an exchange, you see them go, and two years later you discover the exchange contained key mechanisms that allowed someone to engineer your destruction and defeat.”

“Charles told us there were Others who’ve been playing a metaphorical game of chess for a long time,” Verona said.  “That they’re so good we might as well not play.”

“The Faerie may exemplify that concept,” Miss said, from below them.  “I would not be surprised if he was thinking of them specifically.”

“What are we supposed to do, then?” Lucy asked.  “Avoid them forever?”

“What you do is up to you.  I can’t and won’t tell you what to do with the investigation.”

“The Hungry Choir tried to get me,” Avery said.  “Changed a website in the last moments before I would’ve clicked.  If Faerie are good at deals, cheating, and games, is it possible they would have some safeguards or maybe they’d know something that’d help us deal with the Choir?”

“You got involved?” Miss asked.

“Kind of,” Avery said.  “We helped one of the contestants.”

“Then it seems you’re entangled now.  The patterns and precepts that make up the ritual are like the threads within a spider web.  By reaching out, you’ve entangled your hand in the strands, and the spider has only to follow the threads to have its access to you.”

“What do we do?” Lucy asked.

“Distance,” Miss said.  “Step back, move away from the metaphorical web.  The strands of a web should snap or thin out with distance from the origin point, and the spider’s journey from branch to hand becomes longer, if not impossible.  The rules and ideas of the ritual may still cling to you… sightings, tendencies, and traces of the patterns, but with enough distance you shouldn’t get bitten, metaphorically speaking.”

“What-” Lucy started, at the same time Verona asked, “How-”

The two girls exchanged a look.  Lucy made a gesture toward Verona.

“How do you know if you’ve got enough distance that the so-called spider can’t get you?” Verona asked.  “How do you tell if you’re seeing the clinging parts of the ritual instead of the strand that connects to the heart of it, that gives it the ability to get you?”

“I suppose you’d only know for certain if you didn’t end up getting bitten.”

“Great,” Avery said.

“I would be very surprised if it managed to get you while you were moving steadily and constantly away from it.”

“What if we can’t?” Lucy asked.  “As part of the awakening ritual, I said we’d mete out justice.”

“Justice is a tricky thing,” Miss said, from her seat on the bridge’s support struts.  “Keep in mind that the worlds of Others and spirits are old.  The definitions of justice are older.  By old ways, families could be condemned for the actions of an ancestor, hospitality is more important, and one’s place in society and greater structures is far more emphasized.”

“Was I wrong, to tell them I could come after them?”  Lucy asked.

Verona raised her eyebrows.  Lucy wasn’t really the type to spend a lot of time dwelling on whether she was wrong.  Not anymore.

“I couldn’t say with any certainty,” Miss told them.  “I think you’d be fine if your justice was strong and consistent.  I would not hold up modern ideas of rights, wrongs, or the individual, then turn around and cite the old ways.  That is liable to backfire.”

“The old ways seem kind of ass to me,” Lucy observed.

“Agreed,” Avery said.

“The Faerie may indeed be your best counsel when it comes to matters of words and deals, and what directions you may wish to take.”

“I told them we talked last night,” Verona said.

“Ah.  Yes, as I told Verona when she inquired last night, they should have the experience and instincts that would help find a way to free yourself of the metaphorical spider’s web that clings to your hand now.”

“What do we need to know?” Lucy asked.

“That they are a set of metaphorical spider webs of their own, far greater, far more intricate, and you may never know that you’re entangled, or that the so-called spider has you, or that it has already eaten you.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “That’s freaky.”

Avery worked her way to a standing position.  She leaned over the railing to look for Miss, then settled down, chin on her hands.  “Out of the frying pan and into the fire?”

“They swore the oath at your awakening, to preserve you and your safety.  There are ways to deal with Faerie.  They are subtle, and the goblin arts are especially good at penetrating subtlety.”

“Poop jokes and slapping them in the faces with condoms,” Lucy said.

“Essentially.  Another way would be to accept it.  This so-called spider has agreed not to eat you.  Appreciate the beauty of the web when you can see it, accept you may find yourself entangled, and avoid the worst casualties.”

Verona leaned back into the railing, her head tilting back until she was looking up at the sky.  “What does this entanglement look like?”

“They like drama.  Different types of drama for different types of Fae.  You may find that events contrive to happen around you, involve you, and sweep you up.  Were you to spend a lifetime investigating such events, you might find the plots trace back to the faerie, only to then find the investigation is yet another expectation and machination.”

“This sounds exhausting,” Lucy said.

“It may be.  Try not to be the main characters of their stories.  Play your part and move on, if you can.”

“Can I ask?” Verona asked.  “This entanglement… is it something you can get snarled up in too?  You said you didn’t want to get involved with the choir for that reason.”

“Less so.”

“What’s the distinction?”

“The Hungry Choir sets the stage, or sets a table, if you prefer that analogy.  For the Faerie, the world is a stage.  My nature and abilities make it easier for me to slip their net and escape into the wider world.”

“And you can’t, what, leave the table once the Hungry Choir has set it?” Lucy asked.

“I suspect I would become a prop, much in the same way the flyers, waifs, and setting details are.  I’d rather not say more on the subject.”

“Hm.” Lucy made a dissatisfied sound.

“What are the worst fates?” Verona asked.  “The big dangers, with Faerie?”

“Too many to name.  Watch your words with special care.  Courtesy is a knife they hand you, with expectation you will take hold of the blade, so you may wish to be impolite or rude, to do away with courtesy altogether.  Take nothing that is not expressly given.  The tales of mortals eating the fruit of a Fae tree and being stuck in their realm are implicitly stories of betrayal.  There are other stories, of mortals eating food so delicious they never want to leave, but the Awakening oath should protect you from such.”

“Glad we talked to you, then,” Avery said.  “I’m nervous now.  Is this going to be worth it?”

“Faerie have a longstanding relationship with humans, in patron-practitioner relationships.  Our approach here in Kennet hews to old ways, when a practitioner would have to seek out an Other, or the Other seek out the practitioner apprentice, and that would be how one would learn the practice.  In time, other ways have taken over.  Particularly family lines with families passing on the practice.”

“Man, that’d be something,” Verona said.  “That’s more of an established pattern, right?”

“And families may have resources, power to hand down, and extensive libraries.”

“That sounds so nice,” Verona said, sighing the words.  “No offense, but not having to go with hand out, begging for that new practice or power…”

“I can imagine,” Miss said.  “In any event, the patron relationship has advantages.  More access to power, where the patron or group of patrons supplies the energy for simple runes, basic practices and so on.  Faerie are fond of this kind of patron relationship, and exaggerate the benefits.  Expect impressive or sundry gifts, a particular kind of power in ample supply, and good counsel when it comes to deals and contracts.”

“That makes me feel better,” Avery said, her chin still on her hands, which were folded on the railing of the bridge.

“…And be on the lookout for subtle traps or mischief hidden amidst those traps,” Miss added.  “Drawbacks are magnified as well.”

Avery sighed.

“All practice has a price, Avery.  In exchange for the security of picking and knowing who will be our local practitioner investigating our affairs, we Others of Kennet pay our tax, small amounts of power from each of us, for wind charms and smoking cloaks.  We don’t begrudge you this.  But there are other kinds of price, such as a powerful gift where the price is the risk involved in using it, or the consequence when the true intent behind a power, trick, or object comes full circle and ruins you.  The Faerie may give you these kinds of powers.”

“Good to know,” Lucy said, quiet.  Avery nodded.

Verona mentally catalogued this information.  She wished she had a recorder, to take it down, but her memory was pretty good.

“They live for drama.  Some may say they live on it.  They’ve sworn deals.  They won’t be able to hurt or kill you, or do more than force a detour from a long and full life, but the timing of these things could easily be devastating.  If you look out for things of this particular stripe and shape, weather the drama as your price, I think you’ll manage.”

“Where do we go?” Lucy asked.

“Southeastern end of Kennet.  Follow the water’s edge and walk south from that arch until the road is out of sight and earshot.  Look for two thin birch trees forming an arch.  Stand in the arch, look for the cave in the rock face, amidst the trees.  Don’t take your eyes off it, or it may slip away.”

“We can’t just follow the rock face?” Lucy asked.

“You can, but I doubt you’d find the cave that way.”

Lucy nodded.

“Anything else?” Miss asked.

“Are we bothering you, calling you to ask you stuff?” Lucy asked.

“No, but right now, there are three outside practitioners who are curious about what happened to the Carmine Beast.  I’ve engineered distractions, to postpone the point in time that someone shows up and comes to ask questions.”

“What’s the worst-case scenario?” Lucy asked.

“I couldn’t say.  Too many possibilities.  But a bad-case scenario with a dim likelihood of happening might be that someone gets it in their head to arrive, declare themselves lord of Kennet, and claim dominion and province over local Others.”

“In which case… what happens?” Avery asked.

“We would lean heavily on you, fight back, and try to destroy them before they bound and enslaved us.  I don’t think this is likely.  More likely, someone arrives despite my distractions, asks, and you three present yourselves as well versed both in the practices and the current situation.”

“Is that so bad?” Lucy asked.

“It gets less bad depending on where you three stand, but word of mouth would get around that something is unusual about Kennet, more practitioners would show up, which would mean more people possibly finding or acquiring us, and that dim chance of a bad case scenario where someone decides to try to co-opt the entire territory by making themselves a Lord would increase over time.”

“Getting a better sense of the big picture,” Lucy said.

“Good,” Miss said.  “For what it’s worth, I’m glad I found you three.  You’re everything I hoped for and more.”

I don’t trust wording like that, Verona thought.  She asked, “Are we going to look back on this and groan, because you hoped for something nefarious?”

“Not at all, don’t worry,” Miss said.  “I should go.  I’ve been encouraging a riddling spirit to taunt civilians, which is the kind of thing an investigating body would want to look at, and agitating an echo of a hunter who talks about wolves and coyotes eating his animals.  It would be ideal if the fleeting spirit and ghost both disappeared before the practitioners got there, forcing them to carefully canvas witnesses while maintaining the innocence of those selfsame witnesses.”

“Oh, Miss!” Lucy called out.  “Before you go?”

“Yes?”

“Could you stop by and tell John we might come by in a few minutes?  So he doesn’t get paranoid?”

“I will.  Goodbye.  Good luck with the Faerie.”

“Bye,” Verona said, joining her voice to the others.

There was no response.

Verona leaned over the railing again.  There was no sign of any hair or cloth.  Gone.

Lucy jerked her head in the direction they were meant to go.  They walked.

“I feel so useless sometimes,” Avery said.  “I don’t know what to say in conversations like that.  You’re on the ball with the investigation, Lucy, and you’re really quick with the practice, Verona.”

“Remember what Miss said?” Verona asked.  “She’s happy she found us three.”

“I don’t actually remember that specific wording, and it hasn’t been that long,” Avery said.  “Which is my point.”

“Come on,” Lucy said, in a bid to get them to move faster.  “You’re frazzled, so I don’t blame you.  After that stunt the Choir pulled?  About the other part of it, I’ve already told you you were awesome last night.  Do I need to repeat it again?  Because I will.”

“Nah,” Avery said.  She managed a weak smile.  “Thanks though.”

“Let’s see if we can get this bit done before dinner,” Lucy said.  “Do you guys mind if we do that thing?  Stop briefly by Stiles’ house?”

“No,” Verona said.  “Actually, I was thinking of going there sometime soon anyway.”

Why?” Lucy asked.

“Why are you so suspicious of me?  You were asking about me talking to Miss too.”

“Because you’re doing that a lot.”

“Because this whole thing relates to the relationships we’re building with the Others.  They can tell us so much.  Even the practice is the result of a relationship with the ambient spirits.  It’s a waste if we don’t capitalize on that.”

“This way,” Lucy said, pointing down the side street.  “Remember that we’re investigating the locals.  What happens if you have repeated visits and interactions with a local like Miss, and then it turns out she’s the culprit?”

“Then I should have the repeated visits, interactions, and trust built with other local Others to deal with her and whatever she’s pulled.”

“Verona did say she was all-in,” Avery said.

“I just worry,” Lucy said.  “Because I don’t think you can always deal, or escape, or duck the consequences.  I think sometimes you don’t get a chance.  You die, or worse.”

“Like Gabe,” Avery said.

“Yeah, maybe,” Lucy said, sighing.

Verona nodded.

They walked for a few minutes in silence.  Verona tried to imagine the scenarios where Miss would be able to get her that quickly, before she could throw down her dog tag, or use a rune.  Miss could move fast, and they’d joked before about Miss having a spider for a face, or something.

That kind of horror was easier to imagine after seeing the Witnesses and stuff last night.

The burned house where Verona had been held at knifepoint was more or less the same.  They approached and knocked on the door.

There was nothing.

“Damn it, damn it, ugh,” Lucy muttered.

“You want your tag, huh?” Avery asked.

“Nervous,” Verona guessed.

“Nervous,” Lucy said.  She gave Verona a totally undeserved dirty look, for mentioning it.

They could hear guitar.

They walked around the edge of the house, which involved stepping over some cordoned-off bits of burned siding, and around to the back.

John sat on the stairs that led from the back door to the back lawn.  John was smoking, and had a guitar.  He continued playing as they approached.  The three of them remained silent.

Weeds and the flowers and shrubs of a garden that had overgrown and spread out beyond its confines filled the space, and the film was especially thick there, with red things moving in the gaps.  Verona liked the aesthetic.  She wouldn’t like to live in it or walk in it -not if it meant that she’d have three bloodsucking ticks stuck to her legs by the time she made it through the far side- but she liked the wildness of it.  She liked the English style of garden, where it was a kind of intentional mess, with the added bonus of it being easier to maintain.  She’d rather have a mess like this, even with the ticks, than the formal, everything-in-its-place French garden that most houses seemed to go for, and she’d rather have an English garden than this kind of mess.

Not that she’d say anything like that around her dad.  If she did, he’d get gardening stuff and make it a big project for ‘them’.  Which would be her doing the work and him ‘delegating’.  It wouldn’t be an English garden, either.

John had said he wasn’t very good, but he could put the notes together.  It was nice to listen to.  The wind blowing through the backyard, the weather not cold but not hot either, the sound of the instrument in the air, and the world set in a vast underground cave, muted by film.

Then he started singing, and it wasn’t so good.  He didn’t really transition between notes well.

“Mockingbird,” he sung, his eyes closed, a slight smile on his face.  The pauses between each bit felt lengthy.  “You have not… said a word…”

He kept playing, but he stopped singing.  Verona smiled, despite herself, and hoped it didn’t seem at his expense.

“Need anything particular?” he asked, his tone normal.  He continued to play.

“I hope last night qualified as serious enough for a replacement tag,” Lucy said.  “The help was appreciated.”

“Really appreciated,” Avery said.

“Some of them popped up earlier, to give me the stink eye,” John said.  He continued plucking strings with one hand while the other hand pulled off the chain necklace.  With one hand, he removed a tag, then tossed it to Lucy, who caught it.  Rather than put the necklace back on, he draped it over the very end of the guitar, and resumed playing.  “No issues.”

Verona pulled off her bag.

“We had a few,” Avery said.  “Hopefully they relax some.”

“Hopefully,” John said.

Verona fished inside, and found what she was looking for.  She walked on the bricks that lined the garden so she was walking through the grass less, and set an old handheld console on the edge of the stairs.  She put down two games.

“What’s this?” John asked.

“A thank you, for saving Avery, and protecting Lucy.  It’s five years old, you might have to delete some save files, and there’s no cover for the batteries, but it works.”

“I remember those games,” Lucy said.  “I got the handheld and the orangered edition of the game to play and trade with you.”

“I just thought, y’know, if you’re killing time or something,” Verona explained, shrugging.  “And maybe in exchange, don’t hold us hostage with guns and knives anymore?”

“Thank you,” John said, nodding.

“There’s a shooty game and the monster game.  I don’t know which you’d like.”

“We’ll see,” he said.  “Let me know if you need any more help.”

Verona nodded.

Lucy said, “We’re going to go see the Faerie.  I really hope we don’t need any help.  Or you might have to help us deal with Guilherme.”

“Let’s hope that doesn’t happen,” John said.  “I’ll do my best if it comes to it.”

“We’re going to try to talk to them before it’s dinnertime, so we’ll have to cut this chat short.”

John nodded.  As the three of them made their exit, Verona walking on the short brick wall that fenced in the garden until she reached the side gate, he resumed singing, switching to another language.  It didn’t sound much better than the last time.

They walked down to the water, and there were some people down there with their dogs, along with some kids picking through the rocks to try to find stuff that they could skip on the water.  Most of the rocks were the shale sort, flat and irregular, closer to pieces of broken glass in dimension and shape than a good round skipping stone, sharper edges and angles smoothed below the point of being dangerous by the passage of water.

They found the birch trees, white, narrow, and growing at angles, where branches grew into one another.  It wasn’t the landmark Verona had imagined it to be.  Verona disabled her Sight and waited a good ten seconds for the imagery to fade away from her eyes, just to see if she was missing something.  She blinked a bit at how blue the sky was, and how green the leaves on branches were.

Avery was the one to see it first, pointing.  At first, Verona thought it was shadows from the trees that grew at the base of the hill and cliffs, but as they walked and approached, the shadows clarified into a depression, which turned out to be a hole, ten feet high and narrow.

“Guilherme!” Lucy called out.  “Maricica!  The practitioner trio of Kennet are here to request counsel and discuss recent events!  We’re announcing ourselves!”

The call was answered with laughter, the voice young, high, and sweet.  The laughter echoed within the cave, and Verona couldn’t help but shiver.  The sound that bounced back didn’t seem to line up in any way with the original sound.  Like singing into a tunnel and getting a hint of a scream back.

Verona turned her Sight back on, and it was so quick to arrive that it felt like it had taken hold the moment before she’d decided to do it.

She saw a silhouette, a man just past the upper bounds of anyone she could remember seeing in terms of height, with a ton of raw muscle.  She touched Avery’s and Lucy’s arms.

“You called his name first.”  The voice was the same as the laughter, coming from the shadows off to the side.  There was just a hint of echo, still just a bit off.

“You’re lesser, Maricica,” the man spoke.  He had a cultured accent and power behind his voice, even though it wasn’t especially deep or loud.  “You hold no meaningful titles, you’re young, you’re of the most detested court.”

Maricica emerged from the shadows, stepping into the light from the cave entrance.

“Woah, oh, okay, naked woman,” Avery said, turning around.

“I am, but I’m also covered up,” Maricica said.

The young woman was wrapped in her own wings, but the wings were a translucent brown, covered in patterns that ranged from reds to yellows to white, many surrounded by darker outlines, with circles or other shapes within.  It was evocative of eyes.  Further patterns traced down the length of the wings, which were longer than Verona remembered seeing back at the Awakening.  It was hard to make out the ‘fingers’ within the pattern.

Back at the awakening, she’d seen those and taken them to be the ‘fingers’ of massive bat wings, but with the patterns, she could see how Avery had taken it to be like moth wings.  They seemed longer now than they had been, the wings trailing on the ground behind Maricica, extending ten or fifteen feet back into darkness thick enough that Verona’s sight couldn’t penetrate it.  Like a trail from a ball gown.

The patterns weren’t as transparent as the rest of the wings.  The faerie covered her breasts and the rest of her body, leaving her shoulders bare, and patterns or folds in the wings covered everything that needed covering.

“I’m-” Maricica started.  She stopped, twisting, her wings unfurling.  She rose up into the air as a wooden spear plunged into the stone where she’d been.

Verona backed away, silent, as Lucy yelped and Avery said something incoherent.

Maricica had moved those wings in a way that didn’t seem right or real.  It was like the material that was so thin that Verona could see nuances in the darkness behind it was also strong enough to lift the Faerie up.

Maricica laughed again, her laughter like tinkling bells and a song.  The echo like a cat’s screeches.

“Welcome to my humble home,” Guilherme said.  “I apologize for the pestilence within.”

Our humble home,” Maricica said, sing-song, from the darkness.

“You aren’t friends?” Avery asked.

“She arrived from elsewhere to plague me and steal from me, like the lowliest kind of person or beast might.  She has yet to succeed in the stealing.”

“You have yet to succeed in swatting me,” Maricica taunted, before laughing.

“You’re enemies?” Lucy asked.

“A question of courts and houses,” Guilherme said.  “I’m of the Summer court above.  She is of the court of the most wretched of Fae.”

“Ooh, I want to know more about this,” Verona said.  “There’s courts?”

“Seven courts,” Guilherme explained.  “My court is one of wine and adventure, romances and tragedies, and simpler ballads of those led astray.  Heroes, courage, and the threads of epics braiding together and into one another.  The great bard wrote of us.  The court of nature and summer, touched by sun.”

“What are the other courts?” Verona asked.

“High spring, aristocrats and gilded things, parties, fine craftsmanship and even finer, craftier lies.  High fall, melodramatic and brooding, tangled in human ways and things, they play for keeps, with beginnings and endings in mind.”

“He paints it all so pretty,” Maricica said, from the shadows.  “But pretty paint is all so much of it is.”

“The courts below are dark shadows of the ones above.  The High Spring emulates human aristocracy and celebrity, the Dark Spring does away with the humanity and replaces it with the monstrous, dressing themselves in chitin, spiderwebs, and skins while they deal in nightmares and upstaging one another in the torments they can inflict.  The Dark Summer instead lost their Faerie nature, mingling too much with distant and opposed Others, because they fought them for too long, or they took them as allies one too many time.  Imagine the monsters of fairy tales, and you would not be far amiss.”

“Oh, I’ll tell you of the Court of Fall in Shadow,” Maricica said, slipping out of the shadows to appear right next to Verona.  “We cast off rules and roles.  That we should be this or do that.  Why wear one skin, hm?”

Verona looked at the Faerie in the eyes, then looked away.  She watched the wings as they brushed over the floor, the eyes and patterns of the wings forming new shapes as they ran into one another.  The wings were dusty, but it was a fine dust that poured off of them or slid on the surface of the wings.  The dust collected on the floor.

“The court of Dark Fall is the court of the wretched, if not the most piteous and powerful,” Guilherme said.  “When a Faerie of another court is cursed to carry a scrabbling rodent in her womb for every rodent born in her country, the penalty of a game lost or offending the wrong noble, she might crawl to the court of Dark Fall, to seek assistance and to become a different kind of Fae that can bear the curse and still function.”

“Grey Isbold,” Maricica said, like she was amused.  “Poor thing.  I did like her, as sour as she could be.  She went and got herself banished to Canada of your New World, of all places.  Nearly ten million kilometers squared of mice and rats being born, matching lives finding shape in her womb.  I suspect that was the intended final play, from the moment she scoffed at a comment from a young Faerie in the Bright Spring court.  The offended Fae became a princess, and her fate was sealed from then on.”

“How does that not devastate the ecosystem?” Lucy asked.

Maricica’s voice was a whisper.  “They grow inside her, they scratch and writhe, they’re eventually born, and they dart into dark corners, where they summarily disappear.  Their job is done, you see.  She’s learned to manage them, in more ways than the one.  My home court is one of transformations and curses.  I do think it’s the most interesting and subtle.”

“Is there a winter court?” Avery asked.

“There is,” Guilherme said.

“He doesn’t like to even think about it,” Maricica murmured, walking behind the three girls.  Avery averted her eyes, turning a bit. The Faerie woman went on, saying, “Faerie live for very long times.  Grey Isbold’s offense was done in an era when men held swords, not guns, and she had been around for thousands of years before then.  But as much as our bodies are immortal and we are ageless, our minds grow restless.  There are only so many things to see and do, so many stories to tell or adventures to participate in.  After a while, you start to see that stories tend to have the same underlying structures.  Then you see that ideas come from the same places.  There is precious little that is truly original in the world.  The courts are in large part defined by how we approach that problem.”

“That you get bored?” Verona asked.

“That we become boredom.  After thousands of years of listening to music and making our own, we might hear something new, and it entertains us for a few hours or days.  Then, trained by hearing thousands of years of music and its variations, our minds jump to the obvious conclusions.  We guess how the rest of it goes and what might come of it, and what follows from that new thing is only minutes, now, of entertainment or distraction.  Do the same for music, for interaction with others, and we fall into a kind of stasis.  Habits become personal rules, become inevitability, and the personality ceases to be.  That is the winter court.  Doomed to stasis, often powerful, but more automaton than individual.  Like your computers playing chess against one another, getting the same results over and over again, if you watch long enough.”

“That’s scary,” Verona said.

“Yes, I do think it scares him,” Maricica murmured, and she slid her bare arm out from beneath the wings she had wrapped herself in, along Verona’s neck and shoulder, pointing at Guilherme.  “The court of High Summer is the court that loses the most Faerie to Winter.  Adventure, festival, and pleasant debauchery can only tide you over for so long.  Of import: The court of Autumn Below loses the least.”

“She distracts you from what she is and what her court is,” Guilherme said.

“Okay, okay, wait, okay!” Lucy raised her voice.  “Okay.  You guys don’t like each other?  Fine.  We need to talk about more serious things.”

“Gifts!  We’re to give you three gifts!” Maricica said, like it was a realization.  She ducked between Avery and Verona, sliding past like silk.  There was almost no friction as the wings slid past them, but dust came away, forming clouds.  Verona’s Sight let her see Maricica’s hand move in the dust as she departed, a careful sweep of fingertips and taps at the air, like a piano player might play at his instrument.  The dust took shape, becoming something fractal as it expanded outward.

The last five feet of wings disappeared faster than Maricica had, as if they were being yanked into the dark.

“That’s not what I meant!” Lucy raised her voice, calling after the Faerie.

“But gifts,” Verona said, smiling.

Avery waved her hand through the air, dismissing the dust.  It smelled like forest, but not the tree and shrubbery part of forests.

“Are you getting the dust away or are you fanning yourself?” Lucy asked.

“I- both,” Avery said.

“I didn’t think she was your type.”

“She’s not, but she’s this woman that’s practically naked and she was right there.  Don’t you think most people would be flustered?”

“No!” Lucy stated.

Verona laughed.

You’re not much better!”

Guilherme approached until he was more in the light, half of his body defined by the sharp sunlight that came in through the cave aperture, the other half by the deep shadow.  “The Fall fae is younger than you’d think, for a Faerie.  New to your world, new in many things.  Still old enough to not remember coming to be, but… no faerie I’ve met remembers.”

“Where do Faerie come from?” Verona asked.

“New Faerie?  Some say a human is taken, drowned in glamour, traded through hands until they pass under the noses of the oldest and most powerful Fae in the winter court, and then have the last traces of their old lives taken.  All that is left is the glamour and the general shape of them.  Other stories are similar, saying that a man who lives a lie can become more lie than person, they find their way to the places where Fae dwell, and the person is lost.  The lie becomes elaborate enough to have its own personality, and then you have a nascent Faerie.”

“Dark,” Avery said.

Guilherme smiled.  The cave was cool enough that his breath fogged a bit.  “While I’m telling you things about her, I could tell you one more thing about her court.  Fae of the High Fall traffic with humans, playing pranks, stealing them away to return them to the same place, years in the future.  You have the small, gnarled Fae who do errands and give gifts in exchange for cream or honey… but the Fae of the Darker Fall court don’t traffic with humans so much as they traffic in humans.  The children who are stolen away, the ones who I described making their way to the Courts, or being brought in to then be drowned in Glamour?  Largely the province of that girl’s court.  The ones who can’t be bartered away to other courts for power, cures, or fixes become parts and ingredients for remedies.”

“I’ve yet to decide if that’s what I wish to do,” Maricica said, dropping down from the ceiling.  For the moment her wings were extended and unfurled, they seemed to be bigger than the cave itself.  Heavily patterned moth wings stretched between finger-like sets of bones that extended too far into the darkness to see the limits of.

Then, crouching halfway between Verona and the cave entrance, wings wrapping around her, she seemed like the smallest one there, surrounded by a draping of her own wings for ten or more feet in every direction, the edges blurred by dust.

She jerked to one side, the wings pulling back out of the way, as more spears were thrown, wood sinking into stone.  She laughed.

“He doesn’t seem to want to let me have a dramatic moment without jabbing his big stick into it,” Maricica said, through her amusement.

“Can I ask what you did to get sent to the Dark Fall court?” Verona asked.

“Can we please stay focused?” Lucy asked.

“I was of the rare few born to it,” Maricica said, her eyes wide.  “And focus, yes, I’ve been thinking about your gifts since it was mentioned at the awakening.”

“Not about the gifts,” Lucy said, exasperated.  “I want to ask about the night the Carmine Beast disappeared, and about the Hungry Choir.”

“But,” Maricica said, “I will give you gifts you can use against me, relevant to your investigation.”

“What?” Lucy asked.  She looked at her friends, then back at Guilherme.

Looking at Guilherme as if for help.  Which was interesting, Verona decided, when Guilherme had done absolutely nothing to warrant being trusted, except for providing a bit of sanity when Maricica was being so manic and dramatic.

“Restrain yourself, Lucille Desiree Ellingson, and you’ll be rewarded for your effort.”

Lucy crossed her arms.

The Faerie walked, dragging her wings along the flat stone floor behind her.  Some of the patterns were reflective, catching the light and reflecting them onto the walls.  For a moment, the lines and curves seemed to suggest the building-tops at the horizon of an old city.  “Excuse me.  I thought of what gift might be best, and I couldn’t decide.  I then decided on three gifts for each of you.”

“How long is this going to take?” Lucy asked.

Verona reached over to mock-pinch at Lucy’s sleeve.

“A small piece of instruction for each of you,” the Faerie said, still pacing.  “Verona!”

“Yes?”

“An individual creature, the cat that walks alone.  Individuality and a distinct style help this trick.  When you form a contract or a deal, or even if you’re engaged in a simple back and forth with someone, you can insert your individual Self into things.  Do you know the rule of three?”

“Repeat something three times, nail it in,” Lucy said.  “Make it stick as a curse?”

“That’s one form of it.  Worryingly crude,” Maricica said, and there was a note of distress in her voice, her eyebrows drawing together at a point high in her forehead.  “Nail it in?  Who told you to do that?”

“Goblins,” Lucy said.  “They didn’t mean actual nails.  They meant with taps, pushes, shoves, or bangs, among other things.”

“Yes, yes.  I understand that already.  I thought I detected a trace of their stink on you.  I’m not the most polite of Fae, but I’m still polite enough not to point that out at first meeting.  We won’t get distracted; the fact remains that threes make good practice.  The trick is simple.  When engaging with someone, find a turn of phrase and repeat it three times. If it’s yours or your habit, it’s all the better.  It makes the contract or exchange more yours, which gives you more power over it, and in coordination with other actions or tricks, acts as the setup for the masterstroke.  I pledge to practice it with you and teach you to execute it beautifully, if you so desire.  That is the first of nine gifts of varying size, and you can see how you might want to know that for your interview?”

“Except you know about it,” Avery said, “so how could we use it against you?”

“If there’s no against, Avery Kelly, then it works perfectly.  A conversation or interview is a dance, both participants doing their best to work with one another.  This is a complex set of three steps, in tune with a final maneuver.”

“Did you do anything to the Carmine Beast?” Lucy asked, butting in.

“Yes.  But not that evening.  I did small mischief to her weeks before she was lost to us, temporarily blinding her.  She had threatened to eat me or send violent, crude things after me.  I needed to get away and the one trick was enough.”

“What did you do that had her coming after you?”

“A longstanding grudge.  I see something like her, imperious and powerful, and I want to challenge it.”

“Dragging it into the ditches and murky places you live,” Guilherme said.

“You live in a cave, dear sun-touched Guilherme.”

“More specifically, what did you do?” Lucy asked.

“More specifically, I disturbed some Others in her charge, giving them counsel and direction so they could ruffle her fur.  She’s wanted to be rid of me for years.”

“How many years?” Verona asked.

“I don’t count the years well.  Twenty-two, I think?  Has it been that long, Guilherme?”

“Unfortunately.”

“What do you even do in the meantime?” Avery asked.

“Guilherme once spent three years targeting me daily,” Maricica said.  “In a specific way and pattern, that encouraged me to use certain muscles and ignore certain others.  All so I might jump in a certain way in response to a certain pattern of attack, in an ultimately vain hope that he could swat me with one fell blow and be done with me forever.”

“A long time ago,” Guilherme said.  “There was more to the plot.”

“Of course,” Maricica said.  “Fae of my court are adept when it comes to changing shapes and forms.  Changing form lets me be rid of the injuries of my other body… but he sought to force me into grooves and patterns with my transformations too, in preparation for another trick, when he would bid an Other from the forests north of here to attack me.  My instincts would be to transform into something familiar…”

“…And even if she escaped, which she clearly did,” Guilherme said, “she would be tainted by the attack, which she was.”

Maricica laughed.  The dark turnaround on the echo seemed shorter this time.

“Verona Hayward,” Guilherme said.

Verona turned, looking back at him.

“What you just noticed?  Your noticing is part of the trap.”

“What makes you think I noticed anything particular?”

“Your expression changed by small fractions.”

“You seem intent on coming across like you’re on our side, Guilherme,” Lucy said.

“John Stiles paid me a call, late last night.  He asked me to be gentle with you.  I’d rather have him as a friend to drink with than have you as a pawn.  I, barring intervention, will give you answers, give you gifts or promises of gifts, and then leave you be unless you need something specific, as John requested.”

“It sounds so good, doesn’t it?” Maricica asked.  “But that’s ample setup for a trap, right there.”

“What are you on about now?” Guilherme asked.

“He promises you what you desire.  You want answers, you want gifts, and after hearing so many local Others warn you about us, you want to keep things simple, with a minimum of fuss.  You trust John Stiles to some extent, so you trust his friend, who he asked a favor of.  Then if you accept the gift he can simply… tighten the noose, that comes part and parcel with the gift.  He promised only to be gentle about it.”

“You said you had nine gifts for us,” Verona said.  “Are we supposed to believe there’s no traps?”

“I did say I had nine gifts,” Maricica said.  “Three tricks, three sets of instructions, and three glamours.”

Verona raised her eyebrows.  “And… no traps?”

“Each of you gets one of each, and I’ll tell you right now that I also planned to announce to you three small traps across the nine gifts.  To teach small lessons and let you know what to watch out for.  The most minor of inconveniences.  I would have told you before handing out any more, but then he had to be unsubtle.”

“We’re getting off track,” Lucy said.  “Back to the subject of the Carmine Beast…”

Three traps, Verona made a mental note.  Trap from Guilherme?

“Antagonistic relationship,” Avery said.  Lucy gave Avery a look, like she was grateful to have someone on the same page as her.

“I wouldn’t call it such.  She periodically forgot I existed, and something like her has a good memory.”

“More unpleasant than pleasant?  She wanted to kill you at at least one point.”

“Yes,” Maricica said.

“Where were you on the night of her disappearance?” Lucy asked.

“I was here, in this cave.”

“Where were you in the moment of her disappearance?” Verona butted in. She wasn’t about to let Avery get all of the points with Lucy.

“I don’t know the moment of her disappearance,” Maricica said.  “But at the rough time I understand it happened, I was a short flight from here, on the west bank of the river, collecting spiderwebs and mosses for a structured glamour.  Not a glamour pertinent to your investigation.”

Lucy nodded.  “Did anyone come to get you or do anything?”

“The smallest goblin came by, screeching.  It relieved itself on the path and booby trapped the trees.  I was inside the cave by then.”

“You didn’t go out or answer?”

“I don’t heed goblins,” Maricica said.  “If anyone else had come, I’d likely have gone and I would have been glad to get involved in discussion and the selection of our town’s practitioner.  Not that you were poor choices.  You’re an amusing trio.”

“Do you know who did it?” Lucy asked, staying on target.

“No.”

“Do you suspect anyone?”

“Of murdering the beast?” Maricica asked.

“Or absconding with its power.”

“I have no specific suspicions.”

“Non-specific suspicions?” Lucy asked.

“If I had to name anyone or anything I think is likely, I would say the Hungry Choir is a likely instigator or tool of an instigator.  You did say you wanted to talk about them, I remember.”

“Wait,” Lucy said.  “Is there anything you can think of that is pertinent to our investigation?  That we haven’t covered?”

“Yes,” Maricica said.

“What?”

Gifts.

“No,” Lucy said.  “Stay put and be quiet.”

“So rude.  You’re a guest in my abode.”

My abode,” Guilherme stated.  “You’re a parasite that has entered and refused to be shooed out.”

Lucy turned around one hundred and eighty degrees, focusing on Guilherme, her open notebook in her hands.  “Guilherme.”

“I had an antagonistic relationship with the Carmine Beast.  She wanted me as a tool to use, I resisted her wishes and labels,” Guilherme said.  “Had I been a bloodier or cruder thing, she could have made me her soldier or assistant for matters of great import, but the glamour I wear makes me harder to pin down or label.  I shrugged her off, she disliked me, I disliked her.  The exchanges became boring.”

“Did you want her dead?” Avery asked.

“I thought it would be more interesting if she died,” Guilherme said.  “A replacement would shake up things across this area.  I didn’t kill her, at the time of her purported disappearance, I was alone, meeting a contact, not too far from the clearing where you awoke.”

“What contact?”

“I won’t say.  It would unravel plans and preparations I’ve made, in things unrelated to the Carmine Beast.”

“Anyone that can corroborate on your absence?”

“The spirits,” Guilherme said.  He spread his arms.  “Let them strike me down if I’m lying.  To be an Other and to be Forsworn is to be Undone.  Let them undo me, if they see it fit.”

Verona nodded to herself at that.

“Fine,” Lucy said, “and you got back when?”

“Not for a long time.  There were centuries of Court affairs to catch up on.  Even abbreviated, it took hours.  I returned here and Maricica taunted me with the announcement that the Carmine Beast was gone.  Then I went out to ask others for answers.”

“Do you know who did it?”

“No.”

“Do you suspect anyone?”

“I suspect Maricica, because this entire affair lacks subtlety.  I suspect goblins, because they would like the chaos that follows.  With the Carmine throne vacant, more goblins will crop up, as will violent echoes and Bogeymen.  The goblins would like that.  Charles Abrams has ample reasons to hold a grudge.”

“Matthew Moss places Charles Abrams at his apartment at the time of the beast’s disappearance.”

“He was once a summoner.  He may be forsworn, but there’s nothing saying he couldn’t have something stowed away.  He can use objects that an ordinary human could stumble onto and use, they would likely hurt him or have a chance to turn on the user, but with caution or sufficient preparation?  He made Others as the core part of his practice.  He could have sent something to do his work.”

Lucy looked at Verona, then Avery.

Verona nodded.  Mental note on that, then.

“Is there anything you haven’t told us that you think might be relevant?”

“No.  I’ve given you a succinct and complete answer, as John asked me to,” Guilherme told them, his voice soft.

It was a nice voice.  Verona didn’t feel flustered in the way Avery seemed to be around Maricica, but she didn’t feel pulled in either.  She wondered if the lack of any obvious signals was the trap.

“I wish you’d asked that question, about what I think might be relevant,” Maricica said.  “It relates to one of my gifts.  An instruction.”

“What instruction?” Avery asked.

“Lucille-”

“Lucy.”

“Lucy,” Maricica said.  “My second gift to you is to move where you stand in relation to the Others of Kennet, and give you insight into the ones who picked you.  A tool if you’re to effectively move against the Kennet Others, or protect yourself against them.  I ask you… why you?  You three specifically.”

“We’re young enough to be non-threatening and lack ambition, we’re old enough to not be complete idiots, and still be believable as the local practitioners,” Lucy said.

More specifically.”

“Because we were there?”

“More than that.”

“I think you’d better just tell us the answer.”

“Because you’re already a little bit other,” Maricica said.  “Small ‘o’.  I could smell it on you from the moment you arrived at the awakening.  You smell like lonely frustration, Lucy Ellingson.  You stand apart and you know it.  Verona Hayward stepped back and isn’t even sure if she wants to step forward again, alienated in part by her own desires and intent.”

“And me?” Avery asked.  “Do I even want to know?”

Maricica shook her head.  “You told us your story.  That you’re alone.  I can tell you that there are three others around your age who could return your affections.  None are meant for you.”

“What?” Avery asked.  “No.  That’s- no.”

“The first of the three is self-loathing and denies her very Self.”

“Can you introduce me to her?” Avery asked.

“I could, but I would be in contravention of my oath to you,” Maricica said, shrugging, the totality of her wings rippling following the shrug.  “Like being attracted to like isn’t the entirety of compatibility.  You would love her at first but she would hurt you back.  Then you would hate her and she would hate herself.  Such is her loathing.  You should trust me when I say she would do lasting harm to you before you could heal her.  She will find her own happiness when her age is twice what it is now.”

“That’s…” Avery wrinkled her nose, swallowing.  “I’m not sure I believe that it’s that impossible.”

“All the same, I cannot act in contravention of my oath,” Maricica said, her head bowing.

“Who’s are the others?” Verona asked.

“Neither are meant for Avery.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Avery asked.  She looked and sounded a little horrified.  “Is there anyone out there that is?”

“Not in Kennet.”

Avery sputtered.

“What do you mean when you say not meant for her?” Verona asked.

“I’m not sure I want to know,” Avery said.  “This is horrifying.  What kind of gift is this?”

“The second is incompatible in other ways.  She would want and need Avery to be someone she could never be, and Avery would need and want the same back.  The third presently has a girlfriend in another city.  She loves her, and would be heartbroken if ripped from her.  In two years she intends to move to a bigger city with her partner.  It is true love.  Barring illness or incident, they will not be parted.”

Avery blinked a few times.  “So your gift to me is telling me I’m going to be alone forever?”

“This gift is me telling each of you that you were selected with the idea that you could be made Other,” Maricica said.  She gave Verona a momentary look. “There are answers to each of these things.”

“With some traps scattered among them,” Verona observed.

“Small inconveniences to teach lessons, and life-changing possibilities,” Maricica said.  “Here.  Lucy, a trick for defense and counterattack.”

She handed Lucy a slip of gilded paper.

“A wedding invitation, blown away by the wind, never touched by ground or water before I caught it.  I removed the writing and added my own.”

“Nettlewisp,” Lucy said.

“A trick.  A pinch of glamour, hold it in your palm and draw the rune in it.  Whisper your anticipation of the enemy’s attack or ploy.  If you’re right, you can temporarily blind them and confound their senses.”

“Like you did with the Carmine Beast?”

“Yes.  For Avery.  Another slip.  An old piece of paper, enriched rather than damaged by time, and another trick.  Make one item into a similar one with a bit of glamour.  It will make dealing with those awkward hats and masks much tidier.”

“Okay,” Avery muttered.  “Hell of a lot better than the ‘no girlfriends in Kennet’ gift.”

“Verona.  A bit of hide from a creature with silvered skin, inscribed with a trick to create images.  They won’t hold up to many things, but if they stand for long enough, they fool reality and become part of reality.  Glamour is the Faerie’s power, lying to reality, then making a statement bold enough to sell the lie, and not always with words.  Illusions that can be real.”

Verona nodded.

“The remainder.  One instruction that could help with the Choir.  Deals made with greater forces have their means of appeal.”

“The Carmine Beast was a way to appeal stuff, right?” Lucy asked.

“Yes.  But this is different.  If you’re ensnared, and if you truly believe a situation or puzzle was impossible, there are ways to challenge it.  Speak loudly, clearly, and invite all present to witness and add their voices to yours, that you think it is not achievable as presented.  For something like a living ritual, you could demand they prove that one round was possible to complete.  It costs them power to prove it, they would have to stage something similar enough, and depending on that staging, it could be argued down further.  If they don’t answer your call, they are weakened, and ways to escape the inevitable open up.”

“And if they prove they can do it?” Lucy asked.

“In the case of the Hungry Choir,” Maricica said, “I would imagine all living contestants would have to pledge their voices to the challenge.  If it could be proven, likely by having Waifs take on the strength of normal people, with the same wounds as other participants, and succeed, then all individuals who challenged it would be forfeit.  The ritual would forever after be stronger and more resistant to such challenges.”

“A last resort,” Verona murmured.

She saw Lucy nod.

It’s something.

“That’s three tricks, and three instructions.  A nettlewisp protection, a way to turn like into like, and a way to create simple images that may become reality.  A challenge for the choir and other great forces, a truth about why you were selected, and a way to make a contract your own.”

“I’ll reserve my gifts,” Guilherme spoke from the darkness of the cave.  “If what she gives you next doesn’t need fixing, it will still teach lessons that will enrich what I give you by what they lack.”

“So dour,” Maricica said.  Her eyes were bright in the gloom of the cave.  She moved her wings, bringing them forward.  “Would you like to change your skin, Verona?  Dress up as something different?  Lucy?”

“I’d rather watch over the others, first.”

“Avery.  Anything in mind?”

“No.  I’m a little leery after your other ‘gift’.  Geez.”

“Verona?”

Verona hesitated.  When she didn’t say no, she saw the wings sweep over and around her.  Dust rolled off her skin, fine enough to sift into and through her clothes.  She didn’t cough from it.

“What’s the drawback?”

“You tell me.  This is instructional, in part.  Then I’ll give you some glamour to take, along with some more practical instruction, so you can try it out on your own.  Give it a try for now.  Try to stay calm.”

“I’m not sure I’m okay with this practical a lesson right off the bat,” Lucy said.

The dust was cool against Verona’s skin, so fine a sensation that the sensation slipped to a different place from where she was sure her skin and clothes were.  Her headache and stomachache were gone.

The wings pulled away, with a suddenness and a stirring that scattered Verona’s thoughts.  When they resettled, they weren’t in the same configuration as before, because her brain wasn’t a human brain.

She heard Lucy shouting, and she didn’t have the means to understand the words.

Stolen Away – 2.3

Avery

“Change her back!” Lucy raised her voice.

Avery dropped down to a crouch, reaching, and the small animal backed off.  Avery couldn’t see it well in the dark, because it had black fur with a white underbelly, but it looked like it might be a weasel, stoat, a ferret, or something like that.  She wasn’t sure on the differences.  Mostly she could only see it by the white markings around the eyes and insides of the ears.

“She’s scared of me,” Avery said.

“You’re a giant to her, more than one hundred and fifty times her size.  Give her a moment to adjust,” Maricica said.  Her wings shifted, dropping further down from her bare shoulders, like she was about to move or do something, but it was just a change of her standing posture.  Holding her ground.

“Or you can frigging change her back!” Lucy raised her voice.

“If you’ll give her a moment, she should find a comfort zone with the body and the situation.  She didn’t give her permission for the change, and deleterious practices are always more effective if the subject invites it.”

“Dele-what?” Avery asked.

“Harmful.  Inflicted wrongs.  Curses and unasked-for effects like a transformation,” Maricica explained.  “If they ask for it, either by opening their mouths and saying the words, or by doing something in and of itself wrong and deserving of being wronged in turn, the deleterious effect will stick.”

“So this won’t stick?” Lucy asked.

“If she didn’t want it, it would be easy to shake off.”

“She doesn’t seem like she recognizes me,” Avery noted.  “Does she know what she wants?”

“That would be a rub.”

“A rub?” Lucy asked.  “I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean in that context, except it’s in no way acceptable to call it something as minor as a ‘rub’!”

“Glamour may become confused with reality if left unchallenged,” Guilherme stated.

“I want to challenge it!” Lucy raised her voice.

“She would need to, and it seems she’s fallen into the glamour.”

Fallen into!?

“Shhh,” Avery soothed, as Verona ducked her head and backed away a bit.  She tried to keep her voice gentle and quiet.  “It’s okay.  See?  It’s me, Avery.  Just last night, you said you loved us.  I think that was the first time in my life that someone who wasn’t my family said that to me.”

“Don’t make this mistake of thinking this is ignorance,” Guilherme said.  “The Fae of the Dark Fall often trick children into animal forms.”

“Why!?”

“You’re only agitating the girl, suntouched oaf.”

“Shh,” Avery soothed.  She dropped lower to the ground to make her profile smaller, her hands out, palms up.  “Come on, slinky Verona.  I’m safe.”

“They are good for little, but they are masters when it comes to transformation.  Themselves and others.  When all you have is a hammer and a propensity toward rot and ugliness, you’ll often find yourself using the hammer.  Animals can be made complacent, loyal, scared, or edible in ways much harder to achieve with the typical human.”

Edible!?”

“I’m so disappointed you’re this agitated, Lucy Ellingson,” Maricica said.  “If she wants to return to normal, she should be able to.  It will be an effective lesson that will help her learn to make effective use of glamour.”

“She doesn’t want anything, that’s my problem!”

“Give her time.  The Self wins out in the end, against a working as shallow as this.  We’ll see how it emerges, or if it unravels the working and returns her to normal.  It may help if you talk to her.”

“Come on,” Avery murmured.  She turned on her Sight to try and see if she could make out Verona better.  She couldn’t, really, but she could see the tether, and she could see the small movements.  A whisker twitch.  An inquisitive sniff at the air.  Weasel Verona inched closer.  “Shhh.  Look at that pretty fur.  Of course it’s black and white.  I’d take a picture on my phone if I didn’t think it would scare you away.”

Lucy, watching the Faerie with a wary eye, slowly got down on her hands and knees, before dropping down beside Avery.  “I’m getting my nice sweatshirt dirty, lying down like this, Verona.  I need you to get with the program and clue in.”

“Use nice words, Lucy,” Avery said.  “Animals can read tone.”

“My tone is nice,” Lucy said, smiling, “the words don’t matter.”

“Come on,” Avery coaxed Lucy as much as she was coaxing Verona.  “Nice things.  How cool would it be if you could do this when you wanted to?”

“Hey, Ronnie,” Lucy said, her voice uncharacteristically soft.  “Hey.  C’mere.  Let’s get you back to being you.  You’re my best friend, you’re like family.  We’re tied together by the awakening.”

Avery watched as Verona inched a bit closer, reacted to a tiny movement of Avery’s hand that Avery hadn’t realized she was making, then reacted to the turn of Lucy’s head.

“Okay, Ronnie?  I want us to be secret witches even into our old age, to have quiet conversations together with Avery where we discuss if our boyfriends or Avery’s girlfriend should be let in on the secret.  We can get married and each of us have two maids of honor… or more like Avery and I will, and you can do something weird like that hypothetical you talked about last Christmas.”

Lucy, lying belly down on the ground, rested her chin on one hand, the other outstretched, palm up.

“What hypothetical?” Avery asked.

“Like… she said something like the only way she could stand having a boyfriend around without getting annoyed with him would be if they each lived in different houses, and never actually got married.  Like couples sleeping in different beds, but he’d have a house and she’d have an apartment over a bookstore or something.”

“I don’t see the appeal,” Avery said.

“I don’t either, but she did.  Does, unless her mind changed.  Damn it, Verona, don’t make me talk about you in the past tense.  You don’t get to frig off and-”

Verona twisted and dashed into the darkness of the cave.

“-You nitwitAt least try!” Lucy raised her voice, loud enough Avery winced.

Avery got to her feet.  “Are there tunnels or ways out in there?”

“Or light?” Lucy asked, walking back to the Faerie, looking agitated.  “I have a flashlight in my bag, but do you have anything like a light switch?”

“We have means,” Guilherme said, “But-”

Verona came back, dashing across the cave’s floor, looking almost cartoon-like as she moved each leg multiple times in her scrabbling efforts to find traction on the flat stone.  Heading for the cave entrance.  To outside.

Avery dove, reaching for her, but the combination of her belly-flop on the hard stone and Verona’s speed made her miss.  Wincing, rolling onto her side, she reached out for the tether, trying to grab Verona’s tether like she had grabbed her mask from Declan.

Lucy, too, dove.  It was too slow, Verona was already at maximum alert.  Avery did what she could, trying to get Verona not by tugging her back, but by flicking her toward Lucy.

Lucy grabbed Verona’s tail by the end.  In the gloom, grabbing the black furred tail seemed to be a surprise to Lucy, to the point she let go immediately.  Verona, twisting and reaching back in reaction to the sudden touch, had lost momentum.  A second grab by Lucy secured her.

“Alpeana,” Maricica said.  “They woke you.”

The mare emerged from the dark, hair messier than usual.  She lurked at the very edge of the light that entered the cave, wincing at the brightness of it.

“Gotcha,” Lucy said.  “I got you, okay?  Relax, relax.”

Lucy stroked Verona’s fur, fingernails digging in past dense fur.

“Almost scared the literal poop out of me,” the ferret said.

Avery closed her eyes, mouthing a thank-you to- she wasn’t sure what.  There had to be something out there, if there were mares and faerie and goblins and ghosts.

“Sorry we disturbed you, Alpeana,” Avery said.  She wasn’t sure what to do with her hands, and she felt like the apology should be more formal.  “Thank you for scaring her back in our general direction.”

Alpeana rubbed at one eye.  “I dinnae do nothin’, I was only sleepin’, and she comes runnin’ up smellin’ like sunlight an’ glam.  Glam’s hard for me ta ignore, but sunlight?  I might as well be allergic.”

“It burns you?” Avery asked.

“Makes tha eyes water.  Every bit of ye recoils and wants to put up a fight, but you can’t be fightin’ the sun, lassie.  Not many sorts can.  Leaves ye hurtin’ in little ways all over.  Like allergies.”

Why were accents the best thing ever, and was there a better accent than this burr?

“You don’t have to stay if being this close to the door is hurting you,” Avery said.

“I’m already up.  I’ve got to be at work tonight, an’ besides, I can’t be slinkin’ back off to bed when there’s guests out.”

“We weren’t planning to stay long,” Lucy said.

“All tha same,” Alpeana said, not moving.

“Just gotta get Verona here back to normal,” Lucy said.  She jostled Verona.

“Do we gotta?” Verona asked.  She stretched her already long body.  Lucy was holding her cradled in folded arms, and Verona pressed into the gap between arms and body, her body stretched out against Lucy’s ribs, her head settling into the crook of Lucy’s elbow.  “This is interesting.”

“We need to go get dinner.  You’re welcome to come to my place if you want,” Lucy said.

“Gimme a bit.  Let me see if I can figure this stuff out.”

“I’m just glad you didn’t go bolting outside while still animal brained.”

“This entire body is so weird.  The heartbeat’s so fast, and it’s so nervous and alert…”

“Is she going to be okay?” Avery asked Maricica.  It was hard to figure out where to look with the Faerie woman.  Eye contact was intimidating, anything else felt evasive, rude, or weird.  She spent a lot of time studying the pattern on the part of the wings that was on the floor.

“I do believe she is,” Maricica said.  “She dove deep but she resurfaced.  Most who take animal forms don’t learn to speak so quickly.  As Miss suggested before the awakening ritual, skills like a strong imagination make a good skeptic and a good practitioner both.”

“And useless for most real-life things,” Verona said.  “Like school, and getting organized, and keeping on task with making dinner…”

“I need you to start figuring out a way to undo this.”

“But this is cozy.  You’re warm.  You’re safe and friendly and this body really appreciates safe and friendly,” Verona said, stretching and writhing more.  She sounded almost drunk.

“Give her a moment,” Maricica said.

Avery looked at Maricica’s eyes, and it was easier, because the Faerie woman’s attention was entirely someplace else.  Studying Verona, studying Lucy.

Looking at the glamour, maybe?

“Do you sleep during the day?” Avery asked Alpeana.

“In tha sunlight hours, aye.”

“What do you do at night?  You said work?”

“I find tha people who’re most troubled and I trouble them more.”

“Why?” Avery asked.

“Some get therapy tha hard way, and some get a wee sheets-wettin’ bad one when they don’ deserve it, aye?  Cosmological, innit?”

Avery was pretty sure that if she could get a recording of Alpeana or any other girl saying cosmological in a thick Scottish burr, she would listen to it on repeat for days.

“What do you mean, cosmological?” Verona asked.

“Sometimes Fate or Time or Economy have a wee wrinkle and they need to nudge someone or somethin’, or tha cosmological balance sheets don’ add up and they need somethin’ like me ta take a peek or pull some things apart to sort out why and how.”

“Tied into the greater workings of the world,” Maricica said.

“I don’t suppose you ran into that a lot after the Carmine Beast died?” Lucy asked.

“Oh, aye.”

“Aye?” Lucy asked, surprised.  “What happened, or… what did your boss say?  Do you have a boss?”

“No.  No boss, not so far as I’ve ever met.  I work with instinct and nobody’s ever said I should do elsewise.  Give a small child a dream of her da dying before ‘is time, stretch it so it feels like tha dream goes for weeks?  Leaves her changed, after, even if she dinnae remember half of it.”

“Is that a jab?” Lucy asked, her voice harder.  “Are you messing with me?”

“I- no,” Alpeana said, her dark eyes opening wider.  “I’ve just been woken up, lassie, I might be a wee bit muddled, but I don’t think I’ve been jabbin’ at anyone or anything, why?”

Lucy looked like she was going to say something, then Verona moved, and she turned away, pacing towards the door.

“It’s monstrous,” Lucy said, with her back turned.  “Doing that to someone.”

“I dare say I’m a monster, lassie.  Might be tha she hugs her da a little tighter, after.  More likely tha wee bit sleeps uneasy, has some bad days, but the invisible wheels of tha world turn a bit righter, a bit straighter.  If I didn’t, the snarls might become doors and the wrongs in the cosmology might become right problems.”

Lucy turned away, walking a few steps.

Avery watched Alpeana’s expression change a few times.

“Um,” Avery said.  “You said it changed, after the Carmine Beast.”

“Sometimes I take what’s there an’ I move it around, or change a wee detail, sometimes there be a need, an’ I need to use what’s out there to build or fill in, an’ sometimes there’s a wrinkle or a snarl and I fix it an’ go on my nightly way.  Lately, this past month and a bit, wha’s there is bloodier, messier.  Wha’s missing is raw at the edges, an’ when I go to get materials, most of wha I have to work with is blood and chaos.  Wrinkles and snarls?  Same idea.  Means I need to go further afield to find what I need.”

“We should go eat with our families soon,” Lucy said.  “As soon as we can figure out the Verona situation, but we’d like to interview you at a later point, get more details on that.”

“Aye.  Whatever ye need.  Best if it’s at sunup, or you can come with me as I do tha rounds.”

The Verona situation was that Verona was now lying belly up, legs splayed, head back and in the crook of Lucy’s elbow.  Lucy saw Avery smirk, and looked down.

“Don’t you dare tell me you’re sleeping at a time like this.”

“I’m awake,” Verona said.  “I’m listening.  I wouldn’t want to miss learning about all this stuff.  It doesn’t mean I can’t lounge.”

“Lounging on me.”

“Alpeana,” Verona called out.

“Aye?”

“When you say further afield, what do you mean?  Are you spirit?  Or ghost?  Or something else?”

“I don’t rightly know, lassie.  I used to be a wee girl, not tha I was much of one, we had so little.  I dinnae remember the particular details, but I remember standing watch over my ma and da’s bed.  If I shook them out of a fitful sleep, they treated me kind.  Then I did the same for my brother and sisters.  Got a feel for when a bad one was coming.  Then neighbors, only I dinnae wake them up.  Then, some time later, I’m up in the cabin rafters, watching careful while my family got themselves sorted to go to church.  They wondered where I went.”

“So many of them they lost track of you?” Avery asked.

“Five sisters and one brother.  They dinnae forget me as much as they forgot everythin’ for a bit.  They got sick, I was the only one who dinnae get it.  It was the first church outting after.  Then I got the call, like an instinct tha’s not from me to me, but from somethin’ bigger to me.”

“Dream,” Maricica said.

“Might be,” Alpeana said.

“I’m sorry that happened,” Avery said.

“I haf a purpose, lassie, I don’t go hungry, I haf friends and I go interestin’ places.  It’s nae so bad.”

“Interesting places?” Avery asked.

“Yeah,” Verona butted in, from Lucy’s arms.  She craned her sinuous neck around a bit.  “Going back to that, where do you go to go further afield, for resources or materials?” Verona asked, again.  “I’ve been wondering about power sources, or resources, and how it’s all put together.”

Now I know how Lucy feels when Verona derails conversations, Avery thought.

“I dinnae have names for where I go.  I just go,” Alpeana said.  “Maricica comes, now and then.”

“I need materials sometimes,” Maricica said.  “Glamour is strongest when you build on a solid backbone.  There are places you can go that are more Other than human.  Many are hazardous.  The ruins, the abyss, the warrens- detestable.”

“Goblin infested,” Guilherme noted, speaking up for the first bit in a while.

“The paths, the spirit world.  The Faerie courts, of course.  There are other Other places.”

“Woah, woah, woah,” Verona said.  “Explain?  Briefly?”

“We don’t have time,” Lucy said.

“But-” Avery cut in, stopping.  “-I want to know.”

You’re pulling a Verona on me, now?”

“It’s the first thing Miss said about the practice, before we awakened, that really got me excited.”

“That reminds me.  We still need to deal with the Hungry Choir,” Lucy said, turning away from Avery and toward Maricica.  “Were any of these places where they, uh, ‘set the table’ last night, so to speak?”

“No,” Maricica said.  “But that is a very good question.  It would be their own place.”

“Was it Kennet, or like Kennet?” Lucy asked.

“It was Kennet, just… stepping in a direction that mortal feet cannot usually step.  Adjacent.”

“How many places are adjacent to Kennet?” Lucy asked.  “Or types of places?”

Maricica smiled.  “A good number.  Some are adjacent in a way that would put them outside Kennet, such as the Abyss or the Courts, and some are far, far away, like the Paths.  That said, the spirit world, the ruins, the basest parts of the warrens are adjacent in…”

“In a way that would put them technically inside Kennet?” Lucy asked.

“Yes.”

Lucy nodded, seeming to considered that for a second.

“If you want to know more,” Maricica said.  “Alpeana could be an escort.  She knows ways and routes.”

Avery looked at the mare, who sat in the shadows, pale hands combing and tugging their way through her hair.  When clumps or dark stuff came free, they were wiped against the dress, which was ragged and weird in texture, and might have been fashioned entirely from the stuff.  A dark face with dark eyes turned Avery’s way, staring back.

“I’d love that,” Avery said.

Alpeana nodded.

“I was thinking along another line, kind of,” Lucy said.  “The Carmine Beast’s power is still in Kennet, isn’t it?  But there’s no obvious… I dunno.  Blood trail, or evidence, or anything like that?  Metaphorical or otherwise?”

“You’re quite right,” Maricica said.

“So… someone could have killed the Carmine Beast and taken its power somewhere to stow it?  Technically in Kennet, but not… here?”

“That is possible.  The goblins could have stowed it in the shallow parts of the Warrens, for example, Edith could have taken it to the spirit world, or Alpeana could have taken it to the ruins.”

“Or the Hungry Choir’s world?” Lucy asked.

“Also possible.”

“Would it be physical?” Verona asked.  “What would it look like?”

Lucy’s phone began beeping.

“It depends on a great deal,” Maricica said.  “Someone like Matthew could drink it up, if he could wrestle his Doom long enough.  A Fae like Guilherme could make it look like something and hide it in plain sight.  But most often, it would resemble the typical resources one claims from a dead beast, writ large and alive with its own power.”

“Meat?” Lucy asked.

“And bones, tendons, fur, and fluids.”

Lucy shook her head, checking her phone.  “We should have left for dinner fifteen minutes ago.  My mom’s liable to be peeved.  Nobody thought to mention this stuff about overlapping locations with Kennet?  Or the power being meat and stuff?”

“Frankly,” Maricica said, “you didn’t ask, and I suspect many didn’t think to mention it because they thought you had already asked, or considered it common sense.”

Lucy sighed heavily through her nose.  “I feel like Verona’s not motivated to break this glamour so long as I’m acting as her bed.  She’s going to stay a… weasel?”

“Mink,” Maricica said.

Verona stretched.

“How do you break a glamour?” Avery asked.  “You said it could be done delet-”

“Deleteriously.”

“Yeah.  How would I deal with it if someone did it to me?”

“A complex question, depending on-”

“Brute force,” Guilherme cut in.  “Typical glamour is fragile.”

“Oh,” Lucy said.

Avery jumped as Lucy tossed Verona out of her arms.

The creature flipped end over end, and then hit the ground, sprawling.  In the hidden movements and shifts of dust from the awkward collision with the floor, masked by the tricks darkness played on the eyes, the weasel became human Verona again.

“Ow!  Geez!  My tailbone!”

“Your tailbone?  My arms, from carrying you!  I was worried, you jerk!  I completely forgot about dinner because I felt sick, worrying about you wearing that shape for however long, and I didn’t eat much of a lunch!”

Seeing Lucy giving Verona a hard time put Avery in mind of having Olivia over for dinner and her parents arguing with her siblings.  It was awkward, and both Maricica and Alpeana were watching.  Guilherme too, but he was moving through the dark, rustling.

“We should go,” Avery said.

“You should come back,” Maricica said.  “This evening, once you’ve attended to your filial role.  Your last gift awaits.”

Thinking about the other gift stung a bit.  Avery felt like she might be able to decipher the riddle of it or find a loophole if she could think on it long enough, but the conversation and the situation with Verona hadn’t really allowed a lot of thinking.  The end result made her feel a bit heartsick.

“Uh, maybe.”

“It’s one solution to what ails you,” Maricica said.

“It’s a trap,” Guilherme said.  “I know what she intends to do, and I already have a better way in mind.”

“It’s a means of self discovery,” Maricica said.  “You’ll be a richer person for having explored other avenues.”

Avery rolled her shoulders a bit, uncomfortable.

Lucy had helped Verona to her feet, and was now working on getting her closer to the door.  Verona was being a bit of a brat, plucking at her tongue.

“Maybe.”

“Do,” Maricica said.

“Arrive in the evening when Alpeana is absent, and we can light the cave,” Guilherme said.  “Her rights as first guest trumped yours, or we would have found a compromise.”

“I forgot they cannae see in the dark,” Alpeana said.  “I wouldn’t haf asked you to keep tha lights off.”

“Next time, then,” Guilherme said.

Avery nodded, turned to jog after her friends, who were at the entrance, and came face to face with Maricica, who had moved between her and the door.

Or face to collarbone.

The Faerie bent her head down, and Avery froze.

The Faerie whispered in her ear.

Then she was gone.  Avery remained in place for a minute, then ran after the others, who were giving her anxious looks.

“What was that?” Lucy asked.

“She wants me to come back later,” Avery said.  “I think I’m going to come back later.  If I can get away from my parents, which shouldn’t be too hard.”

“I don’t think you should be coming back here alone,” Lucy said.  “I didn’t miss what Guilherme said, about them abducting kids.”

“I don’t think they can, with the oaths they swore,” Verona said.

“Even with that,” Lucy insisted.  “Your idea, before, Avery?  About wanting us to have unanimous consent or agreements before we practice?  It might be a good idea to have a rule like that when it comes to dangerous Others like the Fae.  At least two of us have to agree to stuff.”

“Yeah,” Avery said.

“And we can’t forget there are traps,” Lucy said.  “So we have to pay a ton of attention.  We can’t fuck around, Verona.”

“I don’t think I’ve relaxed like I did while you were holding me since I was a baby,” Verona said.

“That’s bad.  That’s playing right into their hands.  Traps, Verona.”

“I know,” Verona said.  “But… if they want to trap us, they’re going to.  That’s what they are, apparently.  Saying no or freaking out might be the trap.  So… let’s understand it first.”

Lucy sighed, heavily.

“That was good, by the way,” Verona added.  “Asking about the overlapping places.”

“Yeah,” Avery said.  “I didn’t think you were even thinking about that stuff.”

“It’s all up there,” Lucy said, indicating her head.  “Floating around.  Two pieces clicked together.”

“It’s good,” Avery said.

“You’re really coming back tonight?” Lucy asked.

“I might be.  I want to.”

Lucy shook her head.  “She’s being brazen about there being traps.  You can’t know which has the trap-”

“So we assume they’re all trapped,” Verona said.  “Plan ahead, think of ways through, ways it can go wrong.”

“That’s a lot of planning and thinking,” Avery said.

“But it’s a lot of power, and it’s tools we can use,” Verona said.  “We should sit down, work through what we got, and think about each and every gift, and every part of the conversation.”

“Exhausting,” Lucy said.  She looked at Avery.  “And you want to go back?  This soon?”

Avery nodded.

“What was she offering?” Verona asked.

“Mom!” Avery called out.  She grabbed the print-out from the printer as she passed it.  Making sure she covered a statement from earlier in the day, especially before she was doing a heavier practice.  “Mom!  I can’t find the boxes!”

“Check the basement!”

“Where in the basement!?”

“I don’t-”

“Mom, mom, mom, mom-!”

“Give me a second, Kerry, please!”

“But I have stuff for school tomorrow-”

“It’s almost your bedtime!  You’re just telling us about this now?”

“I only remembered now!”

Avery thought about navigating through the kitchen to the basement, but Kerry, her dad, her mom, and Sheridan were all there.  Sheridan wanted their dad to take her for driving lessons.

The television blinged and blanged with Declan’s game.  Declan’s friends hooted and hollered while Declan groaned.  Amber and Cal, if Avery remembered right.  She was glad to see Amber again.  After Declan had been teased about his friendship with a girl, he’d dropped his friend cold.

The noise from the TV was incessant.  Avery escaped into the back yard.  Her Grumble sat in a lawn chair, while Rowan, Laurie, and their friends stood at the base of the porch stairs, fifteen feet away, doing a bad job of hiding the fact they were vaping or smoking or whatever.

Her Grumble beckoned, moving his whole hand because his individual fingers didn’t move so well.  She approached, walking halfway to him.  He beckoned again, and she closed the distance, and hugged him.

His answering hug was stiff and rough, but the smile he wore when she pulled back was genuine, albeit halved by the stroke he’d once had.

“You arright?” he asked.  His voice had a burr of an entirely different sort to Alpeana, gravelly and not rooted in any accent.

“Ups and downs,” she said.  “More than usual, lately.  Kinda mostly downs, past day.”

“Your soccer?” he asked.  “Team problem?”

She shook her head.  “Just general problems.  A classmate might’ve died, kind of.  I don’t know.”

He reached for her hand, and it was uncoordinated enough she had to put her hand in his, rather than let him take hers.  He gave her a squeeze.

It struck her that she could tell him because he didn’t really talk a lot with her parents or other cousins.

“Are you okay, Grumble?  Are you lonely?  Or do you ever feel like you’re being left out, or lost in all… that?

He shook his head.  “Don’t worry about…” and mumbled something she couldn’t quite get.  An old man like me, maybe.

“I worry.  I love you, you know.  I wouldn’t want you to be secretly unhappy.”

“I lived a good life,” he said, speaking like he was mumbling with a mouthful of gravel.  “I’m content to watch over this, proud of everyone, and what my daughter has done and made.”

“Except maybe Sheridan?” she asked, smiling a bit.  “You know, someone could say it’s okay if you’re not so proud of her.”

He made an exaggerated wink.  Avery smiled.

“No,” he mumbled.  “Her too.  She’s a…” something something.  Good girl?  Good egg?

“Let me know, you know, if you’re ever feeling alone in this crowd.”

“Like you?  Before?” he asked.  He still held her hand, and reached awkwardly over to pat roughly at the top of her hand.  “Your mom said.”

“Awkward,” Avery murmured.

“She cried at the dining room table that night.  She loves you,” her Grumble said.

Avery swallowed hard.

“I love you,” he said.  He let go of her hand to reach out, poking roughly at the side of her belly.  She smiled and pulled back out of the way.  He added, “You’re my favorite.”

“I wonder if you say that to most of the grandkids.”

“One or two,” he mumbled, winking again.  “If I want a driver.  Or a favor.  Mostly you.  And you don’t have to do anything but be you.”

She nodded.

“Do your sports.  Give y’r’rall.  Study hard.  Keep being good.”

“Okay, Grumble.”

He held her hand in both of his, tight.  “Meet a good man.  Bear children.  Pass on that goodness.  If you can sit in a backyard like I sit now, picking your favorite grandchild after… after a life well lived, that’s all I want for you.”

Her smile faltered a bit.  She leaned in and gave him a kiss on the side of the head.

“Love you, Grumble.  Let me know if you ever need company.”

He nodded, letting go of her hand.

She ducked back into the house.  The plates and dishes from dinner were still all over the table.  She gathered up what she could and took it into the kitchen, loading it into the open dishwasher on her way through.

Basement. There were plastic totes and boxes everywhere.  Old albums that didn’t fit on the shelves, yet to be digitized.  The photo digitizer, yet to be plugged in.  Old equipment from skiing, for a family of seven, across a few generations.  A sewing machine that came as part of a desk.  The spaces between stuff were narrow enough that she had to turn sideways at times.  Upstairs was better, but this was the aftermath of years of the life lived up there, stored away.

She sorted her way through, checking the occasional box.  Halloween stuff, more halloween stuff.

And then clothes.

She lifted a box down and began sorting through it.

“Find what you’re looking for?” her mom asked.

“Think so.  Hand-me downs.”

“We can buy clothes if you need clothes.  You don’t have to be thrifty on our account.”

“It’s for an experiment,” Avery said.

Verona was waiting for her at the birch arch.  Avery hopped off her bike and leaned it against one tree.

“Lucy couldn’t make it?” Avery asked.

“No.  She was late for dinner and her mom enforced curfew.”

“Darn,” Avery said.  She hesitated.

“Come on.”

It felt wrong, doing this without Lucy.  But they couldn’t always be three.  Life got in the way.  Family meant obligations.  School and even her team meant obligations.

She felt a little nervous at the idea that she might have to miss stuff if her team stuff got more intense.

The cave was lit.  A sword lay on the ground, and caught light from outside, reflecting it in five different directions.  More blades, mirrors hanging from the ceiling, and scattered old coins caught those bits of light, similarly reflecting it out.

Guilherme was absent.  It was dark out and Alpeana had already started her rounds, it seemed.  Maricica sat in what had to be Guilherme’s chair, one wing draped over her, the other across the floor, like an inviting carpet.

Avery averted her eyes as Maricica dropped her feet to the ground, moving her wing out of the way, the other wing slipping down.  There was no need to look away, really.  The Fae revealed only what she wanted to reveal, and she wasn’t crass.  She simply suggested, hinted, teased.  Probably with everyone and everything she interacted with.

Dust rolled down and off of the Fae’s wing as she walked.  As she walked around the pair of them, the dust puffed up like it had hit something behind her.  When she moved on, there was a chair there, ornate.

“Tell me you’re not going to kidnap us or steal us away,” Avery said.

“I won’t,” Maricica said.  “Sit.”

“You mean no harm or foul?”

“No.  I will keep to the awakening oath.”

“Do you invite me to truly and thoroughly kick your ass and make you regret your actions three times over, if I feel you’ve wronged my friend?” Verona asked.

Avery raised an eyebrow, looking back.

“Gotta stand in for Lucy, right?” Verona asked, smiling.

“I invite such for tonight only.  I will not tie my hands further, nor trust that your feelings will not change or become less reliable.”

“Does that mean you intend to wrong Avery sometime after tonight?”

“It means what I said.”

“Or that you think I’ll lose it?” Verona pressed.  “This is an interesting evasion.”

“It is ill-advised to make long-term deals, even with fleeting lives such as those of man,” Maricica said.  “That was the trap Solomon set for the Others.”

“That’s even more interesting,” Verona said.

“Ask Miss.  She can tell you more.  For now… you have somewhere you want to be, don’t you, Ms. Kelly?”

Avery hesitated, then sat.

“Touch my wings,” Maricica said, from behind Avery.  The wings stretched out to either side and ahead of Avery.

She reached out to either side, touching the silky material.  The dust stuck to her hands.

“Feel the weight of it, cup your hands and feel the gravity of it.”

Avery did.  It was heavy, dense.

“Tilt your hands, sift it, let it blow away like dandelion puffs.”

Avery tried.  It did.

“Glamour is about the feeling and the relationship between you and the idea,” Maricia said.  “I would like to give you a new skin to try on, as I did for Verona.  I would like your permission.”

“We’d like a time limit,” Verona said.  “And ground rules.  No permanent changes.”

“Until the clock strikes ten or the effect breaks on its own.  No permanent changes except to memory and the lessons Avery takes away.”

“Okay,” Avery said.  “I don’t think this is going to work, though.”

“Perhaps not, but won’t it be quite the experience to try?”

Avery nodded.

“Is this a definitive yes, then?”

“Yes.”

Maricica touched her hair, fingernails touching scalp.  The effect was like a massage.

“Guilherme and his ilk would have you smear glamour on, but glamour and your hands make a tool for shaping and alteration.  Rub your fingers together as you might roll your thumb over a coin’s surface, and you can change color.”

Avery did.  The dust at her fingertips and thumb had taken on a blue tint.

“Press the glamour in to darken, flick the thumbnail against the fingers to lighten.  Stroke to lengthen, use the nails to cut and shorten.  The heel of the hand to knead and produce deformed bulges… and the lightest of touches following any of these motions to extend the effect out and over.”

The effect was like being at the barber, sitting in the chair, while her appearance was at the mercy of someone she barely knew or trusted.  Verona wasn’t freaking out, at least.

“There are parts you’ll want to attend to yourself,” Maricica said.

Not that many, really.

“Nails?” Avery asked, moving her hand up.

“Yes,” Maricica said, her hands moving to Avery’s face.  “Gently. You’re not trying to dig a canyon.”

Avery drew her nails across one side of her chest, smearing the dust across her top.  She worried she’d only done the smearing, without actually achieving anything, but when she reached down… nothing.  Even her sports bra was gone.

She did it again.

“Once it gets the hang of what you’re doing, the rest should follow, and attending to the rest will reinforce the whole.”

Avery pressed the heel of her hand into her lower stomach, around where her shorts were buttoned up, pressing down, to knead, produce an uncomfortable bulge, then the extension.

“I think I might have done that wrong.”

“No.  Try to accept what comes, find your comfort.  It will meet you halfway.”

“Rolling with it was what worked for me, when it came to finding my voice,” Verona said.  “Like… I just went at it like talking animals made sense.”

“How does this make sense?” Avery asked, indicating the front of her shorts, which sat differently with what was now beneath.

Maricica grabbed her throat, and she felt a moment of alarm, worried she’d offended.  There was the faintest of kneadings.

“You brought clothes?”

“Yes,” Avery said.

The voice wasn’t hers.

“Rowan’s old clothes,” she added.  She reached up toward her face.  Maricica intercepted her hand, briefly massaging it.  The differences were subtle, but there.

She offered up the other hand.

Maricica lifted her from the seat with a surprising strength, and set her down in a standing position.  Like she was dusting Avery off, she swatted at Avery’s hips.

Her shorts resettled, slightly lower down, pinching a bit at her new, slightly narrower hips when they did.

“Neat,” Verona said.

“The fae of the spring court especially would struggle with this,” Maricica said.  She moved around Avery wearing one wing like a toga, the other held out like a painter’s easel.  She adjusted and poked here and there.  “They like their lords and ladies, and do not do well thinking outside of that binary.  But what fits who differs from culture to culture.  Go back a few hundred years and your men would be laughed at by some today as feminine, wearing tights or clothes much like dresses, their hair long.  The skinny jeans of yesteryear, the long hair of the seventies, the bulky flannel shirts your women wore in the nineties… it means what you want it to mean.  Peter Pan was played by woman actors.”

Verona had her phone out.  It was set to camera, and she held it out so the camera showed Avery her new face.

A boy’s face, her own age, with freckles darker and spread more evenly across the face, hair longer on top and dark.  The shape of her face was different.  As Verona stepped back, she could see how the line of her body was different.

She adjusted her shorts, halfways wishing she’d changed into Rowan’s clothes first.  They were a bit tight around the armpits and hips,

“I have like, fifty questions to ask you,” Verona said.

“Would you like to go with her?” Maricica asked.  “With him?  Perhaps as a canine companion?  Or a male friend?  It wouldn’t take long.”

“I- no,” Verona said, meeting Avery’s eyes.  “She might need backup or cover.”

Avery nodded.

“I have to admit, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do like this,” Avery admitted.

“No?” Maricica asked.

“Go do what you’ve always wanted to do.  Have fun,” Verona said.

Fun?  No.

Avery biked, deeply unsettled by the extra anatomy.  It was more up and forward than she’d imagined it being, but… even so, it was there.

She tried to put it out of mind, as she biked toward downtown, in the same direction as Heros and the other stores the kids at school went to for lunch.

She’d known she’d want to do this tonight.  She worried the Faerie knew that was the case, and had suggested it for that reason.  But that was a losing battle.  She’d get paranoid, thinking about being watched -being watched more, after Lucy’s worry about the goblins spying on her- and second guessing everything.

For right now, though, she was doing what she’d done last fall.  Before the winter had brought snow, in those lonely weeks and months, she’d made a habit of going out biking.  It was creepy and maybe stalkery, but… Pam was out there, across the street  from her parents’ shop, which closed at eight.

She liked seeing Pam, so she’d gone out more at night, in hopes of running into her.  She hadn’t had the guts to say hello, so she’d just waved while riding by.  And that had been nice, at a time when not a lot of things were nice.

This felt dirty, somehow, like cheating.  Maricica had called the glamour a lie, stated with enough certainty to override it and make it a kind of truth.  Wasn’t she wearing a lie, then?  It sorta felt like that.  Like it made everything from riding the bike and being here… wrong?  She couldn’t put her finger on it.

Verona was good enough at bullshitting to wear the lie comfortably, and Avery kind of resented every reminder that it was what it was, including the unique anatomy, and the way her shirt sat.

Pam was helping a little girl with a spinning superhero toy, with a string to pull that made the superhero soar skyward before it unfolded and paused in the air.  It wasn’t unfolding right.

Avery coasted to a stop and watched from a distance as Pam tried to fix the string.

Before, she would have just taken the fact that Pam was here as a nice bonus in her day and moved on, happy that Pam smiled when she waved, and thinking maybe she’d made Pam’s day a bit brighter too.

It had been a bummer when the snows came and she couldn’t bike anymore.  It made it a bit too difficult to swing by for a chance meeting.

It was hard to shake the idea that it was stalkery, too, so she hadn’t exactly resumed it when the snow had thawed.

Now, though.  Wearing a different face gave her a kind of courage.  She biked a little closer and approached.  Pam, who was crouching down in front of two nine or ten year olds, looked at her and then handed over the toy when Avery reached down.

Avery licked her thumb, touched her hair, and got a bit of the glamour on there.  She used it to adjust the string, stroking it softly until things were in line and coiled up.  At the same time, she fixed a chip on the wing.  She’d seen toys like this before.

She knelt down, her eyes momentarily level with Pam’s, and gave the end of the string to the nearest kid.

The kid pulled back, and the toy went soaring.

“Whoo!” Avery and Pam cheered, along with the kids, who immediately ran off, chasing the toy toward the sloped field that led down toward the river.

“Nice work,” Pam said.  “That was a fast fix.”

“My sister had one, so I learned the ins and outs,” Avery admitted.  Which was true.  Sheridan had had one, which had been handed down to Avery, but it had been so battered it only worked one time out of three.  She’d learned how it was put together while trying to fix it.

Then Declan had stomped on it.

“I haven’t seen you around.”

“Nope,” Avery said.  “New face.”

“Are you moving in?” Pam asked, bright, straightening.  She had put a flavored ice tube on the wooden railing between the sidewalk and the field, and picked it up now.  Her lips and tongue were blue.

Avery leaned into the railing, watching the kids.  “No.  Sorry, not anytime soon.”

She wished she was as good at this as Verona.

“Too bad.  New faces are nice,” Pam said.  “And nice new faces are… bleh.  Haha, I don’t know how to phrase it.  I meant that you did something nice.”

Avery smiled.  “You were helping them first.”

“They’re my cousins.  I’m watching them.  I don’t get credit for that, when they’d just whine at me for the next hour to fix it if I didn’t do anthing.”

“You get some credit, at least from me.”

“Okay, sure,” Pam said, smiling.  “I wish I got some of that from my family.”

“I know that feeling.”

“Pamela,” Pam said, putting out a hand to shake.  As Avery reached for it, Pamela withdrew it.  “I don’t know why I went for a handshake.”

“You can call me Kell,” Avery said, putting her hand out, instead.  That’s not a lie, right?  She can?

Pamela shook her hand.

This felt like cheating.  Like it was all going to come around and bite her in the ass, or something.  It was too nice.  Too close to what she’d imagined doing, when passing Pamela, and thinking about striking up a conversation, or in school.

“Ice tube?”

“I do errands around my parents’ shop in the afternoons.  I collect the change from one of the games they put in the back for kids to play, that kids drop all over the place.  It’s usually enough for a treat or two after the shop closes.”

“Hey, better than nothing.”

“It’s not really much better than nothing.  They’re pretty crappy, but they’re only fifty cents.”

There was a bit of an awkward pause, and she decided to act on impulse again, halfway expecting everything she did to be the thing that would break the illusion.  Maybe literally.  “Can I buy you an ice cream?  I think there’s a store just down there?”

“What?” Pamela laughed, one note.  “Why?”

“Because it’s way better than nothing?  Because I want to?  As a reward for putting up with little cousins?”

“I feel like I’m being pranked,” Pamela said.

“Why?”

“Because… why?”

“I said why.”

“But… what’s the quote?  You must be truly desperate if you’ve come to me?  If you go up toward the ski hill, I think some of the popular kids hang around the ski hill.  They’re going down the hills with cardboard sleds, I think.”

“But you’re here.  You’re someone that’s nice to kids.  You’re, um.”  Avery indicated vaguely in Pamela’s direction.

“I’m what?” The question was defensive.

“Pretty,” Avery said.

Anonymity didn’t keep her face from flushing as she said it.

She’d wanted to say that, insist that, back at school when she’d heard Pamela talking about herself, months ago, and had kicked herself for not speaking up ever since, even as she simultaneously knew she wouldn’t have known what to say and would have cocked it all up.

She’d told herself she’d work with Maricica, learn what she needed to learn about glamour, and simultaneously try to at least fix that.

Except… Pamela looked hurt.  Wary.

“What’s wrong?”

“Are your friends watching from a distance or something?  Am I a bet?”

“No!  I mean, no, you’re not a bet, yes, I think a friend is watching me, but it’s not because of a bet.  It’s because- my intentions are good.  I’m going to get that ice cream.”

“Okay,” Pamela said, wary, frowning.

“What’s your flavor?”

“Pistachio cream.”

Avery gave her the thumbs up.

Face flushed, Avery went in, bought two ice creams, and took them back outside, half expecting that Pamela would have fled.

In silence, the two of them watched the kids play, firing the toy up, where it made loud laser sounds, then dropped back down.

The toy broke again, the kids came running up, and Avery fixed it again.

Things were nice, when she wasn’t hyperaware of how she was pretty much lying.  It felt off, and that offness blurred into just about everything around her, making her feel like a charlatan.  It made the clothes feel weird, made her unsure of her expression…

Like her entire life had been inverted, and things she was previously insecure about were now secure in anonymity, and everything she’d taken for granted was a massive forgery, just close enough to reality that she couldn’t make out the flaws, but just wrong enough she could tell they were there.

“Hey Kell?”

“Mm?” Avery asked.

“What would you say if I wanted to kiss you?” Pamela asked, averting her eyes.

“I…” Avery’s mind went through about fifty different answers, and settled on none.

“You don’t want to.”

“I do!  I do, but… I’m not… this is the last time you’re seeing this face, probably.  It’s not fair, it’s…”

It’s not me.

I don’t like wearing this glamour.  Even if it lets me do things like this.

“You weren’t lying to me, before?”

“I think you’re really pretty.  It sucks to hear you apparently don’t believe me, but I sorta get it.  My friend might be out there watching from a distance, but if she’s laughing, it’s at how much of a dork I’m being right now.  Not at you, she’s not that kind of person.”

“I thought maybe if I asked you to kiss me, and you said yes, it’d be because of the bet.”

“No bet.  Really.  Who would do that?”

“Assholes.  There’s a lot of assholes.  People treat you as subhuman if you’re fat.”

“You’re not fat.  You’re curvy and I… really like curvy.  I like your face.  I like- I like your clothes.  I think you’re clearly nice, and cool, and…”

Pamela leaned in, and Avery stopped talking, pausing to wrestle with herself.

The glamour broke across her chest, like a crack spreading across ice, starting at the heart.

She kissed Pamela, and… she’d never thought kisses would be warm, stupidly.  She’d never thought kisses would taste like the ice cream that Pamela had just been eating.

Mostly, she wished she was herself.  It was a pointed regret, that made the cracking spread further.  She prayed it wouldn’t be in a way that Pamela could see.

But as pointed as that feeling and regret were, she wanted to give Pamela this.  A nice moment, a person telling her how it was, in reality.  An answer and a moment that she could use when waging that internal war against assholes like she’d talked about.

“I think, um, I’m going to eat pistachio ice cream a lot, from now on,” Avery admitted.  “And think about this.  It was nice.”

She saw Pamela’s face, pink, break out into a smile, like she finally believed what Avery or ‘Kell’ had been telling her.

“I guess I’ll do the same with, uh, caramel?”

“Vanilla chocolate caramel.”

“Okay,” Pamela said, biting her lip.

“I’ve got to get going, or my mom and friend will get frustrated with me.”

Pamela nodded.

Avery ran, twisting her body to hide any of the cracking along the chest, even though she suspected her shirt covered it.  The feeling of wrongness sat with her and made the cracks impossible to ignore.

The glamour fell away by the time she reached Verona, coming away like panes of stained glass that turned to dust instead of shattering on hitting the road, while she biked.

“After all that, I thought you’d stand there like a dork,” Verona said, smiling.  “But you went for it.”

“She went for it.  I accepted.”

“It didn’t last long at all, though,” Verona said.  She turned.  Maricica was standing further in the alleyway.

“It wasn’t for me,” Avery said, “That wasn’t me.  It felt like a lie.”

“It’s not the skin you’re supposed to wear,” Maricica said.  “Some could.”

“I’m still glad I did it.  Assuming there’s no traps I didn’t recognize…”

“You’ll know if it’s a trap when the moments arrive,” Maricica said.

“I’m glad I did it.  Thank you.”

Verona elbowed her.  “First kiss?”

“Excepting a time boys held me down in third grade and kissed me… yeah.  I’m still not sure it counts.  I wasn’t me.”

“Then it doesn’t count,” Verona said, shrugging.

“We gotta get home,” Avery said.  She looked up.  “It’s getting dark.”

“Guilherme stopped by to look, and make sure nothing was going tragically wrong,” Verona said.

Maricica scoffed.  She wrapped her wings around herself as she walked between buildings.  They began to take on the appearance of clothing, as she disguised herself as an ordinary twenty-something woman in a dress.

“Did he say anything?”

“His gift awaits,” Verona said.  “Subtler and surer.”

“Okay,” Avery said.

There was a moment, as a car passed with highbeams on, that Avery saw Maricica’s face in silhouette.

It wasn’t a human face.  Or even a human-like face.  If anything, it looked like a bat’s head mixed with a whole spider.

The abrupt, blinding light passed, and Maricica looked her way and smiled, like nothing was wrong or unusual.  A girl who could have been her babysitter, or Rowan’s friend.

Yeah…

She hadn’t forgotten about the Choir, or the murder.  Or the scary stuff, or the doubts and paranoia.  She hadn’t forgotten the monsters.  Maricica was one.

But… for moments like this?  Even mixed feelings?

“Then I think I’ll try Guilherme’s thing too, then,” she said.

[2.3 Spoilers] Spell Notes #2

Stolen Away – 2.4

Lucy

Last Thursday – Spell notes #2


Lucy was awake an hour before her alarm was set to go off, and she tended to set her alarm early to begin with.  Rain drummed against the windows, but the light of the sky outside was escaping around the edges of her curtains and her room was stuffy, humid, and hot.  Birds had found refuge in trees just outside her window, and were chirping incessantly.  To top it all off, there was someone in her house that wasn’t her mom, and they were periodically laughing.

She felt like she should recognize the laugh, but her memory failed her.

Hot, her pyjamas sticking to her, she hated the idea of having to deal with the rain, or sit in a muggy classroom, hated the idea of dealing with school for a full day with only five hours of sleep under her.  Lucy tossed and turned, drifting on the edge of sleep.  When she heard the voice or laugh, feminine and energetic, constantly being shushed by Lucy’s mother, she found herself at the boundaries between memory and dream, not quite escaping into dream for those precious forty-five minutes of sleep.

Then a precious thirty minutes.

A precious fifteen minutes.

Ten minutes.  She considered waking up later, cheating her way through her morning.  But with weather like this, her hair was going to be a nightmare.  Was it worth getting another thirty or forty five minutes if she were to change her alarm now?  She’d have to deal with comments about her hair all day, probably.  Or weird looks.

Five minutes.  When a day was looking to be this awful, baseline, she could fancy asking her mom for a fake sick day.

Then one minute.  She put her hand out over the alarm clock, waiting.  She smushed her face into the pillow, waiting.

A press of the button cut off the ‘bweep’ of the alarm before it could get to the ‘ee’ part, putting it on snooze.

Reluctant, she sat up, turned off the alarm in that way that required more effort, and detangled herself from sheets.  Faced with the task of making her bed, seeing the roughly Lucy-shaped stain on the satin sheets and pillowcase, she pulled everything off her bed, instead.

It was bright out, for how early it was and how much it was raining.  Masses of bugs were trying to take refuge against her window, which was closed.  She opened it, and flicked the screen to get rid of the fifty or one hundred bugs that were clinging to it.

No breeze to help with the airflow.

With an armful of sheets, she navigated her way to the laundry room.

“-a scam?” Lucy heard the guest ask.  “MLM type stuff?”

“I don’t sell,” Lucy’s mom said.  “I administer it.”

“It feels skeevy.  Are you okay with it?”

“It pays the bills, Heather.  I don’t love it.  I would love to be doing anything else.  But there aren’t a lot of options.  I looked up the medicine before accepting the position.  It’s fine, it helps a select number of people a lot.  The only concerns I have are how they market?”

“A lot of emphasis on the brand name.”

“I mean more of the high-pressure sales tactics.  Not many people need it, and when they find someone who does…” Lucy’s mom sighed.  “…They dig their claws in.  Half the time I’m visiting an elderly person, they’re guarded or holding back worries or information they felt they couldn’t share with the salesperson, because they were steamrolled into it.”

“Skeevy.”

“Can we talk about anything else?  It’s too early for this.”

“Hm.  How’s Booker?  Gosh, the last time I saw him, he was a giant.”

“He’s good!  He’s doing well in his classes, or so he says, he seems to be interested in the subject material.  He’ll talk your head off about political science if you give him a chance, which is simultaneously endearing and exhausting.  He’s got a girlfriend, and she seems sweet.  She’s supposed to come by this summer.”

“It’s summer for University students already, isn’t it?  Is he taking classes?”

“Working.  At the same place his girlfriend is.  It’ll be good to see him, and I think it’ll do Lucy a lot of good.  It broke her heart when he left, even if she doesn’t want to show it.”

Lucy, hugging her sheets, slipped into the laundry room and sorted everything into the right hamper.

She went into the bathroom and turned on the water.  Her hair was still wrapped up in silk, and she weighed leaving it on with the shower cap pulled over it, before deciding she didn’t want to get it wet.  She unwrapped her hair, re-covered it with the shower cap, and-

“Lucy!” her mom called up the stairs.

“What!?”

“You showered last night!”

“This’ll be a quick one!  I’m sticky!”

She heard the not-shouted word of assent from below.

Downstairs, her Aunt Heather laughed.  Her dad had been the only child born to Lucy’s grandmother and grandfather, and the rest of his ‘siblings’ were the long-term foster children that they then brought in.  Uncle Martie and Aunt Renee had been the only ones to be formally adopted, a kind of informal thing that had happened when they were twenty.  Aunt Heather hadn’t accepted the formal adoption.

She was something of a free spirit, and Lucy’s mental picture of the woman always put a wine glass in her hand, even for mornings, but she didn’t associate that tendency with any problems, really.  At worst, a spilled wine glass at the table one Easter, and waking up one holiday at her grandmother and grandfather’s house to find Aunt Heather still dressed from the night prior, sleeping off a hangover on the couch.  Lucy had been young then, hugging a stuffed animal, and had wanted to watch cartoons, and had turned on the television, hurrying to turn down the volume on the set that was so old that it didn’t have a mute button.  She had watched without sound until Aunt Heather got up.

More importantly, maybe most importantly, Aunt Heather had been the one person from her dad’s family that had really stuck around and stayed in contact.  Even Lucy’s grandfather and grandmother were kind of busy living their lives, not helped by the distance.  They sent a generous card on Lucy’s and Booker’s birthday and at Christmas.

Lucy rinsed off, then stood in front of the sink, pulling off the shower cap and undoing the loose coiled braids of her hair.  The basket by the sink had about fifty hair products in it, including ones she or her mom had tried and hadn’t liked, and, as she dug, she couldn’t find what she was looking for.  A second basket had hair styling tools, and she found the slightly dusty tub of cream at the bottom corner.

High hold, humectant free.  She had another tub she really liked, but it had a fruity smell and the same bugs that were clinging to her bedroom window and screen would be drawn to her hair as if by a high powered magnet.  That one was for indoor events only, or the middle week of summer where the bugs weren’t slowly waking up or preparing to lay their eggs before winter.

Even with the hair stuff, her hair had shrunk and deflated.  Her attempts to puff it up, extend it out, or give it any shape at all just saw it sag.  Which meant… what were her options?  Going small?  Braiding it and winding it up?  She’d look pretty severe.  Or a low ponytail.  Which would be hotter, her hair close to her neck on a day that was already going to be a slog.

Her hands still in her hair, dense with cream, she couldn’t even see her face, because the weather combined with even the moisture of a cool shower had fogged everything up.  If her Aunt Heather wasn’t over, she would have opened the door to give the moisture somewhere to go.  She wiped the mirror with a washcloth to give herself a window to see her face and head.

She braided her hair, and wound it up, before setting it in place with pins.  It was dense and heavy enough that she needed a good few before she felt secure.  She really hoped she wouldn’t have to run around a lot for gym.

Seeing her face, she thought about the app.  About how she didn’t rate.

She finished her hair, adding more hairpins as a just-in-case.  Then she got a bit of gel, a small brush, and began gelling down the bits of hair at her hairline, as well as the bits along her head that had escaped the passes of the brush.

Why did she even bother?

Coconut moisturizing cream, rubbed at elbows and knees, and that one patch at her leg that got dry for whatever reason.  Concealer, dabbed under the eyes, and at her hairline, where a couple of reddish bumps were.  Baby pimples.  A consequence of having her hair pulled back into ponytails.

She bothered, she decided, because they’d put it on her if she didn’t bother at all.  They’d note the ashy skin or the even, dull, deflated hair, and even if her classmates were too nice to really bully her, there would be looks and well-meaning comments, or advice that absolutely did not help.

At least like this, she could look at herself in the mirror and look at each part of her body in isolation.  Long neck, good chin, full lips, ears a little big but whatever.  Eyes a little glare-y by default but whatever.  Nose… whatever.  She liked it.  Hair… under control.  Skin… better than most girls in her class, if she was honest.

Objectively… she could rate the angry ballerina in the mirror a seven out of ten.

Subjectively… she rated a zero?

That was on them, and she was putting in the effort, which meant she could give them a hearty and collective fuck you.

She moved to her bedroom, and picked her clothes with a similar mindset.  She hadn’t said as much out loud to even Verona or her mom, but her mindset when it came to picking clothes was that she wanted her things to be bulletproof.  Not in the literal sense, but in the sense that it had no weak points, gave her critics nothing.  No fading, no rips, no tears, no stains.  The material was often from the higher-end athletic brands, because it was hardier and tended to hold up better over time.  Anyone who pointed and laughed at stuff branded with the Vikare swoop or the Dassler waves just looked like an idiot.

Again, not that her classmates did or would, because any obvious bullies would get a harder time than any potential targets.  The thing was that the bullies were still out there, only they were silent.  They thought it.  This kind of stuff was protection against that thinking and those observations.

She settled on a hooded top that stopped just past the ribs.  White, sleeveless, moisture-wicking, with the Mission Canada logo on the breast.  She put it on, then immediately removed it, changing bras, before pulling it on again, so she wouldn’t be flashing hot red through the hole of the sleeve.  Her pants were looser, black, with slits all down the sides and inside of each leg, to let the air flow.  She dug sandals out of her closet and slipped them on.

Hair… clothes… the stuff she needed to put in her bag.  She included a spare umbrella, because she wanted to be triply sure she didn’t get her hair wet.  She weighed everything against the day to come.

Against the mundane day to come.

There were other factors, she thought, as she got the notebook for her investigation notes, and thought about what bases needed to be covered.  The whole thing with the Faerie, the interviews, everything else… it stressed her out just thinking about it.

Maybe today could be a day with no practice, a minimum of Others.

She flipped through the book, and stopped on the calendar.

It was Thursday.  They’d gone back to school Monday, found the flyer, and got the down-low.  They’d prepared and practiced some, extended that practice to Tuesday, and then the ritual had been that night.  Yesterday, they had mostly reeled, they’d done their research, and the Choir had made it clear that they had their hooks in, almost taking Avery.  Then the Faerie, and apparently more Faerie stuff after Lucy had gone home to dinner late.

Tomorrow was the next night of the Hungry Choir’s ritual.

Lucy picked up her phone, and she dialed.

The phone rang four times before Reagan picked up.

“Do you know what time it is?” Reagan asked.  “Christ in a cupcake, I was wondering who or what the hell you three were, and it’s clear you’re not human, because you know I don’t have work or school, and calling me before seven in the morning on a day I should be sleeping in is monstrous.”

“I wanted to call you before I forgot, and to give you time to discuss, think about it, and maybe communicate with others.  We found a little something you might be able to use.”

There was a pause.

“I’m listening,” Reagan said.

“These things, they’re bound by certain rules and expectations of fairness.  You can challenge them, if you think they’re gaming it or pulling a fast one.  Unsolvable riddles, unwinnable fights.”

“How?” Reagan asked.

“You say it.  Loudly and clearly, try to get other players on your side so it has more clout, and costs them more.  Scream it to the sky, call them cheats, be very clear, and don’t lie or embellish.”

“We can’t speak in there unless it’s part of the song.”

“I think you can say this.  Maybe… cut to the quick.  Go straight to calling them cheats, then elaborate.”

“…Okay.  What happens?”

Lucy took a seat on the corner of her bed.  “They’ll owe you and the universe proof that the game is winnable.  The…”  Person? Was Miss even a person? “…we inquired, and we were told that in this particular scenario, they might have to turn some of the waifs into people and have them do what you did that night.  I’m not sure, but I think if you get more people on your side, the burden of proof might be higher, and they might even have to give those waifs similar injuries.  They’d have to do the ritual successfully.  If they can’t, you might be freed, or given a pass for that round.”

“What if they win?”

“Then my understanding is that in situations like that, where they reveal tactics or answers to riddles, or anything like that, is they wouldn’t want witnesses.”

“We all die?”

“Maybe.  Or whatever happens when you lose.  Becoming a waif.”

“It’s a thing we could do if we’re going to die anyway.”

“Maybe,” Lucy said.  “But… to me it feels like that’d be too easy for you and too problematic for the Choir.  It costs them power to re-enact the situation and doesn’t get them much.  Maybe if you do it, and they prove they can beat it… you get worse than becoming a waif?”

There was a lengthy pause.  Lucy got up from her bed, still holding the phone to her ear, and got the chain she’d been wearing around her neck.  It had her house key, her side door key, her locker key, the dog tag, and the ring of weapons strung on it.  She donned it and dropped it through her collar.

“What’s worse than becoming a waif?” Reagan asked.

“I was thinking about it,” Lucy said.  “I’ve been thinking a lot about worst case scenarios.  I think it’s not out of the question that you end up becoming a waif, but they leave more of you inside, watching and unable to do anything.”

There was silence on the other end.

“When we got involved, we got entangled with it,” Lucy admitted.  She adjusted how the keys and ring sat beneath her top.  “They started showing up, tried to trick my friend into the ritual.  Could be that instead of erasing memories or revising histories, they suck in your loved ones.”

“My boyfriend,” Reagan mused aloud.  “Or my little sister?”

“Or, um.  I was thinking about this last night, before bed.  Mostly thinking about how the ritual might have grown or evolved over time, and where it might go.  But it applies.  You know that world you get sucked into?  The stage?”

“Obviously.”

“What if they dragged people in there… and didn’t put them back in reality after?  I could see a situation where they covered their asses and kept people from getting clever ideas like challenging the ritual, by evolving or adjusting how the game works.  Imagine signing up to the ritual, and then they bring you there and keep you there for the three weeks.”

“There’s no food or water there.”

“Except the animals?” Lucy asked.  “I thought it’d make a kind of sense.  They’d give you an animal and you’d have to eat, share, fight over who got how much.  Or you’d have to eat as much as you could on the night of.  The water would be a problem.”

“There’s some.  Some salt water.  Murky water.  Water from taps is rusty or black.  But if you had a few days… you could probably find a way to filter it.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  She picked up her bag.  “I could see a scenario where they can’t take everyone, because the group isn’t unanimous in speaking out and challenging the round, but then they change the dynamic or they make the game evolve, with the person passing on the message about the challenge, and letting people infer what happened.

“It’s a last resort, then.”

“I would think so.”

“I’ll pass it on.  Thanks.”

“Keep an eye out for more calls.  I’ll try to let you know if we uncover anything else.  I can’t promise that they won’t be at inconvenient hours.”

“Nah.  For stuff like this?  Thanks for looking out, Lucy.”

“Sure,” Lucy said.  “I should go to school.”

“Back to bed for me.”

“Jealous.”

Lucy hung up.

Hefting her bag, she opened her door, stepped out into the hallway, and stopped.

The sound of high voices filled the house, all at once.  Seven waifs stood in her upstairs hallway.

Five boys, two girls.  The waif closest to Lucy was a black girl, nine or so, her hair in two braids, and she had one hand at her mouth, teeth digging and chewing at her own fingertips, which were in ruined tatters.  The waif’s shoulders flinched inward as she bit through a part of her middle finger, a fresh trickle of blood running down to her elbow.  The ruined fingers of the girl’s other hand clutched at a dress with tiny flowers in a repeating pattern.

Give them nothing.

“Are we going to have a problem?” Lucy asked.

The waifs remained where they were.

“Is this entanglement or is it your way of whining at me?” Lucy asked.  “Because if it’s whining, get over it.”

The children didn’t respond or move.  Lucy navigated between them, until she reached the final one at the end of the hallway.  The boy stepped into her way.  He wore a constant, guileless smile, his hair a mess, and an unseasonable sweater with an argyle pattern that would have been better suited to an old man.  There was blood around his mouth, maybe two days old.

“Get out of my way,” Lucy said.

The boy didn’t.

“I will kick you down the stairs.  This is my home, calling Reagan was within the bounds of what I’m allowed and supposed to do.  Don’t try to intimidate me, and get the hell out of my way.”

Six sets of hands seized her from behind, grabbing at her arms, the back of her collar, the back of her top.  She could feel the fingers of the one waif at her arm, grooves cut into fingertip by teeth and filled in with scabs and scars, the edges rough.  Another had ragged long fingernails, painted canary yellow where the paint hadn’t chipped.  Others were just small hands, incredibly strong.

She staggered back, lost her footing, and fell, the long rug of the hallway making her slide more.  One of them pawed at the side of her head.  Twisting, she pulled her hands free of the waif’s hold, seized her necklace, and went for her ring.

The waifs were gone.  The singing had stopped.

Breathing hard, Lucy let go of the necklace.  She checked her arm where the fingernails and chewed up fingertips had scraped at her, and they were only red.  Her clothes… no mess, no stains, no bloody fingerprints.

Trembling, she picked herself up.  She fixed the rug in the hallway with a few kicks, and left her bag behind while she went back to the bathroom and checked herself over.  The fan had gotten most of the moisture, clearing up the middle portion of the mirror.  Her clothes were fine, but her hair…

Her hands shook as she fixed where bits had come loose.  Hairpins at the side of her head fixed it in place.

There was a dark shadow in the corner of the mirror’s reflection, where the fog hadn’t quite disappeared.  Child-shaped.

She hesitated, then wiped at it.  She had to double-check, looking behind her to see.  The little washcloth rack.

“Hey Choir,” she whispered.  “If you happen to be listening and watching… you should know you really don’t want to make an enemy of me.  I’d make it a point to get even.”

She squared herself away, then made her way downstairs, grabbing her bag.

“-contact Paul?” her Aunt Heather asked.

Lucy paused.

“No.”

“When you bought this house, the idea was that you both would pay for it.  I don’t think it would be out of bounds to ask him for some help.  Even a one-time payment…”

“I am not going to go to my ex with my hand out, Heather.  And I don’t think he’d respond.”

“Then maybe downsizing? There’s that apartment building downtown.”

“With concrete walls, concrete floor, and shady residents.  Those apartments are like tombs, Heather.  I’m not going to make Lucy downgrade her life.  I can get by.  It’s easier with Booker away for school.”

“You’re helping him with school, though.  With his place.”

“A little bit, as long as he shows me his budget.”

“Paul raised Booker for five years.  I think-”

No, Heather.”

“-you don’t even have to have your hand out.  Just… float the subject?  You’re so clearly unhappy, Jas.  You don’t enjoy your work, you’re overworked, I don’t even remember the last time I’ve seen you properly smile.”

“I’ve-”

“That wasn’t forced.  You need more support.  I know your parents need more support than they can ever give, Barbie and Ran are too far away, I’m… I’ll back you up, whatever you need, whenever you need, like tonight, but I’m not good at taking care of my own life, so your mileage may vary.  That doesn’t leave many options.  Whatever we could say, Paul isn’t a bad-”

“Stop,” Lucy’s mom said, at the most recent mention of Paul.  “This isn’t the time or place for a Paul conversation.  I’m not even halfway into my first coffee, for one thing.”

“It doesn’t feel like it ever is, with you.”

“Lucy’s due to come downstairs any moment.”

Lucy waited a few seconds, then stepped around the corner.

“Hey!” Aunt Heather greeted her.  Aunt Heather was white, with her black hair in a boy’s style of cut, and a colorful dress with a bohemian pattern.  “Look at you!  You’re stunning!”

You’re family so you don’t count, Lucy thought, as she accepted her Aunt’s hug, hugging back.

She hadn’t missed that momentary look her mom had shot her aunt, either.  Like, I told you Lucy was going to turn up.

“It’s been too long.  A year?”

“I don’t know,” Lucy said.

“You’re taller.  You’re not even a kid anymore!  Look at you!  Spin around.”

“I’m not going to spin around,” Lucy said.

“You’re an actual young woman now.  That’s frightening.  Here I am, past my prime, with grey hairs.  How are you?”

“I’m… there’s a lot going on, with my friends.”

“I brought donuts and cider.”

“Thank you.  Are you staying?” Lucy asked, then reconsidered.  “Sorry, didn’t mean to make it sound like I didn’t want you to.  It’d be cool if you stayed.”

“She was passing through,” Lucy’s mom said.  “But I had a bit of work I was considering, and we thought we’d ask you.  You have options and it’s up to you.”

Lucy nodded, getting a donut.

“I could do these contracts, but it would be two tonight and one tomorrow, in the direction of Tripoli.  It’s an overnight trip.  Heather said she’d be happy to watch you overnight.”

“We could hang out, watch a movie your mom wouldn’t let you watch-”

Her mother cleared her throat.

“Paint our nails, gossip…”

“Do people actually do that in real life?” Lucy asked.

“I’m getting resistance on both sides.  I can take a cue.  Not that, then.”

“Option two would be for you to stay over at Verona’s or something,” her mom said.

Lucy made a face.

“That bad?” her mom asked.

“The last time I went over, he was wanting to put up this stone wall around the garden.  He recruited me to help.”

“I wish he’d ask before doing something like that.  It’s a parent’s job to balance the work and play for their own kids, and that’s hard enough with four teachers each assigning their own homework without consulting one another.”

“He said something like ‘it’s just for five seconds’, then before we were done one chore, he was asking us to take another five seconds to do something else, and then after doing that a few times he’d ask why the first chore wasn’t done.”

“Sounds like a boss I had when I was Booker’s age.  Did he help out, or was he giving orders?” Aunt Heather asked.

“He helped out some, I guess?” Lucy asked, shrugging.  “He gets headaches if he exerts himself too much, he says.  I never really said anything to him or Verona about it, but I stopped sleeping over after that.  I mostly try to go over if he’s not going to be there.”

“Okay.  Communicate those things to me more, if you can?”

Lucy shrugged, nodding, while eating her donut.

“What about Avery?” her mom asked.

“Five kids, with three girls in one room,” Lucy said, her mouth partially full, her hand covering it so nobody had to see.  “Her grandfather stays in a room on the ground floor.”

“Well, option three is I skip the job.  Easy enough,” her mom said.

“Actually, can we mix one and two?” Lucy asked.  “Not that I don’t love spending time with you, Auntie, but I might be doing stuff with my friends.”

“I was thinking about seeing a friend on the return trip,” her Aunt said.  “I was wondering how to wedge it in.  If my afternoon is free and I’m staying overnight, that could work out nicely.”

“Make sure the house doesn’t burn down, take my teenager to the hospital in the event that she needs it -gosh I hope not- see that she’s fed, and stay available?”

“Plus a late night, mom-approved movie?” her Aunt asked Lucy.

“Sounds cool,” Lucy said.

“Yes?” her mom asked her.  On getting a nod, turned to her Aunt, “Yes?”

“Great.”

“Yes, great, okay.  I’ve got to make some calls to schedule, then.  Heather, could you take her to school?  It’d be a huge help.”

“Love to.”

“Oh!” Lucy spoke up, before her mom left the room.  “About the phone.  I made a call just now, and I realized it might be long-distance.  To a classmate, about this project Avery, Verona and I are working on, but I realized she’s near Toronto.  You can take it out of my allowance if you want.”

“Was it important?”

“I think so, yes.”

“Then don’t worry about it.  Thank you for telling me.  Have a good day at school- Oh!  I meant to check up with you about Mr. Bader.”

“He’s been pretty quiet since you talked to him.”

“Good, okay.  Where’s my phone?”

Lucy’s mother made her way into the living room.

“Brought you a gift,” Lucy’s Aunt Heather said.  She pulled back a chair from the far side of the little island in the middle of the kitchen, and lifted up a plant.  The leaves were very large and house-plant-y, but the top was a partially open flower of purple leaves.  It sat in a simple white pot.

“Thank you,” Lucy said, taking it.  “You didn’t have to.  It’s not even a holiday.”

“I didn’t know what to get, but I got your mom some flowers to put outside and I saw it while I was there.  Go take it to your room, and go check the little card.”

Lucy hurried to the task, hesitating only at the bend in the stairs to the upstairs hallway, where the waifs had been.  She set the plant on her bedside table, by the alarm clock, and checked the card.  It was a tiny thing, and it had a bit of string tying it shut.  When she undid it, a square of folded-up money dropped into the dirt of the plant.  Fifty bucks. The card itself just had a little heart on it.

She pocketed it, then jogged back down the stairs to the kitchen, looking for her aunt.

“…wound a little tight.”

“She’s fine, Heather.  She gets good grades, she has good friends.  She’s genuinely good, to the point that I trust her to tell me if there’s something she needs or needs to get off her chest.  She’s also keenly aware of everything that goes on around her, and I learned that the hard way.  So please, if you have anything negative to say, or anything sensitive to say, I’d thank you to hold your tongue if she’s even in the general vicinity, or could be in the vicinity.  Really.”

“I promise you, Jas, I didn’t mean it even slightly in a bad way.  I meant it only in a worried way.  You too, with your work, your hobbies, your love life.”

Enough, please.  I know you mean well, but- Yes!  hello!”

Lucy’s mom changed her tone, going full business mode.

Lucy’s Aunt emerged from the living room, and stopped a little short at seeing Lucy there.

“Thank you,” Lucy said, getting her stuff together, her bag back on.  “For the plant, and the card.”

“I wasn’t sure if the plant would hit the mark, so I put in the little extra to break even.  Spend it on something fun, okay?”

Lucy nodded, smiling.

“All set to go?  I didn’t think you’d get ready so fast, but I guess you were mostly ready by the time you came downstairs.”

“All set.”

They got everything together, Lucy grabbing a proper umbrella and flipping her hood up to further protect her hair.  Her aunt opened the door.

Outside, the rain was coming down in buckets.  The temperature was such that it felt like the rain was hitting places where the heat had settled, kicking the heat upwards instead of cooling things off.  The bugs were out in full.

Gross.

“You’re so well put together,” her Aunt said.  “Back when I was your age… I should show you pictures one day.  Different times for teenage girls, back then.”

“You’re not that old.”

“Hey.  I have some grey hairs I have to dye.  I’m getting there.  We didn’t have videos that talked about hair and makeup, or websites that talked about fashion.  We had to get our information from magazines, sharing them around.  I got it in my head to do up my hair like this punk girl from this eighties television show, and… tragedy ensued.  I had hair like a porcupine, with black lipstick, a choker, and a strapless top I thought was the sexiest thing, and it was really the opposite.  I wasn’t even the only walking train wreck, but… I envy your generation so much.”

Lucy smiled.  “I really want to see the pictures now.”

“Your dad had his moments too.  Barbie, bless her heart, had no idea how to cut his hair.”

Lucy smiled, folding up her umbrella before ducking out of the rain and sticking her head into her aunt’s car.  She couldn’t really get in, though.  The foot area in front of the passenger seat was filled with crap.  Her Aunt stuffed a bunch of garbage into a plastic bag, and threw the rest into the back seat.

Lucy wouldn’t say it out loud, but she wasn’t positive her aunt had stopped being a walking train wreck.

She still loved her.

“There,” her aunt said.

Lucy climbed in, putting her bag in her lap.

“I should ask, is it a problem, if I mention your dad like that?”

Lucy shook her head.  “No.  It’s nice, hearing things.  I’d like to see pictures of him too.”

Her aunt started up the car.  They pulled out.  “I don’t know where the line is.  I’d ask your mom, but she’s hard to communicate with sometimes.”

“It’s okay.  You can ask me.  Or say stuff.  Like if you’re worried I’m a little tightly wound…”

“Oh,” her Aunt said.  “You heard that.”

“You’ll want to go over the bridge,” Lucy said.  “Left.  And yeah.  About Paul, too.”

“I think, um,” her aunt seemed to be mentally stumbling.  “Getting into that would be one of the few things that would make your mother absolutely furious with me.”

“Nobody’s ever really explained it.”

“I would, but I know your Uncle Martie said something to Booker, once.  It wasn’t even that clear, but I thought your mother would spit fire, she was so mad.  I don’t want to be on your mother’s bad side.”

The car cut through a puddle, splashing the railing of the bridge.  Just over there, on the other side of the road, they’d talked to Miss yesterday.

“Go left,” Lucy said.  “There’s often a lineup.  You can drop me off at the foot of the hill if that makes it easier.”

“I have no problem taking you to the door.”

“Mm.”

There were a bunch of kids out, Lucy saw, making their slow way to school.

There were kids standing still, in the rain, no hoods or umbrellas.  They remained where they were, staring.  Watching her.  Some with mouths agape.  Some with broken teeth, or chewed lips, or blood on their faces that the rain didn’t wash away.  Kids on their way to school weaved through and past them.

“Weather’s supposed to zig-zag this week.  I was joking with your mom that I wasn’t sure if you should come downstairs in layers, a t-shirt and shorts, a winter coat or a swimsuit.”

“Ha.”

They reached the base of the hill.  There were already some cars lined up.

“Are you wound up?” her Aunt asked.  “I’d try to find a good way of asking, but I’m the kind of person who sticks her foot in her mouth, no matter what.”

“It’s okay.  I’d rather people were honest.  I’d rather they communicate.  I’m… you’re not wrong.”

“Why?  What’s going on?”

“Lots of stuff.  I think it’s okay though,” Lucy said, quiet.

There were some Waifs out on the sidewalk, their heads turning as the car crawled forward.

“Is it?”

“I think I have to be prepared.  I have to be on guard.”

“Why?”

“I dunno.  Lots of stuff, but I can never know for sure.  Did my mom tell you about the Mr. Bader stuff?”

“Briefly.”

“My gym teacher has been hounding me.  And it’s like… was it something I did or said, that put me in his bad books without me knowing?  Or is it that I’m the easiest face to pick out of the rest of the class, when it comes to calling fouls or picking someone that isn’t running fast enough?  And like, that’d be him doing it by accident, maybe, or unconsciously.  Or is he a hateful prick, and the stuff he’s doing is just the tip of a huge iceberg of prick, in which case I might need to be careful about what he’d say or do if he thought he could get away with it?”

“Oh, honey.”

“My homeroom teacher hasn’t said or done anything, but his tone of voice is sometimes like… condescending?  Or like he speaks a little slower to me.  And I don’t know if I’m imagining it, because he’s really nice most of the time, and maybe he talks to every student like that when he’s one-on-one with them.  And I know he taught Booker and Booker wasn’t a great student.  Don’t tell my mom about this, by the way.”

“I imagine she knows.  She did say you’re very aware of what goes on around you.  I don’t know what you could do about it, now that you’ve noticed.”

“If I noticed,” Lucy said.  She muttered, “I dunno.  There’s other stuff, not even related to all of that.”

“Like?”

Lucy considered telling her aunt about the Choir, and the Carmine Beast, and everything else.

What a mess that would be.

She scanned the crowd on the sidewalk and in front of the school, as students rushed out of the rain and in the doors.  It was clearing the way in faster than usual.  No Choir.

This was going to be a long day.

“My class did a popularity contest type thing.  Boys rating girls and girls rating boys.”

“Your mom mentioned that.”

“Oh, did she?” Lucy asked, raising her eyebrows.  “Really?  Because I didn’t tell her.”

“Ah.  She wasn’t supposed to know.  There’s my foot, inserted neatly into my mouth.”

“Verona,” Lucy said, her eyes narrowing a bit.  “Had to be Verona.”

“Bad result?” her aunt asked.

“Rock bottom,” Lucy muttered.

“I can’t believe that.”

Lucy shrugged.

“This isn’t me being nice, or me trying to be the cool aunt, but of all my nieces and nephews, and all the kids my friends have, you’re number one or number two, not even just in the looks department.  Really.  If I had to give a recommendation to a… thirteen?”

“Thirteen,” Lucy confirmed.

“A thirteen year old boy.  I’d tell him to go say hi to that girl.  That’s Lucy Ellingson.  She’s super.”

“The boys in my class don’t think so,” Lucy said, looking out the window.  “But that’s on them.  All I can do is try and be ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“All of it.  The disappointments, the crappiness, the… other stuff.”

The scary stuff.

Still no Hungry Choir out there.

“I wish I had better advice for you, I’d say more but we’re here and I don’t want to hold up traffic,” her aunt said.  “I’ll think on it, so we can talk it over tonight.  At dinner or before our movie.”

The car pulled up in front of the school.

“It’s okay if you can’t, Aunt Heather,” Lucy said, opening her door.  The warm, wet air blasted her in the face.  “I’ve been thinking about it for years, now, and I haven’t been able to figure out what to do.”

“Love you, kid,” her aunt said.

“Love you too, Auntie H.” She stuck her umbrella out and unfolded it.

“Sorry if I added to that in even a small way, with my comment earlier.”

Lucy shook her head, gave her Aunt a quick smile to signal that everything was okay, and ducked out into the rain, managing umbrella, bag, and the closing of the car door.

It wasn’t possible to wait outside for Verona or Avery, with the weather, and visibility was crap, too.

She went inside, dropped off stuff at her locker, and headed to the classroom, settling in at her seat, back row, furthest from the door, closest to the window.  She busied herself with her phone for the ten or fifteen minutes it would take everyone to show up.  The rain drummed against the glass.

Her homeroom teacher entered, smiled at her and a couple of the other students in turn, then set about unpacking his materials for the day.

“The Hungry Choir says hi, I guess,” Verona said, as she arrived.

Lucy looked up from her phone.

“There were two outside the school.  Are they trying to intimidate us before tomorrow night?  It’s not like we have an easy way to get to the Toronto area.”

“I called Reagan.  I told her about the way to challenge cheating.  They got peeved.”

“Do you think they’re concerned because they are cheating?” Verona asked.

Lucy shrugged.  “They grabbed me, even.”

“So what does it mean?” Verona asked.

“I don’t know.  But… makes me think.  What if that’s not the way to beat them, but it gets us closer to the way?  Like… imagine we challenged them to a competition, where we had to defeat them or else?  And then we called them cheats and forced them to show us how to defeat them?”

Verona smiled.  “There’s a lot of holes in that plan.”

“I know, but… thinking.”

“Like, for one thing, challenging the Choir to a game when they are a game feels like a losing proposition.  Especially if their existence is on the line.”

“I’m just saying.”

“It’s cool that you’re thinking along those lines, though,” Verona said.

“I’m ticked.  They came after me, they wanted to scare me, and my response to that is I want to get them before they can ever get me.”

“We can keep looking for ways,” Verona said.

“I’m so not in the mood for much of anything right now,” Lucy said.  “If a kid of the right age on the stairwell looks at me funny, I might reflex-kick them down the stairs, thinking they’re a waif.”

Verona laughed.

“I’m not even sure I’m joking.  I swear, if Mr. Bader rides my ass, or anyone pushes me today, I’m going to flip.”

“You said that yesterday, I think.  It’s still a thing today?”

“Yeah,” Lucy muttered.

The warning bell went off.  More of the class was filing in.  Mr. Sitton stood by the door, mop in hand, as the class tracked in wet and dirt.  Avery was one of the last in.  “Books open!” their homeroom teacher called out, as he mopped the doorway.  “Quiet down!”

“What a crummy morning.  I hope it’s not like this all day,” Avery said.  Her hair was wet, but she wasn’t soaked through.  Probably she had gotten a ride and gotten this wet between the car and the front door of the school.

“I was thinking we’d take a brief break from Practice stuff,” Lucy murmured.

“What!?” Verona asked.

“I said it before.  I’m not in the mood for much of anything.”

“I didn’t think you meant this stuff.”

“It’s fine by me either way, but I gotta go to my locker though,” Avery said.  “Just saying so you don’t wonder where I ran off to.  Be right back.”

“Why?” Verona asked Lucy, as Avery ducked past Mr. Sitton, who put his hands on his hips.

“I want to touch base, compare notes.  Mentally recover.  We should have thought things out more before the Faerie stuff, and we should think things out more now that we’re mostly through the Faerie stuff.  Consider the traps and stuff.”

“You haven’t even gotten your thing,” Verona said.

Avery returned.  The bell rang.

“Just in under the wire,” Verona murmured, as Avery took her seat.

Avery got her stuff out, explaining, “Kerry couldn’t find her rain boots and she has an outdoor field trip.  Everyone in the family was working together to find them.  They were in toy bin, from when she was dressing up her big stuffed animals.  Dad was talking about running to the store to buy some and dropping them off school, if we couldn’t find them.”

“Quiet, please!” Mr. Sitton instructed.

“Pam looks like she’s in a good mood,” Verona said, to Avery.

Verona was smiling more than Avery, as Avery looked.

Lucy looked between the two girls.

“What did you do?” Lucy asked.  There were still murmurs across the class.

“Quiet!” Mr. Sitton said, with less patience than before.

“Tell you at lunch,” Verona said.

Verona was too cavalier and happy about this, Avery too clearly not happy…

Aw no, Lucy thought.  She bit her lip, as the class went quiet, grabbing her math book from her bag.

What did you two do last night with the Faerie?

“What!?” Lucy asked.

She’d had to pretty much strongarm the pair into going out at lunch, because the lunch room was too crowded for a proper conversation.  Now they stood beneath the big tree at the foot of the hill west of the school.  Lucy kept her umbrella and hood up.

“I don’t know why you’re getting so intense about this,” Verona said.

“Really?” Lucy asked.  “Have you thought about it for five seconds?  No, wait, I’m actually getting more upset about this as I say this, because I’m imagining that you didn’t take five seconds to stop and think about what you were doing.”

Avery waved away some bugs, before putting her hands in her pockets.

Neither of the two really answered Lucy, except in body language and things unsaid.

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “When you said you were going to try out being a boy, I thought, okay.  Sure, explore you.  Give peeing while standing up a try.  Try on some clothes.  I don’t really get that whole thing with different genders and non-genders, but if you try being a boy and decide it’s a sometimes thing or an always thing, cool.  My mom says it’s our job as teenagers to figure out who we are.  And if you figure that out with the help of the Faerie, great.”

“It was deeply uncomfortable.  I figured out what I’m not, more than anything,” Avery said.

“Right?  If it’s just that, great.  Watch out for the traps, but great.  Verona was going to be there to give you a swift kick in the ass to break the glamour, maybe.  I could wait a little nervously for the phone call where you say everything turned out fine, but yeah.  But you went straight for Pam?”

“I didn’t go ‘straight for Pam’, like you’re making it sound.  I went for Pam,” Avery said.  “And I did think about it, I asked myself what Maricica wanted, and what I could do that might go against that.  So I thought I’d do something nice for Pam, as minor as it was.”

“And kiss her?”

“No!”

“You didn’t kiss her?”

“I did but- that wasn’t it, that wasn’t why,” Avery said, anxious.  Rain dripped from the hood of her raincoat.  “She’s always been so hard on herself, she doesn’t think she’s pretty, and she was hard on herself when I talked to her.  Like she’d be more likely to believe someone would be pranking her than be genuinely interested in her.  I always hated that I didn’t tell her she was pretty, that one time I heard her dumping on herself.  I thought I’d do that.”

“Did you want to kiss her?  Because I’m not sure there isn’t something unconscious here, and…” Lucy trailed off, shaking her head.

“I wanted- yes but no.”

“Explain,” Lucy pressed.

Verona stepped forward, hand up, “Maybe back off just-”

“I’m mad at you too!  I’m getting to you in a second!” Lucy raised her voice.  “Don’t tell me to back off!”

“Hey!” The voice was distant.

The three of them turned.

It was Jeremy from their class, a little way up the hill.  He wore a yellow raincoat.

“Everything okay?” he called down.

“Go away, Jeremy!” Lucy called up.

“Talking some stuff out,” Verona added.

Lucy made a hand gesture, dismissing the boy.  Jeremy headed back in the direction of the school.

“I did want to kiss her, and I told her that, but… it wasn’t why I went to find her, and when she first asked if she could, I didn’t want to.  I didn’t want to the second time either, exactly.  Not while I was wearing a different face and using a different voice.”

“And essentially lying to her.  Using knowledge of her from elsewhere-”

“I don’t think I did.  I acted mostly in the moment.  I looked for my chance to tell her she was pretty.  I bought her ice cream.  I kissed her because I thought it was the only way she’d believe what I’d said about her.  With how much the body and face I was wearing felt weird, it felt more like a sacrifice than a cool moment.”

“But it was cool, wasn’t it?” Verona pressed. “You seemed happy.”

“I was happy that she was happy.  I… it was nice but it was mixed.  I dunno.  It didn’t feel great, long-term, but I made her happy and that was what mattered in the end, right?  I told her she wouldn’t see that face around again, I didn’t get her expectations up, I didn’t want her to pine or whatever.”

“Would you be okay if someone did that to you?” Lucy asked.  “If Jeremy turned out to be a practitioner and turned into a girl, kissed you, and you found out?”

“I don’t know,” Avery said, uncomfortable.  “It doesn’t matter.  I’m not doing it again.  And again, the kiss wasn’t the point.”

“The kiss happened,’ Lucy pressed, stepping a bit closer.  “I’m going to do that thing again, where I pull on my own experiences, and I need you to not act like I’m talking down to you or making you out to be a child version of me, okay?  Because I might flip out on you.”

Avery nodded, looking glum.

“The shitty thing about people is that they’re going to judge you by what you do, not by what you intended.  And I’ve had to deal with that a lot.  And that’s pretty usual.  But when you’re slapped with the label of being an outsider, they’re going to flip it around on you when it’s inconvenient.  They’re going to make their assumptions about what you intended.  People are going to find ways to make you the bad guy.  You don’t get the luxury of meaning well, and I think that’s part of growing up.”  Lucy saw Avery open her mouth and cut in, “I say that as someone who’s growing up beside you.”

Avery shut her mouth and nodded.

“Verona,” Lucy said, turning.  “The whole idea of at least two of us agreeing on something is that you were supposed to watch over her.”

“Um,” Avery said.  “For what it’s worth, Verona kind of did?  She was quizzing the Faerie, being really strict about definitions.  Even said she was channeling you or something, making up for the fact that you couldn’t be there, in getting permission to kick the Faerie’s ass, if it was needed.”

“For just that night,” Verona said.

“Why does that make me even more upset with you, Ronnie?” Lucy asked, exasperated.  She hated feeling this way.  Frustrated.  Angry.  She was trying to find the words to get these two on the right page, at the same time she was trying to figure out just why it bothered her so much.

“Maybe you want to be angry, and no matter what I say, you’re going to get upset?” Verona asked, sounding innocent.

Lucy narrowed her eyes.  “Really?

“Just saying.”

“You really want to do that?  You want to go there?” Lucy asked.  She raised a hand and it was shaking.  She transferred her umbrella to the other hand, but the hand she’d just freed up wasn’t much better.

Verona looked at it.

“Revising my stance and statement,” Verona said, quietly.  “I didn’t realize this bothered you this much.  I get that you think I messed up and I’m not sure why or how.  I’m listening.  What was I supposed to do?”

“More!  Do more!” Lucy raised her voice.  “Do you think this is fun?  No, don’t answer that.  I’ll say it different.  Do you think this is fun for me?

“We had a good time experimenting with the ring and stuff at your place.”

“And after?  With the Faerie?  With the Choir?” Lucy asked.  She held her umbrella with both hands, so she didn’t have to worry about her hands shaking.  “Come on, Verona.  How do you think I felt holding you while you were a fucking mink?  Did you think maybe I was standing there, terrified you were never going to go back to normal?  That I was wondering what I was supposed to do about this creepy Faerie woman that had just transformed my best friend, when a warrior Faerie couldn’t even seem to scratch her?  What do I do except maybe lose a lifelong friendship?”

“Are we not supposed to have fun?  She said it would break, I was me, underneath it.”

“Maybe-” Lucy started, and she had to gulp in a breath before continuing.  “Maybe not so much fun with the Faerie that – god do I miss hyperbole- but how many people now have said the Faerie are bad news?  Including the damn Faerie themselves!?  Maybe save the ‘fun’ for other times and places!?”

“‘Kay,” Verona said, one note.  “Sorry I scared you.  Sorry I didn’t think.”

“Do you know what scares me most?” Lucy asked.  “It’s not the creepy children that are showing up, or the crotchety old forsworn dude, or even being held at freaking gunpoint.  It’s the idea that this will be it for the next however many years we’re alive and together.  Me, being the level-headed one, while the two of you fuck around.  Cleaning up messes, or worse, that one of you will do something and I’d regret it the rest of my life, that I wasn’t paying enough attention or steering you in the right directions.  That I could be old and still kicking myself every single day because I didn’t protect my best friend from herself!  Or protect someone from being hurt by you, Avery!”

Verona swallowed hard.

“I wouldn’t hurt someone,” Avery said.

“No?” Lucy asked.  “No, really?  Because I can think of a few ways you’ve opened that door.  You said she wouldn’t see that face around anymore.  But is it maybe possible the Faerie was spying on you and saw the face?  That she might dress up as that boy, or dress someone else up as him, and mislead Pam?”

“I-” Avery said.

“Yeah,” Lucy hissed out the word.  “Miss called it entanglement, right?  With the Choir?  And she suggested the Faerie were worse and more subtle.  If you had a spiderweb sticking to your hand, and you touched Pam… don’t you think that’s maybe enough?”

“The Faerie was there, watching,” Verona said.  “With me.”

If there was anything remotely good about this situation, it was seeing Avery go visibly pale at that.

Yeah.  Reality check.

“What if she finds out?” Lucy asked.  “It was all a lie, you were in disguise, right?  She’d go from feeling good today to being devastated, confused, and maybe even losing… whatever it was, that keeps mortals safe and away from Others.  And you two are putting me in the situation of having to think of this?  Really?”

“You’re good at it,” Verona said.

“Don’t be freaking irreverent with me,” Lucy said, angry, shaking her head.  To Avery, she said, “You said Verona was good and on the ball for one part of one conversation, but where does that leave me?  You guys get to have your fun, but what do I get?  What release or relief or casual fuckups do I get to have?  Did you think that maybe I want to cut loose, but I can’t because I have to watch over you two?  Did you think maybe, just maybe, I’d appreciate having either of you step in and offer to kick asses, or just give me a bit of backup?”

The two girls were silent.  The rain kept pouring down.

“I’m more scared for you two than I am of the monsters, and the monsters are scary.  I need you two to step it up.  Verona… I’m struggling to convey this…”

Verona nodded, shrugging at the same time.

Shutting down.

“I know it’s not your whole deal here, what I’m asking of you.  You probably feel like I sound like your dad or whatever.  But we’re in this.  I don’t think there’s a good way to get out of it.  You told me once that you never wanted to be even a bit in debt, because you’ve seen too many people miserable with it.  We’re in debt, so to speak, okay?  We signed onto this, and they get some say over what we do and how, until we solve the mystery.  Maybe even after.  I want to be clear of that.  I want to deal with the living ritual bullshit that captured our classmate.  I need you to be that Verona that’s clever and on the ball and focused and offering backup all the time.  At least around the Others.”

Verona looked away.

“Verona,” Lucy said.

Her friend met her eyes.

“I invite you over all the time, and I don’t go over much.  My aunt was telling my mom that my mom supports me, supports Booker, goes the extra mile constantly.  I know my mom backs up her friends and invites them over for wine and a cry, or goes to help one friend with a sick kid.  But then my aunt runs down the list of all the people who back my mom up in turn and…”

Lucy shrugged.

“…Nobody.  It came down to Paul as a serious consideration.”

Verona nodded.

“I feel like that’s where I’m at.”

“Is that your dad?” Avery asked.

“No.  My dad died when I was little,” Lucy said.  “He got Hep A from working elbow to elbow with a coworker, who got it from animals.  He went to the doctor a couple of times, and they didn’t realize he was suffering from liver failure.  My mom was away at nursing school.  My big brother Booker found him.”

“Oh,” Avery said.  “Sorry.”

Lucy shrugged.

“I’m going to go,” Verona said, jerking her thumb back at the school.  She was already walking.  “Sorry.”

“Ronnie.”

Verona stopped.

“Give me something?” Lucy asked.  “Tell me I didn’t just make a fool of myself for nothing.”

“You didn’t make a fool of yourself,” Avery said.  “I feel like the ass, here.”

“Just gotta think,” Verona said.  “See if I can’t figure out what to do or how.”

Lucy spread her arms a bit.

“I am sorry,” Verona said.  “I don’t like letting you down.  You’re my favorite person.  I just gotta think about this, consider what you said, see if I can’t make it up to you.”

“Being here and not running away would be a start.”

“Gimme a bit?” Verona asked, rocking back a bit, taking a step as she said it.  “You said you didn’t want to do practice stuff today.  So for today, let me give this a hard think.  Then I want to come back and be the backup you need.”

“So long as you’re not going to Others to make yourself into that Verona.  No practice?”

“Nah.  No Faerie or anything.  I was thinking I’d skip this afternoon’s classes and use connection blocks to ensure I wasn’t bothered.”

“You used a connection blocker yesterday, in Ms. Hardy’s class.  I’m not saying you can’t or shouldn’t, but… be aware?”

Verona nodded.

“Okay,” Lucy said.

Verona headed back toward the school.

Lucy looked at Avery.  “I don’t know you as well.  So I don’t know what to say, that I haven’t already covered.”

“I messed up,” Avery said.  “I thought I was going down a different route than what the Faerie wanted.”

“No,” Lucy said.  “Because now you’ve got a hard choice to make.  I’d even say she’s cornering you.”

“What have I walked into?” Avery asked, barely audible.

“For one thing, you’ve tipped her off about Pam, if she didn’t already know.  Pam’s at risk of being entangled.  So the dumb, selfish move is that you could carry on, and Pam becomes something she can use against you.  I already covered some of the ways how.  Maybe she has to use it against you, if that’s what a Faerie has to do.”

“Or?” Avery asked.

“Or you solve the entanglement the way Miss told you to,” Lucy said.

Avery shook her head.

“Distance,” Lucy added, in response to that sentence Avery hadn’t spoken.  The question she hadn’t asked.  “Walk away.  Leave no meaningful connection to Pam.  Trust Verona and I to handle the worst case scenarios, if something happens to Pam, but you should stay clear.  Best case scenario, you did your good deed, and you both go in different directions.”

“You said I was cornered.”

“Oh, you were and are,” Lucy said.  She drew in a deep breath.  “You have to cut off a connection.  Someone that made your days brighter and made your heart warm.  And by doing that, you become a little bit more Other, don’t you?  A little more like Alpeana, maybe, who was cut off from her family.  Or the possible ways of becoming Faerie that Guilherme went over.  It doesn’t seem like you become Other as long as you’re tightly enmeshed with your family, friends, or neighbors… or your crushes.”

Avery turned, looking back toward the school.  Verona was still trudging up the hill.

“It just occurred to me,” Avery said, her back to Lucy, a bit of emotion in her voice, “that we have what?  Ten teachers?  People who’ll go over the Practice and the different places and the types of Other, and who’ll hand us gifts.  But there’s nobody really to go to for advice on this stuff.  We can’t trust any of them.”

“No,” Lucy said.  “Just each other, at least for now.”

“Which is why you want us as your backup.”

“Please,” Lucy said.

“I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do, or what role I’m supposed to fill.  I’m not sure of much at all.  I really did walk away from that meeting with Pam thinking I’d done something good, and I thought it was selfless, because I gave her my first kiss in a way that ruined it a bit for me, but it made her happier and stronger.”

“I think, um,” Lucy said.  “If you’re starting out with deception… it’s not going anywhere great.”

“I feel a little sick.”

“Good.  Use it.”

“I guess… how do I avoid getting entangled more?”

“You step back.  Be careful.  Think hard.  Maybe we get three-way consensus before any Faerie stuff.”

Avery nodded.

“If she says there’s nobody for you in Kennet, maybe the answer isn’t to challenge that or immediately ask if you can meet one of these people that aren’t for you, but to look elsewhere.”

“Long distance relationships?”

Lucy shrugged.

Avery nodded to herself, then made a face.  “Okay.  Alright.  Shit.  Ugh.  But okay.  I do feel bad for not watching out more.  I want to make it up to you, but I don’t know what to do.”

“I don’t want to sound too much like a bitch,” Lucy said.  “But if you actually ask me to tell you what to do to make it up to me, and make that my burden or job, on top of everything, I might throw you in the nearest puddle.  I need you to put in that effort of figuring out.  Like I think Verona might be doing.”

Avery sighed.  “Is she going to be okay?”

“She does this, when things get tough.  Sometimes it’s a positive step away.  Sometimes she forgets stuff ever happens.  If Verona gave me permission, I could tell you what happened on her dad’s birthday last year, but I’m genuinely unsure if she even remembers it happened, or if she avoids the memory.”

“I really don’t know the deal with her dad.  But now I’m afraid to ask, after stepping on your toes about yours.”

“Nah.  He’s… you know that type of kid, who asks you to play a game he made up, and changes the rules when he’s losing, and throws tantrums, and makes everything about him?”

“Kinda.”

“Imagine that kid grown up, and he’s got a kid who kind of has to do what he says.”

“Oh.  Still not sure I get it.”

“It becomes clear once you meet the guy.  Like, I know I just said that I do a lot of the inviting over, and Verona doesn’t return the favor, but I don’t like going over because he’s there.”

Avery looked back in the direction of the school.

“Do you want to come over after school?” Avery asked.

Not especially, Lucy thought.  Her aunt was at her place, and she was actually looking forward to spending time with her.

But… she couldn’t slap away a hand that was extended like this.

“Sure.”

“Who is even this guy?” Sheridan asked.

“What are you, four?” Lucy asked.

“What?” Sheridan asked, bewildered.

“Watch for a few more minutes and figure it out, or ask during the commercial,” Lucy cut in.  “Do you see your parents interrupting every few seconds?  Grow up.”

“Wow, Ave,” Sheridan said.  “Love your friend.  What a guest to bring over.”

“Try getting on my bad side,” Lucy said.

They were sitting around a dining room table, and even though the length of the table was pretty good, the amount of food ate up a lot of real estate, and the chairs were situated in a way that made it hard not to bump elbows.

Just being in the room with all these relatively strange people and the overlapping conversation was enough to get her heart rate up.  Then there was the combative approach the other kids had taken when Lucy and Avery had commented that they’d rather watch a show, and Lucy was stepping up to the plate on that as a matter of personal principle.  Little Kerry was just to Lucy’s right, doing a very bad job of reaching over her plate to hold a full glass.  Lucy was convinced that glass was going to tip over by the end of dinner.  Avery’s ‘grumble’ was getting help eating from Avery’s mom, and he kept making little choking sounds while swallowing.

Which would have been a lot, in sum total, but the hot food and the press of bodies made the humid room even muggier.

“Anyone want another burger?” Avery’s dad asked.  “Lucy?”

“No thank you.  It was good,” Lucy said.

“Me,” Rowan said.  “Thanks.”

Having to answer questions and get involved in conversations while keeping track of the television was another thing.

How did Avery have the energy for this and have the energy to do after school activities?

“I don’t understand the plot.  We couldn’t have watched Singfest Canada?” Sheridan asked.

“Yeah!” Kerry piped up.

“Singing’s been ruined for me,” Avery said.

“Wholeheartedly agreed.”

“It’s the commercial break,” Sheridan said.  “We could switch the channel over for a few minutes.”

“I know how that goes,” Avery said.  “You switch it and then you want to watch to the end of that performance, and hear the judging.”

“That’s just underhanded,” Lucy said.

“Then can someone give a recap of what’s happened so far this episode?  Because I think it expects you to watch the rest of the season,” Sheridan said.  “And if nobody understands what’s going on I don’t see why we’re watching it.”

“Yeah!” Kerry chimed in.

“I’m admittedly a little lost,” Avery’s dad said, from the back door.  It was open, which was letting a few bugs in.  The barbecue smoked in the background.

“It would be easier to follow if certain sixteen year old girls weren’t being rude and constantly interrupting it,” Lucy said, looking at Sheridan.

“I think you’re the one that’s being rude, coming into our home as a guest and being confrontational.”

“I’m responding to you.  Is that being confrontational?”

“That’s the definition of confrontational,” Sheridan said.

“Please, Sheridan,” Avery’s mom said.  “Dial it back, be nice.”

Sheridan protested, “Every day, right after school, Kerry gets the TV and watches her cartoons, then Declan has the TV and plays his games until six, when Grumble watches the six o’clock news, and then Declan plays more if there’s time for dinner.  Can’t this show be my thing?” Sheridan asked.

“And when do I get my thing?” Avery asked.

Declan piped up, “When you get taste and pick something at least half the people here can watch and understand.”

“I agree with Dec for once,” Sheridan said.

“Okay!”  Avery’s dad said.  “Okay.  Please.”

Avery’s mom had her fingers at her temples.

“We need some civility here, please.  I think it is entirely fair that a guest can pick what we watch when they come over,” Avery’s dad said.

“I’m going to bring over my friends every day,” Declan said.

“No you’re not,” Avery’s mom said.

“Within reason,” Avery’s dad said.

Kerry, sitting in a booster seat just to Lucy’s right, was slowly extending a hand toward the side of Lucy’s head.  The girl froze as Lucy looked at her.

Lucy, her hands still not entirely clean from finishing her burger, reached over with both hands, toward Kerry’s head.  Kerry looked confused, then disconcerted, shrinking back down and away.

Lucy stopped before actually making contact, and used a napkin to wipe at her fingers.

“Listen, since it seems like most of you have finished eating, and the rain has mostly let up, how about we make things in here a little more sane?  We need things from the store, and if I can get some volunteers, you can use the extra to buy ice cream bars.”

“Yes!  Me!” Declan said.

Avery looked at Lucy, then raised her hand.

“With Avery and Lucy going, I’m hearing two people who are out of our hair.  Do I hear three?  Coalition of three Kellys and guests?  You get enough to buy extra treats.  Three people, for some cash, free selection of junk food…”

“I don’t want to go with Avery and her friend,” Declan said.

“Still hearing two.  Two people, going once… going twice…”

“I want to watch my show,” Sheridan said.

“Me too,” Declan said.

“Two people,” Avery’s dad said, getting his wallet out.  “Thank you.”

“And we can change the channel,” Sheridan said, going for the remote.

Lucy walked around one end of the table.  Avery took the harder route, around the head of the table, hugging her grandfather and getting the money from her dad before finding her way around.  Sheridan backed her chair up an inch or two to get in Avery’s way.

“You’re more childish than some of the actual children at the table,” Lucy said.

“And you’re a jerk.”

“Not so much of a jerk right now as I am a bad influence,” Lucy said.

“What?” Sheridan asked.

Lucy discreetly pointed toward the pitcher of water with ice cubes.  She saw Avery’s look of recognition, then a look of internal debate.

“Avery,” Avery’s mom said, as Avery picked up the pitcher, which was only a quarter of the way full.  “Don’t you-”

Sheridan had realized what Avery was doing, but wasn’t in much of a position to react or stop her.  Avery pulled back Sheridan’s collar and dumped the ice water down around her back and front.  Sheridan shrieked.

“-dare!” Avery’s mom finished.

Cackling, Avery slipped past Sheridan, who had practically fallen out of her seat.  She deposited the pitcher on the coffee table in the living room as they ran through and out the front door, Sheridan’s cussing following them.

Avery kept jogging ahead, even past the point where they’d passed the end of the driveway and Sheridan hadn’t even appeared at the front door.  Lucy ran with until she had to call Uncle.

“I’m going to get in trouble for that.”

“Sorry if you do,” Lucy said.  “She deserved it.”

“Maybe.”

“I don’t know how you even stand all of that.”

“No choice in the matter,” Avery said.

“I’m getting a headache,” Lucy said.  “That may have shortened my lifespan.”

The rain was just a patter now.  Lucy flipped up her hood to be safe.  Heavy clouds had rolled in.

“What do we do next?” Avery asked.  “And I realize, on asking that, that it sounds like I’m putting that burden on you, to decide.  Are we really doing that all the time?”

“I don’t want you to second guess yourself all the time,” Lucy said.  “Especially if it makes you useless.”

“More useless,” Avery said.

“Enh,” Lucy said, with a one-shoulder shrug.

“That was super unconvincing.”

“I’m kidding.  I am.  Really, though, I don’t want you to be consumed with doubts.”

“Might be too late for that.”

“Just… prioritize what you’re doubting.  Try thinking out loud?” Lucy suggested.

“I want to go places.  That’s a want.  I don’t know how much it helps us solve the mystery or resolve the… you called it a debt, to Verona.”

“Because I think that’s something that she could think on and use,” Lucy said.

“Okay.  Solving the mystery so we don’t have that hanging over our heads.  And because it might be the right thing to do.”

Lucy nodded.

“If it’s that powerful, that its absence is making all of Kennet bleed to our various Sights, then how much meat or sinew or fur or bone is there?  Is it possible that we could go to the right place and find a trail of evidence leading us to where it’s stashed?”

“If it were that easy, an Other might have pointed it out.”

“Unless they’re in on it,” Avery said.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Avery said.

They walked.  A car drove through puddles, but didn’t make splashes big enough to catch them on the sidewalk.  Rain drummed Lucy’s hood and slowly dampened Avery’s hair.  Avery ran her fingers through her hair, pushing it all back.

“I don’t like feeling weak,” Avery said.

“Me either,” Lucy said.

“Maybe we talk to Alpeana and the Goblins?  Get tools, get stronger?  I don’t think they’re as likely to mess with us as the Faerie are, even if the Faerie gifts are…”

Avery made a motion with her hands, to convey something inarticulate, like she was trying to mime ‘big’ and ‘many’ at the same time.

“Yeah,” Lucy said, “there’s a lot there, on a lot of levels.”

“Yeah.  How do other Practitioners get stronger?” Avery asked.  “Are there big steps?  Can we… I don’t know?  Is there a ritual to level up, in the eyes of the spirits?  I might have seen too many of Declan’s games and anime shows.”

“Maybe we ask Miss,” Lucy said.

Avery nodded.

They reached the convenience store.  Avery got out her phone, and started picking out the essentials.  Lucy went hunting for the jerky, then some select chocolate bars.  Salted chocolate, good stuff.

She went to the back for a drink.  The bell at the door binged, as someone entered.

She’d been on guard all day, since the Choir first thing.  The tension hadn’t quite left her, and it had only been alleviated a bit with her ‘bad influence’ move and Avery’s ice water.  She looked up at the little mirror that gave the person at the counter the ability to see people in the aisles.  She saw the man who walked through, stopping at the counter for a second.

“Decide on a drink?” Avery asked.

Lucy watched the mirror.

The man came through, down the aisle.  He stopped just around the corner, opening the fridge door to get milk.

“Remember what I said at lunchtime?” Lucy asked, quiet.

The man in the mirror looked up, his features warped by the domed reflection.

“I don’t think I’ll ever forget.  What part?”

“About needing to cut loose,” Lucy said.  “And needing backup when I do something stupid.”

“Uhh.”

Lucy handed Avery the stuff she’d picked out.

The man was already heading to the counter.  Lucy followed.

“Uh!  Lucy!” Avery called out.

Lucy had moved her knife sheath and knife to the inside of her jeans waist after lunch, in anticipation of possibly running into the Choir or something else that was dangerous.  She drew it.

The man –Paul, she could see it for sure now- set the milk on the counter, said something brief to the guy there, and went straight out the door.

“Paul!” Lucy called out, running after him.  “Hey!  Paul!  Why are you running!?”

Paul beeped his car door open, and opened it, climbing inside.

She closed the distance, threw herself onto the hood, and then brought the point of the knife against the hood.

“Coward,” she mouthed the word, dragging the knife’s point a quarter inch against the paint.

She saw his eyes widen.  He opened the door.

He was a skinny guy, white, his graying black hair short, his beard short.  Wrinkles were permanently set across his forehead.  He wore a short sleeved button-up shirt with a vague plaid pattern, and khaki pants with sandals.

“Don’t,” he said.

“Hey, Paul,” she said.  She slid down the hood, but kept the knife’s point against the hood.

Avery and the guy from the convenience store counter stepped outside.

“Put the knife away, Lucy,” he said.

“I wanted to talk.  Why were you running?”

“Please, put the knife away.”

“Please, Paul, engage with me,” she said.

“What’s going on here?” The guy from the convenience store asked.

“They know each other, I think,” Avery said.  She still had the stuff from the store, which meant she was technically shoplifting.

“It’s complicated,’ Paul said.

“Paul here doesn’t want to explain,” Lucy said, “and neither does anyone else in my life.  It’s the damndest thing.”

“This isn’t you,” he said.

“You don’t know me anymore, Paul.  So this guy, he’s the one who dated my mom,” she explained, for Avery’s benefit, and to explain to the clerk.  “Five years.  My dad died when I was young, and my mom was single for a while, and then after a few months of dating, she brought Paul over.  And he kind of stuck around.  Five years!

“You’re coming across as unhinged.”

“I’m pissed, Paul!” she raised her voice.  “I’ve been sitting on this for years.  So you gotta help me out here.  Have a conversation with me.  Give me that closure.”

“Put the knife away,” he said.  “I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

“I’m still a little confused, Luce,” Avery said.  “And a little spooked.”

“This guy, Paul, he was almost like a dad to me.  Got Booker through his teen years.  Was sweet to my mom, helped with the chores, helped with finances.  They got engaged, bought a house together.”

“I am sorry,” Paul said.

“And then he- you decided you’d rather suck on your own mother’s tits instead of my mom’s, right?” Lucy asked.  “Is that how it goes?”

Paul’s confusion was palpable.

“And… I’m going inside,” the clerk said.  “Do you want me to call the cops?  Paul?”

“No,” Paul said.

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah,” Paul said.  He wouldn’t meet Lucy’s eyes.

The bell on the door rang as the clerk hauled it open, stepping inside.  He was still watching through the window.

“You ran, Paul.  You left.  You didn’t even say goodbye to us, after being like a dad for five years.  You bailed.  You gutless coward.”

She scratched the car again.  Longer this time.

She saw Paul reach out, like he was going to try to stop her.  Then his arm dropped.  He remained where he as, standing between his car seat and the open car door.

“Do you know the kind of hurt you left our family with, leaving like that?  How much it hurt Booker?  Or that I saw my mom with a look in her eyes, that night you took your stuff and left, and she was so devastated that it devastated me?” Lucy asked.

A pained look crossed his face.  He looked away.

“Come on, Paul.  At least look at me.  At least acknowledge what I’m saying.  You could speak up and participate in this conversation.  Give me something, besides some really shitty life lessons.  I don’t think there’s much you could say that would make me respect you less than I do right now.”

For a moment, she thought he was going to say something.  He didn’t.

“You had the good life.  You obviously cared about each other.  You obviously cared about Booker and me.  When you bailed, that taught me a few things, like how you can be super nice, giving, fair, communicative, you can show respect, you can be thoughtful, you can be fun… and you still get dicked over.  And you know, for me, that was the start of seeing a lot of ugliness from a lot of people.  And for so long, even with you, especially with you… I blamed myself.”

“No,” he said.  “I-”

“You what?” she asked.  “Come on.  Do more than stand there.  Talk.  Explain and do more than leave me to fill in the blanks.”

“It’s not necessarily the kind of thing you can put into words.  Sometimes relationships don’t work out.”

“Bull!” she raised her voice.  “No, bull.  Because I saw it work.  I was paying attention, because to me, when I was eight, nine, ten years old, you and my mom were what I wanted to be.  You were good to each other and for each other.  That’s why I was so confused.  That’s why you have this look on your face, like you shit in your bed and you’re lying in it, and you can’t own up to the reality.”

He looked down at the damage she’d already done to his car hood.

“There’s a pattern I’ve noticed,” Lucy said.  “A kid nearly drowns me and I have to puzzle out why.  Why me in particular?  Why single me out?  What did he want?  A teacher treats me like he thinks I’m dumb, when all I’ve done is get good marks in his class.  And I have to weigh all the questions and possibilities.  It could be this.  It could be that.  My gym teacher gets on my case.  Same thing.”

“I’m sorry that happened.”

“Don’t apologize,” she told him.  “Not unless it’s for what you did to my family.  Because I don’t think my mom has ever been one hundred percent okay since you left.  And she’s terrified of Booker and me finding out your reasons… and it’s not because she did something wrong, is it?  She didn’t cheat, she didn’t steal from you or whatever.”

He was stiff.

“The only way what happened with you and my mom makes sense, with the sequence of events, the way you pulled away and then left… is if I think back to meeting your family.  And your sister and your mom would say stuff when they didn’t think others could hear.  In these scandalized whispers… ‘those children don’t look like they’re yours’.  ‘People will wonder’.”

Lucy blinked a few times.

Paul made a face.

“Your family pressured you, they gave you crap.  Your mom wanted you to have a nice white wife and they never had a nice word to say about my mom, who never did a single thing wrong.  And you caved.  You fought with my mom about it, and then you got your stuff and you left.  Because somehow that was easier.  You’d rather be a mama’s boy than be my dad.”

Avery made a sound, off to Lucy’s right.  Lucy flinched.

“All my life, there’s been these big question marks.  Some teachers, some classmates, some boys at the lake, comments from strangers.  If my mom can’t get work because her name isn’t white enough.  And there’s usually these really easy explanations I could turn to.  Could it be this?  Or are they racist?  Could it be that?  Or are they hateful, or ignorant, or that fucking pathetic?” Lucy asked.  Her eyes were damp, her chin and neck rigid.  “And then there’s you.  This one big exclamation point.  One thing that makes sense in why you left our family.  And I think I could actually find my way to forgiving you if you actually admitted it out loud.  Give me this one.  One time I can be sure, and I can put it to rest.  Or give me another explanation.  Any other explanation would be better than wondering.”

“I really do wish you and Jasmine and Booker the best,” he said.

“Don’t you dare disengage and walk away from this,” she said.  “Or you deserve every bad thing that life brings to you, you deserve every person you meet to see through you to the coward you really are.”

He climbed into the car.

“Suck on your mom’s tits forever, get evicted from wherever you are and live in her basement forever!” she raised her voice, dragging the knife’s edge across the hood, back and forth.  “Unless you own up to what happened or you right the wrongs done.  I hope you get weird boners looking at your mom, because that shrew is the only woman you deserve at this point, you pathetic excuse for a human being!  When you die I want it to be unmarried, alone, and unfulfilled, because you gave up on better!  I said it three times and I could say it over your grave.  Coward!

The car pulled away, careful at first, and the knife’s edge dragged against the hood.  When she almost had a grip, like she could hang on, he pulled away faster.  She landed, and the bottom corner of the knife nearest to the handle cut into the side of her palm.

He stopped, and for a moment, she thought that getting hurt would be what got him out.  Brought him back.

She slammed her hand against the scratches on the hood, and blood spattered.  “Let the car mechanic ask you about that.”

He pulled away, then turned, to get to where he could pull onto the road.

“You deserve it all, because you wronged my mom!  You shattered her happiness!” she called out after him.  “You wronged my brother!”

He drove off.

Avery came to her side, kneeling beside her.  Avery took her hand, turning it over.

“I don’t have anything with me for this,” Avery said.  “I could use my shirt, but I’m not sure it’s sanitary.”

Lucy shrugged.

“I didn’t know what to do or say, so I kept an eye on the guy at the counter.  To make sure he wasn’t calling anyone.  If he did, I could’ve broken the connection.”

“It’s okay,” Lucy said.

“Do you think Paul is going to call cops?”

Lucy shook her head.

“Are you sure?”

“He’s too much of a coward,” Lucy said.

“You should put pressure on it.”

Lucy did, pressing her hand hard against the side of her other hand.

“Do you want- I think we should get you a doctor.  To get that stitched up.”

“No.  I have stuff at my house.  I’m going to go back.  Check in with my aunt.”

“You asked for backup and I think this moment is really the kind of moment where backup is most needed and necessary,” Avery said.

“I don’t want backup.  I don’t want company.”

“But-”

“Please,” Lucy said.  She climbed from her knees to her feet, which was awkward when she couldn’t use her hands.

“I really think-”

“Avery,” Lucy cut in, her voice hard.  Her eyes damp, she looked her friend in the eyes.  “This isn’t the time to be butt-head stubborn about stuff.  No.  I want to go, you should get the stuff for your family.  Ice cream bars.  Deal with the punishment for icing Sheridan.”

“Icing, god, if only.  Ice-watering,” Avery said, without smiling.  “That doesn’t matter.”

Lucy talked, looking at the roads and trying to orient herself.  “Tomorrow’s another day.  We’ll do practice stuff, see how Verona has processed.  Work with that.  Maybe go someplace weird.  It might be nice to find out something for Reagan, since tomorrow night’s the next thing for the Choir.”

“I don’t think any of that matters much right now, Lucy.”

“I’m going.  Don’t follow,” Lucy said.

“But-”

Lucy pushed back Avery’s hand, and she walked, hands pressed together.

After she’d walked two blocks in a straight line down the road, she looked back.  Avery was still there, at the convenience store.  Watching.

Which wasn’t technically following.

Fair enough.

It was only after she’d walked another two blocks that she heard the soft clapping.

“Good show,” Toadswallow said, from the shadows of one ditch.  It wasn’t quite dark out.

“Get bent, Toadswallow,” Lucy said.  “I wasn’t putting on a show for your benefit.”

“You did good.  That was top fucking notch,” Toadswallow said.

“Wheee!” Cherry piped up.

“Maybe don’t piss off the girl who’s still got a knife and who just demonstrated she has no patience left,” she said.

Munch kept pace with her, walking on his knuckles, loping forward.  He moved through front yards, keeping to the shadows by bushes and fixtures.   “Lucille?”

“Don’t call me Lucille,” she said.

“You introduced yourself to us all as Lucille-”

“I frigging know I did,” she said.  “Again, don’t test my patience.”

“Okay,” he said, like the ‘oke’ and the ‘ay’ were two different words.  “Do you want us to destroy him?  This Paul?”

She kept walking, her eyes fixed forward.  Her hand throbbed.

She seriously considered it.

“No,” she said.  “I think I did a pretty good job.”

“Do you want us to let you know, my dear?” Toadswallow asked.  “I’m interested to see how life treats him now.”

“I’m done with him,” Lucy said.  “A part of me wanted him back.  Until tonight.  Not now.  I don’t want to hear or see anything about him.  I’ll get angry at you if you tell me anything.  Or if you do anything to him.  Let him sit with what he got tonight.”

“Dear me,” Toadswallow said.  “I don’t want to get on your bad side, so I won’t.”

Munch grunted assent.

“Finally,” Lucy answered, her voice airy.  She stared off in the direction of her house.  “Someone gets it.”

“Want something for the bleeding?” Toadswallow asked.

“I want to be left alone while I walk home,” she said.  “Go.”

There was no response.

When she finally took her eyes off the road, the goblins were gone.

The rest of the way home was quiet, which was merciful.

It made it easier to hold herself together.

She let herself in with her key, and then the tears started flowing.

“Lucy,” her aunt said, from the other room.  “I was wondering what movie-”

Her aunt stepped into view.

“What happened?”

Lucy went to her aunt, hugging her- clutching her and probably getting blood on her shirt, and began to sob.  When Lucy fell to her knees, her aunt dropped down with her.

“Don’t tell my mom,” Lucy managed.

Stolen Away – 2.5

Avery

“How’s it going over there?” Ms. Hardy asked.

“It’s going okay.  Hi Ms. Hardy,” Aubrey said.

“Stop hesitating, Faith!” Mr. Bader shouted.

Avery stood at one corner of the field with two of her teammates, Audrey and Aubrey, twins from a grade above her.  They were were doing Mr. Bader’s Three Goal challenge, and for the process to go smoothly, the girls who weren’t playing defense or running point were doing their best to keep the balls in bounds, or give out balls.

Three small goals had been set up in a triangle, with a player on defense at each goal.  One player had to take a ball, navigate through the cones in the center, get past the defense, score, pivot, and repeat.  Three times in total.  It was supposed to drill them on responding quickly.

Ms. Hardy was on the other side of the fence that separated the field from the parking lot, holding a cardboard box under one arm, the bottom edge resting on her hip.  Her eyes, half-lidded and decorated with eyeliner Avery thought of as almost Egyptian style, were scanning the field.

Avery wished she could be that casually cool.

“Did you get fired?” Audrey asked.

Avery looked in alarm at the little cardboard box.

But Ms. Hardy chuckled.  “No.  Don’t worry.  Classwork to go over this weekend.”

“Going home a bit earlier today, then?” Avery asked.

“I am.”

“Shoot.  I was hoping to swing by for a minute after practice, ask for advice on something.”

“Is it important?  Can it wait until Monday?” Ms. Hardy asked.

“Not too important, I don’t think, and yeah,” Avery said, shrugging.  “I guess.”

A spattering of wet droplets came down from the sky, prompting Avery to look up.  If it was going to rain, the weather was really doing its level best to sneak up on them.  A heavy cloud cover, but no real hint of the actual rain starting.

The air was hot, making it uncomfortable to breathe.

“Faster, Faith!” Mr. Bader barked.  “I’d rather see you make a mistake than freeze!  You can learn from a mistake, but if you freeze you’re holding the rest of us up!”

Ms. Hardy said, “Mr. Lai is going to meet me in the parking lot Monday morning and help me move some things for a home project into my car, if you wanted to swing by and chat with the two of us.”

“It can’t be one-on-one?”

“Not typically, no.  I do trust Mr. Lai and I think you can too, if that helps.  If you’d rather it was a group of other students, we could do that at lunchtime on Monday.  Depending on what you wanted to talk about, I’m sure I could round up some students.”

“Okay,” Avery said.  “Probably not that.  I might think on it over the weekend and show up on Monday.”

“Sounds good,” Ms. Hardy said.  “Offer for the lunch meet stands.”

A ball was kicked over in their direction.

“I got it, you talk,” Audrey said, running after it.

Avery knew who those students at the lunch meet might be.  Three of the boys in her class, a couple of others in school.

It was a bit frustrating.  Avery considered the time she’d opened up to Ms. Hardy about her loneliness to be a life changing moment.  A few quiet questions from this cool, caring teacher and she’d broken down, opened up about everything.  Her teacher had listened, considered, connected, and cared.

But ever since, they hadn’t really had one-on-one talks.  Bits of advice, yes, but always brief.  Or slightly longer talks, if Ms. Hardy was going somewhere or Avery was going somewhere, and they happened to cross paths.  If the conversation continued for more than a couple of minutes, Avery got this.  The deflection, the guardedness of it, where Ms. Hardy would want to make it a group discussion instead.  Mr. Lai had a gay brother and was Ms. Hardy’s friend, so he was usually the person there.  Ms. Hardy and Mr. Lai had something like a general LGBT student group where Ian, Justin, and Noah from her class and a larger group of the older teenagers and their friends would go talk with the teachers as referees.

Avery didn’t even really like Ian and Noah, felt iffy on Justin, and being around the older teenagers made her feel like she was sitting through dinner with her family, except she didn’t even know them or feel any familiarity.  She’d gone once and didn’t feel eager to go again.  It wasn’t what she wanted or needed.

She wanted the one-on-one time with Ms. Hardy, but she did understand what Ms. Hardy had said about the boundaries teachers had to maintain with students.  That didn’t mean it didn’t suck butt.

It was why she’d been so happy to talk for more than a few minutes with Ms. Hardy, last week.  Touching base, even if it was a bit clinical.  How are things with your family?  Are you managing with class?

Focus, Melissa!  We need you here on Earth, not in la-la land!”

“I could hear him from my desk in the classroom at the second floor,” Ms. Hardy said.

“It’s not so bad,” Avery said.

“Does he raise his voice to you?”

“Some,” she said.

“He’s a good coach,” Aubrey added.

“Makes sense,” Ms. Hardy said.  “He had some background.”

Audrey had fetched the ball, kicking it over to one of the players on defense.  The player maneuvered the ball to sit beside their little netted goal.  She jogged up to join them.

“He’s really good when it comes to training us in groups of two or three, when it’s just a couple of us who’re wanting to get really polished at something,” Avery said.  “He’s good as a coach like this.  But as a gym teacher…”

“Hey,” Audrey said.  “He’s fine.”

“I don’t know if he knows how to deal with the students who don’t give a crap,” Avery said.

“That, I can say, is never easy,” Ms. Hardy said.

She thought of Lucy yesterday.  The sheer emotion.

A few months ago, Ms. Hardy had reached out and Avery had broken down.  The dam had cracked and everything had poured out.  It had needed to happen.  It had been important.  It had been healthier in the long run.  The dam wasn’t supposed to be there.

And… Lucy hadn’t had a Ms. Hardy, she supposed.

In her analogy, she wasn’t sure if Lucy was building up the dam herself, dropping rocks on top, or if she’d gone hacking at it, knife in hand, with enough intensity that she’d accidentally cut herself.

“I think he gives some of my friends a harder time than others,” Avery noted, watching the girls play.

“Avery!” Mr. Bader shouted.  She jumped despite herself.

Oh.  It was her turn.

She felt her face heat up as she ran.  Mr. Bader threw a ball, and she bumped it with her chest, then the side of her leg, turning to follow it.  Through the posts, straight at Melissa, who had taken up roost by one goal, playing goalie more than she was playing defense.

Melissa wasn’t allowed to use her hands, though.

Avery paused, seeing if she could bait Melissa out.

“Don’t dally!” Mr. Bader called out.

Avery drew back, feinted, then kicked hard.  The goal was small, barely two strides across, and the soccer ball bounced off the side.

“I know you can do better than that!”

She felt the flush at her face as Faith kicked the ball out to the side.  Part of the exercise was to score when approaching from odd angles, and Avery decided to apply that, approaching the goal from the side.  Faith met her halfway.  Avery dribbled around Faith, put her body firmly between Faith and the ball, and kept it there until the little goal was just to her left and she could let the ball roll in without much of a kick.

“Step it up, Faith!”

Last ball, last player, last goal.  Avery met the ball, then went at the goal hard.

She wasn’t much of a player when it came to accuracy.  Not in basketball, not in soccer, and not even really in hockey, which was her favorite sport.

But she was comfortable with her handling of the soccer ball or puck.  She decided to play to her strengths.  Run fast, keep that ball right where she wanted it, as she ran toward Samantha, and maintained control of it as she slipped past Samantha.  She saw Samantha stick her foot out and adjusted her own footing.  Samantha’s cleat scraped against her shin guard, but it didn’t tap the ball.

She dribbled the ball into the goal.

“I want to see you practicing shooting, Avery!  I didn’t take hours of my day last week to give my forwards shooting practice, just for one of you to pretend it’s not a thing!”

She nodded her acknowledgement, huffing, and bent forward with her hands on her knees.  Her skin prickled with sweat and the ambient warmth.  Samantha vacated the goal, leaving Avery in position as defense.

Aubrey was already done trouncing Melissa.  Avery waited for Aubrey to get to her, removing the ball from the goal and kicking it toward the collection of balls by Mr. Bader.

Ms. Hardy was talking to Aubrey’s sister.  Avery watched Ms. Hardy leave.

Aubrey handily dealt with Melissa, then Faith.  Aubrey had a good kick, with killer accuracy.

Avery watched as Mr. Bader punted the ball over the girl’s head.  She did the opposite of what Melissa had done, and headed straight for her opponent.  She paused for a moment to let her get the ball, then immediately went for it, not giving Aubrey the time to get centered, set her eyes on the goal, or shoot.

Aubrey tried to feint, and Avery claimed the ball, kicking it back toward Mr. Bader.

“Good, Avery!  We need to work on that, Aubrey!”

Faith vacated her spot so Aubrey could take up position.  Aubrey didn’t, though.  She paused.  “Hey?”

Avery nodded.

“Don’t badmouth Mr. Bader to other adults, okay?  It’s pure luck we got a guy who can coach at all.  I don’t know if you remember Mrs. Burke last year but-”

“I wasn’t around last year.”

“She was a mom who volunteered and she barely knew the first thing about soccer.  I know it’s not your sport either, you’re a hockey girl, but some of us are counting on doing well enough here that we can put it on our applications and use it to get into a half-decent school.”

People were already thinking about applying to schools?  Wasn’t that like, three or four years away?

“I’m a soccer player too,” Avery said.  “And I didn’t say anything untrue.  He was kind of a dick to my friend.”

“Get in position, Aubrey!”

“‘Kind of’ isn’t good enough, okay?  If he breaks an actual rule, and you have proof, fine, I guess.”

“Proof like what?  Should I secretly bring my phone with me to gym class and practice, and record stuff?”

“You should keep from saying unsubstantiated stuff you’re not sure about, with ‘I think’s and ‘kind of’s, when rumors spread and it’s his career and our team on the line.”

Aubrey started jogging to her spot.  Avery jogged with to maintain the conversation.

“Isn’t it better if we say something so it can be fixed?”

“This isn’t social time, ladies!”

“Not when the obvious fix is canceling the team, suspending him for a while or replacing him.  My mom’s on the school board and they always take the easy way.”

“Avery!” Mr. Bader said.  One word, harder than before.  He pointed.

She jogged back to her position, arriving just as the ball was thrown for Aubrey’s twin sister.

She worried there’d be a reaction or a continuation of the conversation, as she foiled Audrey and claimed the ball.  Instead, there was just a tight smile, and then Audrey went over to replace Melissa.

Audrey wasn’t very good, in contrast to her sister.  Maybe that was why she didn’t seem to care as much.  There was a possibility that the two girls would talk and there’d be more said about it next practice, though.

Avery wasn’t really sure what else to do about it.

She’d spent a lot of time last night, mulling over Lucy and her situation.  What it would be like.  What she could do.

Lucy angrily telling her and Verona how she felt like she had no backup.  How easily and casually she had offered Avery some of that backup at the dinner table.

She wasn’t sure whether she felt glad she’d done this, felt like it wasn’t enough, or felt like she’d made things worse with her team.

Which maybe kinda fit with what Lucy had described.  Not ever knowing.

Avery did her three ‘defends’, then vacated the goal.  Mr. Bader set her the task of rounding up the balls and stuffing them into bags.  Aubrey got the balls from the other end of the field, kicking them over one by one, while her sister stopped them and rounded them up.

There were no more comments.

Mr. Bader called the end to practice, and the girls split up.  Maybe a third headed for the showers in the school.  The rest headed to the parking lot, where parents had started to gather, or just started on their way home.

Avery’s dad stood by the car.  She could see the back seat was full, and Grumble was in the passenger seat.  She jogged over.

“Hey,” Melissa said.

Avery turned, guarded.

“Ever think about doing cross-country?”

Avery’s classmate was sweating more than most.  Probably having that crimped hair she had barely cut since she was in grade three was acting to partially insulate her.  Even pulled back into a high ponytail, it draped her shoulders and neck.

“Not really.  Why?”

“Because your aim isn’t really that hot, but man I’m jealous of how fast you are.”

“I don’t really like running for running’s sake.  It doesn’t feel like there’s much of a point.”

“Ok.  I was just figuring.”

Avery shrugged.

She didn’t really ‘get’ Melissa.

“Good practice?” Avery’s dad asked.

“Eh.”

He moved to hug her, and she protested, “I’m sweaty.”

And it’s weird getting a dad hug in front of everyone.

“I don’t care,” he said.  He extended his arms.

She gave him a perfunctory hug.  “Where do I sit?”

“You’re going to have to squeeze.”

“Can I sit in the far back?” she asked.  The car was a hatchback sedan, with a spacious back storage area.

“Not allowed.  There’s no seat belts back there.”

She made a face.

The back seat had Kerry strapped into her car seat, Declan in the middle seat with his handheld game thing, and Sheridan, who kind of wasn’t equipped to cede much seat space, either in terms of willingness and personality, or in terms of her fat butt.

Avery squeezed past Kerry, the toes of Kerry’s shoes dragging against her side, making her soccer jersey dirty when the whole of soccer practice hadn’t.

“Eww, you’re sweaty.”

“So are you,” Avery said.  Her kid sister’s hair was plastered to her head.  “What are you eating?  That smells awful.”

“Grape apes.”

“Let me know when you’re buckled in,” her dad said.

“They smell-” Avery had to fight to get in beside Declan, who didn’t take his eyes off his game or help in the slightest, “-almost like cough syrup, juice that’s been sitting on the counter overnight, and faintly of musty butt.”

“Delicious cough juice butt,” Kerry said, her mouth so full of chewy purple candy she could barely speak or keep the chewed candy in bounds.

“How would you know what butt smells like?  Smelling a lot of musty butts, Avery?”

“I have to smell you most days, Sheridan.”

“Hyuk hyuk.”

Kerry waved the bag toward Avery’s face.  Avery pulled back, almost headbutting Declan.

“Get out of my face, Avery!” Declan said, his voice rising in pitch, like he was standing on a cliff’s edge.  His eyes didn’t leave the screen.

“Move over, and I won’t be so in your way.”

She found her space between him and the car seat, not that it was much of one.  The hard plastic of Kerry’s kid seat scraped and jabbed.  Then she had to fight to find the socket to plug the seatbelt into, while Declan bumped her with his hip a few times, trying to lay claim to a bit more seat real estate.  When she leaned over toward him to get more length on the seat belt, he dug his elbow into her side.  She kicked his leg with the side of her cleats in retaliation.

“Ugh.  You’re slippery, so gross,” Declan protested.  He pulled right, away from her.  “Who said girls don’t sweat?  You leave a slime trail wherever you go.”

“How wrong you are.  We don’t sweat or play video games,” Sheridan said.  She touched something on the screen.  “See?”

“Nooo!  No!  What did you do?  I didn’t want to use him!”

“Lower your voice, Declan,” their dad said.

“My game!  I’ve been playing that for two hours, you fat bitch!”

“Ohh!” Kerry chimed in, digging into the bag of candy.  “You shouldn’t say that!”

“You shouldn’t be playing a video game for two hours to begin with, and don’t call your sister names,” Avery’s dad said.

“I should get to call her names when she dragged my silver-white onto the battlefield in the warning round!  I needed that for the boss!

He was being so loud Avery had to cover her ear.

“I will take away your advance gear if you don’t calm down and apologize for calling your sister names.”

“She messed up my game!”

“Declan!”

“Should have saved,” Sheridan said.

“You don’t save in this game!  Oh my god, I can’t win now!”

“You’re very busy losing actually…” Avery’s dad said.  “…privileges to your console.”

They hadn’t left the parking space.

Avery fended off the bag of grape apes that was being waved at her face.  The artificial grape smell of it was thick in her mouth and nose.

“Can I like, not be in this car?” Avery asked.  “I could run home.  I might even be able to get home before this entire thing is settled.

She mentally defined ‘settled’ as the end of hostilities between Declan and Sheridan.  She could probably run five laps around Kennet and solve the Carmine Beast thing solo before those two laid down arms.

“We were going to go get fast food,” Avery’s dad said.  “Your mom has a work thing in Thunder Bay.  I’m not up to cooking.  Stay seated.”

“But-”

“No, Avery.  You ducked out on dinner early, but if you keep leaving mid-meal, skipping family dinners, or going away for weekends, you’re going to end up a feral child.  Stay seated.  And Declan, if you can’t give me the console and apologize in the next minute, you’ll lose all game privileges.”

Declan was crying now.  Droplets fell onto the screen, and he did his best to wipe them away without pressing anything or activating anything on the touchscreen.

“Declan!”

Kerry stuck the bag in Avery’s face, a look on her face like she thought this was a game.  Avery snatched the bag from her six year old sister’s hand.

Then, seeing the shock on Kerry’s face, quickly folded and rolled up the top of the bag, and pressed it into Kerry’s lap.  “Stop.  Please, Kerry.  It smells so bad.”

“I was so close to winning,” Declan whined.

“This is hell,” Sheridan said.  “Living with this is hell.”

“You’re not making it any easier!” Declan said, through tears.  Then he reached out and grabbed at Sheridan’s side, twisting and pinching.

“Declan!”

Avery saw Kerry’s face, going from the earlier shock to a tearless sniveling, like she was fighting the urge to get upset and break down into wailing.

And then it was just noise and infighting.

“How are you doing, Grumble?” Avery asked, over the noise, as her dad reached in her and Declan’s direction, trying to take the game from Declan’s hands.

Grumble said something unintelligible, and made a stiff so-so gesture, hand flat and waggling.

Sheridan, being pinched and grabbed at, popped her seat belt, opened the door, and escaped the car.

“Get back in the car!” Avery’s dad ordered.

“I’m going to walk home.  I’ll buy dinner with my own money.”

“No no no,” Declan protested.  Their dad had a firm grip on one half of the handheld console.  “My friends are playing and I told them I’d win one by tomorrow.”

“Sheridan, you’re in trouble too.  There was no call to take his game from him.”

“I didn’t take his game.  Punish me later.  It can’t be worse than having to spend the next half hour doing drive-thru.”

Avery popped her own seat belt, escaping past Kerry to the other door.

“Avery- Okay, you know what?  You two watch each other.  Stick together, come straight home.  Sheridan, we’ll talk about your punishment when you’re home.”

“Whatever.”

“I was thinking I’d see my friends,” Avery said.

“I think that’s exactly what I didn’t want to happen this weekend.  I’d like to show your mom that if she has to keep going back there, she can trust me to keep a handle on things.”

“Let Rowan-” Avery paused as Kerry raised her voice, protesting about being hungry.  “Let Rowan do his thing with his girlfriend.  Declan could go to his friends, I’ll go hang with my friends.  They said I’m welcome.  If it keeps things more sane…”

“She’s not wrong,” Sheridan chimed in.

“I wanted this to be an actual trial run, it’s- Declan, please quiet down.”

“My friend’s going through a hard time, I think,” Avery said.

“I don’t- Kerry.  Okay.  Fine.  Stay in contact by phone.  Let me know what you’re doing.”

“Bye Grumble,” Avery said.  “Love you.”

“Love yeh,” he mumbled back.

“Love you dad.”

“I love you too.  Kerry, please!  I told you you could only have a treat if you behaved-!”

Avery backed away from the car, then started walking in the general direction of the Burger Bin.  She pulled out her phone.

“Why are you walking beside me?” Sheridan asked.

“I’m walking in the direction of the Burger Bin, you?” Avery asked, still looking at the phone.

“Same.”

Avery texted a quick message to Lucy.

“What’s this thing with your friend having a hard time?” Sheridan asked.

“Are you asking because you actually care?” Avery asked, putting her phone away.

“I’m curious.”

“She ran into her ex-stepdad yesterday.  He bailed on them five years ago.  She kinda flipped, did a number on his car.”

“Wow.  Go her.”

“I’m not sure if it’s a ‘go her’ moment.  It was more sad than anything.  She had a bunch to say about the way people have been treating her in general.  Like my coach.”

“This is the black one?”

Avery gave Sheridan a look.

“What?  Is it racist to ask that?  Genuine question, because I don’t know.  And I don’t keep track of your friend’s names.”

“It’s Lucy, yeah.  I was going to ask one of my teachers…” Avery trailed off, checking her phone.

Lucy.  It was a ‘no’ on coming over.  She was doing dinner with her aunt and mom.

She hadn’t even wanted to talk about it earlier in the day.  Avery felt the gulf.

“You were going to ask your teacher what?”

“Some stuff in general.  About friendships and maintaining friends and… it’d be nice to ask about team stuff because I might have messed that up just before you guys picked me up, and I’m kind of on a team with those two, and I dunno.  It’d be nice to have some perspective.  I thought I’d ask her about dating advice and programs, but… that’d be dumb.”

“Which teacher?  The one who talked to mom and dad?  Black hair, intense makeup?”

“Yeah.”

“You realize she’s a cat lady, right?  And there’s rumors about her?  You might want to go somewhere else for your dating advice.”

“She really helped me out the one time,” Avery said.  “She’s given me advice before, and it was good.  She’s cool.”

Sheridan snorted.

“She is!”

“It was pretty funny how she totally freaked out mom and dad on an existential level.”

“I don’t think it was existential.”

“Your existence, anyway.  They’re like, oh shit, Avery exists!”

Avery frowned.

“Right?  Right?”

“That quite wasn’t how it happened.”

“Nah.  It happened to me too.  They were busy figuring out all the firsts with Rowan, like, he was their first teenager, their first kid who had to deal with high school, who had to deal with school administration, who wanted to go to summer camp… and then you guys start appearing.  And here I am, just chewing on the popcorn, waiting until I’ve got a space of my own, and then I lose space as Kerry moves in.”

“Right,” Avery said.

“You’re too nice about stuff.  It’s why I give you a hard time, try to shake you out of this little rut you’ve dug for yourself.”

“I don’t think it helps like you think it does.”

“Maybe.  Well, can’t give you much advice on that stuff you want to ask your teacher,” Sheridan said.  “I don’t have any friends.  Or teams, or hobbies, or anything I really care about all that much.  A boyfriend would be so nice, but dating advice?  Pshh.”

Avery gave her sister a sidelong look.

“Don’t pity me or anything.  I’m not unhappy.  Life’s fine.  It’s just dull and super annoying when you’re whining, or Declan’s being noisy, or Kerry clings.  One more year of classes and then I can apply to a shitty University somewhere, I’ll figure out what I want to do with my life in my freshman year at Uni like mom, dad, Grumble and Gran did, and then my life finally starts.”

“Looking forward to that.”

“To getting rid of me?” Sheridan asked the question with a bit of an accompanying snort.

“A little bit,” Avery said.  “And also looking forward to you maybe finding something to do that you’re interested in, that isn’t making the rest of us miserable.  Picking on me, messing up Declan’s game.”

“We can dream,” Sheridan said.  “That was a little funny, though, right?”

Avery made a face, and a so-so gesture, mostly to keep the conversation with Sheridan tolerable.

“From the way he made it sound, I accidentally messed him up in the perfect way.  Maybe it’s a special skill.”

“What career would even come of that?  Do you end up Sheridan, master of international espionage?”

“That’s not a career, you little loser.”

“Gonna text my friend, and if I can go over or do something with her, I should be out of your hair tonight,” Avery said.  “Do me a favor and don’t let me walk into traffic while I’m typing?”

“No promises.”

Avery sent a message to Verona.

Is it ok if I come over for a while after dinner? Grabbing a burger at the Bin.

The reply came back fairly fast:

Bring me one?  And fries?  I’ll pay you back.  & can you stay over?  I was thinking we should do the last few interviews.

Verona, dwelling on the interviews and the investigation.

Avery nodded to herself.

Burg might be cold by time I get there.

Verona replied:

Microwaves exist.  No prob.

But… there was the invitation to stay over.

I want to listen, Avery thought to herself.

When Lucy expressed her reservations about Mr. Bader.  When people warned them about the Faerie.  When people warned them about the danger of the Choir, and how strong it was.  Told them to not get involved.

The little regrets were stacking up.

And she’d been told to be careful with Verona’s dad.  That he was weird.  She typed out her reply:

Will me staying over be ok with your dad and all?  He’s…?

She sent it like that.  If she started reconsidering every message, she’d never send everything.  Verona’s reply was one word:

Weird

Verona’s sent another message right after.  Sheridan poked Avery in the side of the head, to steer her around a gully in the sidewalk.

“Thank you,” Avery murmured, looking up from the screen.  “Being a good big sister as a change, hm?”

“Keep talking like that and I won’t steer you around the next one.”

“Ha ha.”

She read Verona’s reply.

Might be uncomfortable but not unbearable.
It’s easier to go out tonight if we’re at my place.

Avery checked with Lucy.

Lucy didn’t say no.

She told Verona she would stay over.

The microwave hummed as Verona’s fries heated up.  Avery couldn’t understand how she could eat them like that, when the microwave would change consistency, texture, moisture…

She ate some of her own fries.  She’d rather have them cold than eat them post-microwave.  It was mostly about the salt, anyway.

It was a late hour to be finishing dinner, about fifteen past eight.  Avery had stopped in at her house for two minutes to change clothes, and had arrived late, bearing a lukewarm burger and cold fries for Verona.

Verona’s house was so quiet.

There was no television on that Avery could hear.  No A.C., no chatter.  Verona didn’t fill the silence, as she peered in through the microwave door.  The neighbors were too distant to be audible.

The house was about the same size as Lucy’s, and both were a little smaller than Avery’s.  But, like… one parent and one kid in each of their homes, compared to Avery’s place where there were eight people, eight people’s stuff, and the little assistance features for Grumble that took up that extra space.

More than the quiet, it felt dark.  It was hard for her to identify why.  The curtains were a little more drawn in, at the edges of windows; Verona had said her dad got migraines and had come home with a bit of a headache.  So that made sense.  But it didn’t account for all of it.  It was in the color of furniture, where there weren’t many solid reds, or yellows, or blues.  It might have been the angle of the house, where the sun shone in through the side, rather than the front.

It might have been the mood.  The two of them not really talking, and Verona’s dad as this big unknown that hadn’t even introduced himself.  He was just upstairs, like a vague presence, as if they were in a cave and he was the bear at the back of the cave they didn’t want to agitate.

The microwave beeped, loud.

“Hungry Choir is tonight,” Verona said.

“Yeah,” Avery said.  “I wish we could do more.  I was thinking, like, what if we got enough ribbon, and the right animal, and I could use it to go over there?”

“The Forest Ribbon Trail?”

“You can apparently use it as a way to get places.  But I thought back to that conversation earlier, and… what would we even do?  Who do we save?  How?  And then I wondered if I’m being a coward and trying to just find excuses not to go and not to get entangled a lot more.”

“I think it’s the kind of thing where we’d have to find a solution, then go after it,” Verona said.  “Going there every night looking for weak points hurts us more than it hurts them.”

“Feels wrong.”

Verona shrugged, nodding.  She went to take a recently microwaved french fry, limp, and pulled her fingers way, sucking on them.

Again, the quiet.  No video games, no music.  No mother that hummed every time she did the dishes, to the point it seemed pathological.

Lucy’s place hadn’t felt like this.  There had been the stove, and Verona had been there, there’d been stuff to show each other.  Verona had put on music.

Was it just Lucy’s absence?

“Are things going to be okay with you and Lucy?” Avery asked.

Verona shrugged again.  “Hope so.”

“That’s it?  Just… ‘hope so’?”

“I don’t know what you expect.  I can’t say for sure.  We’ve been through bad patches where we fought, and we’re really bad at fighting with one another.  We’ve been through serious patches when being friends wasn’t as much fun because of other stuff going on.  Like my parents divorcing or her thing with Paul.  And we’d just…”

Verona shrugged for a third time.

“…do what we could.”

Avery frowned.

Verona went on, “I don’t think we’ve had a bad and serious patch in her friendship.  I thought we were just dealing with some bad, but it was serious for her.”

“It should have been serious for us too.”

Verona nodded.

“I messed up so bad with Pam,” Avery murmured.  “I feel a bit sick about it now.”

“Did you decide what to do?”

“Cutting contact.  But then, like, can I really talk to Ms. Hardy about stuff?  Or am I risking entangling her too?  Where do we draw the line?”

“I don’t think it’s that slippery a slope, Ave.”

“Still sucks.”

“It does.”

“Still leaves me anxious.  Wondering about whether any other people I’m with are being entangled without my knowing it.”

“I wouldn’t stress too much about that.  But it’s good to keep in mind, maybe.”

“I’m so worried about Lucy, too.  That thing yesterday, it-”

Avery stopped.  There was a heavy thud, followed by two more.  Bangs against a wall or floor.  Three bangs in total.

Verona sighed.

“What was that?  Is he okay?”

“That’s how he calls me when he doesn’t want to yell,” Verona said.  She handed Avery the packet of microwave-heated limp fries.  “Excuse me.”

Verona headed upstairs.  Avery set the packet of fries she didn’t want to eat down on the counter, finished her own fries, and found the bin to toss out the extra fast food bag, the foil wrappers for the burgers, and wiped up the salt that had leaked out over the slate countertop.

She did a little circuit around the ground floor.  Front hall, living room, dining room and kitchen were arranged so they each took up a rough quarter of the house, each connecting to the room on either side.  It was tidier than her own house, but maybe not as clean.  Grit behind the TV, salt from winter crusted in the little resting spot for boots by the back door.  Nothing huge, and not anything that would make her think twice about eating or sleeping here, but… different.

She investigated a display cabinet that held little knick-knacks and trinkets, along with chinaware that looked neat but didn’t really go together.  She wanted to look at some figurines, so she went to pull out a dining room chair.  It didn’t budge.

Which was disconcerting.  Chairs were supposed to move.

Some investigation explained why.  She wiggled the chair, and it came loose, but there were little marks on the floor, like it had melted in.

Verona or her dad had mopped and waxed the floor, and had done so while the chairs were under the table.  The wax had gathered up around the legs, solidified, and it was Avery, not either of the two people who lived here, who had noticed that fact.  The table was the same, as she gave it a light push and it refused to budge a millimeter, despite not being an especially big table.  The other three chairs… the one at the head of the table wasn’t quite as deeply set.

How long ago had it been, that the chairs had been waxed into place like that?  Or rather, how long had it been that these chairs hadn’t been dragged out from under the table and sat on?  The socket where the chair leg had stopped formed a bit of a crater.  That depth… either they used a lot of wax for one mop and wax, which didn’t really line up with the one chair being less deep-set… or they’d done it over time, never eating at this dining room table, over a long period that had seen multiple house cleanings.

It wasn’t that she meant to snoop, but it was so alien to her, she couldn’t help but wonder.  It simultaneously made Verona make a bit more sense to Avery, and yet left Avery with a multitude of questions.

It had, as best as she could count, been about ten minutes that Verona had gone upstairs.

She ascended the stairs, and stood at the second stair from the top.  The hallway extended across the upstairs, branching off to the left and right, into the bathroom and two other rooms.  Verona stood at the end of the hall, in the doorway to Mr. Hayward’s room, at the end of the hall.

“You’re just like her,” Mr. Hayward’s voice was deep, but not strong.  It sounded almost plaintive.  “You tune me out, you try to walk away while I’m talking to you.”

“I left my friend downstairs.”

“On our tenth wedding anniversary, she left early to go spend time with her friends.  Writing on the wall, wasn’t it?  I came home that night alone to relieve the babysitter.  Most couples would spend the night together on their anniversary at the very least.  Have some intimacy.  Didn’t even have to be sex.  I would have given her a footrub or a massage.  Do you remember that night?  You would have been nine.”

“No,” Verona said.

“You don’t remember the first thing you said to me?  No?  Because what you said was something that will always stay with me, Verona.  ‘Where’s mom’.  Not, I love you dad.  Not how was your night, or any caring at all.  I wish I could say I’ve never felt as alone as I did that night.  You didn’t smile at me.  You gave me nothing.  You did smile at your hung-over mom the next morning.”

“Ah,” Verona said.

Avery, standing at the stairs, at the far end of the hallway, hugged herself, feeling uneasy.

“Writing on the wall, like I said.  I should have known.  That she resented me.  That she didn’t care one iota about me.”

“People grow apart,” Verona said.

“No, Verona,” Mr. Hayward said.  “No, no, because I put in the effort!  I pushed for couples counseling!  I made concessions.  I changed myself for her.  In ways I still haven’t fully come back from.  I tried to close that gap and she might as well have spat in my face, for all it mattered.  Gaps happen if you let them.  But I wasn’t willing to let it happen like that.  Our separation was her walking away from me.  Walking away from us.”

“Ah,” Verona said.  “Sucks.”

“‘Sucks’?” he asked.  “Is this the writing on the wall with you too?  I put in all this effort, I spend all this time trying to communicate and reach out to you, and I get a ‘sucks’?”

“Really sucks?  I don’t know what to say.”

“Say you’ll try!  Say you’ll act like a proper daughter!  Say you’ll spend time with me when I’m not making you.  Lie down next to me, watch a movie with me like you used to.  Connect with me.”

He went from raising his voice to almost begging over the course of a few sentences.

“I’ve got a friend over.  My new friend Avery.  She’s cool.”

“And you’d rather spend time with her than me?  Because she’s cool?”

“I can spend time with you most nights.  She’s over for tonight.”

Verona looked back over her shoulder, and saw Avery standing there.

Avery couldn’t help but feel like she’d seen something she shouldn’t.  Verona, for her part, didn’t even flinch.

Verona motioned for Avery to go, indicating one of the doors.

“Is that her?” Verona’s dad asked.  “Invite her in here.  Let me cover myself up with a sheet.  It’s too hot, even with the A.C.”

Verona, head leaning against the doorframe by her dad’s room, put one finger in her ear, out of sight of her dad, and winked at Avery.

Avery hesitated, then plugged her ears.

Verona pulled her finger from her ear, giving Avery a thumbs up.  Avery withdrew her fingers from her ears, and caught the end of Verona saying, “-n’t think she heard just now.”

“You could go get her, bring her in.  I should meet your friends.”

“I think I’m going to go do stuff with her.  Projects and some fun stuff.”

“Go do that, then.  Fine.  After I’ve worked my ass off for you for the whole last week, two jobs…”

Verona motioned with her hand.  Avery opened the door Verona had indicated, and let herself into Verona’s room.  The intervening walls muffled the words, until she could hear the voice, but not decipher what he was saying.  It was mostly him talking.  Tone only kind of came through.

The room was actually dark, unlike the rest of the house, which had just felt that way, somehow.  But there were posters with interesting images, that might have been from music albums.  Old art projects were hung up here and there, without much order or organization.

Verona had said she’d collected skulls, and sure enough, there were a few skull decorations, as well as the little one-toothed raccoon or beaver skull that they’d used for awakening.  One was plaster, maybe, and there was a stone with a black ore running through it that had been shaped to look like a small fist-sized skull.

Avery had had to put in so much effort to keep her siblings from getting their paws on practice stuff, but Verona had a computer desk with a laptop shut and moved to one side, and it was scattered with the stuff.

Her dad didn’t ever walk into her room, look at what she was doing?

There was a creepy sound, and it took her a second to make heads or tails of it.  Low, on and off.

Filtered through a wall with pretty good sound blocking, going out one open window and into another, was the sound of a man at least three times their age, sobbing in a way that was more childish than when Declan had cried in the car.

She hadn’t known.  About Lucy’s deal with her stepdad.  That Mr. Bader’s actions had weighed on Lucy that much.  That Lucy had been that on the edge, that frustrated.

That Verona could be so used to this weirdness with dining room chairs rooted to the floor and a grown man sobbing that she wasn’t freaking out or losing it.  Lucy had undersold it, kind of.

Or things had gotten a bit worse since the last time Lucy had seen it.

Avery had never really been to many friends’ houses. Olivia had lived the next town over, and except for one brief occasion when they’d been on their way to the pool, had mostly gone over there to do activities, then driven home.  She’d been over to some houses of other homeschooled kids, but the only times she’d hung out in the other kids’ rooms was when she’d been really young, and at that age, like with Kerry, a person’s room or a portion of their room was less a mark of them as a person and more a place to store toys.

Avery looked through some of the scattered notes.  It looked like Verona scribbled notes down in one book, then copied them over in a more organized fashion to another.

The mixture of the organized and the disorganized was something Avery could never get away with at her house.  Any organization like this bundle of neatly stacked paintings would get disturbed by her siblings, but at the same time, Sheridan or her parents would give her a hard time if she left clothes scattered on the floor like this.  Verona had some stuff piled up behind the door.  Towels and hand towels, socks, tees, underwear, and what might have been a smock, daubed in bits of ink or paint.

Three mugs sat on the desk, one apparently for water for the watercolor, one empty, and the other with a trace of tea in it.  Avery couldn’t imagine herself sitting at that desk and not accidentally drinking the watercolor.  Or constantly picking up the empty mug.

Mr. Hayward raised his voice.  Calling Verona’s name.

The door opened.

“Want to go?” Verona asked.

Avery nodded.

“Verona!” Mr. Hayward hollered.  He banged three times on the wall.

“What?” Verona asked, from her doorway.  Speaking down the length of hallway and into the dimly lit room at the other end.  She sounded impatient, and frankly, really unhappy, in a way Avery wasn’t used to.

“Turn off my light.  And take these dishes.”

“Let me get organized first,” Verona said.  She went to her desk, and began gathering the books, notecards, and the sheaf of papers, sorting them into her bag.

“Verona!”

Three thumps.

“Can you take my bag for me?  I’ll grab it downstairs.”

Avery nodded, picking up the striped canvas bag.  Lighter than it looked.

“What do you need?” Verona asked, as she stepped into the hallway.  “Calling me again?”

“My light and the dishes.”

“I heard you.”

“I wanted to make sure you heard.  You conveniently ‘forget’ sometimes.”

There was a pause, and some clinking.  The room at the end of the hall went nearly dark, lit only by the images on the big television that faced the bed.  Mr. Hayward was around the corner and out of sight.

Verona emerged, carrying three dinner plates, two mugs, two glasses, and various silverware.  She indicated the stairs with a movement of her head, pausing in her room only long enough to get the two mugs.

“Verona!” Mr. Hayward called out.  “Can I ask you about one last thing!?”

Verona shook her head, lips pressed together.  She slipped down the stairs without making a noise.  Avery did her best to follow suit.  At the kitchen, Verona sorted out the dishes, slotting them into the dishwasher.

There were three thumps from upstairs.

Verona ignored it, one finger going to her lips.  The dishes made next to no sound as she finished up.

She didn’t look scared about it.  She looked matter of fact.

“What if he comes downstairs?” Avery asked, quiet.

“I don’t think he will, not until he needs to use the bathroom or he gets hungry.”

“That-” Avery started, before stopping herself.

“What?” Verona asked.

Avery felt like she should be afraid of offending her friend, in questioning or challenging this, but Verona really didn’t seem to care much.  At most, there had been a fleeting look of upset as she’d escaped into her room.

“Lucy said something really similar about Paul, last night.  Like, that he wouldn’t tell the police, I don’t remember the exact wording.”

Verona nodded.

“I kind of understand if you know your dad, but I don’t think she’s seen that Paul guy for a while now.”

“Yeah, huh,” Verona murmured.  “Interesting.”

“Interesting?  That’s not how I’d put it.”

“I guess, um,” Verona grabbed her bag.  “We have our individual monsters, and they occupy so much of our thinking…”

Avery followed Verona, as Verona strode over to the front door, stepping into her shoes without lacing them up.

Verona waited until they were outside and the door was gently shut before finishing, “…We get a pretty good idea of how they tick.  We kind of have to.”

“I don’t have a monster like that,” Avery said.

Verona smiled, and it was a weird smile.  Rueful, or weird.

“What?” Avery asked.

“Man,” Verona said, her tone changing.  She pulled out her phone.  “Didn’t mean to leave this early.  I hope Lucy can make it.”

“Don’t ignore me,” Avery said.  “Say what you were thinking?”

Verona looked at her.

“Please?”

Verona nodded, a little too fast, not making eye contact, like she was thinking.

She was so good at lying, she could seamlessly pull off that thing where she’d said Avery hadn’t heard Verona’s dad.  But this stumped her?

“Can I hug you?” Verona asked.  “Would that be weird?”

“If you need a hug, that wouldn’t be weird at all.”

“I don’t,” Verona said.  She stepped closer, and wrapped her arms around Avery.  “I hope you never have to deal with that kind of thing.  I think you will, and it could be tonight, tomorrow, ten or twenty years from now, but I really hope you don’t.  That’d be nice.”

Avery floundered for a response.

Verona’s pocket vibrated against Avery’s side.  Verona pulled back.  “Lucy.”

She put the phone to her ear.

Disconcerted, Avery stepped back a bit.

“Yeah,” Verona said.  “The two trees.  Yeah.  See you there.”

She ended the call, then put the phone away.

Avery looked back toward the house, with the slightly uneven lawn, the garden that lined the front and part of the side of the house, bounded in with squared-off blocks of stone, but that didn’t have any plants at all, with a leaning garage, and no lights on from within the relatively dark interior.

Verona sidled up beside Avery, and looked at the house as well.  “If we’re quiet he should be asleep when we go back, and we can be up and doing something before he’s awake.  Sorry.  I thought that since he came home and went straight to his room to lie down, that he’d be out of our way.”

Avery wasn’t sure what to say.

“We oughta go near the Faerie cave to rendezvous with Lucy,” Verona said.  “You up for it?”

“Yeah,” Avery said.  “I mean, I gotta, right?  If I’m going to back you guys up?  We just need to be smarter about that.”

Verona smiled.  “Come on.”

It was a relief to get away from that house.  The walk over the bridge and down the rocky shore was a nice one.  There were more people out with their dogs, which were splashing in the water.  One seemed intent on getting a fish that was in the shallows.  Its owner was trying to stop it and get ahold of the leash.

What fun, doggo.  I hope you get your exercise.

“Where do you want to be in twenty years?” Verona asked.

“Hm?”

“What do you want your life to look like?  What kind of practitioner are you?  Do you have a job?”

“I haven’t really thought about it.  Ever since the first night where we saw the Hungry Choir, I’ve been feeling like I spent my whole life up until recently unable to see more than a few feet in front of my nose.  Then the Pam thing, it was like… I thought I was expanding my thinking, and it takes Lucy yelling at me for me to realize I’m still only seeing a few feet in front of my nose, and the Faerie used that against me.”

“I’ve been thinking about the Faerie,” Verona said.  “I think it’s more likely they used it for themselves.  They can’t do stuff against us.  They can and have to entertain themselves.  As a matter of instinct.”

‘There’s that word again, huh?” Avery asked.

“You didn’t really answer my question, by the way.”

“I don’t know,” Avery said.  “Don’t people spend most of their lives figuring that out?  My mom said she didn’t know what she was meant to do in life until it came to having kids.”

“Yeah,” Verona said.

“Why are you asking?”

“I’m still trying to figure some stuff out.”

“Is this the same sort of stuff you were saying you’d think about for Lucy?”

“Kinda,” Verona said.  “I see her.”

They stood near the two birch trees that met to form a kind of arch, partway down the rocky shore.  Water had once settled or ran along the base of the two trees, and had stained them.  More weather had stained the top, and the branches had grown entangled.

Lucy wore the same clothes she had during the school day.  A tight tee with the Mission Canada logo and loose fitting shorts, a sweatshirt tied around her waist.  She wore her hair in a low ponytail, and carried her bag over one shoulder.

The school day had been muted.  They hadn’t chatted much.  Lucy had wanted to leave Verona alone, Avery had wanted to be sensitive with Lucy and accepted the first signals that Lucy didn’t want to talk.  They’d recapped only briefly at lunchtime, helped by the fact that Verona had heard the Paul story before.  All she’d needed was an update on what had happened last night.

“Hey, friend,” Verona said.  Her hands were in the pockets of her denim shorts.  She wore a broad-striped tee that parted at the collar, with a button that was never supposed to be done up.  Avery didn’t know the fashion term.  Like a polo without a collar.

“Where are we at?” Lucy asked.

“I’ll be the backup you need,” Verona said.

Lucy nodded, smiled a bit.  “Thank you.”

“I spent a while thinking last night.  About the gifts we got.  I know we still need to get the last few from Guilherme and Maricica, and there’s a bunch left to collect from the Others as we do the last interviews, but I put some thought toward the Faerie ones in particular.”

Verona pulled her bag off one shoulder, got it around in front of her, and pulled out the sheaf of papers.

“I appreciate that,” Lucy said.  “We’ll have to go over it together, figure out if there’s anything to watch or or use, before we use the gifts.”

Verona nodded.  “I drew while I was doing my thinking.  Did you a picture.  You can put them on your wall near your bed, or beside your bed, along with a marker.  The diagrams on the back double as spell cards.  I wanted to make you something or give you something, but the complex diagrams eat power just by being there, and I think if we make too many of those, the locals might get antsy.  We’re leeching power from them for anything we’re not paying for with some other tricks.”

Lucy looked over the pile of papers, turning some over.

Avery could interpret the circles and diagrams.  That one, it had radiating, rotating fire, at a high intensity and high output.  On the other side, it was a cute octopus painting.

“You’ll want to be careful with that one,” Verona said.  “I kind of thought, you know, if the Hungry Choir showed up in your room again or whatever, you could blow a hole in the wall and run.  Maybe.  I let my imagination run wild, because it’s really all I’m good for.  I liked the idea of being your backup even when I’m not there, by having given you those.”

Lucy hugged the pages to her chest, eyes down.

“Sorry if it’s not your style,” Verona said.  “The art, I mean.”

“You’re my best friend.  Things by or about you are worth a place on my wall.”

“Can I hug you?” Verona asked.

“A hug?”

“I’ve been thinking a lot about what our friendship was and is and where I want it to go.  I remember we fought a bunch when we were kids and we’d both get into a game in very different ways, or the time we did sailing camp and you loved it and I hated it.  And we made up with hugs.  It feels like we’ve been drifting apart by fractions after every fight or, uh, I called them serious times to Avery, I think it was.  When life gets shitty.  After every one, we don’t feel quite as close as we did.”

“You think, uh, hugging like when we were kids is going to help that?” Lucy asked.

“Can’t hurt,” Verona said.  She swallowed.  “I don’t want to drift apart over the course of our lives.  So I’m going to try harder.  I promise.”

“Have to be careful with promises,” Avery said.

“Nah,” Verona said.  She looked off to the side, and her eyes turned purple.  “This one’s important to make and keep.  I have to make it something I keep in mind.”

Lucy hugged Verona.

Both of them seemed better and more at ease than they’d been when they stood two feet apart.

Lucy made a hand motion, and Avery joined the hug.

“I’ll be better too,” Avery pledged, her eyes shut.

She felt Lucy’s head move in a nod.

They broke the hugs.  Verona stuck her hands in her pockets, her bag still slung over one shoulder, dangling.

It was getting dark.  The sun was down.

“How did things go with your mom?” Verona asked.

“I told her about Paul.  Mostly.  She told me I could be super grounded or I could go talk to someone.  I chose to talk.  I don’t know how that’s going to go when I can’t lie, but…”

“Tricky,” Verona said.

“…There’s a chance the curse I set might get lifted pretty soon.  She’s going to reach out to Paul.  I think he might actually pick up and answer her, after yesterday.  I nailed the coward curse in three times, if he can overcome that and overcome his natural instincts, he’s free and clear.”

“Oh, aye?”

The three of them turned.

In the shadows by conifer trees with long needles, Alpeana crouched.

“Hey.  We came to see you,” Avery said.

“Telling me my night’s hard work is all for nothin’?” Alpeana asked.

“Night’s hard work?” Lucy asked.

“Aye, it’s like subcontractin’, innit?  Spirits and whosits haf got a bunch of minds to put to gradual change, dreams are a way to go about doin’ it.  Spent the better half of last night plantin’ subtle ideas in people’s heads, this guy he cannae be trusted, he’ll turn tail and run.  Ain’t it so weird he spent so long livin’ at home with his ma?  What’s goin’ on there?”

“Sticking him with a label?” Lucy asked.  “Nothing more?”

“Oh, aye, Lassie.  If you wanted more, you cannae be lyin’ in little ways all the time.  Makes it easy to shake, and they say a curse you can shake can go back to the sender, stronger than it was.  You’re lucky he’s not much of a shakin’ sort.”

“Goblins neglected to mention that,” Lucy said, her eyebrow raised.

“If ye be wantin’ thoughtful sorts, goblins aren’t the way to go, Lassie.  Most can’t see much further than the next bloody nose they can inflict.”

“What would happen, if it landed on me again?” Lucy asked. “Could I shake it by meeting the same terms?”

“Ownin’ up to your wrongs done and cowardices?” Alpeana asked, from the dark.  As the sunset waned and the shadows deepened, the mare emerged more and more.  “Aye.  You could shake it, then it might go back to him, dependin’.”

“On?”

“Karmatic balances and intent, innit?  I cannae say I know for sure.”

Lucy nodded.

“What are you thinking?” Verona asked.

“I’m thinking I’m okay with that.  If he can shake it, if it does land on me because he’s angry or because I did mess up, that’s fair, isn’t it?”

“I did some good work last night, so I’ll be hopin’ it sticks, if you don’t mind my sayin’.”

Avery smiled a bit.  “I don’t want anyone to suffer, though.”

“Sufferin’s the way of it, sometime.  What’s fur ye’ll go by ye.  Speakin’ of, as nice as it is to have a blether, I really should be seeing to my rounds.  We can talk and I can answer yer questions, but I gaunnae address some doin’s while we’re at it.”

“How bad is this going to be?” Avery asked.

“Well, since ye asked, I’ve got some easy, early ones lined up.  An auld codger, bitter and black-hearted.  I can tell ye, if anyone deserves a fitful sleep, it’s him.  Should be easy on the wee conscience, when he beat his pretty wife and weans, and there’s no court’ll convict him or punish him for it, but his own mind.  Sleeps early, wakes often.  I like to go by, make sure he’s handled early on, or I’ll sometimes miss my chance.”

“I’m not sure I like picking on a defenseless old man,” Avery said.  She felt uneasy.

“He won’t sleep easy, no matter what happens, Lassie.  But if we see to him, might be he’ll change his mind about things, or find it in him to make amends.”

“Might be we’re just twisting the knife, though, and nothing will come of it,” Avery said.

“Oh, aye.  Ye dinnae have to come, but I thought if ye would, it would be easy to do it this way.”

Avery folded her arms.

“Verona, Lassie.”

“Hm?” Verona made an inquisitive sound.  She looked like she’d stirred from a thought.

“Your da.  He’s due.  Fell asleep by his telly.  I can skip him, aye?  Doesn’t hurt much.”

“Oh,” Verona said.  “You don’t have to skip him.  If there’s a chance of growth, or him settling into a role he’s supposed to fill…”

“Verona!” Avery raised her voice, scolding.

“I don’t mind,” Verona said.  “Really.  Actually, I’d feel way better about going into my house than some strange old man’s place, seeing how you do what you do.”

“Aye, that’s one way of it.”

“Guilherme.  The children are here.”

“Take care not to get near me, pestilent thing.”

Avery’s heart hammered.  Something in her perspective had changed, and the fact she found herself reacting, her breathing short, had nothing to do with the woman’s near-nudity, nor Guilherme’s imposing size.

They approached from the cave, but they were only visible through the arch.  the view of the same path across the shore from the side of the arch didn’t reveal them.

Lucy put a hand on Avery’s shoulder.

“Gifts.  I do want to get these out of the way.  Lucy.  A gift that will be useful tonight,” Maricica said.  “My last one to give to you all.”

“Can you write it down?” Lucy asked.

“My dear, I can show you.  It is so much better to show than tell.”

“Please write it down.  We’ll review it.”

“Are you sure?” Maricica asked.  The smile that spread across her face was a bit sly.

And, Avery reminded herself, entirely false.  This face wasn’t hers.  She’d given Avery a glimpse of another face entirely.

When someone tells you something, listen, Avery thought.  Whether it’s a friend saying a teacher is a dick to them, or a Faerie telling you she’s delivering a trap to your hands.

Maybe even a teacher, saying she has to maintain boundaries.  Ugh.

Maricica may well have shown Avery what she was.  And by the expression she wore now, it was hard not to feel like they were playing into her hands.

But that was the inevitability, right?

Maricica withdrew a paper from within the folds of her wing, walking to one side as she wrote on it.  It freed Guilherme to approach without drawing too near to her.

“Avery,” Guilherme said.

“Can you write it down?”

“As you wish,” he said.  “John told me to keep it simple.  I will.”

“You said it was better?  You said hers would be a lesson, and you weren’t wrong.”

“Maricica would change you into someone you don’t recognize.  I would highlight the you that you want to be.  It’s subtler and more blunt at the same time.  You’ll want to be careful all the same.”

Avery frowned.

“A man with wealth will soon find himself surrounded by so-called friends, with no idea if they like him or his money.  So will the greatest swordsman in the world, who attracts people by way of celebrity.  Self-assuredness has its own draw.  People without it would seek to find it.”

“I feel like if I had that much self-assuredness, I’d be even less me than when I was Kell,” Avery said.  “I may have to think on this one and discuss it with my friends before I use it.”

“Good,” Guilherme said.

He handed Avery a slip of paper.

Alpeana was getting antsy.

Maricica returned, with her own paper.  She ducked as Guilherme swung an arm in her direction, and tittered.  There was no cave echo to mutate the sound.  She held out a folded paper to Lucy, but held onto it as Lucy gripped it.

“Become a bit of moonlight,” Maricica said.  “Or a bit of smoke, or a bit of flame.”

Lucy tugged the paper free of Maricica’s hand.

“There’s a deposit of glamour in there.  Be careful when unfolding it.”

Lucy nodded.

“You smell of goblins, and your lips taste like a curse,” Maricica told Lucy.  “Be careful.  Curses and lowly practices travel paths of least resistance, and the most common path of least resistance that draws lightning from the heavens, rain from the sky, and light from the sun is down.  Sink too far, and you may find it all tumbling down on your head.”

“Noted,” Lucy said.

“Can we get gang now?” Alpeana asked.  “I don’t want to be late.”

“Do you have a boss that yells at you?” Verona asked.

“Och, nae, no.  It’s only the whole uncountable cosmos and the immutable confabulation of everythin’ breathin’ down me neck, innit?  I’ve not been much late to the work and I’m not about to start now, am I?  When it’s tied into the very fabric of my bein’?”

Really now?” Lucy asked.  “But you can pick and choose who you do?  Skip us or Verona’s dad?”

“She’s anxious,” Avery said, giving Lucy a nudge.  “And she’s cooperating, and she’s being nice enough to hear us out and give Verona’s dad a pass, if Verona wants, which I really think Verona should want.”

Verona sighed.

“Who first?” Alpeana asked.

“My dad, I guess.”

Avery frowned at Verona.

“Go easy on him?” Verona asked.

“Aye.  Can do.  One of ye take another by tha hand.  I can only tug ye along with usin’ my hands, unless ye want to take hold of this hair of mine.”

“Uhh,” Avery said.  The hair was very greasy and had a lot of stuff in it.  Alpeana was cute in her own weird way, but not so cute Avery wanted to hold her hair.  She took Lucy’s hand.

Alpeana’s hand was cool to the touch, and slippery without being wet, in a way that made Avery’s hairs stand on end.  Alpeana took Verona with the other hand, and then tugged.

Avery’s stomach was left by the shore, as they made the quick trip back to Verona’s house.

They were dropped onto the stairs.

“Son of a-” Lucy swore, as she slid down a few steps before getting her feet beneath her.

“Ye shut your wheesht,” Alpeana hissed.  “Ye’ll wake him.  Though I suppose if ye do, ye’re not as bad off as you might be in another situation.  ‘Da, I’m home’, no?”

“Yeah,” Verona murmured.

Alpeana scaled the wall to the ceiling, and traveled the length of the front hall.

“I don’t like this,” Avery said.  “Hurting your dad.”

“It’s a bad dream,” Verona said.  “I’ve asked people for help.  I’ve argued with him.  I’ve tried to do what he said he wanted.  I’ve ignored him, I’ve spent whole days at a time with him.”

“And maybe you’re just hitting a sad, messed up guy while he’s down?” Avery asked.

“Maybe,” Verona said.  “But if there’s a chance it changes him…”

Avery floundered, wanting to change Verona’s mind.

But she felt paralyzed in a very similar way to when she’d seen Lucy facing down Paul.  That had been so angry…

And this felt so sad.  Verona, who seemed so unflappable, so often, looked low.

“He’s your monster that you’ve been wrestling with, I guess.  But it feels wrong to me.”

“Come on,” Lucy said.

They crossed the hall.

Alpeana was on the ceiling.  Below her was a man that was maybe eighty pounds overweight, wearing an undershirt that stretched across his belly, the stubble grown in after a morning shave, his cheeks either greasy or moist from crying.  The plates Verona had taken hadn’t been all of them, or Mr. Hayward had gotten more and put them by the side of the bed.  There were some food wrappers stuffed in the drawer.

The television was on, and was the sole source of illumination in the room, very blue.

How bad does this have to get, before I say stop?  Avery asked.

Alpeana barfed blackness and drainstuff.  Her hair extended, reaching down, like it was liquid.

It buried Mr. Hayward’s face, extended into his open mouth.

Smothered him.

Verona shifted her footing, arms folded.

He twitched, turning his head, as if to escape it, then moved his hand, reaching up lazily, with no sense of what he was fighting against.

An arm, thin, feminine, and strong, reached out of the tide of black stuff and grabbed him by the wrist, pinning his arm down to the bed.

“Stop!”

Avery turned her head.

“I’m calling uncle.  I’m sorry, Alpy,” Verona said.  She looked agitated.  Her eyes were wet.  “Fuck.  Wimping out already.”

“This isn’t wimping out,” Lucy said.

Verona made a face.

The darkness receded, drawing back up to the figure on the ceiling.  Alpeana stared down at them with eyes that had no white to them.

“Costs me a wee bit of somethin’, reachin’ in.  If I’m not finishin’ the job I’m not getting me pay from the cosmic tide and bellow, aye?  I cannae be stoppin’ and startin’ all night.”

“Aye,” Verona said, affecting the accent unconsciously.  “Sorry.  I’ll make it up to you.”

“I hope so.  I like ye, lassies.  I’m try’nt to be fair to ye.”

“Yeah,” Verona said.

“Another night, ye think?”

“We wanted to interview you.  I have questions in my notebook.”

“How about ye get yer notebook out and figure out what yer going to ask, and I’m goin’ ta go make sure this auld codger sheds a tear of regret for the violence he did ta his sweet pretty wife and bairns?”

Avery frowned.

“It’s what I am, Lassie.  If ye want me to stop, ye might need to put a permanent end to me.”

“I don’t want to do that,” Avery said.

“Do you hurt them, in the dreams?” Verona asked, looking at her dad.

“Aye, but not with blood and death.  I’m best with sorrow sweet and drawn out long.  With ones like this one, and tha auld codger, I show them wha they missed in their shortsightedness, a wee taste of tha life they could have lived, and a long hard ride in tha sorrow of knowin’ it’s their own sorry fault.”

“And the little girl you mentioned?” Lucy asked.

“Aye, tha’s sweet and it’s sorrow in its own way.  Might leave a bairn more melancholy than they should be but it keeps tha wheel tickin’ and it puts her where tha cosmos needs her ta be.”

“Reconsidering?” Avery asked Verona.

“Why?” Verona asked, not taking her eyes off her dad.  “Are you?  He tries hard, and he does the basics of what a dad’s supposed to do, according to those guys from the government.  Feeds me, shelters me, makes sure I go to school.  Just… he’s broken and he won’t put himself back together.  I don’t think he’s where he’s supposed to be.”

“Then-” Lucy started.

Verona wasn’t done.  “But I don’t want him to hurt.  I don’t want to see him hurt.  He makes me more miserable than anyone and I feel exhausted and even a bit of dread when he comes in the door, but I love him.  I want to not live in his house, at least after I’m eighteen, and I’m not even sure I’ll come back to visit him when I’m gone, but… I love him.”

“I should be going, lassies.  Are ye comin’ or are ye goin’?”

Verona put out a hand.  Avery took Lucy’s hand and took Alpeana’s.

Another jump.  To a different end of town.  Alpeana placed them on grass.  Verona stumbled.  Lucy fell over.

“I’ll be a few minutes.  Make yerselves comfortable, aye?”

“Yeah,” Verona said.

Alpeana slipped beneath the door, the entirety of her body squishing down into the stuff like tangles of pubes and hair pulled from the drains, dyed black instead of red and brown.

Lucy pulled her notebooks from her bag.  Avery paced, getting her hat out of her bag and pulling it on, so they could at least break some of the connections.

The back door opened.  All three girls jumped.

But it was Alpeana.  She looked alarmed.

“What’s wrong?” Avery asked.

“Miss!” Alpeana called out.  “Miss!  Miss!”

Avery turned, then turned again.  Miss was in the doorway, her silhouette blocked in large part by the door.

“What is it?” Miss asked.

“Interference,” Alpeana said.  “Someone got here first.”

“Another Mare?” Avery asked.

“Och, no,” Alpeana said.  She looked agitated, crouching down.  “The echo I should’ve used to answer his dream.  Someone tore it apart for pieces, aye?  Took tha eyes.  They’re lookin’ in.”

“Someone, not something?” Miss asked, as she strode into the house. Alpeana followed.  The girls followed Alpeana.

“Aye, we’ve got a practitioner spyin’ on thin’s here.”

“These three girls are the only practitioners in Kennet, with the exceptions of the cases of Matthew, who cannot practice, and Edith, who isn’t human at her core, and they’re too preoccupied to do this.”

“You’re sure?” Lucy asked.

“Positive.”

“It’s an outsider, miss,” Alpeana said.

“Yes,” Miss said.

The girls entered the bedroom.  A man, face covered in blackness, was lying on a bed, shirtless and sweaty.

Beside him, flickering, was the ghost of the woman that had to be his wife.  Her eyes were missing, with only a slash of darkness in their place.

“Ye girls had best be goin’ home or comin’ with us,” Alpeana said.  “I’ll warn ye, though, we’ll be going to pass through some right wrong places if we’re going to track down these eyes, the fella or fillie who took ’em, and figure out why they’re here.”

Avery hesitated.

Believe them when they say stuff.  They say these places are ‘wrong’… then they’ll be pretty rough, right?

But going to these places was the reason I wanted to practice in the first place.  I wanted to explore worlds.

“All three of us or none of us,” Verona said, to Lucy.

“Why are you saying that to me?” Lucy asked.  “Are you thinking I’m going to back down?  No, we were going to visit these places anyway.  We have to.”

“Then that’s a yes?” Verona asked.  “Because I’m trying my best to be good.  I am.  Avery?”

“Yes,” Avery whispered.  “Let’s go.  Let’s figure this out.”

[2.5 Spoilers] Gifts Collected

From: VHayward@tbaynorth.ca
To:
AKelly@tbaynorth.ca
Subject: Some copies of the stuff I’m giving Lucy re: Gifts

Matthew & Edith
Gift provided: yes
Gift was: Instructions on practice, use of runes.  Included notes on: basic earth/air/fire/water, circles, balancing out diagrams so they don’t collapse, supporting diagrams with words and symbols.
Follow-up lesson included: additional runes (light & dark), the progression of runes (how you can have white -> light -> sun as you go from simple to decorated runes), imperative runes that activate the diagram when something happens but consume power as long as they’re waiting, and referential marks that help break down or control smaller parts of the diagram.
We done here?  No.  They’ve said they’ll teach us more.
M&E Motivations?  Matthew & Edith don’t seem like they were doing anything other than their duties when teaching us.  Edith is a little more biased toward fire/air though.  That might be who/what she is: Avery’s heavy-as-earth stick broke and Edith didn’t know much about water.
Dangers?  Not really.  It doesn’t feel like they’ve left out anything major.  When we’ve made mistakes its because they haven’t taught us everything yet, but they are continuing to teach.

John Stiles
Gift provided: yes
Gift Was: Dog Tags for summoning & hot lead.  Hot lead is too uncomfortable to carry for everyday use, but serves as a bit of a battery that doesn’t draw power from local others.  Power seems to push through better, for high cost & high intensity effects.  Dog tags for summoning were used against Choir and he replaced it.  If we aren’t frivolous with using it, he’ll continue offering it.
We done here?  Maybe?  I think if we asked him for something he’d probably give it, and it could tie things up into a 3-part gift (and the practice loves threes), but I don’t think we could go up to him with our hands on hips and demand it.
JS Motivations? Seems solid?  Not getting suspicious vibes, no traps, no weirdness.  Like John, the gifts seem pretty straightforward.
Dangers? The Hot Lead can run out.  The summonings could be revoked if we mess around or pull him into something he doesn’t want to get involved with.  We shouldn’t forget that John Stiles is twitchy sometimes.  It’s worth thinking about before we summon him.  Is he going to become as much of a problem as whatever we’re calling him to help deal with?

Toadswallow
Gift provided: yes
Gift was: instructions on applying low-level curses.  Needs a three-peat of the insult, escalating each time.  Needs the nail and this is super easy to forget.  Without a physical action or violence to drive it in, it won’t stick and is just decoration/flavor.
We done here?  Yes.  With Toadswallow at least.  He did say he’d help Cherry pick something to give us.
TS Motivations?  A little sketchy maybe?  He likes chaos and ugliness and mess.  Lucy said he was pleased, after.
Dangers?  Not sure yet.  We might have to ask Charles/Miss [note to self/Avery: maybe tonight?].

Miss
Gift Provided: yes
Gift was: Individual gifts for each of us.  Lucy got a ring that would make ordinary objects into weapons.  Nice to have but if we don’t have a power source (hot lead?) then she says it makes us weaker and we can barely use the weapon.
I got the quill pen, that can take letters and words and put them back down.  I also got instructions about a magic school, which felt more like a thing she thought we should have anyway.
Avery got the instructions for the Forest Ribbon Trail.
She also gave us the means of calling her, with the general promise of advice/counsel.  repeat her name 3x.
We done here?  Yes.
Miss motivations?  Maybe?  Faerie says they want to make us more Other and making Avery Lost, Lucy weak or leaving room for me to mess up something important with the quill pen could be a way of doing that.  Do they only want practitioners in Kennet for this one incident?
Dangers?  Yes.  Each gift is a double-edged sword of sorts.  Plays to our wants & strengths (Avery wants to go places, is fast enough to do the detour maybe?  I like handicraft stuff and the pen works for that and the magic school interests me.  Lucy wanted to be stronger.) but also our weaknesses (weakens the user, for Lucy, Avery’s memory isn’t her strength and the trail requires memorization and attention to detail. Quill pen is an excuse for me to get into trouble?  School might have a trap?)

Faerie
Sending another email with more of a breakdown.  Each gift needs a heading, really.

Munch, Gash, Cherry
Gifts Provided: not yet
Gift ideas: goblins are good at weapons, curses, nasty stuff.  We could ask for favors (Munch offered to hurt Paul?  Would he go after someone else?).  Cherry offered us something like ‘sticky stuff’?  Might be useful if we want weapons that the ring can’t give us.  Or a supply of weapons we can throw away?  Goo grenades?  Stinkbombs?  A way to slow someone or something down, or keep them stuck in place?
Expected Motivations?  Munch and Cherry are apparently trying to learn to be better ‘training wheels’ goblins.  Gash is more regular as a goblin.  They should keep to the awakening rules but they’ll be messy and violent.  I think they’d give us better gifts if we can get them excited.  Like, if we’re really P.O.’ed at someone and we want to mess with them.  Cherry and Munch would be all over that, from what we’ve seen.
Dangers?  May be messy.  Some Others don’t like goblins so using goblin stuff or carrying it around might reflect badly on us.

The Choir
Gifts provided: not yet.  Ever?  If they futzed with the awakening so they weren’t giving anything, just taking, maybe they aren’t obligated?
Gift ideas:  Zero idea.  They are tied to incarnation(s) and rules and patterns, so maybe an always-on effect?  Pendant that makes us less hungry?  I kind of want to wait.  If they’re our adversaries or if they’re a thing we should deal with to protect people, maybe we want to ask for something specific.  Like, imagine Avery signed up and lost on her first night, and we asked for our gift to be her being turned back to normal.
Expected Motivations?  The ritual must go on, I guess?  What they give us and the danger of that thing is going to depend on if they think we’re a problem for the ongoing ritual.  If they’re ticked off they might give us something problematic that still counts as a gift.
Dangers?  Being tangled?  Pulled into the game?  Ethical considerations, for those who have ethics (like buying diamonds for a wedding ring: that feeling like some slave in Africa could have been worked until his fingertips were bloody to get it).

Alpy
Gifts provided: Not yet.
Gift ideas:  She’s the most interlinked Other we have for access to Other realms and getting a sense of the little things in those realms.  Maybe a way to navigate?  Or access those realms on our own?  Something for each of us that protects us in a different hostile place?  Something relating to dreams is possible but I don’t know what that would be.  Dream visions?
Expected Motivations?  Does she have grander motivations?  Doesn’t want to be bound like other Kennet others, does her thing in the Kennet area.  Is friends with Maricica, though?  Was hanging with her at Awakening, sleeping in her & Guilherme’s cave.
Dangers?  ???


From: VHayward@tbaynorth.ca
To:
AKelly@tbaynorth.ca
Subject: Gifts, 2nd Email

Guilherme

List of apparent gifts from Guilherme
Avery: TBD, but it’s apparently a better glamour than what Maricica offered for Avery’s situation?
Me: TBD
Lucy: TBD.

Psychology/Motivations: Says he’s opposed to Maricica but there’s no guarantee of that.
Says he’s doing as John said and being good to us, but instinct could play a part, he could still trick us.
Getting a definite good cop/bad cop feeling.  Is this feeling a trap?
His style is Sun-touched Summer.  Warriors, heroes, adventures.  Toadswallow said he was fixated on the glory of battle and war. Maricica was trying to steal something and he’s protecting it?
Why is he in Kennet?
He met with an outsider to discuss a plot that didn’t have anything to do with the Carmine Beast.

We Done Here?  No.
Why not?  He’s answering Maricica’s stuff.  If we’re looking for traps, this could be a scenario where she makes a situation messy, and he comes in with “I told you she was good for nothing, here’s my fix” except we jump from frying pan to fire.

Dangers: Hard to say.  He hasn’t given us much yet, except for information on the courts.

Maricica

List of apparent gifts from Maricica:
Avery, Info: A way to challenge a ritual or dynamic like the Hungry Choir.
Avery, Trick: Turning one type of object into something similar.  A hat into a hood?
Avery, Glamour: Disguise, becoming someone else, how to use glamour to change our shape & face.

Lucy, Information:
We were picked because we’re vulnerable to becoming more Other???
Lucy, Trick: Nettlewisp glamour, a counterattack charm if you can predict someone’s attack.
Lucy, Glamour: ?  TBD

Me, Info: 
A way to make a contract ours, by weaving our style into it.
Me, Trick: 
Creating a false image.  It can become reality if left unchallenged.
Me, Glamour:
 Changing into an animal.  She demonstrated and promised to teach the technique.

Why so many? I wanted to break down every part of this section, so… let’s ask why she gave so many gifts.  Miss said Faerie like their patron-practitioner relationships, so is that why?  Was she trying to bombard us so we might miss something obvious?  There was a definite feeling of being swept up in her momentum.  Charles said something about how fairness mattered.  Is Maricica intentionally creating a bias?  If the deal we’re making is that we serve Kennet in exchange for gifts, power, and teachings, what happens if, theoretically, an Other gives us five million gifts?  Are we more beholden to them?  Do our responsibilities change?

We Done Here?  Not yet. One to be determined.  Three traps to be determined, hidden among the nine gifts we’re supposed to get.

Psychology/Motivations: Guilherme says her court (Dark Fall) has a lot of childnappers, those who transform, and those who take parts from a child and swap in animal parts.  They are apparently best court at avoiding falling into Winter?
She’s trying to steal something from Guilherme.  Reason for being in Kennet?
She’s apparently young for a Faerie.
Wants to amuse herself?
Hasn’t decided on a life path.  Didn’t rule out being a childnapper.
Promised three ‘momentary inconvenience’ traps in the stuff she gave us.

Gift: Info on why we were chosen?
What does this serve to know we might become more Other, or they might try to make us that way?
Makes Avery miserable.  Avery even called it out as a bad gift.
Makes us paranoid.
Trap Possibility: Is it possible this isn’t one of the nine gifts?   We could/should watch out for additional gifts from her.  The ‘minor inconvenience’ could be getting stuck in a lie and losing a bit of magical power because we were led to make assumptions.  I’m thinking back and trying to think about what we got that was explicitly declared a gift or outright given to us.  I think I’m going to make that a subheading for other gifts here.
Trap Possibility:  Multiple Others have told us that stuff hits harder if we’re warned about it first.  Is this setup for something else to happen with the rest of the Kennet Others?
Trap Possibility: Stirring up drama with us and the Kennet Others?
Gift Rating: 1/10 IMO, subject to change.
Was it actually declared a gift?  I think yes.  She said it was her gift to Lucy, to position us differently to the rest of the Kennet others, but my assumption was that it was to Avery.  It was only after I wrote stuff down that I realized the way to challenge the Choir had to be Avery’s gift.  So… why this for Lucy, specifically?

Gift: A way to Challenge the Choir
A means of calling on higher authorities to challenge an impossible contest.
When we passed on the info to Reagan we got more tangled up.  Lucy got assaulted.  Choir has been showing up more.
Trap Possibility: My first thought was that it’s dangerous to do this because we could lose hard.  That’s not a minor inconvenience tho.  What would make it minor is if it was a disaster, she pulled our asses out of the fire (no real consequence), we still learn the lesson, but then we owe her or trust her more.
Trap Possibility: Is something else out there that she’s already thinking about or planning on us using this trick against?  Something small that has a small/inconvenient consequence?  When we do end up using this, we should try to think about if or how she’s gaining from it.
Trap Possibility: Is the choir getting tangled up with us the trap?
Trap Possibility:  Who are we actually appealing to?  The Sable/Alabaster/Aurum judges were crabby with Charles.  Was part of that due to him appealing to them before?  Do we make enemies with them in a small way if they have to come be judges for our challenge?
Gift Rating: 5/10 for now IMO.  If it works it’s 7-8/10.  If it doesn’t it’s lower.
Was it ever actually declared a gift?  Not really?  She listed it off in a string of stuff she gave us.  Leaves me wondering how much is implied vs. confirmed.

Gift: A Way to Make a Contract Ours
If we can weave certain sayings, phrases, or stuff that’s more Verona (Or Lucy, or Avery) in sayings, catchphrases, or odd ‘signatures’ that stand out, three times in a document, we can gain more influence over the outcome and final terms.
Trap Possibility: Does making a contract more ours create more responsibility?  Goes back to the question on an earlier page, where I wonder about getting too many gifts and having expectations change.
Trap Possibility: Is it possible she’s already planning or thinking of a contract she thinks we’ll use this on?  With someone very dumb or easy to manipulate? (Cherrypop?  Munch?)  Might be this really does work, but it makes enemies of the other side.  Not many people out there like being screwed on a deal.
Gift Rating: 6/10.  Hard to use, have to be really good at negotiation, patter, and keeping the deal in mind to drop something into a contract three times without being obvious.
Was it ever actually declared a gift?  Yes.  It was the first explicit gift she gave us.

Gift: Nettlewisp Charm
A bit of glamour held in hand, the rune gets drawn on it, and we whisper what we expect our enemy to do.  Answers as a blinding/confounding counterattack.
Trap Possibility: My first thought was that if we’re wrong, it might be a lie.
Trap Possibility: Second thought is more subtle.  What if it just waits for the opportunity to counterattack?  Can we put it down/away?  It would be a big inconvenience to have a fistful of combat dust we can’t really get rid of without picking another fight.
Trap Possibility:  We keep getting tricks and charms that are a bit cumbersome or have a lot of drawbacks in a real fight.  Who has time to grab dust, draw on their hand, and whisper something when being chewed on by waifs?
Gift Rating: 7/10.  I talk smack about it above, but it’s just plain nice to have something like this, just in case.
Was it actually declared as a gift?  Given to Lucy as a paper.  Does that count?  Why is it important that Maricica tell us that it’s paper from a fancy wedding invitation?

Gift: Like to Like
Object must be placed next to another, similar object.  Should have something in common.  Headwear to headwear, handheld tool to handheld weapon, black fabric to black fabric.  Use glamour, and draw a figure-eight with one object in one side and use glamour to draw the desired object in the other.  ‘Wind it in’.  There are ways to do this with two similar items, combining them, or turn a weapon into a charm that dangles from the wrist until needed, but may be costly.
Trap Possibility: Doesn’t specify what happens to the thing if the glamour breaks.  If I turn a knife into a charm to wear around my neck, and the glamour breaks, do I have a knife?  A charm?  The worst of both worlds?
Trap Possibility:  There’s no mention of time limits.  How long does it last?  It would be SUPER awkward to use this with my hat & mask (my first thoughts) to keep them with me at school, but then have them turn into a hat and mask in the middle of class.  Explainable but messes up our day and Others us a bit, if people think we’re weird and push us out.
Trap Possibility: If we need glamour for these things, does it give Maricica a way to keep tabs on what we’re keeping with us?
Trap Possibility:  Just thought of this one… if glamour is the thing Faerie are best at, is smearing it all over something important to us giving up ground?  Does it mean the Faerie could claim it?  Inconvenient to lose my hat until I go to the Faerie to ask for it back.
Gift rating: 6/10.  Really convenient, but can’t use it for its full convenience until we have answers.
Was it actually declared as a gift?  I don’t think so?  It was given as a piece of paper, so that might count.

Gift: False Image
Illusions that can become real.  Needs a fair bit of glamour, sculpted in same technique used to change Avery into Kell.  The image is very fragile but gains durability the longer it goes unchallenged.
Trap Possibility: There’s no guarantee the drawbacks of one gift don’t apply to the other gifts.  So do we need to read that bit about stuff becoming reality and watch out for any ‘inconveniences’ when something we did with a transformation, or turning a hat into a charm, becomes reality because we left it too long?
Trap Possibility: What if it’s not just limited to images?  There are ways to convey ideas or moods with glamour.  Dazzling people with Nettlewisp, too.  If we convey a mood or gain a mood with False Image (like, say, making our rooms cozy or cool) then is there a way that becomes reality even if it’s not necessarily right?  What sticks?  What doesn’t?
Trap Possibility:  It was given on a patch of silvered skin.  Who/what is the skin from?  Do I find myself enemies with something if I pull out the skin or use the trick that was written on the skin?
Gift Rating: 8/10.  I see basically no way I live to an old age and don’t find a good way to use this.
Was it ever actually declared as a gift?  I don’t think so, but again, it was handed over as a bit of vellum.

Gift: Glamour for an Animal Form
A change to an animal body, with promises of instructions on how to do this myself.
Trap Possibility: I could get stuck this way.  Is that a minor inconvenience though?
Trap Possibility: As a prey animal, I could be preyed on.  As a animal hunters could go after, I could be shot.  Not necessarily a minor inconvenience, but if Maricica sees it coming and saves me, owing her a favor could be a minor issue, I guess?
Trap Possibility:  Routine becomes expectation becomes reality.  Is there a possibility that repeatedly going back to a form makes me vulnerable to returning to it?  Or being forced into the form by someone else (like Maricica or Guilherme?)
Gift Rating: 9.5/10.  Just plain fun.  Too fun?  Super useful for attack, escape, utility, depending on the form.  Not so much for defense.
Was it actually declared as a gift?  Not explicitly.

Gift: Disguise (Girl to Boy)
How to change our face and become someone else.  Maricica included some tips for how to sculpt one’s body, change colors of hair or eye, take away or build up portions.
Trap Possibility (Named by Lucy): Maricica could become the same disguise and create drama.
Trap Possibility (Named by Lucy): Maricica could now go after Pam.
Trap Possibility: Do we lose power or presence if we become a little less us?  We swore the awakening rituals as Verona, Lucille and Avery.  Lucy’s remarked on how much the Others keep going back to Lucille because she used that name then.  How attentive are spirits?  Could we lose our practice temporarily while wearing the wrong face/using a different name?
Trap Possibility:  There was talk about me getting stuck as an animal?  What happens if we get stuck in a disguise?  If Avery stayed as Kell so long she forgot who she used to be?
Gift Rating: 9/10.  Really cool, good, probably going to be useful at some point.  Just have to be careful.
Was it actually declared as a gift?  Yes.

Lucy’s big glamour thing is pending.  I think we get the bits of glamour to keep around the time she gets that.

…Maybe one thing we could ask the goblins for is an emergency way to break a bad glamour situation.

 

Stolen Away – 2.6

Verona

Last Thursday: Gifts Collected


Verona studied the echo, which seemed to be the politically correct term for the ghost.  The woman was a projection of a person going through a series of actions and various standing positions, leaning against the wall, standing in a defensive posture with her head down and shoulder drawn forward, pacing.  She flickered between images in a messy way that didn’t seem perfectly timed, and ran into herself in places, prompting splashes of crimson, as flesh dissolved into stubborn puffs or waves of echo-stuff.  Hair became like dust.  Clothing like strands.

She wasn’t see-through, but the gummy, blurry mess at the edges made for a kind of translucent web or wreath that surrounded and backed her.  Smoke that accumulated in exact amounts and quantity to what dissipated.  Splashes of liquid Echo that hung in the air.

“Can he breathe?” Avery asked.

Verona turned her attention to the old man in the bed.  He’d exhaled, and the exhalation had forced its way to the surface of the black gunk Alpeana had deposited on his face, forming a bubble that stubbornly refused to pop.  He tried to drag in a breath, and the fluid drained down his throat instead.  His body jerked.

“No, Lassie, he dinnae need to, much.  If anyone’s hafing trouble breathin’, it’s me.  This isnae a pretty situation.”

“I’m trying to think about what we should do,” Miss said, standing at the far end of the unlit room, by the head of the bed, where it was too dark for even Verona’s sight to penetrate.  Verona wondered if she could hit the light switch, but there was no guarantee it wouldn’t hurt Alpeana for the room to be that bright.  Miss went on to say, “I might step away for a moment, stir up the goblins, and ask John to patrol.  The problem is, what would we do with them, if they were close enough to find?  Murder would invite more problems, anyone that close may be too determined to easily scare.  A disappearance invites further investigation.

“Guilherme, Miss,” Alpeana said.  “Ask him, aye?  Many a man who’ll face doon a bogey-sort and still walk double-time away from a Fae, now.”

“I suppose we must.  I’ll do that.  John and Guilherme, a quick patrol around the boundaries of Kennet.  See if anyone has camped out somewhere, or if they’re sending bound Others in as tools.  If they’re stealing eyes and using them to make observation tools, there’ll be a supply chain.  As for you four…”

“Ah’ve still got me rounds, Miss, but we’ll be needin’ to check there isn’t anythin’ more nefarious still lurkin’.”

“Summonings, practice effects, any traces of the kind of practice they use.  Try not to tip them off that we have that quick or organized a response.”

Slightly annoyed, Alpeana spoke in a quiet but firm voice, “ah’ll be careful, aye.  Ah’m not some dob, can’t tell me erse from a dimple in someone else’s bawbag.”

She looked at the girls.  “Sorry.”

“I don’t have much idea what that last part meant,” Avery said.

“I worry,” Miss said.  “And you haven’t dealt with predatory practitioners before.”

“Aye, but I’ve kept me nose out of it for this long.”

“What’s the danger?” Lucy asked.

Miss answered, “Conventional, modern practitioners are organized, on more of a level playing field with one another, while treating Others as more of a resource than a threat.  They know how to counteract Others, limit our movements or options, and will try to corner us.  Their best way to one-up one another or gain a foothold in their internal politics is to have more tools in their toolboxes.  They would collect us.”

“If we cannae disarm this situation, ye might find ye have no more patrons, no more gifts, and some right scabby bastards who would do away with three wee lassies before they could grow up to be competition, aye?”

“Possibly,” Miss said.  “I’ve already explained to the girls that someone could try to declare themselves Lord.”

“Which is like someone trying to declare themselves the next Carmine Beast?” Verona asked, jumping into the discussion, in an effort to contribute.  “They’d declare themselves, then others would take notice and jump in, and there’d be infighting, and-”

“And a great deal of mess,” Miss said.  “Possibly ending in disaster for Kennet and the surrounding region.”

Verona nodded.

“I’ll go rouse our warriors,” Miss said. “If I don’t find you again in the next ten minutes, call me.”

“I’m glad yer handlin’ this, Miss.  Puts me heart more at ease.”

“Should we treat this like a crime scene?” Lucy asked.

“The deed wasn’t done here,” Alpeana said.  “I think there ain’t much point.”

Verona turned her Sight on, and swept her eyes across the room, looking for anything that stood out.  It let her see in the dark, and it highlighted the small details.  Dings on the wall, little bits of lint on the floor, a pill that had fallen from the top of the dresser, wedging in between the dresser’s leg and the baseboard at the bottom end of the wall.

When she looked at the corner, Miss was gone.

“Could we interview the echo?” Verona asked, looking at the ghost.

“Ye might be in for a dose of dissapointin’ if ye try.  Echos are a wee bit bampot, stuck sayin’ the same thins.  It’s worse when they’re damaged, see?  Narrows down what they ken be.”

“Hey,” Lucy said, approaching the echo.  She winced as it flickered, arm moving towards Lucy’s head.

“Be gentle, aye?  The thin’s especial fragile.”

“Maybe I should do it instead, Lucy?” Avery suggested.

Lucy gave Avery an annoyed look, then stepped back to give Avery room to approach.

Verona investigated the pills.  She couldn’t decipher the meaning or intent.  There was a pair of wedding rings and old pocket watch resting on the dresser.

“Hi,” Avery said, gentle.

The echo whispered.

“What did you say?” Avery asked.

Verona popped open the pocket watch, then closed it.  No portrait or anything inside.  She looked at the wedding ring.

“Can you tell us what happened?” Lucy asked.

“I don’t want to talk about it, mama,” the ghost murmured.

“Maybe ease in?” Avery asked.  “What’s your name, ma’am?”

The woman whispered something.

Verona picked up the wedding ring, turning it over in her hand.  There was an inscription.  “She’s Bev.”

The ghost flickered, changing position.  The other two girls jumped, which made Verona smirk.

“I’m Bev, and you are?” the Ghost asked.

“Avery,” Avery said.

“She’s no’ askin’ you, you wet tube,” Alpeana said, finding a perch on the bed, sitting on the old man’s chest.  “She’s a mess o’ memories bad enough the world kept ’em long after the hear’ stopped beatin’.  Stuck walkin’ in circles until she gets forgotten by tha world too.”

“I didn’t think it hurt to be nice,” Avery said.

“Bev,” Lucy said.  “What happened to your eyes?”

Bev flickered.  She wore sunglasses, but they didn’t fit on her damaged face.  She distorted, the sunglasses tearing free and dropping to the ground.  She stood there, with a damaged mess of crimson and grey instead of a head, her body flickering.

“What happened?” Lucy asked.

“Haf to sidestep that one, Lassie.  She be like a house of cars and there’s a car missing, aye?  Dinnae want ta go remindin’ her o’ that or you’ll hurt her.”

“Hurt?” Avery asked.

“I think she’s a bad memory, pressed into existence,” Verona guessed.  “She expresses herself through scenes from her old life, that were tied to high emotion?  Based on what Charles explained, before?”

“Aye.”

“If we make her live out a scene where we bring her attention, for lack of a better word, to the missing E-Y-E-S, or ask her to use them when she can’t, it damages her, and makes her forever weaker?  Is that it?”

“Ye’ve got it, Lassie.”

“Bev,” Lucy said.

The image flickered.  More of a head than before.

“Are you okay?” Lucy asked.

The image consolidated.  A little blurrier at the edges than before.  Bev had her head bowed, hand at her forehead, covering her eyes.

“I get by.  Clay’s dad mellowed with age… or he got too weak,” the echo said.  Again with the hand at the forehead, shielding the eyes.  A bruise was visible at the edge of the damaged portion of the face.  “I have that to look forward to.”

“If we ask her about earlier, will she try to express herself?” Lucy asked.

“She might,” Alpeana said.  She leaned over the old man’s face and barfed out more black stuff.  Reaching into it, she gripped the old man’s jaw and dragged it through the tar, until it was nearly at his collarbone.  Then she shoved her arm into the darkness, all the way down to the shoulder.  Gunk overflowed onto the bed.

Cool.

“When did this happen, Bev?” Lucy asked Alpeana.

The echo answered, “This afternoon.  I’m not especially keen to discuss it, Father.”

“Dad father or religious father?” Avery asked.

“Religious, I’d be guessin’, given tha era,” Alpeana said.  “Not so many back then were pourin’ their wee hearts out ta their da.”

“We’re on your side here,” Lucy said.  “You should be safe here.”

“Careful there, Lassie.  Should she?”

“In the company of three local practitioners who are invested in protecting the Others and people of Kennet?” Lucy asked.

“That works.  Jus’ making sure.   If ye need advice, then tha closer ye get to what she heard back then, tha better off ye’ll be.”

“You’re part of our flock,” Verona said.

“I’m afraid I’m already a lost sheep, fa-” the ghost raised her face mid-sentence, hand dropping from her face as she made to make eye contact with her conversation partner, and the resulting damage ripped part of her head off.

“Oops,” Verona said.

“Ye cannae avoid it, Lassie.  She’s goin’ to need to try and open those eyes and each time she does she’ll diminish.  She’s no so long for this here world.”

“Your children are safe, Bev,” Lucy told the image.  “You’re safe.  Relax.”

The image consolidated.  Even blurrier than before.

“The children aren’t safe, ma,” Bev said.  “He thrashes them.  I can’t even send them to school the next day, and then people come asking questions.  I’d go, but our account at the bank is in his name.  I can save up pennies and change, but for what?”

Lucy answered, “You can-”

Alpeana lurched forward to the very edge of the bed, and pressed three fingers against Lucy’s mouth.  They were still a bit mucky from being shoulder deep inside the man’s neck area.  Lucy backed away a step, wiping at her mouth.

“Take care there, Lucy.  Remindin’ an echo it ken go is a sure-fire way ta get ye rid o’ one.”

Lucy nodded, making a face as she tried to wipe away at her mouth.

“How do we bring up the attack but not remind her about the eyes, or bring the ‘scene’ to a point where she’d be opening her eyes?” Avery asked.

“I can think of a way,” Verona said, looking at the bed.  It was big enough for two people.  “It’s not pretty, though.”

“We dinnae need pretty, Verona.  We need answers.”

“A little bit of pretty would be nice,” Avery said.  “I think we should be mindful of the kind of practitioners we’re becoming.  It’s… easy to do stuff we later regret.”

“Bev,” Verona said.  “I’m sorry.  I won’t do it again.”

Bev flickered, then appeared in the bed, a phantom blanket drawn over her.  She lay beside ‘Clay’, her back to him.  Alpeana moved back, sitting by Clay’s feet.

She didn’t speak.

“It’s night, eyes are closed, there’s nothing and nobody to really look at.  We digest the events of the day,” Verona said.  “And I guess emotions stay strong enough that we don’t rest easy… and they can get stored by an echo.  The crummy people in our lives know we’re a captive audience, so they talk at us instead of processing and facing their own deeds.”

“Useful,” Lucy said.  “Bev.  Can we talk about what happened today?”

“I want to sleep, Clay.”

“Please?” Lucy asked.

“You-” Bev started, and cut out.  Verona worried something had broken again, but Bev had just skipped ahead.  “-Monstrous.  More than anything I’ve seen-”

It cut off at the end, like there was more to be said.

“It was a monster that did this?” Lucy asked.

“Monstrous.  More than anything I’ve seen.  Then- left.  Stormed out and away.”

“Good to know,” Lucy murmured.

“Hurt me.  Hurt the-” Bev jumped across the room, to the place she’d been standing before.  “-others.”

“Not the only set of e-y-e-s the monster stole?” Avery asked.

“Do you even want me to stay, Clarence?”

“Clarence, not clay?” Avery asked.

“Probably Clay is a nickname,” Verona guessed.

“Ah.”

“What time did this happen?” Lucy asked.

“The kids just got back from school, ma.  I should go look after them.”

“This afternoon?” Lucy asked.

“Yes,” the ghost said.

She was disintegrating more and more.

“Anything else?” Lucy asked, looking back.

“What did it look like?” Verona asked.

“Black mood.  Furious,” Bev told them, flickering between a few different positions to deliver each word.  “Ugly.  Not someone I recognize.”

“That’s all I got,” Verona said.

“Me too, I think,” Lucy said.

“Can we give her a good sending off?” Avery asked.

They looked at Alpeana, who shrugged.

“What do you want to do?” Avery asked Bev.

Bev moved back to the bed, lying with her back to the old man, who was smothered by the black stuff.

“If I went to pack up the kids and hop in a car to drive away… would you really fight to stop us?” Bev asked.

There was a pause.

“I’m not saying I will,” Bev added, defensively, responding to a voice that they weren’t privy to.  “I’d never, don’t worry.  Don’t get upset, please.  I wish you’d-”

She cut off again.  She reappeared at the end of the room, eyeless, standing with her head bowed, not saying or doing much except standing there.

“Please tell me she got away,” Avery said.

“Oh, aye.  Took another unhappy year, but tha wee lass stole away in the night with the bairns.  Dinnae look back, never called.  Most knew wha Clarence here did, shunned ‘im.  He stuck by tha ones who didnae care fer twenty-five more years.  Friends at tha bar.  Then they passed and left ‘im alone and bitter.  I’ve been visitin’ ‘im for decades now, five or six times a week, if I ken catch ‘im before insomnia stirs ‘im awake.”

“Bev,” Avery said.  “Go.  Be with the kids.  You’re supposed to be away and safe, far from here.  You got away.  I’m pretty sure another existence is waiting for you.”

The echo dissolved the conflicts between images worse than before, except now she didn’t make up for what she lost.  Bashing herself to pieces.

Lucy folded her arms.  “Should we go then?  See if this monster that took her eyes left a trail, or if there’s any trace out there?”

“Aye.  I haf to admit, I was hopin’ Miss would be back and she could point the way.  This isn’t my talent.”

“No, we should probably get going,” Lucy said.  “It’s already late.”

“I’ll wrap up here, then,” Alpeana said.  The darkness that covered Clarence’s face and chest was like a pool she could reach into, stirring things up and changing things around.  The flesh seemed moldable.  She pushed ribs aside and they stayed pushed up and away.  She worked within, hands in the black stuff.

“What’s his nightmare tonight about?” Lucy asked.

“His daughter’s daughter turns up, sweet as anythin’.  Wants ta know who her grand-da is, and he’s ailin’.  She mops his brow and makes his meals nice.  His heart rests easy and light,” Alpeana said, peering into the darkness.  “Then a departed friend of ‘is laughs about what a braw lad he was, puttin’ ‘is wee pretty wife in her place.  The girl leaves with a few choice words, and the codger is left all alone, gets put in a crummy, lonesome auld folk’s home, where he gets as good as he ever got, while he’s an auld man too weak ta even raise his arms ta defend himself.  A dream that feels like a right decade, sittin’ heavy on the heart.”

“He gets five or more of those a week?” Lucy asked.

“More of ’em as o’ late,” Alpeana said.  “Dreams I’m meant ta give out are gettin’ meaner.  It’s tha Carmine beast’s absence, innit?  Subtle at first, but it gets worse by tha day.”

She stirred some things around in his chest, plucked out something eel-like from the darkness, tilted her head back, and swallowed it in a single gulp.

The old man spasmed, back arching, hands fumbling for a grip on sheets.  Bubbles formed at the mouth.  He thrashed, to little avail.

A urine stain spread across his crotch area, soaking the sheets.

“We’re done,” Alpeana said, brightly.  “Echo’s put away, he’s set fer tonight.  It’s his oon head doin’ ‘im in, I’m just makin’ some use of it, greasin’ the big tickin’ wheels with what he’s left unsettled.  He’ll sleep ’til mornin’ sun.  Let’s go investigate this happenin’.  Hopefully this willnae take all night, aye?”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “Or my mom will wonder where I am.”

Alpeana dipped her hand into the darkness, and pulled out something white and wispy, like a bridal veil that twitched.  She walked to the wall, and as her hair pulled away from the old man, she pulled the black stuff with her.  He was left untouched, rib cage and jaw where they were supposed to be.  The urine stain remained where it was.  He continued twitching, and vocalized a bit.

Alpeana used the wispy veil stuff to paint out a chalky outline around the closet door.

“What’s this?” Verona asked.

“It’s harder ta bring all three of ye lassies with me if ahm slippin’ between worlds.  It’s hard enough fer me alone, ah’ll usually use the ways.”

“The ways?” Avery asked.

“Ye can get anywhere, walkin’ on foot.  Even tha Paths, if ye walk long enough.  Some places are closer to tha Warrens, tha Abyss, or tha spirit.  Tha toll isn’t so heavy expensive if tha way’s shorter.  Elsewise, ye pay the toll direct.  Use a wee bit of spirit to open up the spirit ways.”

“The spirit world?” Verona asked.

“Directly thar,” Alpeana said, hauling open the closet door.

The world on the other side was the old man’s bedroom, but flipped around.

The three of them followed Alpeana in through the door, into the room that was covered in scribblings, like two people had been fighting to cover the room in their own handwriting.

“Lots of raw awful in ‘ere, aye?” Alpeana asked.

There was a vague silhouette on the bed, with what looked like nine ghostly figures of size ranging from adult to dormouse, crouched over him.  Most of them shied back away from Alpeana.

“Ah’m not gonna grab ye like I grabbed yer kin!” Alpeana told them, annoyed.

“Why the spirit world?” Verona asked.  “Aren’t there better places to look?  The Ruins?”

“The spirit world makes a good first lookin, fer tha same reasons it’s bonnie good for new practitioners like yerselves.  A good ground level fer a start.”

They left the house, which had less writing on the walls than in the bedroom.  Out into the spirit world version of Kennet.

It was, essentially, the same layout.  Brighter in some ways, darker in others.  Houses more or less lined up to where houses were supposed to be.  There were figures so transparent that they were hard to make out when looked at directly, moving this way and that.

“What are we looking for?” Lucy asked.

Alpeana had pulled ahead a bit, and came back, “Cummoan.  Quick with ye.  This ain’t yer world, dinnae be gettin’ distracted.  Feet aren’t so important as will, now.”

“Will?” Avery asked.

“To get where ye goin’.  Distance and measure dinnae matter so much either.  Focus now.”

“What are we looking for?” Lucy asked.

“Disturbances,” Alpeana said.

Mostly, it looked the same.  Graffiti and decorations were everywhere, and they hadn’t been there before.  The road was layered in a quarter-inch of water, and their footsteps splashed.  There were no people, and there was a sheen on things that made it feel more cartoony, even though that was the wrong word.  The cared for houses were more polished, and the polish had a faint rainbow hue.  Abandoned places were buried in a muck of vague silhouettes.  It highlighted contrasts.

The sky above them was monochrome, but for the variations in the clouds, which seemed like they were more set for framing than for anything.

“Why would someone come here?” Verona asked.  She scanned the area with her eyes.  The buildings seemed to be less important for the fact they were buildings, and more important because they were anchors for other things to gather around.  The further they walked, or traveled on all fours as Alpeana was doing, the more she realized how unmoored this all was.  A didn’t lead neatly to B.

“Ye could come here ta petition tha big spirits.  We dinnae got nothing or no-one especial-big.  If ye drew out a big, important diagram, or planned a big ritual, ye might want ta check and clear tha area in a few different overlappin’ places first.  Dependin’ on how ye went about it, ye might smoke a pipe with some special leaves ta pay yer visit, square things away with any local spirits.  Most practitioner families will have their wee apprentices and bairns do that part.  Easy, builds a relationship.”

“The Paths notes Miss gave me said that you can use the Paths to get someplace faster, but there’s a risk.  Is this like that?”

“Och, not so much, no.  The spirit ways are a good way ta get where ye need to be if yer lookin’ for a feelin’ or idea, not so much if ye want ta get anywhere.  Bit of a mire, see?”

“I see,” Avery said.

“Bit of a tangent,” Lucy said, “but in the interest of giving credit where credit is due, and not complaining at you two all the time… I was pretty happy with how that ghost interview went.”

Verona smiled.

“I didn’t contribute much,” Avery said.

“You didn’t not contribute,” Lucy said.  “I think having someone taking a step back, watching our flanks, making sure we’re traveling in the right directions… that’s important.  It might be good to make a habit of that.  If we notice we’re not contributing much to the conversation, we can step back and look at the big picture.  Whether that’s moral or strategic or whatever else.”

Avery nodded.

“I’m not seeing much disturbance,” Verona noted.  “But I’m not sure what it looks like normally, so it’s hard to tell.”

“You’d notice, lassie.  Numpty spirit things running this way and that, mess, disaster.  Tha spirit reflects wha tha real world hides.”

“We’re looking for the hidden,” Lucy said.

“Aye, but it’s been too long.  Hours now, since the blighted eye-stealer came through.”

“Can we ask the spirits directly?” Lucy asked.

“No.  Some places ye can, but they’re tha places where men pay heed to tha spirits and spiritual, ta superstition, ta symbols and meanings in tea leaves, aye?  They put a peedie amount of tharselves in the spirit, an’ the spirit gets a peedie bit of humanity.”

“Enough humanity to talk?” Verona asked.

Alpeana nodded.

“I would have thought we were more spiritual than that,” Lucy said.  “We have churches.  A lot of people put stock in religion, in Kennet.”

“Aye, but not in tha way that counts, see?  Not many who see tha heavens crack, flash, and rumble, cleaving a tree in twain, and think there might be somethin’ to it.”

“Gotcha,” Lucy said.  “The spirit world is shrinking then?  As people stop believing?”

“I dunnae about shrinkin’, Lassie, but it’s changin’.  All things do.”

The individual parts of Kennet were moving around, it felt like.  If no members of their group were paying attention, a place could find its way to somewhere it shouldn’t be.  It was as if the roads were actually a deep water, and each major chunk of the town was adrift, floating by one another.  Here and there, there were growths, something like a combination of a tumor and a cloud, or a fungus with blurry, cloudy wisps growing from it, in peach hues that dissolved to white.  Near the school, near the Arena, and the dance studio.

“Disturbance,” Avery said.  She indicated the dance studio.  “The bird-people-things on the roof are acting like something happened.”

The things looked like shadow-people, pale and indistinct, perched on the rooftop.  In place of arms they had triangular shapes that could be described as wings.

“They’re carrying swords, like the ones I see with my Sight,” Lucy noted.

“Hurt and harm done,” Alpeana said.  “They’re omens.  Somethin’ bad is goin’ ta happen ta someone tonight.”

Avery began to jog over.

“Can we do something?” Lucy asked.  “Step in?  Is that allowed?”

“It may be allowed, aye, but I dinnae see what ye might do.  It may look and rightly feel like we’re close but we ain’t.  It’s a plight of the spirit, see?  That it cannae change much about tha real, and tha real can’t much impact the spirit.  Takes a skilled hand and some power ta break tha.”

Lucy headed over.

Alpeana looked at Verona.

“I think they want to try,” Verona said.

“We’ll get sidetracked nine ways from Sunday if we cannae stay on task,” Alpeana said.

But she didn’t argue or fight, and gave chase.

There were more omens collecting.  More shadow-figures, in various shapes, too indistinct to clearly see, but suggestive of animals, people, and things.  A kid that looked like he was wearing a cat hoodie.  A woman’s silhouette, tall, thin, and see-through, conveying some agitated emotion.  They gathered at the windows, and parted as the other two girls got there, to make room.

Verona caught up.  Even in the spirit world, she was slower than the other two.  This time, she couldn’t even blame the fact that her legs were a bit shorter.

Through the window, they saw only more spirit.  The translucent figures overlapped, some winging in the air.

“More omens these days,” Alpeana said.  “Remindin’ us that if we cannae get this Carmine Beast business squared off, wrong thin’s are comin’.”

“More omens, more violent dreams?  More violent, dangerous Others.”

“There’s more room fer them, aye.  Lots o’ omens now.  This here is a special bad one, or somethin’s off.”

“Could someone be making something bad happen?” Avery asked.

The omens were gathering inside.  More and more, the darker overlaps where two of the simple, silhouetted, ‘winged’ figures were next to one another suggested images.  Alone, they were so transparent they could be mistaken for tricks of the eye.  Two overlapping made a deep shadow.  Three overlapping made black.  There was black to suggest the edge of a person.  A hand.  Movement as someone ran.

“It was already evening when we went to see Alpeana,” Lucy said.  “Who’s at the dance and yoga studio this late?  After dinner?”

“The serious kids,” Verona said.  “This is too mobile to be dance.  It’s definitely not yoga.  It’s not the gymnastics class, not with this many people on the floor.”

“Cheerleading,” Avery said.  “Oh no.  From what I’ve heard, cheerleading is the sport for girls getting injured.  Is someone going to snap their neck?  Please tell me nobody’s going to snap their necks.”

“Aye, with this many omens, ah wouldnae be surprised, lass.  Ye may want ta look away now.”

“We just lost a classmate, earlier this week.  You’re telling me we may lose another?” Avery asked.  “No, that’s not okay.”

“I didnae say it was, lassie.  It’s the way of it.  If ye look, there’s spirits of fatigue, brae with fat, loused an’ hunched over.  Spirits o’ frustration, gowpin’ spirits.  Something was due ta go wrong, aye?”

“We can’t just leave it like that.  If we called Miss now, and sent her over, she can travel fast, right?  She-”

“I can’t,” Miss said.  “I couldn’t intervene in that manner.”

Miss stood in the group of spirits around them.  Overlapping translucent shapes provided the cover for her face and hands.

“Ah, ye caught up.  Just in time ta see a bit of cause for cryin’.”

Avery fidgeted.

Overlapping omens created the shadow-picture of what was happening in reality.  The exercise.  Girls doing flips, jumps.  Getting caught and lifted up.

Two girls, standing on the shoulders of the girls below them.  Another girl, smaller than the rest, propelled into the air, to be part of the formation.  She spun in the air, one hundred and eighty degrees.  Hands of girls below and to either side of her reached out to support her.

An omen silhouette with larger wings than the others, sword in hand, dove.  It never touched her.  It only followed, as she went up, lost her footing, slipped over, and plunged down on the far side, her body mostly vertical, feet down.  One foot down.

It met her as she met ground.  Sword met ankle, and the impact shook almost every other omen nearby, scattering them.  Dust exploded up and away from the impact site, and solidified.  The girl became briefly visible, as if she existed in this world.

“An’ an echo is born, aye?  A wee one,” Alpeana said.  “The lassie lives, at least.”

The image of the girl remained, flickering, repeating the event, as Bev had replayed bits of conversation.

Only the girl’s silhouette remained, framed by a wreath of hands that reached for her to give support, many of them hesitating, not knowing what to do.

Her foot remained attached by only one small part of the ankle.  It dangled, wobbling and twisting, the toe pointing toward the knee as it rotated, largely disconnected from everything above it.  Bone was clearly visible in the silhouette image.

Adults gathered near the girl, and spirits moved inside, through the window that had no glass.  They went to the solid growths, that were like the mushrooms and tumors.

“The spirits have their manna, the story will spread, different people will take away different things from the event,” Miss explained, “and different spirits will become stronger.”

Even with the intervening spirits and images of adults, the girl was pretty clear to see, as if Verona watched with x-ray vision.  She strained to see details, to make out if there was anything hinky or unusual, and switched to using her Sight.

In this world, it operated differently, closer to the adjustment of a camera’s focus, except it adjusted light and darkness, contrast and the kinds of spirits that were more or less transparent.

She focused on the girl, and made out details.  A blue jersey top worn over a leotard.  Crimped hair.  The expression-

Verona looked away, feeling a bit as if she’d just stuck her hand onto a hot stove.  She could look at dangling feet all day, but that?  Nah.

“Looks like it’s Melissa, from our class,” Verona commented.

“What?” Avery asked.  “No.  Please tell me the damage being depicted is exaggerated like so many of the other things in this world.  Feet don’t do that, do they?”

“They can,” Lucy said.  “I remember when I was little, I wanted a trampoline.  I argued to my mom and… and to Paul as well, that it’d be good exercise.  My mom wasn’t keen, because of her nursing background.  Booker showed me a vid where the same thing happened.  Teenager came down too hard, wrong angle, wrong vibration.  Sheared off.  Worse than this.  I don’t think injuries this bad necessarily happen without the trampoline.”

“It could be the omen influencing things,” Verona observed.

“Miss,” Alpeana said.  “Tha omens’re too many for such a small event.  I was goin’ ta ignore ’em, because tha dance place is in tha middle of toon, and our invaders haf to be outside, aye?”

“They’re outside the city limits.  The men are on the task.”

“It’s hinky, Miss.”

“I’m not sure what it could be,” Miss said, looking in.  Most of the omens had scattered, but some lingered.  “An ill wind?  Omens are tied to certain animals, like crows.  In seasons like this, whole murders will flock to a tree.  It could be a parallel.  Crows being associated with omens, then the crows arrive and bring omens with?  Especially as a byproduct of other practice?”

Verona adjusted her sight to study the omens.  Adjusting the camera focus, darkening everything, highlighting the vague, gingerbread-man like shadows with wings.  The limbs became more apparent, sinewy and narrow, wearing the looser shadow of the gingerbread man shape like clothing.

“Careful, Verona,” Miss said.

“Careful why?”

“With the practices of Seeing, whether it’s the future, studying omens, looking out over distances, a good rule of thumb to keep in mind is that when you look, they can look back.”

“Another entanglement thing?” Avery asked.

“In a sense.  Look too hard for your demise and Death looks back, and he may find you sooner.  Look too hard for omens…”

“Got it,” Verona said.  Now keeping more of an eye out for any Omens that were turning their eyeless, mouthless heads back toward her, she gave them another quick once-over, trying not to stare too much at any one in particular.

They were black, like matte leather, veins and sinews standing out on lanky limbs.  When they hunched over or prowled, as Melissa was helped onto a stretcher, their spines stood out in distinct relief, their ragged wings reached down and draped the ground around them.

One had a scar, hard to make out in the gloom inside the building.  Circular, around the neck.  When it caught the scant light, it looked bronze.

“One of them is wearing a collar,” Verona said.

“Which one?” Miss asked.  She stepped through the fog of transparent, immaterial spirits, until she was right behind Verona.  She dropped down.

Verona pointed.

The Omen turned to look at her, and Verona looked away, immediately striding away, until the line of sight was broken by the wall beside the window.

Miss remained where she was, hunched over, hands in the pockets of her long coat, her black hair blowing across her face.  Staring at the Omen.

“Belanger,” Miss said.

“What’s that?” Lucy asked.

“The culprit in the stealing of eyes.  I suppose the logic I just outlined would apply here.  A young female practitioner sends an omen spirit to go sniffing around, because it has a nose, so to speak, for trouble.  Where one omen settles, others gather, until events come to pass.  She went looking for trouble and trouble happened, when it might not otherwise.”

“She hurt Melissa through her carelessness?” Avery asked.

“Hurt was set ta happen, see?” Alpeana said.  “But the minging lass might’ve made tha situation worse, stickin’ tha particular nose into thins.”

“Who is she?  What is she?” Lucy asked.  “Alpeana said they used a monster to steal the eyes.”

“A tool, yes,” Miss said, staring down the omens.  Verona continued to walk back, pacing.  A bit of distance was the prescription for entanglement, and she had told Lucy she was trying to be careful.

“Charles said his old friend was an augur,” Verona said.  “They- he said they were going to make a watchdog.  And now we’ve got eyes and omens and that feels augur-y.”

“It is.  The Belangers are the same augurs that troubled Charles.  They also have a not-insignificant stake in the magic class I gave you the notes on,” Miss said.  “Nicolette Belanger is the student of Alex Belanger.  I don’t know the exact relation but I suspect they are family.  Nicolette was prowling around, but she was nowhere near Kennet.  I distracted her, I thought we had longer before she found us.  She must have found a metaphorical thread to pull.”

“You’ve done that a few times,” Lucy said.

“Hm?”

“Thinking you had more time than you did.  With our Awakening, is the other big one.”

“A trap many Others fall into, I’m afraid.  When you count your existence in centuries, those who move ahead by days can catch you off guard.”

I’ll have to keep that in mind, for when I become Other, Verona thought.

If.  Maybe if.

“Can we trace it or track it?” Lucy asked.

“I think that would be dangerous.  They would converge on us as a flock.  There are other ways, and other threads to follow.  For now, we need to know how much damage is done.”

“Damage?”

“Information is power.  Practitioners can counter an Other, cut off its movements, and bind it, but to do that-”

“They have to know what type of Other they’re dealing with,” Verona interrupted.  “It’s why you’ve been so secretive, you’ve said.”

“Yes.  They need information first.  The Belangers, as it happens, are exceptional when it comes to gathering information.  Clairvoyance, future-sight, omens, seeing sendings, and all manners of using the Sight.  They are information gatherers and they sell that information.  You didn’t notice anything wrong last night, Alpeana?”

“No.”

“Then we have roughly thirteen hours they may have been active.”

“Bev, the echo, said they took her eyes this afternoon.”

“Good,” Miss said.  “Let’s see if she was the start, the middle, or the end of their work.”

“Ruins?” Alpeana asked.

“Please, if you’d forge the way.”

“Best if we cut through the factory.”

They started moving doubletime, and it was a little easier to move than before.  Easier to move when she was beside her friends.

Learning how to best move through this world, or these worlds, was going to be another thing she needed to practice.  She was exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with her legs, and everything to do with whatever part of her was being drawn on to push forward in this spirit world.

The factory wasn’t too far.  Scribblings and etchings surrounded it.  Some of them moved.

“Alpeana,” Lucy said.  “Can we ask you some questions?”

“Now?” Alpeana asked.

“Please.”

“If ye must.”

“Did you have any involvement in the troubles tonight?”

Verona raised an eyebrow, giving Lucy a look.

“Why would I haf a hand in this?  Yer erse is out tha window, lassie!  Wha sorta good does it do me, ta shite up me night’s rounds, bring a practitioner ta our door, and put us all in some raw heavy danger?”

“Yes or no, please?”

No, ye bloody tit.  No involvement ‘sides tha help I’ve given ye.”

“I think you offended her,” Avery whispered.

“I’m asking to cover the bases.”

“Yer own base might as well be uncovered, erse hanging out in the cauld breeze, aye?”

“Did you play any part in the Carmine Beast’s disappearance or death?”

“Not to tha best of me knowledge.”

“Did you know it?  Have any interaction with it?” Verona asked.

“No.  We saw each other once, fifty years back, but tha’s all.  Tha Sable Prince was tha one I worked with most.”

“Prince?” Avery asked.

“The titles suggest who they were before,” Miss explained.  “Were John Stiles to take the seat, he would be the Carmine Dog.  The Choir would become the Carmine Choir.  The Sable Prince was once a higher spirit.  Prince was the easiest title to give him.”

“Did you have anything against the Beast?” Lucy asked.

“No, except the tit went and died, an’ it’s made me rounds messier.  Brought trouble like tonight’s doon on my hea.”

“Do you have any suspicion or knowledge about who might have done it?”

“I’m not tha one to ask, Lassie.  No idea.  I dinnae pay much mind to the Others.  Tha Faerie are fun, Maricica will give me a story for a spiderweb or a trace of anythin’ odd I find on tha nightly rounds.  Bit o’ spirit here, bit o’ echo thar.”

“Anything notable lately?  Around the time things started getting hairy, or the Carmine Beast disappeared?”

“No.  A laddie got too drunk aroun’ tha holidays, drove his car into a ditch.  A hunter shot his friend.  Not connected to the Carmine Beast, he was a dob who didnae seem like he could tell his erse from his ear.”

As they passed a wall, Verona pulled out her pen and dragged it along one of the words scribbled on the wall.  “Jobless”.  The pen picked up the word.  She put it down a few feet down the same wall.

A spirit, head peering over the wall, made a sound like a strangled scream, handless arms pressed to its head, as it saw the damage.

Verona looked to Miss for clarity, and got none.

“In another circumstance, would you have taken Melissa’s echo and given it to them?” Avery asked.

“Might’ve done, aye.”

“What would she do with it?”

“That relates ta this next destination o’ ours here.”

They reached the factory.

“If ye need to go ta tha Warrens where the goblins deal with other goblins, ye’ll want to come this way an’ turn left, go tha’ way.  I’m not sure why ye would want ta, especially without a guide, but I’m telling ye now.”

There was a bit of collapsed structure, and it looked like part of the collapse was over a murky stairwell.

“Not a fan of goblins?” Lucy asked.

“They’re fine, really.  But I dinnae haf much cause to deal with ’em.  Here.  The Ruins.  Keep yerselves close, now.”

Miss pulled out an umbrella, and shook it out to its full breadth, her hands hidden by the umbrella’s fabric first, then by the fact that she held the umbrella with the hand furthest from them.  The umbrella’s edge hid her face.

The landscape was, again, like Kennet.  This time, it seemed like everything was in the place it should be, instead of maybe being connected by association rather than place and landmark.

Rain came down in a torrent that limited visibility past a hundred feet or so.  The roads were gone, replaced with ragged chasms.  Crosswalks were rope bridges. Buildings were muted, like the pounding rain had worn down the edges and driven the rooftops a bit closer to the building foundations.

There were no lights, and there was almost no motion.  The sky, though it was hard to make out, was like television static.  So was the water of the river, which was far higher than it was in reality, the static turning near-white where it crested and formed violent froth.  A good portion of the water flowed into a chasm, disappearing into the darkness.

Echos were everywhere.  Flickering, wandering.

“The guide for the Forest Ribbon Trail mentioned the Ruins,” Avery said.

“It did,” Miss said.

Verona shivered.  The rain had already soaked her through.

“It grinds down ghosts?” Avery asked.

“Yes,” Miss said.

She walked briskly, and the three of them followed.  Verona pulled her bag around to her front with the intent of getting her hat, but when Miss crossed the first rope bridge, Verona decided to prioritize holding onto the rope, hugging the bag to her chest with her other hand.

“I’m going to have to change this bandage,” Lucy said.  “Soaked through already.”

There was an echo on the far side of the street.  Flickering across a series of forms, with enough consistency and pattern that the forms appeared interconnected.  A man, staggering forward, streaked in blood that thinned out with the rain, his arms reaching out to either side and behind him, where they blended in with another version of himself.

Shoulder connected to upper arm which connected to elbow, then forearm, then wrist, and back the way it had come.  Wrist to forearm to elbow to upper arm to shoulder.  There were ruined versions of him that had no legs, the lower body missing and the intervening space raw and bloody, so he left a trail of blood behind him.  He craned his head around, mouth open, tongueless and toothless, head flickering to change which direction he was looking, rather than actually moving.

He had no eyes.  Only a clawed out section.

“Recent wound,” Miss said, looking.  “More recent than… Bev, you said?”

“Yes,” Lucy said.

“The Belangers’ eye-stealing Other may be close.”

Lucy pulled off the chain at her neck.  The dog tag, two keys, and the ring were strung on it.  She retrieved the ring, disconnecting the chain.

Verona got her hat, then pulled out the box with the Hot Lead in it, handing it to Lucy.  She pulled the hat on.

“The bleakness of this place reminds me of the Hungry Choir’s realm,” Avery said.

“If you were to map out the connections between worlds, that one would be a close sibling or child of this one.  The Ruins are a place of the eroding abstract.  Incarnates and echoes.  The Hungry Choir is of that abstract, a living ritual rooted in the Incarnate.”

“Case in point,” Avery said.  She pointed.

There was a figure that could have been mistaken for an echo, but it didn’t flicker.

A waif, standing in the rain, watching them.

There were more echoes.  Most were far more monstrous than Bev had been, or far less, being torn apart by the rain.

“The Others native to this place are predators that feast on echoes,” Miss said.  “Echoes will find their roots here, what you see in reality as the tips of the icebergs, if they’re complex or multifaceted enough to have icebergs.  When they’re spent, they dissolve out here, reduced back down to spirit stuff, if they aren’t taken apart for other purposes.”

“What purposes?” Verona asked.

“Some might make Others and send them out.  Others might be similar to Alpeana, building nightmares or scenarios, like a funnel spider might build a web, but using scenes and memories instead of webbing.  Nascent incarnations might seek out echoes that tie to their natures, an Incarnation of Innocence eating child and elderly Others until it has the strength to take form in our world.  The eye thief could easily be something of that same typology.”

“Those native Others will feast on ye or me if they ken, Lassies, so keep yer eye out.”

Avery and Verona, each walking on one side of Alpeana, looked at the girl.

“Dinnae be lookin’ so terrible scared, lassies.  Most will et thins too slow and broken down ta move fairy fast.  So long as ye dinnae walk into an open maw and get gulped doon, ye should be okay.”

“Good to know,” Avery said.

“I wasn’t really scared, just going to say,” Verona said.  “More like I’m interested.”

“I stan’ corrected, lassie.”

There was a cluster of other echoes.  All eyeless.

“What a scabby mess this is,” Alpeana complained.  “Wha am I supposed ta do with this when it comes ta makin’ nightmares?  It’s like bein’ asked ta make axes and ye’ve no wood for tha handles!  How am I ta make it personal, if tha echoes o’ those persons are haf gone to mingin’ pieces?”

“I think that’s the least of our concerns,” Miss said.

Verona’ Sight was more like it was supposed to be, in the midst of all of this.  It didn’t really help with seeing through the rain, but did help with seeing the things the torrent of rain might have covered up.

“Turn on that sight of yours if it’s not already on, Ave, Luce.  It’s useful,” Verona said.  She dug out her mask, putting it on to further clarify things.

“Will do,” Lucy said.

Miss explained, “This is a place that lives in the abstract, bearing the entirety of the wear and damage of the day to day.  Echoes that don’t even manifest in reality will lurk here.  Necromancers will often travel to this place or places like it, to traffic in dead spirits.  Incarnate practitioners who specialize in things like the Hungry Choir ritual or dealings with a specific Incarnation, such as Dream or Bondage, will have cause to come here.”

“If this keeps doon this sorry path, I’ll be crossin’ these fingers o’ mine tha ye girls decide you want me for a Familiar.  Would sure be nice ta get a wee vacation when yer work has gone unwiped erse over fanny.”

Verona laughed.  Lucy and then Avery joined her.

“It’s no a laughin’ matter, lassie!”

“Then stop being so funny, geez,” Verona said, chuckling.  She frowned a bit, not wanting to take her eyes off the things around them.  “I gotta say, I understood you less than usual there.”

“Same,” Avery added.

“We were going to put off mentioning that to the girls,” Miss said.  “It’s a decision older practitioners make.”

“Tell the lassies now,” Alpeana said.  “Dinnae do any harm, will it?”

“What’s this?” Verona asked, interested.

“There’s a ritual that you can enact, that ties you to an Other.  It will give you some talents or skills, and in exchange, you give it a taste of mortality.  As Alpeana alludes, it can be a break from their standard responsibilities or the demands they have for certain foods.  A vampire, for example, would not need to drink blood.”

“Ye’d be as dumb as a tit without a curve in it if ye picked a vampire, I’ll tell you that,” Alpeana said.

“Why?” Verona asked.  “Also, I want to know everything about this.”

“Vampires?” Alpeana asked.

“Familiars!” Verona said.

“Vampires are not what they are in your media,” Miss said.  “The closest analogue would be a drug addict in your world, penniless, desperate, and ground down by reality.  Should you find one, it will likely be more scared of you than you are of it.  Even if you weren’t a practitioner, it would be so.”

“Got it,” Avery said.  “Sad.”

“The Seal of Solomon was far harsher to them than it was to most.  Practitioners who want to extend their power and raise their status will often pick a Familiar.  Some families will have their children take a familiar early, to establish a firm bond with one kind of Other.  The Familiar grants power, awareness, and some extra innate ability, depending on what it is.  Powerful or insidious familiars may overwhelm you through that connection that is formed, so be wary.  Know your strength.”

“And in exchange, they become mortal?  They don’t have to eat?” Lucy asked.

“Alpeana would not need to work.  An Other in the process of falling apart, such as the Girl by Candlelight, who became the Edith you now know, might be shored up.  An option they could not take, because the Doom Matthew now houses would have destroyed them both.  Faerie might seek it out to enrich their understanding of human experience.  A goblin would be free to be active for more than a few hours at a stretch, when they normally sleep for twenty or so hours every day, and they would have easy passage over places with power and running water.”

“Sounds great,” Avery said.  “Aside from the risk of getting too big a familiar, why wouldn’t we do this?  Why wait?”

“Because it is a lifelong commitment.  The Other would be with you until you died.  You would want to be sure he or she was committed to the responsibility, that he or she was compatible with you.  Families that choose familiars for their children will pick suitable and safe ones, negotiating well in advance, if they don’t simply expect their child to adapt.”

“We were going to ask about ways to level up, and get stronger in case we ran into more trouble,” Avery said.

“There are two more ways.  The implement is a tool that would shape how you use the practice.  A lifelong commitment to being someone who wields a sword in coordination with the practice, if you will.  It would shape how others see you and how the practice responds to you.  It could be a cup, a wand, a scroll, or any other thing that reflects you as an individual.”

“Could I pick my cell phone?” Avery asked.

“The ways of Others are old and cell phones are new.  The cell phone you picked today might well be outdated in two years, and forgotten in twenty.  I would gently suggest, Avery Kelly, that if one’s first thought is a cell phone, they aren’t ready to pick an implement.”

“Right,” Avery said.

“The other choice one may make is to pick a demesnes.  One place that will become yours, in which you are the true arbiter of its rules.  If you have a place in mind, I could elaborate.  But again, be aware-”

“It’s a lifelong commitment?” Verona asked.

“Yes,” Miss said.

Something to think about.

Verona liked to think that Alpeana was more her wavelength, if she had to pick one now.  Dark, easy to get along with, and Verona felt like she kinda got and liked what Alpeana did, in the grand scheme of things.

Maybe if she formed a firmer bond with the mare, she could find a way to get her dad to a better place.

Implement?  Maybe a pen, like her feather pen?

Demesnes?  She would rather skin a leg and foot and wade through salt than lock herself down to any one place.

They walked through the pouring rain, crossing more rope bridges.  They slowed as they approached a lumbering figure, faceless, that had three echoes gripped in its hands, one of the echoes a complex, interlinked series of images, the other two small and fading.  It plunged all three into the river.

One of the echoes screamed inarticulately.  It projected something over the area, and Verona could see that something like a light that didn’t shine, spreading out over the area.

It hit her, and she found herself choking.  Lucy and Avery did the same.

“It’s just a trace of a fading memory,” Miss said, encouraging, one hand in her pocket and the other holding the umbrella.  “Bear with it.”

The sensation faded.

The local Others seemed to be more densely packed in one area of the city, near the downtown area, and the five of them, three girls, one Miss, and one mare, investigated as much as they could without passing under the nose of the strange Others of the Ruins.

Verona was glad Alpeana had been right.  That the local Others weren’t that interested in humans.  They chased echoes by lumbering footsteps and awkward movements.  Echoes were off in their own little worlds, memories walking in circles, as Alpeana had put it.

“This is the Arena,” Avery said.

It was where the Others had congregated in the greatest numbers.  Echo and Ruin-Other alike.

“You said that was where the Carmine Beast died?”

“We traveled a circuit of all the other realms, including here, shortly after its demise, to be sure,” Miss said.

“I did this one,” Alpeana said.  “There was naught and nothin’.”

“There’s something going on now.”

“Aye,” Alpeana said, her brows knit together in concern.

They navigated the rope bridge, crossed to the sidewalk, and weaved across the parking lot, avoiding the Others who congregated and stood nearby.

Circling around the back, they found more echoes and other Others.

Blood streaked the lot.  Like something huge had been dragged, leaking blood all the while.

The streaks continued to the side road by the decrepit, rain-worn building.  They disappeared into the darkness there.

“You missed this?” Verona asked.

“I came this way weeks ago, and this wasnae here,” Alpeana said.  “Even last week.”

“Was the Carmine Beast’s body stowed here?” Lucy asked.  “Did someone move it, and recently?”

Nobody had an easy answer.

“This is tricky, because I fear that what I say next will make you suspicious of me.  I swear to you my intentions are for what is best for Kennet, and I have no part in this, no malfeasance in mind.  I am not attempting to distract you from this task we’ve charged you with, but-”

“But you want to handle the more immediate problem?” Verona asked.  “The augur who is spying on Kennet?”

“Please,” Miss said.  “As horrible as it may be to say, the Carmine Beast is a problem that will balance out and remedy in time.  The loss of Kennet as the haven it is may be something we can never recover from.”

Verona stared at the landscape around them, at the streaks of blood.  She tried to find details, and found little.  No footprints, nothing left behind but the occasional hair as long as her arm, or bit of clotted blood.  Some Others were imbibing the stuff.

Was that a problem?  Did that give them some of the Carmine Beast’s power, or was the power more like a role, given to the person who had the entirety of the meat, fur, and bone?

Reluctantly, they left the scene behind.

Verona couldn’t help but wonder why?  Assume that in a world with Faerie who could set plots that spanned centuries, and augurs could see the future, there were no coincidences…

Was someone using the distraction of tonight’s events to move the body?  Because they’d gotten too close?

She didn’t want to ask out loud, because she couldn’t be positive Alpeana or Miss weren’t involved.  She hated that, because she trusted Alpeana as much as she maybe trusted John, which was eight-out-of-ten trust.  Both Alpeana and John could hurt them if they reverted to instinct, maybe, but… yeah.

They needed to have a serious meeting.

If it was stowed in the Ruins, does that mean an Other associated with the Ruins put it here?  Or could someone have put this mess here to make someone else look worse?

They continued their circuit around the town, and tried to identify the echoes with fresher wounds than the others.  They estimated directions and when one direction seemed to have fresher victims, they trended that way.  Lucy’s sight helped them identify the damage and get a better sense for the freshness of that damage.  The route took them west from the Arena.

Verona wondered how much time was passing.  Her phone had no battery, and it had been charged after school.

A ghost of a child sat near the church, bleeding from the neat black wound at its face.  Its hands were cupped, holding the portion of its face that the eyes should have been in, but the eyes were missing.  It was disintegrating, the top of its head gone.  Without the head to go by, Verona couldn’t guess at the gender or likely age.

“There’s a thread,” Avery said.

She pointed out into the rain.

They moved with more energy now.  It was a blessing and a curse that this was a place that used their mechanical legs to move.  A blessing because it let Avery move her full speed.  It wasn’t a subtle mire like the spirit world was.

But Verona was tired.  She trailed behind.  Rather than struggle to keep up, she kept to the suggestion from earlier, and tried to take in the bigger picture.  To look for traps, consider morals, and consider motivations.  She watched the flanks of the others, as they focused on their singular target.

She wanted to be better for Lucy.  She didn’t know what she wanted in the long term, whether she wanted to be Other, or what escape she might seek, or even how she was going to deal with her dad for the next five years before she could move out, but…

For Lucy?  For Avery?  Yeah.  She could focus her attention on that.

She’d been happier, before that conversation with Lucy, yesterday.  Happier to have a goal, to be certain in that goal, to have her friends at her back.  It was hard to avoid feeling a little resentful, even if she knew the resentment was unfair.

But she didn’t want to be her dad.  She didn’t want to be a user of people.  That was what was fucking with her the most.  That she’d almost fallen into that trap.

She scanned the surroundings.

A glyph hung in the air, over the ravine, a midnight blue against a background of black, cloaked in the rain that poured around them.  In the middle of that floating glyph was a large eyeball.  It blinked as it watched Miss and Alpeana.

Verona pushed herself, nearly slipping on the wet ground, the chasm of what should have been road to her left.  She fought to catch up to Lucy.

“Got a gun?” she asked Lucy.

“Gun?” Lucy asked.

“Do you?”

Up ahead, the others had stopped at a street corner.  They might have seen what they were after, but for right now, Verona was focused on watching the flanks, and she’d found something there.

“I have a can in my bag.”

Lucy shrugged out of one strap, letting her bag drop down to where it was more accessible.  Verona got it open, reached in until she touched cool aluminum, and pulled out the can, pressing it into Lucy’s hand.

Lucy made the aluminum, logo-embossed handgun.  “Why?  Think we might need it?”

Can’t explain if we’re being watched.

“Miss!” Verona called out, tapping Lucy’s arm, getting Lucy to stop jogging.

The woman with the umbrella turned partially, the umbrella still tilted so the edge of it blocked her face.

Verona pointed at the glyph, using her other hand to lift up Lucy’s gun, moving it in the same general direction.  “Should we destroy it?”

The glyph began moving.

“With prejudice, if you please,” Miss said.

Lucy aimed, squaring herself off, her eyes crimson.

The glyph swayed, jerking to one side, then the other.

Verona pressed one hand against Lucy’s ear, one hand against her own, choosing the ears closest to the guns.

It fired, loud in the hiss of rain in this strange place.

The bullet didn’t hit the eye itself, but it hit the edge of the symbol.  The floating symbol with the eye centered in it was shattered, the eyeball dropping out and dissolving much as the echoes had.

“That will sting, if not partially, temporarily blind her,” Miss said.  “We should finish the task.”

“Finish?” Verona asked.  She and Lucy caught up to Miss.  Lucy tossed the gun into the chasm, and it became a can as it left her hand.  Litterer.

“Guilherme and John will be looking for her, but an Augur is well forewarned,” Miss said.  “She will get away, unless we do something, and if she gets away, she will likely bring the practitioners of western Ontario down on our heads.  Or at least, a half-dozen more practiced augurs from her family.”

“You want to kill her?” Lucy asked.

“No.  Murder will bring its own problems.  I think, as dangerous as it may sound after your recent experience with Faerie, we must trust Guilherme to find an answer.  For now… we must complicate and confuse as much as we can, and give Guilherme the opportunity to reach her.”

They met Avery and Alpeana at the corner of the crosswalk.

On the opposite corner of the crosswalk, an Other was bent over an echo of Melissa, with a destroyed ankle and freshly destroyed eyes.  It was long-limbed, its face an expanse of black with no features, and it wore a necklace strung with bleeding eyes.  The eyes looked this way and that, as the Other ducked its head down.  One clawed hand reached to the necklace, lifting one draping end away from the neck and over its head.

“The gunshot alerted it,” Avery said.  “It sees us but doesn’t know what to do about us.  If we approach, it might run.  It looked fast.”

“I have a card for blinding flashes,” Verona told the others.  “I’m not sure the rain wouldn’t wash at the ink though.  Mabye if I kept it dry and got closer?  I could try glamour, to make an image.  We could bait it in with an image of an echo with big, juicy eyes.  Pug tier.  Or eyes like that one actor.”

“It uses eyes unlike yours, and senses beyond ours.  I think it would not be fooled, unless you were very skilled about it.  Rain would shorten the duration of the glamour.”

Lucy bent down over her bag, and sorted through it.  She pulled out a packet.  A folded paper, and she held it close to her.

“Trust a faerie to know when we might need something,” Lucy said.  She looked at Miss.  “Any tips?”

“Follow the instructions.  Trust that a clever use at a dramatic moment may be closer to what she intended than a trap might.”

“I wouldn’t have long,” Lucy said.  “If rain washes away glamour.”

“No.  Less than a minute.”

“What do I do when I get close?  Take the necklace?”

“Subdue it.  Try not to kill it.”

Lucy nodded.

There were four rope bridges at the crosswalk, one for each path that pedestrians might have used to cross.  Lucy went after Alpeana.  After some consideration, Verona and Avery went along the other bridge to the next corner, until a single rope bridge stretched between them and the Other.

It went from a four-limbed crouch to a standing position, tall and looming.  It backed away a step.

Verona and Avery backed away too, until it eased a bit.  It moved the necklace with one hand, the eyeballs darting around and looking at everything nearby.  Lucy at the one corner, Verona and Avery at the opposite one.

Miss, Verona, and Avery at the opposite one; Miss stood behind them.  She murmured, “If it returns to the Augur with this harvest of eyes, she’ll soon have more observation glyphs like the one you destroyed.  I imagine she’d be able to keep an eye out for interruptions and disturbances, while harvesters like this collected more eyes.  They would be harder to catch off guard like this.”

Verona looked in Lucy’s direction.  Lucy was gone.

She blinked, searching, looking- and she saw only a blur.  A denser patch of rain.

The rain washed away, if such a thing could happen, revealing Lucy as she was two paces from the Other.  It scrambled back, away from her, and Alpeana crawled out of the crevice, leaping onto its back, vomiting blackness over its necklace.

Avery and Verona ran toward it, but running and a rope bridge made for bad times.  They swayed, found their balance and footing, and progressed a bit more carefully.

Lucy stuck her knife into the Other’s calf, then swung an axe that might’ve been made from a book at the other leg.

The Other collapsed as Verona and Avery drew close.  Together, they climbed onto its back.  Verona kicked wildly at one elbow as it tried to use a hand to push itself to a standing position.

“Make a circle,” Miss said.  “This will be a very quick lesson in binding.”

“In this rain?” Lucy asked.  She moved forward on her knees, shaking, her eyes wide.  She put a knife to the necklace of eyeballs, and cut the cord.  The Other groped blindly as Avery snatched the necklace away.

“Find a way.  Anything will do.  It’s defeated, we only need the formality.”

Verona pulled her bag open, and began tearing loose sheets of paper from her bag.  She pressed them down into the sidewalk, letting the rain wet them down into place.

When she was done, Lucy offered her a marker from her own bag.  Verona quickly drew out a shaky circle, extending from one piece of paper to the other.  By the time she reached the place the circle had stared, the permanent ink was kind of bleeding.  It wasn’t washing away, though.

“Now demand it return to its master and do its utmost to weaken her and harangue her.”

“Returning a summoning the same way we might return a curse?” Verona asked.

“Exactly so.”

“Hey, eye-thief,” Lucy said.  She stood on the thing’s back, and she did her best to stand upright, back straight, hands on her hips.  Her hood was up, her hat was on, but both were soaked. The eyes of the fox mask glowed red.  “You heard what she said.  Return to the one who summoned you.  Ruin her day, scare her-”

“Don’t kill her,” Avery said, her voice muffled by the deer mask.

Lucy nodded.  “Don’t kill her.  Slow her down, steal her things, and use your full talents to make her regret coming this way.”

“Then forget you saw us, and forget you saw everything here,” Verona said.

Lucy nodded.

The Other raised a hand.  Verona, sitting on the thing’s shoulder, got ready to grab it or kick at the hand if it tried something.

The hand moved, two fingers together, in a smooth motion.

Verona shivered.  She wasn’t sure why that felt so meaningful.

“That’s agreement, it is in your power, and out of hers,” Miss said.  “Now let it go.”

Avery kicked at the papers Verona had laid down.  The circle was broken.  They moved away from the Other.

It paused, reaching blindly for the necklace.

“If this Nicoletta beats it, she gets the eyes, right?” Verona asked.

“Yes.”

“Make do, Eye-thief,” Lucy said.

Injured, head bowed, it hobbled away.  As it traveled, it picked up speed, until the injuries seemed to be gone.  It disappeared off down the road.

“Thank you,” Miss said.  “We’ll have to trust Guilherme to handle the rest.  He’s canny.”

“We need more power if we’re going to be doing this stuff,” Lucy said.  “Weapons, the rest of the gifts.”

“I ken only help ye with tha travel,” Alpeana said.  “Speakin’ of.  We haf no reason to stay ‘ere.”

She put out her hands.

Verona took the mare’s hand, then took Lucy’s.

Avery took the other hand.

The mare jerked them to another place, much as she’d delivered them to the hall outside dad’s room, then to the ‘auld codger’ Clay’s place.  From torrential rain into light rain.  From cold into dull, humid heat.

Verona got her bearings, using her Sight to make out the mountains in the dark.  They were at the northwestern corner of Kennet.  Fast food shops had their glowing signs off to the east.

The Arena was one of the biggest buildings in Kennet, if not the largest.  The lights from the parking lot illuminated it.

It’s not just that there’s a local Other that’s involved.  They’re actively working against us, now?  Moving the evidence?  Or putting bait in front of our noses?

Lucy pulled out her phone.  She made a face.  “I’m already in trouble.  Now what?  Got any magic tricks for a homicidally angry mom, Miss?”

“Your mom’s nicer than that,” Verona told Lucy.  She checked her own phone.

Two in the morning.  Fuck.

“I’ve got ta finish me rounds,” Alpeana said.  “Well done, lassies.  Thank ye for tha assistance rendered.”

“I look forward to a long working relationship,” Avery said.

Verona looked at Lucy.

Lucy’s face had fallen.  She held her phone, glowing, but it dangled to her left, in fingers that gripped it so lightly it might have fallen into the shallow puddle at Lucy’s feet.

Oh.

Oh, the Hungry Choir ritual had been tonight.  It happened at midnight.  Which meant-

Verona reached for Lucy’s hand, and lifted up the phone, securing it herself.  She looked at the screen.

Reagan was alive.  She’d sent a message and a picture.

And she was doomed.  It was obvious from the picture, and she’d admitted as such in her own words.

The girl they’d saved.  Somehow, the girl who had been lying in a sobbing heap last Tuesday had won tonight.  She’d taken seven different things from the other seven competitors, and swallowed them.  A twist of hair, meat on the bone, a ‘gulp’ of blood.  In the doing, she’d claimed seven eyes, including Reagan’s remaining one.

The Hungry Choir had its newest winner.

Stolen Away – 2.7

Verona (again)

Verona tossed a chicken nugget into the air.  It was devoured before it could hit the ground.  Violence immediately followed, with gnashing teeth, scraping nails, and weapons drawn.

It was too hot, and it was only May.  If this was like last year and the temperature zig-zagged its way to forty-plus degrees Celsius by mid-summer, she was going to die.  No, worse than die.  She’d overheat, her brain would stop working, and she’d say or do something practice-wise that doomed her.

She sat behind a strip of stores and shitty little restaurants.  A short distance away from the dumpster were a few stacks of wooden pallets, recycleables, and empty cardboard boxes.  Verona sat on the shorter stack of pallets.  There was at least a faint breeze carrying through the passage.

A tiny hand, red like it had been terminally sunburned, appeared beside her, reaching out from behind her, fingers splayed as it reached for the little carton of chicken nuggets.  She moved the box.

It didn’t help that her clothes were from last summer.  Her short sleeved top had light grey and white stripes and black banding at the collar, sleeves, and bottom, but it hugged her weird, and dug in at the armpits, which was way worse as sweat made it damp.  Like it was sawing at her.  Her shorts had the same problem her jeans did.  She wore six dollar flip flops not because they were comfortable or because she liked them, but because they let just that five extra percent of her skin breathe.

She didn’t remember being like this, even a few years ago.  Being conscious of her skin and body and of temperature and sweat.  Every time she breathed, she was conscious of how the fabric of her top hugged her middle.  Her chest was the same feeling but multiplied and pretty damn mixed.  On the one hand, yay, puberty had delivered the one real thing she wanted or cared about.  On the other, this was her life now?  Her shirts were always going to poke out in front?  Dudes her dad’s age were going to do that totally not-surreptitious look?  Unless she wore a sweater, maybe?  Why wasn’t there a sweater, but for summers?  It could be made of some cooling material or have a fan built in, or something.

Please.  Someone.

Yes.  The rambling was confirmation that the heat was frying her brain.  She’d have to be careful.

Her mom had sent the money, and she’d ordered stuff.  Two weeks until delivery, plus or minus five days.  It was still better than shopping with her dad, getting comments and judgments, the ‘this would look nice’ stuff, as he tried to get her to buy something she’d said five times that she didn’t like.  Or logos, which she’d said a hundred times over the years that she didn’t like wearing, because screw actually paying to be a walking billboard for a megacorp.  Then he’d sulk and bring it up a few times, or go back to the store to buy it, or she’d cave and get it.  Then her dad would nag for days or weeks after to wear ‘that nice top’, and him acting like he was so generous and thoughtful, putting in that time and money…

Two weeks wait was worth it to skip the hassle.  She’d have to endure until then.  Maybe she’d try to do something with glamour to resize stuff.  She’d have to ask permission from the others and think about traps first.

She blinked as something moved in the corner of her vision.  A tiny hand, red-skinned, holding a rusty nail, reaching slowly and haltingly for the box of chicken nuggets Verona had balanced on her knee.

Verona placed her notebook down flat on top of the carton, blocking it.  “Question three.  Did you know or ever meet the Carmine Beast?”

Cherrypop had silently stacked up three empty aluminum cans beside Verona’s foot, crawled up them, and now perched on top, reaching.  She stabbed the notebook a few times with the nail, as if it would move.  The cans wobbled.

In front of Verona, Gash had wrapped both legs around Munch’s neck, pried Munch’s mouth open, stuck a ragged bit of wood in, and hit Munch’s chin so the wood would impale the roof and underside of Munch’s mouth.  Once it was secure, he reached into Munch’s open mouth.

Gash was medium-dog-sized, rangy, with a big head and a hatchet of a nose, his eyes just distilled mean, his mouth small but capable of opening wide into a piranha’s bite.  Pretty close to what she might’ve imagined if she thought ‘Goblin’, but his flesh was a pallid Caucasian white, with bruises settled in the folds, when she might have assumed green.

Munch had flesh the color of the kind of bowel movement one might have if they were very sick, brown and yellow, with more bruising in the folds, he had fatty lumps around his neck and shoulders that didn’t correspond with muscles, he had muscles that weren’t symmetric, and his flesh all had a quality to it like it was callused and thick.

Verona sighed.  “I want an answer from all three of you.  Cherrypop?  I know you’ve answered some questions before.”

Cherrypop hissed at her, stabbing repeatedly at the notebook.

Verona knew she had to appeal to their baser natures, and their baser natures were awful.

“If you give me a bunch of answers, I’ll give you a bunch of nuggets,” Verona said.  “That’s less for them.”

The little goblin narrowed her eyes as she looked at the two squabbling boys.  Gash had successfully tripped Munch’s gag reflex, wasn’t letting Munch turn his head to actually expel the vomit, and so it was coming out of the big goblin’s nose and pooling in his open mouth.  Gash fished inside the soup of blood and vomit, disengaging his legs from Munch’s neck to kick away a reaching, punching hand.

Most of Gash’s success in this scrap was due to the deep cuts he’d inflicted at the back of Munch’s heels and the hole he’d put in Munch’s one elbow, but… even so.  Verona mentally noted that Gash was pretty good at fighting, considering he was maybe thirty-five, forty pounds, and Bluntmunch was maybe a hundred and fifty pounds.    Verona wasn’t good at estimating weight.  Cherry, meanwhile, weighed mere ounces.  Verona was even worse at estimating small weights.

“I forget the question,” Cherrypop said, as she watched the fighting through narrowed eyes.  “I’m stupid.”

“Did you know or have you met the Carmine Beast?”

“Nah,” Cherry said, sticking out the hand that wasn’t holding the nail.

“I need a bit more of an answer than that,” Verona said.

“Didn’t know what it was until recent.  I’m so stupid.  Toadswallow says I got a brain like a fart’s shadow on underwear.”

Verona handed over a nugget.  Cherry took it with enough excitement she almost lost her perch on the empty cans.  She devoured it in a messy way that seemed to lose half the chicken and fried casing.

Gashwad pulled a scrap of meat out of the soup at the back of Munch’s throat, which wasn’t chicken nugget.  He ate it himself, then went fishing in again for the traces of, Verona presumed, the nugget.

Munch, a splintered spike of wood impaling the roof and floor of his mouth, closed his jaw, driving the points of the wood in deeper both ways.  Sharp teeth closed in around Gashwad’s elbow.  Gashwad stopped fishing and started fighting back, scraping with the claws of one hand and the pointed nails of both feet, raking face, neck, and shoulders.

“Are they going to be okay?” Verona asked Cherry.  “I’m not going to get a goblin killed and accidentally break my awakening oath, offering nuggets?”

“This is a most days thing,” Cherrypop said.  “They won’t die an’ they’ll be better by tomorrow.”

“Ah, good,” Verona said.

Cherrypop held out a hand.  “I answered a question.”

Verona gave the tiny goblin another nugget that was pretty much a third to a fifth of the little goblin’s size.

“Do you have any idea who might have taken the beast out of the picture?”

“None!” Cherrypop said, eager, mouth full.  She reached out with one hand, fingers opening and closing, while using the other to shove the unfinished nugget further into her mouth.

Verona gave her a nugget.

She’d come with a box of twenty and a spare cheeseburger, trying to account for Munch’s size, and had planned to split the food across the goblins, in exchange for answers.

Verona had quickly discovered the goblins were happier trying to steal nuggets and fighting one another over a single nugget than the simpler process of getting one each.

“Do you have any involvement or ideas regarding the movement of something large and bloody, possibly the Carmine Beast’s power, from the version of the Kennet Arena in the Ruins, last night?”

Cherrypop fought to swallow the remainder of the last nugget, managed to clear her airway enough to gasp in a breath like she’d been drowning, then choked more down.

“Cherry?” Verona asked.  “Proper answer.”

“Uhhhh… nope!” Cherry said, brightly.  Her stomach was distended.  “No idea.”

Verona held out the nugget, then held it back as Cherry reached for it.  “Do you go to the Ruins at all?”

“Not much,” Cherrypop said, still reaching, wobbling on her perch of cans.  “It’s mostly made up of stuff Goblins can’t deal with.  Stuffed metal.”

“Stuffed metal?”

“Don’ go telling her!” Gashwad screeched.  “Sayin’ our weaknesses!  I’ll eat ya, Cherry!  Limbs first!”

Verona waggled the nugget, just out of Cherrypop’s reach.  Tiny hands strained to make contact.

“Metal with water running through it, like pipes,” Cherrypop said.  “Metal with electricity running through it.  Metal that’s hot, not so common.  Metal with gas, like more, funner pipes.  Metal with sand or rock running through it would be the same, but that’s rare.  Hurts to be near, makes us weak.  Lots of it in the Ruins.  The other places we’d normally go are missing.”

Verona gave Cherry another nugget.

She didn’t really expect Cherry to be a well of information.  But then, that wasn’t really the idea.

“You’re getting so many nuggets,” Verona commented, making sure the others could hear.  “You call yourself stupid, and they call you stupid, but you’re being smarter than those two are.  Look at you, you look like you could pop at the seams.”

Verona wasn’t lying.  Cherrypop, sitting on a stacked soda can with her nail laid beside her, had a distended stomach.  The little goblin, mouth full, embraced the most recently received chicken nugget, and smiled, showing off missing and mismatched teeth.  Still smiling, the goblin chowed down, gulping down what she could and reducing the rest -most- to an unsalvageable mess at the base of the cans.

The other two goblins fought, but now they were fighting to disengage from one another, each trying to get away and get to Verona while not letting the other do the same.

“Who goes to the Ruins?  Who is tied to the place?” Verona asked.

“Uhhh… don’t know!”

“Think hard, come on,” Verona urged Cherry, eyeing the two male goblins.

“Uhhh…” Cherry leaned back, eyes closed.  She tipped back, the stack of three cans collapsed, and she landed hard.  Lying on her back, she shouted, “Thought hard!  No idea!  Gimme!”

Verona gave her a nugget.  Gash was free of Munch, and scrambled after Cherry, to steal the nugget.  Cherry hoisted the thing and fled for a pile of trash, disappearing into dark recesses, cackling.

Munch sat up, trying to free the wood that had embedded the roof of his mouth.  Blood already traced the lines and crevices between the pointed fangs of his mouth, from his mangling of Gash’s arm, but as he pulled at the wood, his own blood flowed out and down.

“I’ve got your attention?” Verona asked.  “I have one third of a cheeseburger I’m not interested in finishing, and one nugget.  I intend to give both the remains of the cheeseburger and the single remaining nugget to whichever one of you gives me more information, with the least amount bitching or distraction.”

That had their attention.

“Who’s going to be the loser today, hm?” she taunted them.  “Lower on the totem pole than even Cherrypop?”

“Out with it,” Munch said, surly.  “Ask the questions.”

They were both eager now.

“Do you have any involvement in the Carmine Beast’s death or disappearance?”

“No,” Gash said.

“Nah,” Bluntmunch said.

“Better answers count for more.  Try to give details when you can,” Verona told them.  “Can you tell me where you were and who you saw, on the night she disappeared?”

“Yes,” Gash said, before Bluntmunch came up behind him and shoved him from a standing position to being face-down in the road.

“We sniffed trouble,” Munch told her.  “All of us together.  Smelled the hurt, the violence, we realized something was up, so, ‘course, we went straight there.  We saw the beast.  We followed her, ran into the bi- woman.  Whatshername.  We followed her to downtown, not far from here, couldn’t go in further.  Then we split up, told others.  According to the deals.”

“Deals?”

“With the Others in Kennet.”

“Okay, good.  Tell me about these deals?”

“Keep the worst goblins out.  If we make trouble, it can’t be in this town.  If we notice trouble, we gotta tell the locals.  There was trouble with the Beast, so we told.  Job done.”

“And in exchange for these deals, you get… what?  To be the sole goblins of Kennet?”

“There are others,” Munch said.  “They pass through.  Nah, we each get different things.”

“Like?”

“Sir Toadswallow needs a place to hide out.  Somewhere without practitioners,” Munch said.

“How does he feel about us?”

“You swore a deal, you’re not his problem.  Nah, if he’s gonna be summonable, he’s gotta be free from interference, see.  If some practitioner wants to teach her twat-rat how to handle a goblin or learn some dirty tricks from the dirtiest, she’ll pick something like Toadswallow, work her way through more serious goblins as the brat ages up, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Verona said.  “I’m not connecting the thought.  I blame the heat.  Interference?”

“Well,” Munch said.  He shifted his weight, still sitting on Gashwad’s head and driving Gashwad’s face into the pavement.  “Imagine what happens if some mommy practitioner has an enemy, that enemy finds Toadswallow, messes with the deal and gets him to change up how he operates.  Next time he’s summoned, he sticks around.  At five in the morning the next day, mama witch hears screaming, comes to find out her little girl’s got a hundred improvised piercings while she was sleeping overnight, and each piercing is wired or threaded to something else.  Tied to the bed in fifty different ways, Two earrings wired to the same light switch so she gets a bit of a btzzt through the brain-pan, nose ring and eyelid studs to the door mama just hauled open, say nothing of the wire around the kid’s throat that pulls tight…”

“Got it,” Verona said.  “So that’s a goblin type thing, huh?  Something you can do?”

“It’s not something we can’t do,” Munch said.  “Just an example.  Sanitized a bit from something that really did happen.”

“Here?”

“Nah.  Distant.  Goblins talk, share stories.  But I gotta leave out gorier details, gotta keep to my own rules and deals, as one of Toadswallow’s apprentices.”

Gashwad clawed at the pavement, trying to get an angle where he could scratch or hit Munch, while he was being smothered.

“So he has to stay away from practitioners?” Verona asked.

“Certain ones.  He can’t make certain deals, and a lot of your sorts out there would kill him once they realize they can’t use him.  Most kid-friendly goblins like him stick to the wilderness, but that makes ’em more animal, less able to work with humans.  He’s got it good here.  That’s his reason.”

Verona nodded.  “And the rest of you?”

“A goblin queen, one of your types, that works mostly with goblins, she was getting started out, recruiting every goblin over a certain size.  I ran.  She’s only gotten bigger since.  If I get seen by her or her soldiers, they’d make me enlist or kill me.  Here, it’s close enough I still know my way around the local Warrens, but far enough away I’m not in her way.  I keep in touch with goblins from the Warrens who know enough to keep their mouths shut.”

“Do we need to worry about her?” Verona asked.  “One of the outside practitioners?”

Munch shook his head.  “If there was a chance, I’d be told and I’d be gone.”

“Okay.”

“Gash, similar thing, but he made an enemy of a bigger goblin.  Cherry showed up at one point, like other goblins sometimes do, jus’ wandering.  We grilled her, she’s fine.  Toadswallow recruited her.  Recruited me too.  Promised us more mischief, more chances to ask for favors from practitioners, if we agreed to the same deal he made and learned under him.”

“And?”

“And… it’s something to do,” Munch said, heavily, not sounding very happy.

“What’s your daily routine?” Verona asked.  “What do you actually do?”

“Me?  Sleep.  When I think I can get away with it, I mess with people.  I’ll hitch a ride on whatever I can to get to another town nearby.  Then I’ll knock over garbage cans, then go into their houses while they clean up.  I grab what I can that I think I can trade at the Warrens.  Radios, laptops, phones.  Some goblins like to study people, so they can do stuff specific to those people.  Family albums, purses, bits of clothing.”

“Innocents?” Verona asked.

“Sometimes.  More when there’s a quick opportunity, see?  It’s easier to do stuff when they deserve it, and for the little stuff, it’s a moment of carelessness, not watching a bag.  I specialize in the big stuff.  The ones who really deserve it.  Think heists, but the stealing is only a bonus.”

“Like?”

“Like last month, might’ve been a few days after the Beast died, I caught a train to Winnipeg.  Some acquaintances of mine sniffed out a fun one, couple renting out a place on this Bedsurf thing, yeah?  Five stars, nice view, right downtown.  Built cameras into the place to record their guests, all over the place.  Cameras that are hard to find with your usual wave of a spyfinder wand.”

“That sounds like a lot of work for something pretty boring.”

“Well… the goblins handling the project needed muscle.  Gremlin climbs into the walls to fiddle with the camera, get a certain red light blinking again.  Move a wire so it looks suspicious, then camp out in the attic and wait.  Guest causes a commotion, couple goes to handle it, we get into the apartment, loot some of the recordings, hard drives of weird porn, contacts so we can find more like ’em for future moves.  My job’s to handle the dog, block the door and carry.”

“So you’re doing something good?” Verona asked, a bit skeptical.

“No, kid,” Munch said.  “A lot of the bad lands on the bad people, that’s the way it works, and that’s an easy thing to facilitate.  But the police are left wondering if they had accomplices who took the data and recordings.  Wild goose chase, and the couple gets a harder time with the law because they can’t and won’t name their accomplices.  Victims are freaked.  Those who are low are brought a little lower, see?  A bad situation gets badder and messier.  And us, we reap profit.”

Verona wasn’t sure how to feel about that.  That profit, if it was going from vulnerable people to goblins, did that mean it was essentially not in this world anymore, not affecting innocents?  That was a reach, but handling things like this did mean that the couple was stopped.  Messy and bad, yes, but… over?  Kind of?

The whole thing with Lucy getting as mad as she had about Avery kissing Pam had her second guessing her values.  She wasn’t sure her ‘caring’ meter was calibrated right.

She would talk to the others about it, she supposed.

“That’s your day to day, then?” she asked.

“And some talking with the Warrens.  I go back and forth, pass on messages, get information.”

“And the other goblins?” Verona asked.  “What do they do?”

“Gash-” Munch shifted his weight again, smushing Gash’s face into the pavement.  Verona was surprised the smaller goblin wasn’t dead and still had the strength to struggle.  “-wants to rise to the top of the heap, see?  But he isn’t strong enough.  He’ll help Stiles sometimes.  Collects dead things and scraps to make weapons.  Plots revenge against his enemies and gets nowhere.  He’s a better blighter than a fighter.”

“Blighter being?”

Munch shrugged.  “We have terms.  Don’t try to remember them, they’ll change or get forgotten.  Goblins don’t like labels.  You’ve got your bumps, they go bump in the night, scare kids, mess with people.  You’ve got the snots, they’re just gross, they make gross things grosser.  The scrappers, obvious enough.  You could call me a lunk, you could call Gashwad a blighter who thinks he’s a scrapper.”

“And blighters do what?”

“Ruin and steal what’s pretty and precious, especially if it’s left unattended.  Rummage through hoarder’s piles, flood old storage lockers, steal a precious toy, knock over a statue… he’s a waste, not keeping up with that.”

“What would you even gain, doing that?”

“They’re things with value, emotional attachment.  Can give to something that eats emotion, maybe, or if you take away the value, you took it someplace else, didn’t you?  Now you’ve got some value to spend.”

“Not… really sure I get that, and I think I’m above average at getting a lot of the practice stuff.”

“We get a bit stronger, when we keep up with that sort of thing.  That’s the value finding a new roost.  Scare the wits out of someone, where’d those wits go, hm?  Beat the snot out of someone, then-”

“Okay,” Verona cut him off.  She sighed.  “Okay.  Right.”

She supposed she’d never be a ‘goblin queen’ or whatever.  This didn’t feel as intuitive as a lot of the other stuff.

“Cherry’s too witless to have much of a role or way of doing things.  All opportunity.  Sometimes it’s too much, sometimes too little, but she’s good at keeping it out of Kennet.  Toadswallow works out new tricks and things to teach, or lounges around, when he’s not out being summoned.”

Verona nodded.

“We got off track, huh?” Munch asked.

“I like getting off track,” Verona said.  She just wished she could do it in a place with air conditioning.  She was sweating more than before.

“I want my burger and chicken,” Munch said, eyeing the food.  “Can’t let Cherry walk away the winner in this.”

She’d pricked a nerve.  She resisted the urge to smile.

“Then I’ll ask the other questions.  You went from the Carmine Beast to notify others?”

“I went to find Charles, Matthew was there.  I stayed after.  Stole some of the beer Matthew brought the old man.  Kept my head down.  If you hang around too close to things that big, people start asking you to do crap.”

Verona nodded.

She couldn’t argue with that logic.  More or less lined up with her attitude toward her dad, and why she was out on her own this Saturday.

“Did you ever meet or know the Carmine Beast?”

“Couple times.  Once with John and the others.  Once in the Warrens.”

“Tell me about that.”

“When Stiles shot his dog, the black dog, whatever her name was.  A few of us were there, in case of a problem.  Me as a favor to John.  After he put a bullet through her, y’know, winds changed, a whole lot of bad settled on John’s shoulders.  The ah, white one, the deer woman.”

“Alabaster?”

“That’s the one.  Her and the Carmine appeared.  I think to see what was up.  They talked to John, then left.  I think that’s when they decided they wanted him as a replacement, if anything happened.”

“And who was there?” Verona asked.

“Miss.  Matthew, Edith.  Matthew was barely more than a teenager.  I was there, Guilherme was there.  Maricica may have been in the city, but not at that event.”

“Would a Faerie miss drama like that?” Verona asked.

“Who the fuck knows?  Faerie,” Munch almost spat that last word.  He made a face, “And now you’ve gone and spent my f-word.  I hope you’re happy.”

“Spent?”

“Under the terms of the deal, we get one a month.  PG-13 rules.”

“Ah.  Okay.  Can I ask Gash?”

Munch made a face.  “I want my burger and chicken.”

“You’re doing well, but if you get in the way of me getting answers from Gash, that hurts your standing with me, and it means your chance is lower.”

Munch got up off Gash, who picked himself up.  Some of Gash’s teeth had broken.

“Gash,” Verona said.

“Ugggh.”

“On the night the Beast died, where did you go after all the goblins split up to notify people?”

“Ugghgh,” Gash groaned.

“Come on.  You’re behind, but you can still catch up.”

Munch grumbled.

“Edith,” Gash mumbled, picking up a broken piece of tooth out of the shallow pool of blood.  “Supposed to be Moss, too, but he was gone.”

“That’s Matthew’s last name?”

“Yeh.  Ughh.”

“And you,” she asked Munch, “Saw Matthew?”

“He was there with groceries and small construction materials for Charles.  Screws, some planks.”

The man who could lie had an alibi, backed up by a few sources.

“So… Edith James,” she returned to Gash.  “What did you talk about with her, after running into her?”

“We didn’t talk about much.  She wanted to go handle the Beast.”

“She knew already?”

“Figured Moss called her.”

Verona turned to Munch.  “Did you see or hear this?”

Munch shook his head.

“Where was she and what was she doing, Gash?”

“She was at her house.  She wasn’t doing nothing.”

“By which you mean…?”

“She was by the front door, boots, coat, and hat on.  She nearly tripped over me.  I told her, she shooed me away before the neighbors could see me, said I was being careless.”

“Okay,” Verona said.  “Interesting.”

They’d never had the formal interview with Edith and Matthew.  It was the only interview left, besides talking to the witness.

“We done?” Munch asked.

“The Ruins.  Did either of you move something from the Kennet Arena to another location last night?  Or earlier yesterday?”

“No,” Gash said, eyes narrowing, at the same time Munch said, “Nah.”

“Do you know who might?”

Both said no.

“Who would go to the ruins?  What Others are comfortable there?”

The two goblins talked over one another,  Verona held up a hand, then pointed.

“The Choir has a bunch of kids there most of the time,” Gash said.

“Good.  Munch?”

“There aren’t many who go there because they like it.  The Ruins are this thing, for a lot of Others, like they’re in a tunnel, there’s a light of an incoming train, but they can’t tell how far behind them it is.  Echos, incarnations, especially the weak incarnations, uhhh, spirits, but not all spirits.  The special ones.”

“Like Edith.”

“Yeh,” Munch confirmed.  “She could go there, but it wouldn’t be fun.  Rain to you or me, acid to her.”

“But it would be a potential hiding place.  She could go there on her own?”

Munch gave her a lopsided shrug with lopsided shoulders.  “Yeah, sure.”

Verona took some notes, keeping track of it all.

She went back to check some notes and copies of Lucy’s notes.

“Where’s Charles’ place?”

“Southwestern end,” Munch said, at the same time Gash loudly said, “Uhhh!”

It wasn’t an ‘ugh’ of pain this time, but rather, Gash was trying to get in with an answer, but this wasn’t like a game show where someone could buzz in.

“Close to where we had the Awakening ritual?”

“Uh huh,” Munch said.  Beside him, Gash nodded dramatically, as if giving a very enthusiastic answer would count for more.

It kind of did, it was funny.

“And you started at the Northeastern end of the city?”

Both nodded.

“Matthew and Edith’s place is in the middle of town.  Why did it take you so long to find Edith, Gash?”

“I went, I knocked.  No answer.  I looped around.”

“So she was out.”

“I guess.  Is that helpful?” Gash asked, with a hopeful note in his voice.  Beady little black eyes opened wider.

“It’s something.  Did you notice anything weird?  Strange expressions, breaks in pattern…?”

The goblin stared at her blankly.

“No?”

“No,” Gashwad said.  “But I don’t pay attention to humans.”

Verona nodded.  She began to pack up her things.  As she moved the food, the goblins perked up.

“How long have you guys been around here?” she asked.

“Eighteen years,” Munch said.

“Six,” Gashwad told her.

“And Cherry?  Toadswallow?”

“Couple years for Cherry.  Fifteen for Toadswallow.”

Verona nodded, making some notes.

“So… Munch, you and Toadswallow were the only goblins there when Yalda was shot?” she asked, penning down stuff around the timeline she was making.

Munch gave her a blank look.

“The Sick Dog?”

The blank look continued.

“John Stiles’ friend.”

“The Black Dog,” Munch grumbled.  “You’ve got special, specific terms for everything… labels, labels… goblins don’t truck much with that.  Call a spade a shovel, then use the shovel to beat the person who crawls up your ass about it being a spade, specifically.”

“You were the only Goblins there?”

“Yeh.”

She made a note, then put the notebook down.  “Munch.”

She tossed the food up, so it was in his reach.  He caught the wrapped burger and nugget.  Not that it really mattered.  Gash immediately went after him, full offensive.  Whoever got it, the other was going to attack them.

Kind of like the Carmine Beast’s throne.

Verona sorted her things out, throwing some stuff out in the dumpster behind the restaurant.  She remembered what Munch had said about people ‘deserving’ a bit in the way of shenanigans if they left their stuff unattended, and closely watched her bag and the empty plastic bag with the last bits of stuff from the fast food place.

The squabbling continued as she walked back over.  She wet a few napkins using still-cold water from a water bottle, and wiped down her neck and pits with two-thirds of the napkins, and used the last third to get her mouth and hands clean of any stray condiments.

She balled them up together and pitched the ball toward the dumpster.

Gash scrambled, crawling up Munch, then leaping off Munch’s shoulder, catching the wet ball of napkin out of the air.  He shoved it into his mouth.

“Tell me that’s not a curse or a goblin thing, please,” she said.

“Salty,” Gash said, as he chewed the wad of sweaty napkin.

Gross.

“I’m going to go.  Gotta figure out what I’m doing today,” she told the goblins.  “Communicate with my friends.  I won’t bug you for gifts, but… it’s something of a convention now.  Others have given theirs.”

Something brushed against her leg, and Verona pulled back.

It was Cherry.

Cherry held up a twist of wire stuck through what might have been the skull of a rodent.  The wire extended out of the mouth and then wound around the mouth like a muzzle.  It ended in a fork shape.

Verona took the thing.

“Toadswallow made it,” Cherry said.  “Gave it to me, said I could give it to you girls as a gift.”

“What is it?”

“Opens stuff,” Cherry said.  “Like a key for most stuff, might break if it’s used on a thing sealed with practice, I guess.  But after you open something it jams the lock.  Original key won’t work.”

“Cool,” Verona said.  “That sounds useful on its own.”

“Good,” Cherry said.  “I’m done?”

“I guess so.  You’re getting to be my favorite goblin, Cherry.”

Both the truth and it nettled the other two.

“Give me more nuggets someday, then,” Cherry said.

“Will definitely consider it.”

“Oh!  Gift,” Gash said.  He stepped forward, holding it out.  Verona had to bend down to take it.  She was reminded again that her shorts were too small.  Uncomfortable around the thighs and waist.  Gash warned her, “Careful.”

She was careful, taking the offered object.

It was a cone-shaped thing that could have been a thorn or the end of a very black nail.  Surprisingly heavy, despite being a half-inch long and relatively thin.

“What is it?”

“I haven’t forgotten what I’m good at,” Gash said.  “You’re dealing with some practitioners?  John told us there were some outside the city last night.”

Verona nodded.  “Yeah.”

“That there’s a thorn in the flesh.  Buried in some loser’s guts.  Best if it’s kidney or spleen.  It healed over, left to stew in bile, picked out again after a few years, leaving some of the organ around the outside.  Dried it in the sun, and with a hair dryer.”

“What does it do?”

“Push it into a practice.  Summoning, diagram, object, whatever.  Poisons it.  Makes it uglier, a little weaker, and harder for its maker to break.  If there’s someone connected to the practice, they’ll get sicker and sicker as long as the connection’s there.  They’ll know it’s something like the thorn, so if you don’t want to lose it and get it used against you, you’ll want to pick it back out before they show up.  Otherwise, they gotta end things from a distance, which can hurt if the thorn’s stuck in it, or come and pull the thorn out themselves.”

“How sick?” Verona asked.

“After a week to a month, depending on how strong they are, their karma, crap like that?  Bad cold sick.”

“And after that?” Verona asked.

“Bad cold sick.  That’s it.  If we left it buried for longer, it’d be better, but the twit was going to go see a doctor.”

“Huh.  Assuming you guys aren’t fucking with us too, I gotta say these gifts are better than the average Faerie gift.  Nice and straightforward.”

Gashwad spat a bit of blood and a tooth onto the ground.  “Faerie.”

“I’ll get you a gift soon,” Munch said.  “Been thinking, but I don’t have much.  Got a thing with some goblins this summer.  Guy and his gun nut buddies are getting spare animals from shelters, using them as moving targets for practice.  It’s like the Bedsurf camera couple.  Universe doesn’t like it if you invite someone or something into your home and mess with them.  We were going to try to make some Dog Meat.”

“Dog Meat like…”

“Like we get enough of them together, they invite their friends in from the States, including some who can maybe make some fostering and adoption paperwork disappear for kids.  Then we see if we can’t kill enough of them in a messy enough way that there’s a Dog at the end.”

“Like Stiles, but not,” Gash clarified, a smile creeping out around the sides of his face.  “Different breed.”

“Want to borrow it if it works?” Munch asked.  “Could be my gift.”

“Uhhh,” Verona said.  “I was going to ask.  Instead, maybe something that could break a glamour, if we needed it?  In case of Faerie emergencies?”

“I’ve got some things,” Munch said.  “Firecrackers I’ve messed with a bit, emphasis on the fire and the crack.  A stinkbomb with enough stank it’ll clear everything away.”

“Sounds great.”

Munch gave her a funny look.  “But… firecracker in one hand, right?  Then in the other hand, a feral, crazy murder beast with some really cool scars.  Won’t die easy, and they can turn up with powers, I’ve seen one that could climb walls as fast as you or me could run, and another that could immobilize people with deafening screams, for as long as she could scream.  Firecracker… feral murder beast.  Firecracker, or feral murder beast.”

Munch weighed the two options in one hand, getting more dramatic each time.

“Feral murder beast,” Gash urged.

“Firecracker and stink bomb,” Verona said.  “Would be some peace of mind.  Great gift.  Especially if you’ll keep us supplied.”

Munch sighed.

He handed over the stuff.

Verona took it with care, put it away with equal care.  She gave some more care to the fleshy thorn thing.

“Thank you for your time.  This was useful.”

“Gotta learn manners specific to goblins, kid,” Munch said.  “Something like, ‘Go take a bath!’ or an insult.”

“Get lost!” Cherry piped up.

Verona snorted.

She gave them the finger and walked away.

Okay.  That was one more interview down.  Nothing hinky with the goblins specifically, which was something of a relief and a bit of a disappointment.  Goblins, at least, felt like they were a problem that could be faced head on.

Maybe two points of weirdness though, that might warrant questioning others, and re-questioning Others.

She was eager and excited to talk to the others, give them the update, and get their takes.  Maybe she’d tidy up her notes first, but… it was exciting and interesting.

Problem was, her friends were grounded.  They’d gotten home at half past two or close to three o’clock, with anxious parents waiting up.  A simple excuse of ‘we lost track of time’ didn’t really suffice.

Verona’s dad had been fast asleep, so she’d skirted the punishment.  Tired as she was, she’d rigged a simple connection breaker around the landline phone in the basement, by the laundry room, and she’d made it specific to Jasmine.  The diagram had faded out, which suggested an attempt had been made, and no call had gone through.  Yet.

It was possible Jas would try and call again and talk to dad, but Verona was pretty sure she could get away without a grounding.  She’d have to turn things around on her dad and stuff, blame him for being unaware.  Maybe provoke a meltdown or mislead him into other topics, but it was doable.

The way she saw it, she had racked up more than enough hours of being moaned at, shouted at, and told what she was doing wrong when she hadn’t deserved it, that she was due some back-credit.

She wasn’t sure what to do with herself, with her friends grounded, the weekend open, and weather this hot and awful.  She didn’t want to go home, exactly, because yes, she could do some practice stuff, and sort out her notebooks, compile notes and send stuff to the others, but her dad was home.  She’d checked and he didn’t have work later.

The library?

How freaking sad was it that the library was an option she was legitimately considering?

It was air conditioned, though.  She could while away a bit of time.  She wouldn’t be able to paint, probably, without someone fussing about her making a mess, and there were about fifty other supplies she had at her place that she’d miss having at the library.

Her flip flops were dragging at the space between her big toes and her second toes.  Her top was sawing at her armpits.  The small of her back was practically a pool of sweat, and her head felt hot.

If she had scissors or clippers or anything like that in easy reach, she might have given herself an impulse haircut, just to see if it cooled off her head.  And she did like her hair, a lot.

That was the distinction.  She liked her hair, most of her clothes, her stature, her nascent chest, her stomach that her top was clinging to, and her face.  A few boys in her class apparently liked those things too.  She just wished it didn’t all come with so much hassle.

If she could only leave it behind.  If she could only become something else, something Other, and if Lucy and Avery but especially Lucy could be okay with it, she’d devote her existence to helping them out, backing them up.

Miss had clarified that an Other that paired with a human became an animal, and could switch back and forth between their form as an Other and the animal form.  Some preferred one or the other.  The black cat for a witch, or a mouse, or a snake.

If she could be Lucy’s familiar?  How cool would that be?  To stay with Lucy and not worry about anything, even eating and using the bathroom?  No needs except the relationship.  No stresses, no burdens, no looming future where she’d be broken, fat, depressed, and in debt.  No looming future where she might avoid some or most those things, but in her effort to hold onto her own identity and integrity, she could end up unavoidably becoming the kind of bitch that left someone else broken, fat, depressed, and/or in debt.

She had how many more years of school left?  Three more of high school, if she didn’t slip up and fail one?  How many years of University?  She didn’t even have the beginning of a sense of what that involved, but she’d heard of people in their thirties who hadn’t graduated yet, who were going for or getting or had PHDs but were still there.  She didn’t know what a bachelors was or what programs people were supposed to go into, but Booker had been making noise about it, sounding excited and apprehensive, and all she’d felt when thinking about it ever since was apprehensive.

Jasmine had taken Booker to visit with a bunch of universities he was interested in, and Verona had seen some of that from a distance.  Verona was pretty sure her dad wouldn’t do that and she wasn’t sure she’d welcome it if he did.

Three more years of high school?  One to ten years of university?  How many years of working?  To do what?  She didn’t know a single adult who had paid off their house, so… massive debt and the imminent possibility of losing her home?  And a possible relationship, when each person was like a collection of five to ten jigsaw pieces from a jigsaw puzzle, trying desperately to fit themselves together with jigsaw pieces from other puzzles.

Sometimes you could jam that fit of personalities and sexuality and introversion-extroversion and hobbies and whatever else together.  Force it and stress and fight and be uncomfortable a lot of the time, and even if you could make it fit sometimes, a situation like Jas and Paul could happen and you could get your heart torn out and never be one hundred percent okay again.

Dating didn’t sound all that fun.  Living with someone didn’t sound fun.  Getting engaged didn’t sound fun.  Weddings could be fun if there was an off the wall theme or something like a costume wedding but that really wasn’t the point and then what?  Being married just seemed like more hassles.  Getting separated and divorced felt like an even bigger hassle.

Who cared?  And who cared enough to work their asses off for years at school and careers?

If she could be an Other and then be a familiar, couldn’t she just be Lucy’s friend forever?  Sleepovers every night?  Visiting Avery and helping Avery find some girl that was her type?  Helping with practice stuff?  Vicariously enjoying what Lucy enjoyed in work and love?  Rooting for her friends and supporting them?

Being a family with Lucy and Jas and Booker?

Except if she brought it up to Lucy, she was pretty sure her friend would flip out.  Which kind of made her want to cry, even though the tears weren’t readily available.

She’d thought she had found a way forward and she’d just hurt Lucy instead.  She was trying to focus on being the backup, on shouldering burdens and keeping things moving, and watching the flanks for other crap, because whatever decision she ended up making, she wanted to do that for Lucy.

She wanted to tell Lucy all about her morning and early afternoon, and hear about Lucy’s morning and early afternoon.  She wanted to help Lucy more with the Paul thing, which had exploded when she wasn’t there.

She wanted to help Avery but she felt even more gunshy about that after the Pam thing and the accusations she hadn’t been looking out, when she hadn’t even thought it was a thing to look out for.  Lucy had been right and Verona felt like crap, and it made it hard to interact with Avery because she didn’t want to do something wrong without realizing.

Which went back to the backup.  Getting the a-ok from the others and then interviewing the goblins, collecting three gifts.

She felt so frustrated, about everything, and it was worse because it felt like her life was becoming a shrinking box, and there was a clear way out of the box, and she wasn’t allowed to take it.

The frustration was worse because her freaking clothes didn’t fit, and her hair was hot, and the small of her back and her bra and her ass crack were all collecting sweat.  Her flip flops were wearing into the skin between her toes, but the ground was too hot to walk on, and it was supposed to get hotter this summer and how was she even going to juggle laundry for the next two weeks while her clothes arrived and she didn’t trust her diagrams quite enough to try warding off the heat because she’d tried with another top and reduced it to cinders and-

And kitty.

Kitty!

Verona perked up.  At one corner of her neighborhood, there was an empty lot that didn’t have a house in it, and it might’ve belonged to one of the neighbors, but for the time being it was something of an impromptu field and play area for younger kids in the neighborhood.  Older kids went to the ski hill when it wasn’t covered in snow, and there were a bunch of places to sit.

Those Verona’s age got the stink eye for being older kids among the younger ones in the empty lot, and for being kids while at the ski hill, if there were any teenagers there.

Jeremy from her class was in the empty lot, and he was sitting in the grass, a few feet away from a kitty.  A juvenile cat, with a black face and light brown fur that formed wisps all around it.  Fluffy.

She watched from a distance, venturing forward a few steps at a time, while not stepping onto the lot.

Jeremy had a plastic bag beside him, and was cranking at something.  The kitty kept tilting its head one way or the other.

Verona stepped to one side to get a better view of what Jeremy was doing, and he saw her.  He waved her over.

She approached carefully, so as not to spook the kitty, crouching down about ten feet from the little critter and Jeremy.  It looked like a can of cat food, and he had a cheap can opener that seemed to need a few passes at each part of the can to open it up.

“Do you know her?” Jeremy asked.

Verona wasn’t sure if he was talking to the kitty about her or her about the kitty.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before,” she admitted.

“Where’d you come from, beautiful?” Jeremy asked.  He got the can open, bending the lid back rather than actually removing it.  He made a face at the smell, then used a plastic spoon to get some out and offer it to the kitty.

The kitty gratefully accepted.

“Woohoo,” he breathed.  “She likes it.”

“Good for you both,” Verona murmured.

Jeremy smiled.  He was a bit gawky, like he hadn’t grown into himself yet, and like her, pretty much every inch of his clothes was damp with sweat or humidity.

He still wore it better, in Verona’s opinion.  No bra outline standing out in relief.  He just had a guy chest.  He’d pushed his hair back out of the way – it was dark and long on top and very short at the sides and back.  Her hair was probably scruffier than the stray cat’s.  She’d trimmed it to have a shape and there was zero chance it was holding that shape.

“How do you like this stuff, huh?” Jeremy asked the cat.  He offered the spoon at the same time he reached out to pet it with his other hand.  It ventured closer to the partially open can, which let him pet it.  “It smells so bad.”

“It probably smells amazing to a cat nose,” Verona said.

“Do you have one?” Jeremy asked.

“My dad says he’s allergic.”

“Would you if you could?” he asked.

Verona nodded with emphasis.

“Me too,” he said.

They sat there in the grass, while the cat ate.

“Got some on my hands.”

“I’ve got a water bottle I’ve drank from.  Can’t guarantee there isn’t a bit of my spit in there, though.”

“It’s gotta be better than this,” Jeremy said.

Verona gave him the bottle.  He seemed to use the bare minimum necessary to get his hand wet and wipe it off.  She gave him the last napkin she had from her lunch, as well.

She wondered how he’d take a really bad pick up line?

If you don’t mind my spit, how’d you like to swap spit?  Just for practice, no strings attached.  Because I’m curious, and you’re kind of cute in a weird way.

Not that she’d actually ever say something like that.

She poured a bit of water into her cupped hand, and held it out for the kitty.  After a tentative first sniff, it went for it, drinking greedily.  Verona refilled a few times, squinting through the sunlight.

She pet it, and it was soft as heck.  It was also warm to the touch.  Probably overheated.  It needed a groomer to cut all that extra hair off, pretty as it was.

“Scoot over one foot to your left, Jeremy?” she asked.  “Not- left.  Come on.  You’re an artist.  You should know left from right.”

“Is that really an artist thing?” he asked.  “Also, you knew I’m an artist?”

“Yeah,” she said.  “Look, see, now you’re giving shade for the kitty.”

“Bit of shade for you too if I just, uh…” He sat up a bit, kneeling in the grass, his butt not touching his calves, and put his hand over his head.  The hand just barely blocked the sun from shining in her eyes.  He adjusted a bit.

“You might get too tired, doing that,” she said.

“I know, but it’s kind of worth it, right?”

“I’m not complaining,” she said.  “Thanks.”

“Hi, by the way,” he told her.

“Hi,” she said.  Why’d he have to go and make it awkward?

“Out enjoying the nice weather?”

“I’d rather it was winter,” she said, combing the cat with her nails.  “Cold weather, blankets, sweaters, the comfort food is better and doesn’t make my teeth hurt like cold stuff does.”

“Cavities or something?”

“Nah, I’ve had the issue since I was a kid,” she said.  “You don’t have sensitive teeth, kitty.  You were deprived, weren’t you?  Poor kitty.”

“If it’s any consolation, you definitely look like someone that’s in their element in warm weather,” Jeremy said.

She made a face, looking at him.

“Was that cringe?” he asked.

“If I had to rate it, I’d rate it kind of smooth, actually.  Eight out of ten, in my books, as compliment delivery.  And I’d rate it two out of ten on the honesty scale, but thank you for trying.”

“I wasn’t lying.”

“I’m-”

A herd of kids were making their way onto the lot, including the mom from the wavy tree dance studio and her triplets, all aged five to nine or so.  They were dragging this giant plastic mat covered in circles of different colors.

Verona tried to shield the kitty from view, moving around until she was beside Jeremy, her back to the kids, but it was too late.  Squealing and cheering, they came running over.

The kitty bailed.  Smart.  Some of the kids gave chase, until they were called back by their parents or the instructor.

“Well, she ate most of it,” Jeremy said.  “Two dollars and ninety-five cents well spent.”

“It was nice of you,” Verona said, standing up, and picking up her bag so it wouldn’t get kicked by kids.  That would be bad, especially with a ‘firecracker with extra fire and extra crack’ and a ‘stankbomb’ in the one pocket.  And the flesh-thorn thing.

“Got any plans for the day?” Jeremy asked.

Verona huffed out a breath, mostly from the heat and lingering frustration, her one hand closed in a fist.  “Nothing explicit, but I want to check in with my friends.  We lost track of time last night and it was two in the morning when we realized.  They’re grounded.”

“Oh man.  That sucks.  But I’m also kind of glad?”

“Well then you’re a jerk.”

“It’s kind of hard to talk to you when you’re always a duo or a trio.  I know, uh, you voted for me in the app thing.”

That app was the worst.

“You’ve got an expression on your face like that’s the last thing you ever wanted to hear,” Jeremy said.  “Did I misunderstand?  Because if it was a pity thing…”

“It wasn’t a pity thing, explicitly.  If I was going to do a pity thing it would’ve been for Gabe, specifically, but…”

“Who?”

She blinked twice.  The heat was baking her brain.

She waved him off.  “You don’t know him, I don’t think.  Doesn’t really matter as far as this conversation goes.”

“I’m glad it’s not a pity thing and I’m also really confused.”

“You’re cool.  If I was going to have a boyfriend, you’d be the first or second person I’d think of.”

“Who’s the other?” Jeremy asked.

“I voted for Wallace.  Don’t tell him, though.”

Jeremy shook his head.  “Nah.  Interesting though.  I’m getting a better understanding of you, I guess.”

“I gotta figure some stuff out first.  Might be a lot of figuring,” she admitted.

“But you would pick me, if you had to pick someone?” he asked.  “And there’s a chance you could tap me on the shoulder sometime and ask to do a date type of thing?”

“Small, small chance.  I don’t really get dating.  Sorry.”

“But it would be me?” he asked.  He seemed like his ego had inflated about ten times.

She shrugged.  “Yeah.”

“Cool.  Awesome.  Kind of glad we did the Class Ranker thing.  Even if I felt bad for some of the others.  Half the guys got no votes at all, and Lucy…”

Verona sighed.

She was worried about Lucy.

“That part sucked a bit.”

“Speaking of, I’m going to go check on my friends, I think,” Verona said.

“Cool,” he said.  “If I run into the kitty again, should I bring her by?”

“Maybe.”

“It won’t bother your dad if I do?”

“I don’t really care if it does.”

“Ah, that type of dynamic, then?”

She shrugged.

“Cool.  Well, see you later.”

“Later.”

Things had been nice until the weirdness with expectations and roles and boyfriend girlfriend stuff, but at the very least, it didn’t feel frustrating in exactly the same way as it had before.

She made her way to her house, and let herself inside.  The interior was dark and cool, with the air conditioner’s rumble loud but not obtrusive.  White noise filling the space.

Fist still closed, she made her way upstairs.

“Verona!” her dad called out.

She passed her own room, and ventured into the doorway of his room, standing there.  He lay in bed, wearing an undershirt, blanket draped over his lap for modesty.  Even with the air conditioner in the stairwell, he had a bit of a sheen of sweat on his face.

“Have you had lunch?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“I was going to ask if you could make me something while you were at it.  Oh well.”

She shrugged.

“Want to come in?  Lie next to me, watch a movie, have a daddy-daughter day?”

“I was stopping in to charge my phone a bit, drop stuff off, and change.”

“After you’re done changing, we could watch a movie.  Order pizza in a few hours…”

He tried to make it tantalizing.  And the ease of pizza was tantalizing in its own way.  Her stomach, though, felt heavy with lunch.  She didn’t need much food to keep herself going, and it wasn’t like she was in the middle of a growth spurt.

“I’m going to go do the stuff,” she said.

“Think about it!”

She entered her room, and only when she was at her desk did she open her fist.

In the process of petting the stray cat, she’d collected hairs.

She had other things she’d collected.  A little slip of vellum.  Skin with a silvery tint to it.

She’d put it in a clear resealable bag, and when she’d done so, she’d noticed the dust accumulating in the corner.

She had another, the slip of paper Avery had gotten, also in a bag.

She investigated as best as she could, and there was no difference in the consistency, color, or properties of the dust.

She texted her friends.

I want to do some faerie related practice.  Transformation.  I’ve got some glamour-breaking stuff from goblins, plus more stuff.  Would drop in to see you.  Have info.  This doesn’t feel like a trap but am open to input, can give more details.

Avery’s reply was immediate.

Lucy’s took another ten minutes.  Verona spent those ten minutes changing clothes and getting her notebooks sorted out.

Lucy’s response was brief.

Can’t really talk atm.  Check in regularly, plz?  Keep careful notes?  If I don’t hear from you at least every 30 min, I’m going emergency mode.

Verona sent her confirmation.

Then, shaking as much of the stray glamour from the vellum as she could, she did a little test on the shirt she’d just pulled off, trying to adjust the dimensions and scale.  Anything funky?  Weird?

No?

What kind of trap would this be?  Was it related to the vellum and the source of the vellum?

She used the dust from Avery’s thing first, picking up the cat hair, and then putting it against her own hair.  Twist, roll, spread, extend.  Twist, roll, spread, extend.  Slight color change to darken it.  Twist, roll…

Weaving it in.  Twisting it in, until the smudge of hair blacker than her own extended over most of her head, and a pass of her hand could spread it out to the back of her head.

The bones were harder.  She kneaded those, to change direction and shape.  With the cat hair in the mix, all she really had to do was fight to control the texture and color.  The rest came pretty easily, as the glamour tried to take on and impart cat properties.

Her fingernails raked against her flesh digging in like they were digging into clay.  Claw away, press in, condense.

I am a little cat.  I am a dense, lithe form.  I am beautiful.

It was nice.  Freeing.

A bit of a break from the hassle of her regular body.  A full body massage, and a body that felt nice to wear.

I am a tiny predator.  I am related to humans but not confined by that relation.

The cat walks alone.

Her fingers dug into her skull, opening up the ear, large and wide.  A moment later, she felt the rustling and heard the footsteps.

She hid.

There was a sharp knock at her door, followed by it opening a second later.

“Verona?” her dad asked.

He stepped away, leaving her door to swing open wide.  He called downstairs.  “Verona!”

Verona licked and kneaded at herself to reduce her form down further.

“Oh my gawd!”

Six year old Kerry Kelly was ten times her size.  Verona could feel the footsteps rattle the ground as the kid charged toward her.  She ducked away and around behind the couch.

The entire couch, which might as well have been the Kennet Arena, for scale, slid two inches closer to the wall as Kerry threw herself at it, clambering over to see behind.

“Did we get a cat?  Why didn’t we get a dog?  Is the cat ours?” Kerry asked.

“There’s a cat?” Declan asked.

“It’s a kitten!  Black with a white belly!”

Verona had slipped into the house, using the door that was left open because apparently this was a house with twenty people in it and no air conditioning.  She’d gone looking for Avery and found chaos instead.  She darted left, and Kerry moved to cut her off, the entire couch sliding again.  A practical mountain moving within inches of Verona.

Kerry’s voice became shrill and unintelligible.  Declan’s footsteps were audible too, something clattering violently and sharply as he tossed it onto a table.

Verona reversed direction, slipping into… dining room.

There were three people in the dining room.  Mostly adult or adult-ish.

I was joking when I thought this house had twenty people in it. 

What is this crap?

“Who- Kerry!  Did you bring the cat inside!?”

“No!  Where is it?  Oh my god, kitty kitty, don’t go outside!  Stay in!”

“Mom, close the door!”

The ground thundered with kid footsteps.  The adults, even though they were massive, were somehow gentler.

Verona checked outside.  No Avery.

Kitchen, adjacent to dining room.

Two more people?

This is my hell.  What are these people?

“Get it into the kitchen and close the door behind it!” Declan called out.

A distant door slammed.

Cutting off escape routes.

Verona reversed direction.  Her body was lithe, agile, quick to react.  She was a coiled spring and she could go anywhere.

Mostly she wanted to get away from the kids.  She had to get to Avery and distract.

Her eyes refocused, and the side-to-side movements of the kids became clearer, up-down movements and planes of vision a little blurrier.  Her Sight brought things out even more.

She’d wanted to use her Sight more, but if she got to the point it was always on, Lucy would start to catch on, then Lucy would worry, and Verona didn’t want to add to Lucy’s worries.

She ran around the kid.  Off to the side, with a grind and a rumble, and faint metal-on-metal squeaks, the sliding glass door closed.  Another door slammed.  The front door.

All-in, now, Verona.

If that little kid grabs or hugs you with any strength at all, it’s going to spoil the glamour and you’re going to be a thirteen year old girl in the middle of their living room, and they are going to be very confused.

She had to get upstairs.  but for now- maybe if she got up?

There was an armchair.

And in that armchair, she realized as she bounded up, there was a man, so still her eyes hadn’t registered it.  It was all she could do to avoid springing away in the same way she might if she had jumped onto a hot stove, legs and tail splayed.

“Unf,” the man mumbled.

Oh, this was Grumble.

Hi Grumble.

He moved hands nearly as big as she was closer to her, gently and cautiously.

And, Verona noted, the kids weren’t storming toward her anymore.

“Grumble’s got him,” Declan said.

Hands, stiff and slow moving, pawed at her with less manual dexterity than her own paws offered.

Being stroked felt nice.  Weird but nice.

Kids hovered.  Their faces were huge.

“We can’t keep him, no Declan,” the dad was saying.  “If we add a pet this house might collapse from the added stress.  Besides, your mother isn’t home.”

Verona settled down, curling up a bit.  Kerry cooed and reached over the arm of the armchair.

“She trusts us!” Kerry said.

I do not.  I barely trust myself.

“She’s lying down.  Oh, are you sure we can’t keep her?”

“Him!” Declan said.

“It’s a her!”

Kerry turned away from the chair to continue the argument and plead with her dad, sometimes in the same sentence.

“Just what we need, hm?” the old man said, his voice a coarse creak of a sound.  “A bit more liveliness in this house?  More energy?  At least you can settle down in all this bustle, hmm?”

This is a feint.  Trickery, Verona silently pledged.  I am a badass predator.  I am laser-focused on my prize and my prize is talking shop with Avery.

The kids were sufficiently distracted.  Avery stood in the stairwell, a smirk on her face.

Quietly, and with some care, she slipped down to the ground and raced to Avery, who scooped her up.  Verona immediately hid beneath the bottom end of Avery’s shirt.

“Where did she go!?”

Avery escaped into her room, closed the door behind her, and sat down at her desk.  Homework was spread out in front of her.

“Infiltration successful,” Verona said.

“Having fun?” Avery asked.

Yes.

“Well, I appreciate the visit.  Today was looking to be really dreary.  Nobody has any activities and I’m grounded for the weekend.  I’ve been in a funk, thinking about Reagan and the others.”

“I thought I’d look in.  Give some emotional support.  Backup.”

“The word of the week, huh?  Thanks.”

Verona made her way from Avery’s lap to the computer desk, stretching.  She liked these muscles, and she liked how they worked.  Lots of explosive, easy power.  The tiredness sat differently though, walking from her place to Avery’s, as contrasted with the walk from downtown to her house.

“Well,” Verona said, “We can talk about that.  That’s an option, I don’t know what to say or do, but I can listen.  Or we can talk about my interview with the goblins, and the gifts.”

“Gifts?”

“Three gifts.  I thought we’d each take one, trade them between us.  There’s-”

Her ear twitched as she heard incoming stomps.  Not kid stomps.

She hid, ducking down to Avery’s lap.

The door banged open.

“Avery.”

“Knock, Sheridan.”

“It’s my room too.  What are you doing that you care so much about privacy?  Looking at porn?”

“This is homework, Sheridan.  Ever hear of it?  You kind of have to do it to succeed at school.  Ever hear of that?”

“Kerry’s going to have a full-on meltdown if we can’t find this cat that got into the house.”

“Good luck with that.  I’m grounded, I can’t leave my room.”

“Yeah, well thanks.  Stand by for one six year old freaking the fuck out.”

“Standing by.”

The door banged shut.

Avery sighed.

The hallway was filled with the stomps of -Verona counted- two kids.  The younger ones.  And one adult-ish person.

“I don’t know how you manage this,” Verona murmured, standing up so her back legs were on Avery’s thighs and the front ones were on the desk.  She surveyed the homework.  “Or this.”

“I don’t know how you manage your dad,” Avery said.

“You learn,” Verona said.

“Can you learn to not put your head directly in the way?  Distract me, please.”

“Do you want to talk goblin interview, gifts, or two weird little things that I think might be pertinent to the investigation.  Maybe clues or suspicions?”

“That last one.  Please, yes, I need a win right now, or… a hint of a possible win.”

“Okay, but you gotta give me pets.”

“I was wondering, would that be weird?  Because-”

“Pets.”

“Okay.”

Avery’s fingernails were frustratingly short, probably because of the sports thing, but it was still nice.  Verona closed her eyes, and talked, ears peeled for more Kelly family members tearing their way into the room.

“Okay, well, it came up during the interview, when they mentioned…”

Getting into Lucy’s house was harder.  It wasn’t air conditioned, but it was properly screened in, with no doors left open or anything.  The car went in the garage, so it was hard to tell if they were home, and window positioning made it tricky to tell where they were in the home.

Verona leaped from windowsill to windowsill to get to Lucy’s window.

Lucy wasn’t home.  A bit more exploration confirmed it.

She settled in among the plants outside one window, which provided some shade, and baked a bit in the sun.  There were a few times bugs got close to her, and she batted at them, testing her paw-eye coordination.

It was hard to be a cat and not to feel very good at everything that thousands of years of evolution had honed cats into being.

How were humans so bad at being humans, by that same measure?

Sick frigging joke, it was.

It took maybe an hour for Lucy to turn up.  Verona could sense the movements and the shuffling as doors were firmly closed, and someone -Lucy- jogged up stairs.

She meowed loudly, then meowed again, because it was fun to try the variations.  It felt a lot more like her vocals were attached to the emotional part of her ‘heart’.  She played with it again, for a third meow.

Lucy popped the window open.

“You’re ridiculous.”

Verona meowed once more.

Lucy pressed a finger to her lips, pointing.

Just two rooms over, a light flicked on.

Lucy picked her up, holding her all wrong, and carried her over to the bed.  Then she settled in, moving blankets to provide visual cover in case Jasmine came in.

Then she stepped out of the room.

Verona tested her hand-eye coordination more, targeting a stray thread sticking out from the sheet.

A minute passed before Lucy returned, with some snacks.  She held her finger to her lips again.

“Had my counseling appointment,” Lucy murmured.  “Kinda really wish I didn’t have to explain things from the beginning.  It’s exhausting, and kind of disheartening.  Because it makes me feel like I’m overdramatizing when I’m not even sure if the things I’m complaining about happened.  But then, in the big picture… there’s something going on, right?”

Verona rolled over onto her back, and used all four paws to maneuver Lucy’s hand, bringing it to her side.

“I kind of worry that I can explain for twenty two-hour sessions that are really expensive for my mom, and this guy might not ever get what I’m talking about, y’know?”

Lucy’s nails were longer, and did a good job of parting fur and reaching skin beneath.  They traced their way to Verona’s belly.

“Ah, not there,” Verona said, quiet.  Belly felt vulnerable and weird.  She added, quiet, “You know, I can’t say I get it, but I’ve been paying attention all along, so if you want to talk more, or figure out what to say next time, I can help.”

“Okay,” Lucy said, her head resting on her folded-up arm, her other arm reaching down and over to find a rhythm with the scratches and pets.  “I was thinking you’d want to talk practice.”

“I really really do, but I want to hear you out more.  Really.”

“I talked to Reagan,” Lucy said.

“I wanted to talk about the you thing.”

“I want to talk about this too.  I need to get this off my chest,” Lucy said.

“But…”

What topsy-turvy world was this, when she was the one arguing with Lucy about focusing on the practice stuff?

She held her tongue.

“It took her a while to get back to her place after.  The winner, the sobbing girl, took seven parts from each of the seven contestants.  Reagan isn’t in good shape.  She’s blind, and she’s convinced she’s going to die, and the other six aren’t much better off.  The next night is tomorrow.”

Verona licked Lucy’s wrist.  Sweat was very salty.

“I was thinking,” Lucy said.  “I’d hate myself for a long time if I let that happen without fighting it.  Or at least discussing fighting it.”

“You want to interfere?” Verona asked.

“Do you think you could use that body of yours to find a prey animal for Avery’s ritual?  Virgin?  Never tasted or drawn blood?  Or…”

Lucy’s voice, so soft it was on the cusp of the words not coming out, cracked a bit.

“Or?” Verona asked, tilting her head to better see Lucy with the weird horizontal emphasis of her eyes.

“Or summon up some really good arguments why we shouldn’t?  Or maybe do both Avery and I a huge favor and be a stubborn jerk who says no and refuses to budge on the subject?”

“I’ll think about arguments, but… I worry if I do argue about it, we’ll be having this discussion again in a few days.  Then a few days after that.  For how long?  Until we’re okay with it?”

“You want to interfere?”

For you two, more than for the victims.  Maybe that makes me a sociopath.

“I want to interfere.  So let’s start thinking about how and why, and going over everything about the Forest Ribbon Trail.  We’ll need to bring Avery into this discussion.”

Lucy’s expression had changed by fractions.  Most who saw and knew Lucy tended to dismiss her as having an angry expression all the time, but it really wasn’t that.  There were signs, and Verona had known her friend for long enough to read a slight rise of the eyebrows as fear.  A press of the lips together as determination.

“I’m going to call Avery.  Her parents aren’t watching her phone, right?”

“Right,” Verona confirmed.

Probably, hopefully, Lucy felt better taking this route.  More scared but better.

The trail would be a way to get where they needed to be, if everything went right.

The Hungry Choir Ritual would very likely get messy, if they intervened again.

Lucy feeling better now was great.  That feeling having any permanence at all depended on them navigating a whole lot of craziness in a very short span of time.

[2.7 Spoilers] Location Diary

Stolen Away – 2.8

Lucy

Last Thursday – Location Diary


Aunt Heather laughed, and Aunt Heather’s volume control knob was a bit higher than most people’s at the best of times.  She’d had a few glasses of wine tonight, and it was a louder and longer laugh than before.

“Don’t laugh!” Lucy protested, her attention divided between the screen and her aunt.  “Why would you laugh?  How can you laugh?”

On the television, Chloe was taking a machete to The Headcase.  Lucy leaned forward.  Six minute uninterrupted final encounter.  If there were any cuts, they were cleverly disguised.

“I’m not laughing at the movie, it’s you.”

Hurt, bewildered, and confused, Lucy looked at Aunt Heather, who sat sideways in an armchair.  There was a fond smile on her Aunt’s face, which didn’t line up with the comment.

“You jump every time she does something,” Aunt Heather said.

Oh.  Had she?  The feeling of being both stung and shaken dropped away.  Mostly.

Lucy tried to refocus on the film’s finale.  The moment had pulled her out of it.

Chloe hacked the killer in the groin with the machete, bringing him to his knees, pulled it out, then swung the machete at the box that encased the killer’s head, she pulled it free and began hacking, chopping the box to pieces.

“I should thank you,” Chloe told the killer, panting for breath.

The killer lunged, grabbing her by the wrist before the machete could come down again.

Lucy’s leg jerked, as she willed Chloe to jump back, to react.

Damn.  Her aunt was right.  Aunt Heather met her eyes, and then laughed at the annoyed expression on her face.  Ruining the whole feel of the conclusion.

Lucy had made a point of watching this film once a year for the last four years.  Every year she’d had a different take on it.  Year one, it had been about realizing that there were patterns in movies like this, and that those patterns could be played with.  Year two, it had been actually getting what had been going on with Christopher.  Year three it had been about deciding why she liked certain things in movies and films, and the start of her own list of rules about movies and television shows.  Why she liked what she did, what she accepted, and what she didn’t.  If a female character got sexually assaulted, a male character of roughly equivalent status needed to lose his dangle and/or tackle.

This movie, as much as it was in her top five, and as much as it had been the origin of that rule, only got a C for that.  The killer died too soon after.  There had to be repercussions.  Emotional weight.  It had to be fair, or more than.  That was the only way some people would get it.

Chloe tore off the remains of the box from Headcase’s head, revealing his face.  Tim.  He shielded his face, cringing.  The calculating monster truly defenseless for the first time.  Chloe embedded the machete in his skull.

Lucy’s arm twitched.  Aunt Heather chuckled.

“I’m not scared or anything.  I’m really into it,” Lucy said.

Aunt Heather smiled and nodded.  “Sure.”

Lucy, sitting on cushions at the base of the couch, twisted around to look at her mom.  “Mom-”

Her mom was looking at a tablet.

“You’re not even watching!” Lucy protested.

“I’m keeping half an eye on the screen,” her mom said, two eyes on the tablet.

“I told you to put that away.  Come on, please?  It’s disrespectful, if I want to show you a movie I love and you aren’t even giving it a chance.”

“I’m- fine.  Sorry.  I did warn you this wasn’t my kind of movie.”

“Maybe it could be, if you gave it a chance.  It’s a good movie, with good critic reviews, some really great cinematography and effects across long shots, solid action.”

Second to last scene of the movie.  Kai, barely alive, limping up, and looking down on the killer’s body, picking up the machete, and proceeding to methodically take it to pieces.

“I hope you’re okay with the decision we made,” Chloe told Kai.  “No getting our heads back on our original bodies now.”

“Perfectly okay,” Kai said, a look of determination on his face.  He held his injured side as he worked his way to his feet.

“I don’t know who these characters are,” Lucy’s mom said.

Lucy groaned.  “Remember Christopher from the start of the movie?”

“Barely.”

“Or Katie?”

“Was that the girl with black hair?”

Lucy groaned, getting up from her seat.

“Want me to pause it?” her mom asked.

“It’s the last scene, besides the after-credits one,” Lucy said, stretching.  She picked up the empty snack plate and bowl from the coffee table, and carried it over to the kitchen.  “Is it still okay if I go out?”

“Hold on, hold on,” her mom said, looking at the tablet.

Lucy put her hands on her hips, hips askew, giving her mom her best glare.

“She’s mad,” Aunt Heather said, a little less amused than before.

Lucy’s mom glanced back at Lucy.  “Hold on.”

Lucy shifted her weight to her other foot, her hips switching to the opposite angle.  She dialed up the glare.

The speakers of the tablet computer weren’t very good, and the ‘ringing phone’ sound was abrasive.

“Please don’t tell me this is Pa-”

The tablet display switched from a mostly-white screen to a video stream.

“Hello!  Hello, can you hear me?”

“Hello!” Aunt Heather called out, not moving from her spot.

“Hi, Auntie!  It was nice seeing you when you stopped by.  Hi mom.”

“Hi Booker.”

Lucy relented, hands dropping from her hips.  The frustrated, angry feeling went away.  Mostly.

“How are you doing tonight?”

“We’re managing,” Lucy’s mom said.  “We just finished movie night.  Lucy’s pick tonight.  I’ve been trying to get this program working for most of the film, and she’s made it clear I should have been watching.”

“My fault!” Booker told Lucy.  “Hey, you there, baby sis?”

Lucy approached the couch, putting both hands on the armrest to lean forward.  Her mom tilted the tablet up a bit.  “Hi.”

Booker was in his dorm room, apparently.  He had music posters and art on his wall, like Lucy had done with two of hers, even though his were bigger, with more of a theme running through them.  The place looked small, with a bed, bedside table, bathroom, and door out all visible within the camera’s frame.

Booker’s hair was long, curly, intentionally messy, and draped halfway down his chest.  In contrast, he’d put a lot of attention into trimming his eyebrows, the pencil mustache at his upper lip, and the beard that was kept to the very end of his chin.  In contrast to the attention and effort giving to what she praisingly thought of as Booker’s ‘mane’, or his facial hair, he wore a wrinkled university tee.

He looked so good.  Healthy, comfortable.  Himself.

There was a slight delay before he spoke.  Faint audio lag.  “Hey, don’t blame mom too much, okay?  I gave her bad instructions for the download, and it took me too long to catch on.”

“If you’re going into anything political, you’re going to have to get better at communicating than that.”

“Haha, ouch.  I know the schedule for movie nights, unless you guys have changed it-”

“It’s a little shaky in recent months,” Lucy’s mom said.  “My work schedule.”

“Mine too.  Sorry Lucy, I’ve got a shift later tonight, ten to midnight, and then I’ve got an activity center thing at the crack of dawn tomorrow.  So this will have to be a short conversation.”

“That’s okay.  I was going to go hang out with my friends, squeeze something in before a late curfew if I could.  Part of the deal I struck with mom.”

“About that- can we talk in private?”

Lucy looked at her mom, who held up the tablet.  Lucy took it, then headed for the stairs.

“She put you up to this, huh?” Lucy asked, once they were mostly out of earshot.

“She mentioned stuff.  I said I wished I could be there, but I can’t, so this is a bit of a compromise,” Booker said.

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “I don’t think she knows what to do with me.”

In the background, a girl let herself in, walking very carefully with two mugs.  She was petite, wearing an oversized university hoodie that made her look smaller.  White, with bleached hair.  She navigated the various things in the rather confined room.

Lucy felt impatient.  This call was supposed to be short, she and Booker had places to go, and this was an interruption when time was limited.

The girl placed both mugs on Booker’s desk, then gave him a kiss on the side of the head, hugging Booker around the shoulders, compressing his hair.  She was short enough that standing behind a sitting Booker, their shoulders were roughly level.

“Sorry to interrupt, but there’s no way we’re getting through work tonight without caffeine,” the girl said.  “Hi.”

“Hi,” Lucy said, wary.

“This is Alyssa,” Booker said.  He rubbed Alyssa’s arm at his shoulder.  “She’ll be coming with me to visit this summer.”

“I’m looking forward to the visit,” Lucy said, picking her words carefully.

“Me too,” Alyssa said.  “I’m looking forward to seeing where Booker grew up.”

“It’s pretty boring, I keep telling her,” Booker said.  He smiled, looking at Lucy, “but some of my favorite people are there.”

“Where are you from?” Lucy asked, trying to be nice, still feeling like the conversation with Booker was being intruded on.

“Ottawa.  Ottawa’s boring.”

“It’s not Kennet boring,” Booker said.

“So you keep saying.  Listen, I don’t want to get in the way, so I’m going to do laundry.  Does your uniform need a clean?”

“No, but uh, can you throw my clothes from the hamper in?  I want to dress nice for the parents tomorrow.”

“Will do.  Bye, Lucy.  I look forward to getting to know you.”

“Bye.”

There was a bit of commotion as Alyssa collected the clothes from the hamper. It looked like it attached to a metal rack with hooks and rods that kept the mouth of the bag open, but it was a struggle with the lid and everything.  Booker rose from his seat and had crawled halfway across the bed to get past Alyssa to the hamper when Alyssa finally got it free.  She shot them both a victorious, embarrassed smile and then carried the bag out of view.

Booker sat back down.  “What were we talking about?”

“I don’t remember, exactly.”

“I can see your wall.  Show me?”

Lucy hit the button on the tablet to use the other camera, and showed Booker her wall, with all the collected album art, posters, and promotional material.

“You gotta keep sending me your favorites.”

“I will.  There hasn’t been much since the experimental week.”

“Yeah.  I remember now, you said mom didn’t know what to do with you.”

Lucy sighed a bit.

Booker’s head turned.  Alyssa returned, ducking her head a bit, collected one of the two mugs, and jogged back out of frame.

“You’re really together.”  Lucy emphasized the word ‘together’.  “Enmeshed.  Doing each other’s laundry.”

“She’s got a roommate situation, so she’s been staying over.  But we can talk about that in a month or so, she’ll tell you.  I gotta admit, baby sister, I don’t know exactly what to say or do here, either.”

“Mom didn’t give you instructions?”

“No,” Booker said.  “I even did internet searches, looking for advice, trying to figure out how to approach this conversation.  I kept running into stuff more for white parents of white kids, preaching tolerance, acceptance.  It made it sound easy.  But I couldn’t find a good guide for when a son, daughter, student, or sibling is angry or hurting, possibly for very justifiable reasons.  How do you make that better?”

Lucy glanced at the window, checking for a certain cat, then settled on her bed.  She didn’t have an answer, or input.  She held the tablet with arms crossed, right hand at the upper left corner, left hand at the upper right, the bottom of the tablet dug into her stomach.  “It doesn’t have to be a pep talk.  It’s nice to talk to you.”

“Sure, we could make a regular thing of this,” Booker said.  He glanced to one side, seeming to consider something, and then said, “Ran into Paul, huh?”

“Yeah,” she said, her voice soft.

“I’ve been trying to forget about him.  Like, he left us, so why should I give him a second thought, right?  He hurt mom.  I think mom had the same mentality, trying to move on.  So it didn’t cross my mind that it might be any different for you, until mom reached out.”

“I don’t think she moved on.  In her head, logically, but her heart… it sucks, seeing it.”

“Oh yeah.  I’ve been wondering if I should have stuck around for a bit.  Postponed school, used the time to save up.”

“I’m not sure it would have helped any, and it would have hurt.”

“Yeah.  Maybe.”

“Yeah.”

“Talk to me, baby sis.  I only got the cliff notes.”

“It’s hard to explain,” Lucy told him.  It was.  She couldn’t lie, and there was so very, very little she was certain about when it came to this stuff.  She had to be so careful, and that was an additional obstacle when the conversation was already halting and hard.  “I don’t- I can’t move on, it feels like.  Sometimes little things happen and my brain sort of takes it up and won’t let them go.  Like they’re circling around in my head, and I wonder, interpret, cross-check against new things and ideas.  But there’s never a clear answer, I can’t take them from that part of my brain and put them down or leave them in the past.”

“Mom said you’re seeing someone now?  A therapist?”

“Therapist, counselor, or psychiatrist.  I’m not sure of the terms.  But even there, he asked a couple of questions about what I remembered about mom’s relationship with Paul, and what happened with mom’s relationship with dad.  Is that him trying to understand me better, or is it him gathering ammo?”

“Ammo?”

“When these types of things happen, not even with you or me or mom, but violence, or politicians saying something sketchy, or slipping in fourteen word headlines into government websites… if it gets any meaningful traction at all, there’s always people looking to defend them.  Always people out there looking to make us out to be the problem.  That guy committed a crime a decade ago.  That guy should have been more cooperative.  And if we try to be meek and easygoing and non-problematic then it feels like we’re playing into a long-term game where we don’t have teeth when it counts.  It doesn’t matter, anyway.  Because the people who want to find something will find something to point their fingers at, so long as it isn’t themselves.”

“I think it’s possible to be easygoing and have teeth when it counts.  It’s what I try for.”

Lucy’s fingers gripped the tablet harder, and it creaked a bit with the force of it.  She wanted to hug it, but then she couldn’t see Booker, and mostly she just really wanted to hug Booker right now, tight as could be.

“I think I’d rather have the teeth first, and be ready.  The people worth keeping can look past that and see the real me.”

“You’ve got those people?  Verona still around?”

Lucy nodded.  “And Avery.  New friend.  She was there, with Paul.  I was so worried she’d make a comment, like, wonder, was mom to blame?  But she’s met mom and mom’s never done anything even remotely unkind to her, so why would she think that, right?  I was so ready to go off on her, if she even hinted at it, but I guess thinking that way isn’t fair to her any more than a comment about mom would be.  And it’s like… I can’t even put it to rest?  It’s not even cathartic, because now there’s more, stirred up in my head.”

“I’m glad you’ve got friends.  It sounds a lot like you’re overly ‘ready’ for too many things all at once.  Paul, your friend.”

“Could be.”

“I wasn’t thinking seriously about all this until I was sixteen or so,” Booker said.  “I wish I had good advice.  It’s tough, being your age.  If you were a little older, I’d tell you to go find the parties.  Network.  There’s guys as young as fourteen or fifteen who hang out, drink, mess around.  There’s not much to do in Kennet except that, or being off on your own, doing your own thing.  I know telling you to go drink beers at your age is really terrible advice, but I think it’s so important that you get out there, make your face known, make friends, find a boyfriend, if you’re into boys-”

“Um, yeah.”

“-Cool.  Look, be goofy, be happy, be sad with these people around your age.  Go drink a beer with them, if that’s what it takes to form those relationships.  Be thirteen, and build something better while you’re at it.”

“Man, if mom heard you giving this advice, she might uninstall this app.”

“It’s what I had to do, baby sis.  It’s the nature of a town like ours.  I wasn’t into it at first, but I did forge some bonds, made friends I still kind of keep in touch with.  People I’ll go out to drink with when I visit with Alyssa in tow.”

“Mom was looking up how to deal with problem children on her computer.  A book showed up as a product she’d looked at on a site, even though she deleted the search history.  If I came home drunk or whatever, I think I’d only be reinforcing that take.”

“Don’t get drunk.  Save the stupid stuff for when you’re with people you trust, like Verona and your other friend.  When you’re with others, be sharp enough to notice the little things.  Trust your instincts, because if you spend enough time around them, some people will show off their assholes.  Protect yourself.  Use protection, if you’re doing anything.”

Lucy groaned.  “Ugh, no.  Don’t go there.”

“Gotta say it,” Booker said.  “Mom won’t, because she’s in a bit of denial about what it’s like there.  For the next few years, there’ll be drama, drinking, driving out to nearby towns or locations for something to do, more drinking, some drugs, and doing it like they’re trying to repopulate the species.  Find the good in there, and it’s a good enough distraction for the heaviest stuff.  Just make sure you come through it all with a net gain, and a minimum of long-term problems.”

“I’m not even really thinking about all of that.  There’s other, heavier stuff on my mind.”

“I think you should let yourself think about it.  It helps.  Really.  Some stuff only feels heavy because we get stuck out on our own, nothing to use as a measuring stick to figure out how big the problem in front of us is.  When we surround ourselves with people and experiences, it gets easier.  Get through the teen years, and you’ll find you have a bit more elbow room to do stuff that needs doing.”

Lucy looked out the window.  It was dark out.

“What if there’s heavy stuff now, that can’t wait?” she asked.

“Then call me.  Or talk to mom.”

“What if I can’t?” she asked.

“I think you’d be surprised at what we can handle.”

“But what if I really can’t, because sharing stuff would make everything worse?”  If bringing up the Choir and the Trail and a dead Beast could entangle them and pull them into all of this?

It was part of what nettled her about Avery getting involved with Pam like that.  Lucy had to be this careful, and Avery had let her guard down that much.

“I think,” Booker said.  He turned his head.  Alyssa was back, carrying a basket.  She seemed to drop it off and leave.  “If it comes down to what you were talking about… even if it’s a hard subject, like wondering about Paul, you can ask, and I can share my own thoughts, and we can work it out together.”

“Your thoughts?”

“What do you think happened, Lucy?” Booker asked.

“I think he’s racist.  He left us because his mom and sister pressured him, saying we weren’t his, we didn’t look like his.  I called him out on it, and he didn’t say no.  He couldn’t even let me have that certainty.”

It hurt, seeing the expression cross Booker’s face.  A reflection of emotions she’d felt, on a face she was fond of.

“Where did you get that idea?” Booker asked.

“Overheard stuff.  Bits of conversation with him and his family.  It’s the only thing that made sense to me.”

Booker nodded.  He rubbed at his forehead.  “Geez, sis.  How long have you been holding onto that one?”

“Since then.  Years.  Am I wrong?”

“No, baby sis.  No, you’re not.”

“But there’s nothing that-”

“Lucy.”

She stopped.

“I gotta admit, I haven’t really given this a lot of thought.  I try not to think about Paul, because it puts me in a bad mood after.  But I got fragments of ideas from some family members, people who kind of stayed friends with both Paul and mom for a while before they picked a side.  Enough I had a sense of it, even if I didn’t put it all together.  Yes.

“Yes?”

“Yes, you’re right.  Do you have any doubts?  Comments from aunts and uncles or friends that don’t line up with it?”

“I have doubts, yes… but nothing contradicts it.  It makes sense.  Paul’s face as I called him out on it was fitting if I was caught him dead in my sights, but-”

“No buts, Lucy.  That’s it.  Has to be.  Lines up too well.  There’s no way you can spend years trying to figure this out, I can spend years picking up on the little details, and both of us agree it fits perfectly, if it doesn’t fit.  Maybe there’s a bit more to it, like job stress or new house jitters, but… those things alone couldn’t be more than a small fraction of it.  His family was and is shitty, especially to us and to mom.  He didn’t stand up for her.”

Lucy’s eyes were moist.  Just hearing that… it was a bit like a deep-set, dark place inside her chest finally had a light shone in on it.  She wasn’t sure she loved what was there, but it was so much better than being in the dark.

She drew in a deep, shuddering breath, and that breath almost shook the moisture free from her eyes.

“Okay?” Booker asked.

Talking to him felt better than the therapy, which wasn’t all bad because it was a place to talk, at least, to vent.  She was pretty sure her therapist had gone off to have a stiff drink after dealing with her for two hours, but whatever.

“Okay,” she said.  “Thank you.  Then I guess all that’s left is to see if he takes something away from this, or if he’ll be a mama’s boy coward?”

“I guess.  Mama’s boy coward.  That’s a way to put it.  I’ll call again next week.  I really should be getting to work.  Alyssa’s in the doorway now, looking anxious.”

“Booker, um-” she jumped in.

“What?”

“Hypothetically, if there were seven or eight people in a lot of trouble, like, lives on the line, and you were in a position to maybe save them, but it was dangerous, or dangerous for a friend…” she started, and she trailed off.

“What’s this about?”

“Hypothetically.”

“This doesn’t sound hypothetical.  I need more details before I can say anything.”

“Maybe nevermind, then,” she said.  She’d let her guard down.

“What’s this about.  Are you in trouble?”

“Can I cash in all the credit I have with you, and ask you to not ask questions about this?  Trust me?  I’m just trying to figure out what to do.”

“Be safe.”

“But- what do I do?  What do they do?”

“These eight people?”

“Yeah.”

“You go to the police.  Or another higher authority.  Teachers, if this is at school.”

“What if they don’t care, or they don’t recognize the problem?  What if I really am one of the only people who can handle this?  What if I’m the police in this dynamic?”

“This sounds like a lot.  I know when I was at your school, there were some kids dealing and they were sloppy about it.  If it’s something like that…” he trailed off, leading, pressuring her to say yes or fill in the gap.

“What would you do?” she asked.

“I would say that you should ask yourself, very hard, if me and mom and Aunt Heather and Barbie and Ran got the full story, would we hug you and be proud, or would we be upset with you?”

Lucy nodded.

“Got me pretty worried now, Lucy.  Stay away from the dealers.”

“Okay then,” she said, trying to make it sound like she’d come to a decision.  “Thanks.  I don’t really have any interest in the drug stuff.  I want to help people who’re caught up in bad stuff.  It’s part of why I was out past curfew on Friday night.  Keeping an eye out, trying to figure some stuff out.”

“There have to be better people for that particular job.”

“There should be,” she said.  “I’ll try asking.”

“Okay,” he said.  “You should talk about this stuff with mom.”

She made a face.

“The-”

Someone talked from off-screen.  Alyssa again.  Lucy couldn’t make out the words, but she could hear the tone.

“Gotta get ready for work.  I’ll check in soon.”

She nodded.

Lots of checking in.  She had five appointments with the therapist this week, and it was supposed to taper off to two a week for a month, then one a week for the next month.  Then they’d reassess.

Checking in with mom, to reassure.

Aunt Heather swinging back by their place after doing her work thing earlier today, checking that things were okay.

Now Booker.

Booker hadn’t closed the video, and Lucy had a bit of a window into the life he was leading, as he got stuff together and got ready.

He returned to his desk to get the mug he’d barely touched, winked at her, then shut off the connection.

She missed him so badly.

She couldn’t help but resent Alyssa for butting in once or twice, and for… it was hard to articulate.  For being there?  Or not being there more?

Booker was beautiful, in so many ways.  He was cool, to the point Lucy kind of defined ‘cool’ with him in mind.  He was thoughtful and kind and smart and resilient.

Paul had left a hole in their lives by walking out.  Booker had kind of left a hole, albeit a healthier one she was on better terms with, in her heart when he’d gone off to school.  Seeing Booker get sorted out and talk about bus fare and grabbing a jacket because the temperature was supposed to drop was… it was nice.  That he was living what seemed to be a good life, and that he didn’t seem to be miserable.

It was hard not to think of him struggling with homework at the dinner table, sitting with mom and Paul.  But he didn’t look like he was struggling now, and that was a balm for Lucy’s soul, which felt a bit like it had been dragged over the rocks in recent days.

With Alyssa she felt… not jealousy.  But almost, kind of offended?  Like… Booker was all that, and as nice as Alyssa seemed to be, Lucy kind of felt like Booker deserved everything.

Lucy had to fight the urge to pick apart what little she’d seen of the girl, identifying flaws, and leveling a judgment on her.  She would have to be careful, she decided.  Because Booker obviously liked Alyssa, and it would be so very easy to be a bitch to the girl.

Lucy got her things together.  The temperature was supposed to drop, but she wasn’t sure if it was there yet, or if it would get there.

Her mom was doing the dishes, while Aunt Heather lounged on the couch, in her mom’s spot.

“Brought your tablet back.  Going out.”

“It’s already pretty late.”

“A bunch of people will be there.  We’ll have a chaperone, kind of.  I kind of explained to Booker, and I think I’m not doing anything that would make you regret letting me go, if I could explain.”

“Teenager stuff?” her mom asked.

“Some teenagers.  A lot of kids.  Some people who are I don’t even know how old.”

“I could come, then?” her mom asked, drying her hands.

“It would be… massively inconvenient and weird if you did,” Lucy said.  “You’d be in the way.  It’d be a disaster, probably.”

Her mom made a face.

Lucy made a pleading gesture.  “We made a deal.  I’m not grounded if I go to the therapy and stick to being my best self.  I had the session yesterday and one today, there’s more this week…”

“Going out at a late hour isn’t ‘not grounded’ territory.  Going out late is the kind of thing you get to do maybe if you haven’t been grounded and I can’t even imagine you doing something you’d get grounded for.”

“People are counting on me,” Lucy said, maintaining the pleading gesture.

“And you are counting on me to be a good mom.  I’m not sure being a good mom would involve letting you out at eight-thirty, with an insufficient answer about what you’re up to, and no firm promises that you’ll be back before curfew.”

I want to go, I want to help.  At the same time, I think more than anything, I’d be relieved if you grounded me and didn’t let me go.

I don’t want people to die.  But this is scary, and I’m not sure I’m one hundred percent okay after the first night with the Hungry Choir, or after hearing about the second.  Forty-nine body parts eaten by one person who shouldn’t have made it through the night.

“You’re keeping things very close to your chest, Lucy dear,” Aunt Heather said, her chin resting on the armrest of the couch.

“If I don’t go then Avery and Verona might, and they’ve promised to be better, but I’m still not one hundred percent sure they’d be as okay as if I was with them.  It’s a bit of a spiritual thing, and I don’t trust Verona to not get carried away, or Avery to not be a ditz.”

Her mom seemed on the fence.  “I’m not sure if I love the ‘spiritual’ part of that line of argument.”

“It’s good to explore that sort of thing, figure out what works for you,” Aunt Heather said.

“I’m kind of trying to,” Lucy said.  “Considering options.”

“Is this tied to the Wavy Tree dance studio?” Lucy’s mom asked.  “Yoga and… I don’t know?”

“Speaking as someone who has indulged in yoga and procrastinated on a new years resolution to be more consistent with it, I resent that implication,” Aunt Heather said, to Lucy’s mom.  To Lucy, she added, “I feel like I’m taking a small step toward my resolution, defending it.”

“There was actually something last Friday, where Melissa practically snapped her ankle off,” Lucy said.  “People were pretty shaken, I think.  Kind of why we lost track of everything.  We walked and talked and didn’t look at the time.”

“You did mention that,” Lucy’s mom said.  She made a face.  “I don’t know.”

“Booker was just suggesting I make some bonds.  He asked me, like, if you and he heard the full story, would you be proud or upset with me?  I don’t want to make you upset.  This isn’t that.  The Paul thing wasn’t something I wanted to repeat.  The break of curfew was a real accident.”

“There’s a chaperone?” her mom relented.

“Plan was that Verona’s bringing one.”

“Her dad?”

Lucy shook her head.

“And you’re not saying who.  Fine. You’ll stay in touch?  As much as you can?”

Lucy nodded.

“It’s a school night.  If you’re out too late, you’re grounded.  You’ve got school in the morning, I know you have that big project to work on for your world politics class…”

Lucy nodded, with more vigor.  “Absolutely.”

“Go.  Be good.  Don’t make me regret this.”

I hope I don’t.

Lucy hurried for the door before her mom could change her mind or Aunt Heather could say something that turned the situation sideways.

Verona was waiting outside with Avery as Lucy slipped out.  It was a bright evening outside, the kind of bright-dark that she might have associated with the sunset, except the hills and mountains to the west blocked any and all trace of pink and orange.  What light there was diffused across the night sky, making it an indigo blue with furrows of deeper, darker midnight blue running through it.

The temperature was similar.  Kennet was cooling off after a warm day, but the effect of the heat still lingered in the air, like she was in an area where a lot of people had been cooking on the barbecue, and the smell of meat had faded, but the smell of smoke hadn’t.

Verona carried a shoebox.  Avery carried a canvas grocery bag.

“All set?” Lucy asked.

Both girls nodded.

“Ready?”

“Is that the same as being set?” Verona asked.

“No,” Lucy said.  She was pretty sure Avery was on her wavelength.  She touched the shoebox.  “That’s more about being ready.”

She touched her own heart.  “This is where you figure out if you’re set.”

“I’m set,” Verona said.

Avery nodded.

Lucy was glad they didn’t ask her if she was the same.

“We should consult Miss.”

“Miss,” Verona called out.

“Miss,” Avery echoed.

Lucy paused, unsure if the Miss she’d finished a sentence with would count.  It apparently didn’t.  “Miss.”

“Yes?”

Miss leaned against a fence that bisected a double-wide driveway so two neighbors could use it, her back to them, only her shoulder and hip really visible.  As the three of them walked up to her, she began walking.

“We were thinking of using the Forest Ribbon Trail tonight, to get to the Hungry Choir’s ritual.  If that doesn’t work, we were thinking about some other options.  We wanted some advice.”

“Of course.”

“I brought a baby possum,” Verona said.  “Does that work for a prey animal?  It’s omnivorous.”

“If it’s virginal, it will suffice.  I’m afraid I don’t know what boon it would grant.”

“But it’ll grant one?” Avery asked.

“Yes.  Even if not virginal, it would, but the walk would be much greater.  Are you going tonight, Avery?”

“I was thinking of going myself,” Lucy said.  “Because I pushed for this.”

“No,” Avery said.

“Why not?” Lucy asked.

“Because I just spent the full day preparing myself?  Because I want to do this.  I want to help those people.”

“So do I.”

“If I may,” Miss interjected.

Both Lucy and Avery looked at her, the three of them following behind Miss as they walked south.

“This is an initiation ritual for Finders, those who walk the Paths.  There are many benefits, but you should be aware your first big ritual that isn’t the Awakening will shape who and what you are as a practitioner.  Many spirits and forces are out there, waiting and poised to see you identify yourselves as one thing or another.  If you do the Finder ritual, Lucy, then you may find it hard to shake the guise of being a Finder.”

“What I did with Paul wasn’t defining?”

“Not nearly so much as something of this magnitude.”

Lucy frowned.

“Please,” Avery said.  “I want to go places.  I want to do this.  I want this to be my thing.”

Lucy looked at Verona, who shrugged.

It made it easier to keep her mom’s faith, Lucy supposed.  If Avery thought she could handle it…

“We discussed it last night and earlier today,” Lucy told Miss.  “Can we walk you through it, raise a few questions?”

“Please do.”

“There’s apparently a cabin in the woods that gets used in Winter, to store emergency stuff and give people walking the trails a place to hole up.  It shouldn’t be occupied.”

“Saw it a few years ago, while playing a mega game of capture the flag,” Avery said.  “I asked and they explained what it was.  It should still be there.”

“I’m aware of it.  It’s not occupied.  Yes, quite fine.”

“Cool.  The second question would be if this works timeline-wise.  One of us does the Forest Ribbon Trail.”

“Me,” Avery said.

“Then there’s two options we’ve considered.  Does she finish, show up all hurt and everything, and then we run through the trail again using the woven object, right after?  The Trail grants a gift, and the woven object gives freer access through the Trail.  She can bring us?”

“That would be a task.  She could bring you, but she would be in dire shape.”

“Dire how?” Avery asked.

“Bleeding from nonspecific wounds, with no scars.  Insensate.  They would have to wrap you in ribbon again, while you were unwell, then carry you through.”

“And this situation, would I need to go to a hospital after?” Avery asked, a little more nervous.

“The hospital would find nothing explicitly wrong.  You’d recuperate in days, physically.”

“And mentally?” Verona asked.

“You would forget what you needed to forget, if you kept to the ritual.”

“That feels like a non-answer,” Avery said.

“I cannot share specifics.  Rest assured, if you keep to the terms of the ritual, you will be more or less fine in time.”

“Uh huh,” Avery said.

“Then option two, does she detour, which forbids future use of the trail, and can she find another way back?”

“Difficult to find her way back, but it remains an option.”

Verona said, “Lucy and I discussed blocking her connection to her mom long enough for her to get home.  I guess we’d be blocking Avery’s connection to her family.”

“The backlash would be notable, but you could navigate it, I’m sure.”

“Backlash like?” Avery asked.

“You could distribute it, so there is a high amount of attention over a long period of time, or dramatic, high-intensity attention for a brief period.  The latter would likely be forgotten very quickly, as innocence tends to shuck memories of the strange.”

“Then those are the two options we theorized about.  There’s some other questions, but… any ideas, Miss?” Lucy asked.  “You seem to know about this stuff.”

“There are possible ways forward that are simpler.”

They had reached the southwestern end of the town.  They continued into the woods.  Miss weaved through the trees with ease.  Lucy had to pick her footing.  Now that they were in foliage, pushing through pine needles and leafy branches, the lightness of the evening over Kennet wasn’t a thing.  It was darker, in the woods.

Lucy tried turning on her Sight to see if it helped with the view.  It didn’t, but she could See less branches on trees with watercolor staining on the trunks, and she couldn’t help feel like less branches were getting snagged on her clothes.

“What ways?” Avery asked.  “Simpler is good.”

“Simpler isn’t always good, but you’re right, it may be good here.  At the end of the Path, the Wolf waits.  You will find yourself talking to it.  If you do not step from the Path and take the detour, then you should negotiate with it.  Negotiate to be deposited at your destination, with everything you need, and postpone its time with you.  Tell it that it is to take you back here once you’ve run your errand.”

Avery looked at Verona, who nodded, then at Lucy, who did the same.

“This is spooky.  I’m not sure I would be doing this if it wasn’t for the Hungry Choir thing.”

“The benefits are subtle, but important.  This is a ritual for explorers, I thought it would suit you.  On completing the ritual, you will find more doors open to you, more paths, small ‘p’, and Paths, big ‘P’.  You will find lost things and Lost things, small and capital ‘L’, and the gift imparts power, often something meaningful of forgotten origin, or something original, of forgotten meaning.  Enough things have traveled specific courses to become important, that the courses were left behind, while the things have been lost by waysides.  This is one critical confluence of courses.”

“Still spooky,” Avery said.

“Yes it is.”

The cabin looked lonely in the woods.  It wasn’t big, barely more than a shack, with two windows; one on the north side, and one inset in the door, cracked.

A bit smaller than my bedroom, Lucy thought, as she circled around it.  She looked for traps using her Sight, and saw a few fragments of blades, and a bit of darkness.

Verona’s eyes flashed purple, as she joined Lucy in walking a circuit around the little building.  It looked like a park ranger or someone had taken pains to keep the ground clear around the cabin, raking up pine needles and clearing up vegetation.  It stood alone with no trees within about fifteen feet.  A ring of stones marked a campfire, but an orange sign with a weighted base had been set in the middle, sitting at an angle, warning about fire risk.

Lucy waved her arm through some spiderwebs that stretched between the cabin and the trees.

“What do we do when we’re there?” Avery asked, standing a couple of feet ahead of Miss, who had stopped at the denser edge of the trees at the clearing’s edge.

“I couldn’t say.”

“We were thinking, at the very least, we could counsel Reagan, observe, give her advice if it looks like it was actually impossible.  That’s fair and just, right?” Lucy asked.  “They don’t have enough eyes or depth perception to really win.  Reagan has no eyes left, six of the others have only one eye.  There should be a new contestant with two.  They were gouged, bled, they lost fingers, and a lot of them were already in rough shape.”

“It’s possible.  It wouldn’t be unjust, necessarily, but I don’t believe it would be just in the way that makes it easier to combat the choir.  I can’t say more, out of concern that I would be entangled.”

“What you said about justice, that’s like how goblins find it easier to hurt bad people?” Verona asked.

“Yes.  I should warn you, you would find yourself further entangled, going this course.”

“Like, absolutely, positively screwed entangled?” Avery asked.

“Far from absolutely.  Definitely not positive.  Screwed… hard to say.  Entangled?  Yes.  Most likely they would continue to be a nuisance, attempting to resist your involvement.  Being a referee is not the worst role you could take.”

Verona had stopped to talk to Miss.  Lucy continued to walk, not looking at the cabin or the clearing, but at the woods.  Avery approached the cabin, investigating the interior.

She stopped, staring at a collection of knives, razors, and fragments of steel in the branches.

She stared at it.

As she did, her eyes adjusted to the gloom.

Multiple eyes stared back at her.

“Miss?” she asked.

“Yes?”

“What you said about the Omens, how looking at them can bring them closer?  Looking with any type of Sight or Seeing runs the risk of someone seeing you back?”

“Is it the Augur?”

“I think so.  Or someone related to her.”

The leaves and branches rustled behind Lucy.  Miss walked up to the edge of the clearing nearest Lucy.

“What happened with Guilherme and her?”

“He caught her in the woods north of the city.  They talked, and I listened in.”

“What did they say?”

“That he would let her go if she forgot the particulars.  She eventually agreed.  He then said that if she returned, he would be a gracious host and give her what she came for.  If it was wrath in her heart, he would give her violence.  If it was greed, then he would give her what she coveted.  If it was envy, he would give her lessons and raise her up, so she had no desire to take what others had.  And so on.  She’s a knowledgeable enough practitioner to know he would follow through, and what that might mean, coming from a Faerie.”

“Kind of making me reflect even more on the gifts,” Verona said, as she walked up to where Lucy was, peering into the trees.

“She was told the same went for her family, or anyone else who came at her behest.  All they had to do was enter Kennet.  Most importantly, he communicated that our business here is being seen to by practitioners.”

“What happens next?” Lucy asked.

“She left.  She remembered enough to know she has to keep out of Kennet, and keep her eyes and spies out of the area.  Now she watches without crossing the town’s boundaries.”

“We’re outside the town?” Lucy asked.

“We’re in designated parkland.  It’s not part of Kennet in anything more than spirit.”

“Huh.”

“To brave Faerie, she must either have a mandate, or be intensely curious.  For someone who specializes in ways of Seeing, a strong sense of curiosity makes sense.”

Or an Other in Kennet tipped her off, to provide cover for the moving of the Carmine Beast’s body, Lucy thought.

She wouldn’t bring that up here and now, when the woman best suited to let a pesky practitioner slip through and cause a fuss was right here.  Miss distracted and deterred other practitioners from getting close.  It wouldn’t be hard to let one through.

It didn’t even have to be malicious.  Verona had relayed what the goblins had talked about.  If a goblin could be corrupted or co-opted and made to attack a practitioner’s child, Miss could be directed to mess things up here.

“Is there a good way to capitalize on that ‘looking back’ thing?” Lucy asked, her arms folded.

“If it were any of the other Ontario or Manitoba practitioner families, I would encourage you to.  The Belangers would have safeguards and protections.  It’s their stock and trade, after all.

The eyes peered through the gloom, sitting amidst blades of varying size and quality.

“These torn connections,” Avery said, kneeling down in the dirt.  She dragged a finger through the dirt and picked something up.  “Did you walk through a spiderweb?”

“I did,” Lucy said, alarmed.  “Why?”

“It’s tied to that, over there.”

“Aha,” Verona said, sounding excited.  “Like a motion detector light that goes on when you walk through its area.  It allows more surveillance without so much power cost.”

Lucy advanced a few steps, raising a hand.  “Hello!”

One occupant of the branch flapped wings.

As she got closer, she could make it out.  A crow, with its skull cracked open, a bit of skull still showing.  A human eye had been set in the side of its head, and it roved around, looking.

There was a spider about half the size of Lucy’s head, dangling from a branch.  The chitinous exoskeleton had similarly been cracked open at the abdomen, an eyeball set within.  A squirrel had its mouth stretched open, bearing an eyeball, its little furry arms and tail limp.

All in all, maybe eight eyes set into various zombie critters.

“Can you hear me?” Lucy asked.

The crow bobbed its head in an up-down motion.

“I know being friends might be too much to ask, but are you willing to cooperate with us?  Mutual benefit.  We’d be open to trade, to exchange favors, or just talk.”

None of the animals moved.

“We have no interest in interfering with your business if you have no interest in interfering with Kennet.  Things are in the process of being sorted out here.  Let us finish sorting this out, and equilibrium should be restored.  We have little interest in being your competition.”

The animals remained still.

“Be careful,” Miss murmured.

Lucy looked around.  There were more swords than before.  A shadow of crimson watercolor spread from the tree with the eyeball animal zombies toward her.

“What is that?” Lucy asked, backing away a few steps.

Miss answered, “You can’t see it from here with your Sight as it is, but omens gather.  He or she is looking from a few angles and ways, to try to find a way to deal with you.  Once they find it, it will be hard to shake the outcome.”

“Good to know,” Avery said, from the treeline.  “Back up?”

Lucy retreated a bit more as the blades and staining advanced, reaching out to either side of her, as if to surround her and swallow her up.

“Are you okay showing yourself, Miss?” Verona asked.  “You said you wanted to avoid giving them information about you.”

“They don’t have an angle to see me, and they won’t get one,” Miss said.

“Sending omens like this led to innocents getting hurt,” Lucy said, raising her voice for the Belanger practitioner’s benefit.  Melissa and Melissa’s ankle.  “This area is under our protection, and the intrusion the other night caused several problems, while upsetting the local systems and balances. This marks a second offense, in our area.  Stand down, disable your surveillance, and we can establish a loose working relationship where both sides benefit!”

“Belangers are stubborn,” Miss said.  “If this is an apprentice, she’ll be a Belanger as well, as a formality, and she’ll have some of that stubbornness.  It may be a trait of Augurs; seeing the future can tie an individual to a conclusion, and makes them very used to being unwavering.”

“We want to help people!” Lucy raised her voice.  “Help us, or leave us alone!”

Slowly, the ordinary crow with a very unordinary human eye shook its head, the eye disappearing from view as the beak swept toward Lucy’s right, black beak and feathers disappearing in the backdrop of gloom.

Veronoa reached for Lucy’s arm, and pulled her.

Lucy retreated from the woods, leaving the observing animals behind.  The stain and swords chased her out of the woods, and stopped at the clearing’s edge.

“Do they do anything altruistic?  Is there any chance they’d tackle the Hungry Choir on their own?” Lucy asked.

“It’s not likely.  They trade in information.  I have trouble thinking of a worse practitioner family to take any interest in Kennet.  For our sake, and in terms of personality.”

“What’s her long term plan?” Verona asked.  “What does she get here?”

“She might imagine you’re some novices who’ve cornered a share of the market, or she might be following the growing damage that relates to the Carmine Beast’s absence, tracing it to the epicenter.”

Standing between Verona and Avery, Lucy looked through the gloom.  The animals were spreading out a bit, peering through the branches and looking at the clearing.

Verona began drawing out symbols and runes around the roughly circular clearing.  Darkness, in an eye shape.

Squawking, the crow flew through the trees, turning a hard right.  Dust was disturbed, and the rune was distorted, dirt settling into a shape that didn’t resemble a darkness rune or eye.

Other animals around them made noise.

“Back off!” Lucy raised her voice.  “Seriously!  I’ve tried to be nice, here!”

For my mom, I said I’d reach out to a higher authority, and see if they’d handle or help with this whole situation with the ChoirI tried.

The noises continued.

Annoying.

“Verona?” Lucy asked, quiet.

“Mmm?”

“Got that glamour?”

“It’s technically Avery’s.  I used her share.”

“Go ahead,” Avery said.  “Maybe don’t use a lot.  It would be nice to have some in the Trail.”

“Stay here, don’t do anything yet,” Miss said.

Lucy turned her head, but Miss was gone.

“You’ve got the thorn in the flesh?” Verona whispered.

They’d shared the goblin gifts.  Verona had the glamour disruption stuff, Avery had the lockpick that destroyed locks, and Lucy had the thorn, wrapped up and stowed in her bag.

“I packed it.  I don’t want to be that blunt, though,” Lucy whispered back.  “If we’re going to the magic school, we may have to deal with her or her family.  If we go too aggressive when the worst she’s done is be partially responsible for Melissa and mess up a lot of ghosts, then she might be justified in coming after us or doing something.”

“And justification makes it easier to do stuff,” Verona said.  “Sure.”

They remained where they were, standing in the dark, their eyes painted in strange colors.

Miss spoke from the trees just to her right.  “Lucy, if you’d put out your hand?  I’d appreciate it if you averted your gaze.”

“You sure ask for a lot of trust while justifying relatively little,” Lucy said.

“Please.  It makes it easier, especially while the Augur is trying to see.”

Lucy put her hand out to the side, palm up.

Cool dust settled there.

“I brought some for you as well, Avery.  From Guilherme.  To help you on your trip down the Trail.  He’s going to check to see if our practitioner needs more discouragement.  Alpeana is on her way here.  She’s taking a short break from her nightly rounds.”

“Cool,” Avery said.  “I don’t suppose she could help?”

“She would not be able to come with you, no.  You will have your boon companion, assuming it is healthy.”

Verona cracked the box open and nodded.

“If Alpeana was my familiar, would she be able to come?” Avery asked.

“Yes.  Familiar and practitioner are tied to one another.  I would not make that decision so rashly tonight, for that small amount of assistance and company.”

“This is scary,” Avery said.

Avery had been very quiet tonight.  It tended to happen when she was spooked.  She withdrew.

“You’ll have the companion.  If anything bad happens, you can use this little guy,” Verona said.  “You could try any number of times, pulling the quote-ripcord-unquote, any time things got to where you couldn’t continue.”

“This is what makes the ritual very good for beginners,” Miss said.

“I don’t want to do that to him if I can help it, though, and I feel like even succeeding is scary in its own way.  Either the Wolf does something, or I have to run for it along a so-called ‘detour’.”

While they discussed, Lucy worked with the dust in her hand.  She ended up pulling out her wallet, pulling out her bank card, that she’d been given to open a beginner savings account, and then used the card to flatten out the surface.  She used the corner of the card to draw curves and lines.

Verona saw and took over.

“Nettlewisp, nettlewisp, nettlewisp,” Lucy whispered.  She looked at Miss, who wasn’t complaining or stopping her.  “I’ve tried being nice, I’ve tried being fair.  I’ve tried being even and I’ve tried being clear.  If that spying practitioner from outside Kennet keeps giving us the evil eye, staring at us with…”

“Ill intent,” Verona supplied.

“Ill intent and promised omens, repay them three times over in stings and pain.  And if it’s Just, if the karmic way is clear, and if the glamour heaped in my hand is enough?  Nail their friggin’ eyelids to their skull.”

The glamour twisted and shifted, gathering in her palm.  It condensed into a shape like a small flower, surrounded by twists of bristling leaves.  It looked like it was made partially of glass.

“The Faerie would call that crude,” Miss said.

“Is it a problem?” Lucy asked.

“No.  An interesting blend of Faerie magic and Goblin intent.”

“Did she hear or see?  I wouldn’t mind if she got the warning.”

“She can’t hear, and she can’t see much.  I’m cognizant,” Miss said.

“Please leave!” Avery called out into the woods.  “We’d like some privacy!  We’re taking measures!”

The animal sounds were mocking and chaotic.

“She’s not like, a really talented eight year old, right?” Avery asked.  “We’re not making plans or sending monsters after a kid who got awoken early?”

“If it is Nicolette Belanger, she’s older than you three by several years.  If it was someone younger, they wouldn’t have the talent to use these kinds of Seeings, or that kind of Ominous Eye.”

Lucy investigated the bristling flower.  It felt tense, like a coiled spring, but the spring was trapped in an arrangement of dust that just so happened to interlock and keep it in a singular shape.  It was heavy, and as Verona’s notes had suggested, it was stubborn, occupying much of her hand.  If Nicolette or whatever Augur was observing them didn’t chill out, would it be stuck like this until triggered?  Glamour washed away with water, but there was a chance this thing would backfire if it didn’t get the target she’d asked for.

Would such a backfire include nailing her eyelids to her skull?

Well, that would be the price of doing this.  Sending a monster after the practitioner hadn’t been enough.  Guilherme hadn’t been enough.  Doing this, at least, would hurt or ruin the zombie animals.

Then, depending on what happened next, they could maybe use the thorn to drive the point home.  Stick your nose in, and refuse to deal?  Lose your summonings, lose your seeing-eye forest creatures.

“Since she can’t hear, I wanted to say I really do think Alpeana would be my style,” Verona said.  “Dark?  Yeah.  Nighttime?  My favorite time.  Creepy nightmare stuff?  Heck yeah.  If I’m going to tap into any juice as a practitioner, I kinda like that stuff.”

“I think personality matters more when it comes to picking familiars, Verona,” Avery said, testy.  “It’s not just about the powers.”

“But the nature of the Other influences the personality, right Miss?”

“They do.”

“I think you’re interpreting the best of ‘Alpy’ the way you want to,” Verona said.

“That’s not a rebuttal,” Avery said.  “If it’s about the nature of the Other, who’s the person who chickened out when it came to giving her dad a nightmare?”

Lucy sighed.

Using a stick, wincing as the end of the stick pressed against her hand, where she’d cut herself earlier in the week, Lucy began to draw the blinding runes.

The animals reacted.  They had some natural ability to disturb these things, or that ability was being communicated through them as a medium.  The squirrel with an eye in its mouth, its original eyes carved out, darted down, close to the ground, and the crow took to the air.

The swords and stain approached Lucy.  This time, she didn’t back down.  The vines of the glamour slithered around her hand, the flower becoming like a ring on her hand.

She shook her head.

“Don’t.  Back off,” she said.

The crow with the human eye embedded in its skull dove, entering the clearing, and Lucy was reminded of the Omen diving toward Melissa.  Swords rose from the dirt, point-first, and stain swelled all around her

There was a sound like a stick being swished through the air, closer to a gunshot from a silencer than a shotgun blast.

The crow hit the ground.  The squirrel tumbled, a goat’s eyeball spilling from its mouth.  The spider swung like a pendulum from a web-strand, legs curling up.  A thousand leaves and small twigs fell in a rain.  The swords around Lucy collapsed, scattering, rustier each time they flipped over, until they dissolved into more stain.

Lucy shook the residual dust from her hand.  Slivers like glass tumbled from the folds.  No harm done to her.

“You’re liable to keep losing toys and tools if you keep this up,” Lucy murmured, looking down at the crow.  It had gone still.  This close-up, with the light of the sky reaching down into the clearing, it was evident it had been dead a long time.  White at the edge of the feathers, like the crust of saltwater or soap scum.  It smelled moldy.

“Two decisive victories,” Miss said.  “The third will matter.”

“Was I wrong to respond?” Lucy asked.

“Not at all.  Just be aware.  They certainly are.”

They did another check of the area, then moved indoors, and Avery used the goblin lockpick to get the door latch and lock open.  They’d each brought flashlights and Verona had some candles, and they broke them out, setting flashlight down on the floor so they shone up.  Candles did a lot to light up the cabin in a more ambient way, but the effect of the flashlights did make the lines of their faces and the shadows of the little cabin more stark.

It meant a lot to Lucy that Verona was putting in the extra attention and care, bringing the candles.

It meant a little less, when Verona and Avery kept up the discussion about Alpeana in the background, as the heavy moment from the nettlewisp’s response faded from recent memory.

“Would you guys chill out and focus?” she snapped.

“Focusing!” Avery said, crisp and responsive.

The cabin had some basic furniture, not all that different from Booker’s dorm room.  Desk, bookshelf, bed.  No bathroom, though.

They rearranged a bit of furniture, then broke out the ribbon Avery had brought.

Avery and Lucy worked together to reel it out and wind it around, passing it to one another to get it around table legs and bring it around to Verona, who was lifting the critter out of the box.

It wasn’t a baby, but it remained small.  Lucy tried to be gentle as she wrapped its limbs, then continued holding it as Verona and Avery handled more of the ribbon, bringing it to the curtain rod, down to the side of the bookshelf then back around to the possum baby.  Lucy held it cupped in two hands, two limbs bound, and it seemed strangely okay with the treatment.

The ribbon encircled its middle, forming the first part of the general hammock shape.

They talked in quiet voices throughout.

“I can use my practice?” Avery asked Miss, who stood outside the door, which was ajar.

“Yes.”

“I can bring things?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll need the gross eyeball necklace if we’re going to try giving that to them.”

“We’ll give it to you last minute,” Lucy said, “Before you wrap the last part yourself.”

“Good, that’s good.”

They took care to bind the possum’s last leg, its tail, and then its eyes.  Belly up, in a cradle of ribbons, it was suspended near the center of the room.

“I was thinking I’d make it an old wolf, so I can run more easily, if I need to run,” Avery said, as they spliced two pieces of identical ribbon together.

“Older may be wiser,” Miss said.

“Is that a problem?”

“It’s a factor.”

“Uh huh.  Can we get a verdict on this splicing of the ribbon?  Is this okay?”

“That will be fine.  There may be a bump in the path as a consequence.  Don’t trip.”

“Okay.  I’m pretty good at keeping my feet under me.  I just figured it was better to have more ribbon to wrap myself in, than to keep to one ribbon and not have enough.”

“Trust your instincts.”

Verona drew the circle beneath the possum, filling it in so it was, ironically, ’empty’.  Avery took over, penning the message around the circle border.

“Lengthen that word, or you’ll have to stretch later ones.”

“It’s a long bit of message,” Avery said.

“It is, but I think you want to be at the halfway point by the time you get to ‘and’.”

“Look at ye all,” Alpeana said, from the shadows at the door.  “Prepared fer a right war, are ye?”

“Prepared for something, hopefully,” Lucy said.

“Where’re ye off ta, then?”

“I think to pay the Choir’s crowd a visit, and see if we can’t give them the necklace,” Avery said.  “That’s the plan, right?”

“Yes,” Lucy said.  “Before the ritual starts.  They’re allowed to bring preparations, and it’s a gift they earned by being helpful to us.  I think it’s fair.  The entanglement shouldn’t be so bad, and if it works, it’ll give Reagan a fighting chance.”

“Aye.  Ye’re right out of yer minds, the lot of ye.  Goin’ alone, lassie?”

“Yes,” Avery said.  She looked at the others.  “I think so.  Going to ask the wolf to drop me off on the far side.  If I make the detour, I think I can appear where I want to, as well.”

“Yes,” Miss said.

“If ye want, I can be at tha other end when ye appear.”

“That would be very nice of you, Alpeana.  It’d mean a lot to know I had a friend waiting for me on the other side.  I might be in bad shape.”

“Aye.  I cannae get involved, meself, but I can see ta yer well bein’, at tha very least.”

“Thank you,” Avery said.

“I should be at me rounds so I’m free ta go on a trip.  I’ll see ye tonight, all goin’ well, aye?”

“Bye,” Verona said.  “Wish us luck.”

“Luck ta ye three.  I’m hopin’ ye ain’t needin’ it.”

“So am I,” Lucy said.

“I should go as well,” Miss said.  “I can’t be too close to this ritual.  Any questions before I go?”

“I did have one, kind of,” Avery said.  “I’m wondering if I should ask.”

“You did say you had a tight timeline, to run this errand.  I wouldn’t waste time deciding.”

“Are you-” Avery started.  “Are you Lost, Miss?”

Lucy and Verona turned to look at the slice of the woman, visible at the door’s edge.

“I am.”

“That’s why you know about the Trail?”

“It is.”

“Were you there, once?  Were you a Wolf?”

“No,” Miss said.  “I was by the wayside.  A memory without anyone to have it, or a person forgotten even by the Abyss, or an echo forgotten even by the Ruins.  I waited by a place called the Stairwell Web.  Someone made a wrong turn, they panicked, they ran, and for a moment, neither of their feet touched a stair.  I put my foot down before they did.  I took their place, they took mine.  I walked the various Paths for a long time before I made my way to this world.  I was trapped for a long time in the Yellow Flower Spiral, and I walked the Forest Ribbon Trail by instinct alone.”

“You said it might matter if my guess was right and timely.”

“Yes,” Miss said.

“If I run into trouble, do you think you could back me up?”

“If you run into that much trouble, that you need me, I don’t know what I could do.”

Avery nodded.

“The universe has no place for me, even in people’s sight or Sight.  It contrives to find a station for me, in a similar way to how I had a station at the Stairwell Web, and the most likely place is as part of a ritual or great practice.”

“You’re finally trusting us a bit?” Lucy asked.  “Telling us this.”

“You’re starting to prove yourselves worthy of trust, standing with us against enemies.  Good luck, Avery Kelly.”

“I hope I don’t need it,” Avery said.

Alpeana and Miss left.  It was just the three of them.

Avery finished the script, and knelt in the circle Verona had filled in.  Lucy managed ribbons, keeping everything taut, and making sure the little possum didn’t come loose or fall.

Lucy passed Avery the ribbon, and Avery wrapped her feet, then her ankles.  Lucy helped her get the ribbon to her throat, where they took three tries to find an arrangement that wouldn’t choke or interfere with the necklace of eyes.  The ribbon went to Avery’s ponytail, then encircled her eyes enough times to blind.  She wrapped her hands as best as she could, Verona and Lucy offering quiet counsel and tips.

Avery took the end of the ribbon in her teeth, then spoke through clenched teeth, “Hey, addled old wolf, bring me to the Forest Ribbon Trail, so you might eat me.”

She jerked at the ribbon, hauling it tight at her hands, and all throughout the room, floorboards ripped up, revealing more ribbon.  Furniture slid, ribbon unspooling behind, logs pulled inward from the walls, and everything closed in around her, as she was hauled up off the ground.

Lucy and Verona scrambled back as everything moved into place, clustering into a barrier that blocked the view of the circle at the center of the room.  Ruined floorboards and shifted walls made a warding barrier of splintered wood that warded off approach.  Even without that splintered wood, there was a moat, almost, of dark gaps in the floor that Lucy in no way trusted her feet to.

Verona whistled, long and loud.

Lucy backed up, head and ankles nearly catching on some stray ribbons, and surveyed the situation.

What was inside the room didn’t line up with the neat and simple exterior.

Venturing back inside, she found a seat in one corner.  Verona settled in the other corner, unpacking notebooks.

Lucy couldn’t distract herself like that.  Booker had recommended distractions but… some feelings were too hard to put down.  Even when she could put them down, like when she’d thought Aunt Heather had laughed at her, just the memory of the bad feeling stuck.  Like a sliver of the hurt was still there, unfounded as it was.  Like the Paul situation could be resolved, but the resentment that she’d felt that way for so long might be there for years.

She had a bad feeling now, about this, and no idea what to do about it.

Stolen Away – 2.9

Avery

Avery tumbled, the ribbons that wound around her feet unwinding as she fell, forcing her into a violent spin, head down.

Her feet were freed, and the ribbon pulled at her neck.  Avery’s heart leaped, and she was convinced it would pull taut, snapping her neck.  She reached up, to catch it or stop it, but her hands were bound, tethered to a point around her upper face, unable to reach high enough, unable to grip anything if she could.

The pull at her neck maintained her continued, falling spin as she plummeted, wind rushing up at her with terminal speed.  Her fingers grazed branches, and promised ground just feet below.  At the very least, she was able to kick at the air, at branches, to try to get her feet under her.

The eyes unwound, and it was dark, and it was more disorienting to be able to see than anything because she still spun, still grazed branches, and the vast surfaces around her gave no sense of up and down.

She shut her eyes, felt her head jerk as the last ribbon came free, and her entire body weight pulled on her arms as the ribbons unwound from her arms and hands.

Her fingers hooked at the ribbons, trying to find enough purchase that she could get a grip.

Game on, Avery, she willed herself.  You know the rules of this game, even if you’ve never played before.

She managed to get the grip she wanted.  She continued to spin, hit more branches, and tugged yet again, ribbon digging into her hand, as she reached the last of it, her hold on it the only thing that kept her from plummeting the rest of the way.

Can’t look down, she thought.  That’s a rule.

She dangled, swinging slightly, an uncomfortable distance above the path, and she kept her eye on the horizon.  Two walls, infinitely tall, loomed on either side of her, a purple-black in color, with branches and full-fledged trees growing out of of gaps.  Someone had painted on the walls in complex, endless murals, depicting more trees.  Below her was a sea of what might have been white mushrooms mingled with leafless branches.

Every branch, whether twig or tree limb, painted on the wall or otherwise, had a ribbon attached to it.  Each ribbon was as bright as a halogen light, but the light didn’t extend past the ribbons themselves.

The only useful light came from the ‘sky’, which managed to shine with an eye-searing brightness from high above the infinitely tall walls, dampened by the distance it traveled and some intervening wall-foliage.

Avery’s hand was slipping.  She took a deep breath, made sure she was square, then let herself fall.

Her left foot hit ground first, her right foot sliding.  Faces, pale and eyeless, leaned in toward her.  She found herself instinctively reaching for the wall, then pulled back.  She twisted her toes and used them for traction, for what little good that did.

Two small hands grabbed her left hand, pulling hard.  Steadying her.

She found her balance.  Then she froze, transfixed by the scene, the path long and straight in front of her, the destination brighter than it was here, the sky so bright she couldn’t look at it, while it cut into her vision like a laser, leaving dark afterimages she couldn’t shake.

The ‘mushrooms’ she’d noted were mannequins, reaching out of parts of the wall where planks peeled away or had broken, pale with features etched in but left unpainted, sometimes with mouths open, sometimes with damage.  There were torsos stacked on torsos and arms attached to neck-holes.  Trees and branches grew through and out of them, all with ribbons attached.  To her left, the mural of trees had a cluster of branches painted around an air vent, and the ‘ribbons’ were attached to the vent, so they blew inward, at face height.

And beside her-

“Ah!” her companion made a sound, like it was reprimanding a dog.  Something rough rubbed past Avery’s chest and jabbed sharp at her chin.  Avery, annoyed, pushed it aside.

There was a pause.

“Hi,” Avery said, her eyes on the horizon.

“That’s bad.  You obviously don’t know the rules about looking down.  Moron,” her companion said.  The voice was young.

Avery’s eyes remained fixed on the light at the end of the path.  “I wasn’t intending to look down.  It would be nice to know who I’m traveling with, though.  Can you walk ahead a bit so I can see you?”

The person beside her let go of Avery’s hand.  They didn’t move.  “You’re going to have me take your place at the end, guaranteed.  Murderer.  Idiot.  And you want to look me in the eye?”

Avery didn’t take her eyes off the way forward.  “There are other ways, as a maybe.”

“No,” her companion said.  “There aren’t.”

“I- I’m doing this to help people.”

“Right, and you aren’t doing it to help yourself any.  No magical boons, no opening of doors.  Sure, I believe you.  DisgustingLoser.

Great frigging companion you got me, VeronaThanks.

“I… want to get along here.  For as long as this journey lasts.  Then we can figure out-”

Something moved behind the wall, and the purple-grey-red planks of wood shook almost free of their housings.  One of the mannequin heads turned toward Avery, staring at her with blank eyes.

There was a wheeze of a laugh, from behind the walls, echoing in through one of the many painted vents with ribbons attached to them.  Not her companion.  Something else.

“Take longer to get your sentences out, murdering a-hole.  Hesitate more.  Let’s drag this out.  We’ll postpone my horrible fate, okay?”

Her companion was now walking around Avery, poking at mannequins and tugging at ribbons.  Too short for Avery to see more than the top of its head.

“Please, can we not make this harder?” Avery asked.  “I’ll admit that I did have selfish motives, I did want the extra power, and the other things this ritual gives me.  But I would have hesitated to do it for that alone.  I really did want to help people tonight.”

“Now you’re lying to yourself,” her companion said, voice quiet.  “Ugly.”

Something banged against the planks further down the path, and the walls were like a tight drum, carrying the sound into the narrow space, that was only maybe five feet across.

“I would like to see your face,” Avery said.  “So I can know who I’m dealing with.”

Her companion walked up the path until she reached a group of shattered mannequins with a larger tree growing through them.  She climbed up them, knocking mannequin parts loose, as she climbed.  It was a kid, no older than eight, possibly younger, with messy blond hair, a jacket, a top, and bare feet.

Avery measured her steps carefully, getting a feel for the ground, before catching up.

The opossum girl hung from a branch over the path with both hands gripping the leafless wood, her face at Avery’s eye level.  Her hair was bleached and messy, her skin pale and smudged in places, her feet dirty, and she had dark circles under her eyes like someone had punched her.  She wore a white jacket with a hood, and big black buttons had been sewn onto the hood to be eyes, cloth for ears, and actual teeth from various animals sewn in around the edge of the hood.  She didn’t have any shorts or skirt on that Avery could see, but she wore an adult-sized t-shirt that came to her knees, black.  It was printed with ‘I have class, I have sass, I scream at own ass’.

“Murderer.  A-hole.  You prepared for this crap,” the opossum girl said, accusatory.  She was missing teeth.  Her expression was solemn.  “Makes me excited for the next parts.  This is going to be good.”

Oh boy.

“Can you tell me what your trick is?  I read that the animal companions on the path have tricks they bring to the table.”

“I know it and think I’m not going to tell you, somehow,” the opossum girl said.  She swung on the branch, and more of the mannequin parts clattered and fell free.

“Do you have a name, at least?”

“Yeah, but you should name me, Avery.  You should pick a great name for me, so it sucks extra when you have to leave me for the wolf.”

Why did it have to look like a kid?

Avery supposed the opossum had been a little one, so there was some analogy there.  She wondered if opossums were assholes in general or if Verona had picked out the worst one, somehow.

“Are you virginal?” Avery asked.

The girl’s eyes opened wide.

“In the practitioner and Other sense, not the ordinary sense.  You’ve never bled or tasted blood?”

“I have.  Both,” the girl said.

That might explain the hostility, then.

Avery jumped at the sound of another bang against the wall.  Broken, painted bits of wall cascaded down, dropping onto the narrow path, further ahead, with some ribbons following after.  A few were caught in the conflicting drafts of air, where vents on the left wall blew in similar directions to the vents at the right wall.

“Be afraid,” the opossum girl said, swinging.  She dropped to the ground, then dashed off the path, right at the left wall.  She pushed at a segment of the wall between two painted trees, beneath a headless mannequin body that was stuck in an arch, stomach thrust skyward, and the wall opened like a door.  She disappeared within.

Small hands gripped Avery’s right hand, pulling her off balance.  Avery caught herself.

The little girl was there.  She hadn’t circled around, Avery was pretty sure.  She’d appeared too quickly.

“You should stay, dunce.  I can go ahead without you, and talk to the wolf at the end of the path.”

“Stick with me, please,” Avery said, reaching out for the kid’s shoulder, fingers bumping her neck, before she found the grip she sought.

How dangerous was the kid, if she was ‘bloody’?  Was she capable of doing harm, or was it only in attitude?

It made it harder to trust her.

Things moved behind the wall, pounding and thumping.  Periodically, wood creaked, like something big was walking on floorboards on the other side.

Avery reached to her wrist, where she had a few charms hanging from a simple rope bracelet.

A bracelet Olivia had bought her.  The pledge on Olivia’s part had been that she’d buy a new charm for the bracelet every birthday and Christmas, in addition to other presents.  Olivia had given it with one charm, a skate, then forgot the following Christmas, then bought a rabbit, and then the friendship had ended.  Olivia had gone to play for Swanson and had ghosted Avery, ignoring and then blocking the messages Avery had sent.  It wasn’t even like she’d sent many, or been demanding, or even been accusatory.  She’d sent two the first week, then one a week for the next two weeks.  Then after another month, she’d sent Olivia a happy birthday message.  She hadn’t even cared about the hockey team or Olivia leaving, only that she’d lost a friend.

Avery had dug up the bracelet because it was convenient.  It was a strong bracelet, and with other charms removed, she could add her own.

Mask- she tore it off, shook it violently, and shucked off the glamour she’d used.  She donned the mask.

Hat.  Same deal.

“That’s so lame,” the opossum girl said.  “You look so uncool.”

Cape.  She draped it over her shoulders, hiding the squicky eyeball necklace she wore.

Then hockey stick.  Actually Rowan’s old one, from the basement.  It wasn’t engraved with anything.  She didn’t want to risk it cracking or firing off when she needed it for something far more mundane.  The one she’d brought on Tuesday night had cracked on the first use and broken on the second.

She used the stick to check the path, feeling for bumps and branches she might trip over, while keeping a grip so that she could lean on it if she needed to.

“If you don’t strenuously object, I think it would be convenient if you had a name you wanted,” Avery said.  “Do you have something you want to be called?”

“I want you to call me Dead Meat.  Or Unworthy Sacrifice.  Oh!  Actual Literal Trash.”

Avery sighed.  “That’s even more of a mouthful than opossum girl.  What if I named you?  If that leaves me feeling guilty, I think I can deal with that.  At the very least, it’s more convenient than calling you opossum girl.”

Something whispered from behind the walls.

“I’m all for it if it makes you feel bad.”

“Then… you’re wearing a shirt that says you have class.  I like that.  What if we called you… Aveline?  I named a doll that when I used to have dolls.”

“Hate it.”

“Okay, then… not that,” Avery said.

The girl was walking ahead in the path.  Avery glanced at her face, and saw the sour expression cross it.

It was important to remember her task.  There wasn’t much light here, and the first length of the path had one item.  If she missed it, she’d be in trouble.  Skull, woven object, timepiece, coin, and axe.  Especially axe.  She couldn’t afford to get hurt this early on.

There was a lot of garbage hidden among the fallen branches, scraps of wood, fallen ribbons, and mannequin parts.  Paint slopped here and there, suggesting shapes of objects that weren’t actually there.  More problematic was that she had to focus her eyes forward.  She couldn’t walk up and look closer, because she couldn’t look down.

“Octavia?”

“Hate that one too.”

“Odelia?”

“You have awful taste in names,” the girl said, walking backwards, expression getting worse and worse.

“They’re names I liked as a kid.  I used some for a story I wrote for school.  But fine, a different approach, then.”

The back and forth with this little girl was distracting, but that wasn’t the worst thing ever.  Avery would rather have the company of someone who loathed her than be utterly alone in a place like this.

“Flower names?  I’m trying to think of some.  Cicely.  Sweet Cicely is a flower, and it works as a name.”

“You’re really bad at this.”

“Snowdrop?”

The kid looked at her, and there was something in her eyes.  Wary, surprised, hopeful.

“Snowdrop?” Avery asked again, hoping to see that glimmer.

“It’s not as bad as the other ones.”

“But do you like it?”

The kid gave her a funny look.  “I hope you miss finding the item that’s supposed to be around here.”

“Okay, that’s fair, Snowdrop.  And it’s two items.”

“Nah,” Snowdrop said.

They walked between the two walls.  On the one side, something pounded.  Sometimes it was fifty or a hundred or two hundred paces ahead of them, sometimes it was behind.  Like the thing on the other side was trying to sound them out, knocking on a wall to find the hollow spot, but the opposite.

On the other, there were whispers and subtle movements, and sometimes a small hand reached out to pull on a branch and make it move, or stir a mannequin.  It spooked Avery just about every time.

Game on, she reminded herself.  It was something she told herself at the start of any event, whether it was a prelim hockey game with her team or gym class.

Every game had rules.  In soccer, if the ball went out of bounds and she was the one who touched it last, it went to the other team.  In Hockey, there were icing rules, and rules about stick handling, and her league had rules about body checks.

Sometimes that meant walking a very fine line, trying to stay in the zone where she was skating or running her hardest, keeping her eye on the puck or the ball, and staying constantly aware of where everything and everyone was on the ice.  The coach and captain would be shouting and she’d have to listen for the calls amid the din of the Arena.  She had to control her physical contact with other players on the ice, where she could get in close and bump shoulders while trying to get the puck, but a body check would get her pulled off the ice.

This was the same.  In addition to reading the papers Miss had given her over and over again, she’d done visualization training, not because it had ever done anything special for her, but because she’d wanted to put herself here, mentally, and figure out what she needed to be aware of.

She’d pictured a winding path and so far this path was straight, though the branches and mannequins leaned in, and detritus had gathered where the path met the painted wooden walls on either side.  That made it easier to keep her eyes focused on her target.  She’d imagined it would be the next bend, but for now it was that point where the path was brighter, off in the distance.

Every step mattered, and how she reacted to aggression.  She couldn’t back up, not even a step, she couldn’t look down.  Everything stayed in bounds.  The stick scraped left, then right, then left again.  Periodically, she caught on a branch or object, and sent it skidding far enough ahead enough that she could see what she was dealing with.  An empty cup.  A television remote.  A baby’s shoe.

“I was going to lead a nice long life.  I had the rest of the time with my mother to get drunk on her milk, cozy and safe.  Then a good life awaited me, eating trash, eating bugs, eating plants, and eating carrion.  I would have found a mate, I would have had babies, and I’ve heard that Nature rewards good animals who have babies with a weeks-long hit of happy, like we’ve been given heroin.  Doesn’t help keep some moms from eating their babies.”

Avery scanned the area as best as she could.  Mural, mannequin, road ahead, branch, ribbon.  Mural, road, mannequin, trash.

“Nothing’s set in stone,” Avery said, “but if it does come to that… I am sorry.  I’ll remember your name.”

“Nothing around here,” Snowdrop said.

Avery wished she could back up to look for something.  Her eyes were peeled for a glint of steel, or possibly rust.  For any shapes that looked too smooth to be a branch, but too dark to be mannequin.

The wind picked up, sweeping from the path ahead to behind her, gusting in through the various vents and gaps in the walls.  Mannequin arms and clawed branches reached in closer to the path.

She had played hidden object games as a kid.  It was a way for her parents to keep her occupied while Declan had been a toddler, something that taught her to spell, when she had to identify the word and use it.  Every time she’d run into a word she didn’t know, she’d run to her parents, get the answer, then run back to the computer.  It had been a big part of her process of learning to read.

She wished she could say that the skill she’d picked up as a kid made her better at this, like she was trying to translate her sports experience to this whole endeavor.  But it didn’t.

She felt lost and she felt like she’d already walked past two objects.  That she could be passing by the axe unwittingly, giving one of the monsters at the side of the path the opportunity to come after her.

And Snowdrop wasn’t helping much.

“I’m going to die a meaningless death, when I had a real chance of contributing to my species,” Snowdrop said.

“Can you please chill out, Snowdrop?  Please?  This is nerve wracking as it is.  If that is what happens, I’ll try to do something to keep your end here from being meaningless, and… I don’t know, I’ll see about doing something nice for your species.  I don’t know what that would be, but if it would make you feel better…”

“It wouldn’t, you sad, lonely failure.”

There was a violent crash just ahead of Avery and to her right, a heavy impact like someone had driven a truck into the wall.  A tree came down, tearing through a spot in the wall that was depicting an identical tree, crashing through wood and into the path.

Falling wood brought more branches down, made mannequins collapse, and the crumbling cascaded toward Avery.  She turned on her Sight, to better track the motion, and her legs twitched with the impulse to jump back, or jump forward, or navigate this collapse.

Was that the axe?  Of the five items, the axe was supposed to forecast danger, a trap or the opportunity for Others by the wayside to hurt her.

If it wasn’t the axe, they shouldn’t be able to hurt her.  Which turned this into a situation like it was with the Others of Kennet.  Couldn’t hurt her, but they could bait her into hurting herself.

Or was it a distraction?  Sleight of hand, so she might fall prey to another object?

She looked around to see if there was anything she was missing, being careful not to look down.

Faded color in the mural, that didn’t line up with the mural’s colors.  There was a tree with an apple, and the apple had faded hues that made it look rotten.

Being careful not to step too close to the point where the floor met the wall, she extended her hockey stick.

More things crashed ahead of her.  She tried to keep her cool.

Game face, she thought.

Don’t freaking drop it.

Scraping, moving, she dragged it away.  The wall was solid, but the paint was loose and tore away easily.

At first, she thought it was a bit of turtleshell.  In the gloom, with the only light being a slice of pure white so high above it barely touched them, she thought it was a bit of painted turtleshell.  There were parts of it that were broken, and there were parts that had a lip.  Scraps of paint clung to it, but even in the gloom with the crap on it, it was clear there was color there.

It was too light to be turtleshell though.  She moved her stick, bouncing it slightly.

A basket.  A woven basket.

“You’re going to make this tricky, huh, Forest Ribbon Trail?” she asked.

She adjusted her grip on her stick, then flicked the thing upward.  She caught it out of the air.

“You need to close your eyes now,” Snowdrop told her.

“But… the instructions said I didn’t need to, if I brought it.”

“No.  Close your eyes,” Snowdrop said, smiling wide enough to show off the teeth she was missing.

“Snowdrop, I don’t-”  Avery shook her head a bit, and then she closed her eyes, holding the broken bit of basket in one hand, the stick in the other.

She swept the ground with her stick, checking her footing.

Something broke nearby.

“Yes, do that,” Snowdrop said.

Avery’s steps were tentative.  She prodded, checked, and flinched as something struck the broken wall to her right.  The fallen tree was in her way, and it was in her way in a troubling way, because the branches now stuck out in every direction, including toward her.  She couldn’t step back or let herself be forced back, and at the same time, every branch that she pressed against was like an elastic band, bending rather than breaking, her inching progress just adding to the strength and the threat of the pushback from the branches.  She struggled to find both footing and enough traction to keep forging ahead.

There was a sound of a sigh.  Small hands gripped her wrist, and began moving branches.  Pine needles rasped against her stomach, chest, and her bare arms and legs.

She climbed onto the tree, using the hockey stick for balance, and found footing ahead of her that didn’t line up with what she’d remembered seeing before she’d shut her eyes.

Like the tree was a stair, and she was ascending to a higher stair.  Which definitely hadn’t been the case.  Was she walking on fallen wall?

“How do I know when we’ve reached the next object?” she asked.

“I don’t know and I’m not saying.  It’s your job to figure it out, not mine.”

“But-”

Avery allowed herself to be led forward, her stick raking the ground, searching.  It didn’t feel like fallen wall.  It was too flat.

Wind from vents pushed out with enough force that mannequins clacked and tree branches knocked together.

She allowed herself to be led.  Experiencing this, her ears peeled for any sound, her hand gripping the hockey stick and trying to analyze every point of contact, to guess at density, at shape…

She moved slowly, possibly more slowly than Snowdrop wanted.

“Be quiet here.  Don’t say anything,” Snowdrop said.

Non-virgin mystery animal is really making this ten times as hard as it needs to be, Avery thought.

But the animal had been the one that Verona had been able to find.

She’d made the decision.  She needed to own this.

There were whispers to her right.  A creaking to her left.

“Avery,” a small voice said.  It sounded Kerry-ish, by age.  “Avery, open your eyes.”

Avery kept her eyes shut.

“Snowdrop here is lying to you,” the voice said.  “She has been from the beginning.  You read that you didn’t need to close your eyes, so why are your eyes closed?”

Was she supposed to listen to these voices, that mimed her own instincts, or listen to the companion?  Was a hostile companion still bound to give her service?  Snowdrop had helped her climb, and had kept her from stepping off the path?

There were more whispers to her right.

A thud to her left.

The guide had said she needed to maintain a relationship with the local Others.  It had also said… what was the punishment for opening her eyes?  She’d told herself she wouldn’t, no matter what happened, but now that she was here… it was a little harder to hold that conviction.

She was in a scary place with a bunch of scary things, and there was literally nothing she could trust, except the hockey stick in her right hand.

Because she’d been so convinced she wouldn’t open her eyes, she hadn’t memorized the punishments one hundred percent.

Was this an open your eyes, become Lost, like Miss was?

No.  The axe promised harm or death.  She could deflect that by putting Snowdrop in harm’s way, but only if it didn’t kill her before she could ask for it to happen.  The coin… was it that it made her lose something if she didn’t give it away?  The Timepiece would make her lose someone or something vulnerable and precious.  She remembered that one, because she’d thought of her Grumble.  The Cat Skull was another one of the serious ones, which would put her by the wayside of the path, while the Other would be free, possibly using or taking her body.  Like Miss had done to someone.

The woven object punished her by forcing her into a loop.  She remembered now.  She’d return to where she was, and have to walk the next part blind again.  If it was wrong.

Avery opened her eyes.  She looked at and saw Snowdrop, further down the path.  The girl didn’t have an expression on her face.

Off to the sides were four Others.

To the left was a doll’s head, bigger than Avery’s house.  It lay on its side and peered through the gaps in the trees, where it was now impossible to tell where there were gaps in the wall and where the wood was stained so dark it was indistinguishable from pitch black.  The black hair of the doll’s head didn’t help any.  Artificial eyelids clicked closed, scraping over cracked eyes, then opened.  It shuffled a few feet to get a better view of her through the trees, and the ground on the far side creaked and cracked.

At this stage, it was easier to imagine the ground on that side to be a network of interlinked roots than any ‘floor’, per se.

On Avery’s right were three more Others.  A boy with black tattoos and heavy body modifications, with things slid under skin to deform his face, some of those things obvious and apparent, like the handles of scissors, a dead mouse, and a fork.  Others were mysterious.  A man who could have been an everyday guy she’d seen on the street, brown haired and dressed like a stereotypical dad, biting his fingernails.  A girl in a white dress, her head bowed so her hair covered her face, her hands out and cupped.  In her cupped hands was the opossum baby she and her friends had wrapped in ribbon.

The boy with the tattoos whispered.

“I thought the Others by the wayside were supposed to show up during the second length of the Path,” Avery said.

“This is the second part,” Snowdrop said.

“This is the first part.  You’ve yet to find the second landmark, don’t worry.”  It wasn’t the girl speaking, but the opossum in the girl’s cupped hands.  It had the voice of a mature woman, smooth, confident, and reassuring.

“Who are you?”

“I have no name, but you can call me the opossum that can lead you past the Wolf safely.”

“That’s a mouthful,” Avery said.

“I should be out there, not her,” the opossum said, with conviction.  The baby animal reached out with a paw, pointing in Snowdrop’s direction.  “She’s a deceiver.  I can guide you.  I can tell you things.”

“Listen to them,” Snowdrop said.  “Think hard about it.”

“Wouldn’t you rather have a boon companion who cannot tell a lie?” the girl with the opossum cupped in her hands asked.  “I could illuminate, shed light, and share.  About the Others in your town and who you can and can’t trust.  About the Choir.  About your family, and how things are about to get much more complicated for your family, soon, and not just because you’re not leaving the Path like you hoped or planned.”

The last bit shook Avery a bit from the response she’d already been concocting.

“I’m- are you thinking of the detour?”

“No, I am not talking about the detour.  If you keep Snowdrop as your boon companion, then you will not leave by wolf or by detour.  It will be horrible.  I’d say I’m sorry for how this will go, but if you refuse me, then you kind of deserve what comes at the end of the trail,” the opossum in the girl’s hands said.

“I think I should keep to the steps as they were written down,” Avery said.  “Sorry.”

It struggled to stay upright and fell over.  It was too young.  It writhed, stretching in a way that made its sparse white fur spread out enough to reveal the very pink skin beneath, and its mouth moved as the adult woman’s voice came out.  “What do you think this is, Avery Kelly?”

The use of her name made her shiver.  Snowdrop had done the same thing.

“What do you mean?”

“What story is this?  All things Other have some roots in the annals of man,” the baby opossum said.  “Fairy tales, fantasy stories, myths, religions, and urban religions.  There are no original stories.  So I ask you… what kind of story is this?  Don’t jump to the obvious answer.  Give me a good answer and I’ll tell you something you should know.”

“It’s-”

The obvious answer, a troubled path with a wolf at the end, was Little Red Riding Hood.

“I’m not the most widely read person.”

“Child,” the Opossum by the Wayside said, speaking to her like a teacher might.  Like Ms. Hardy might.  “They used to call these Paths a kind of Dream.  We are the figments and constructions of this so-called dream.  Those of us here take specific shapes and fall into specific roles because we are reinforced by you.  Your memories, your hopes, you fears.  It is how we know your name, we know you, deep down inside.  Your current, deceptive companion does.  The Wolf knows you to your very core and she intends to use it to destroy you.  We know what you’ve read and we know what you’ve watched.  You have that knowledge in your head.”

“You can’t just tell me?”

“That would be taking away from the longer-term goal.  If I told you, then you would be unable to walk away from the Paths with what you require.”

“From guessing a bit of pop culture?”

“Two steps down that same line of thought is a deeper answer.”

Avery shook her head.

“But even if you get the answers you need to, pop culture and deeper answer alike, if you don’t take me as a Boon Companion in little Snowdrop’s place, then the Wolf will have you, I’m sorry.  Your family will be anxious in the morning, but they will dismiss it, letting you slip in their priorities as they’ve done so very many times before.  Your friends will be devastated and unsure what to do.  Miss has told you she can’t come.  Time will pass and you will not leave here.  Unless interfered with or delayed, and they will be, by outside parties, your family will not start looking for you until the mid-afternoon, when they try to call you.  Your phone, in your bag right now, will answer the call, and they will hear only rustling, animal noises, and small frightened sounds.  The Wolf’s noises and your sounds, Avery Kelly.  They will panic and there will be nothing they can do.”

Avery almost took a step back at that.  She lifted up her foot, then couldn’t remember how far forward it had, or how far back, and she couldn’t step back.  She wasn’t sure she should step forward either.  There were a few cases where she shouldn’t, like the risk the woven object didn’t want her to move forward if her eyes weren’t closed, or if the axe was here, or if there was something else.

Unable to stand on one foot, she set her foot down, and felt a sharp pain in the back of her calf.  A kick, from Snowdrop, before her foot settled.

“Snowdrop-” she started.

There was movement to her right.  She looked, and saw the little girl, head still bowed, hair in the way of her face, elevating the possum baby she held, so it was close to Avery’s face.

In a woman’s voice, the possum murmured, “You would not have Snowdrop with you.  You would be utterly alone, with only the Wolf to keep you company, and the Wolf is very poor company to keep.”

“Snowdrop,” Avery said.  “Any opinions on the matter?  Clarifications?  Thoughts?”

“You should take her and abandon me.  The way to the Wolf will be harder, but the end result will be what you want,” Snowdrop said, her eyebrows drawn together.

This feels so flipped around.  I thought it would be more cut and dry but it’s only constant confusion, a strange place with strange people.

She could see why this would be described as being like a dream.  It was a little more structured, but it had that general feel.  Like things were familiar, but when she peered closer or wondered, she found herself grasping, empty-handed.

Like this was a big, messy riddle.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Avery said.  “That’s it, right?”

The girl with the baby opossum lowered her hands.

“A bit of Wizard of Oz, with the yellow brick road, or the Path.  A lot of Alice in Wonderland,” Avery said.

“One person presently on this Trail isn’t supposed to be here,” the opossum by the wayside told her.

“What?  What’s that supposed to mean?  How does that thought connect?”

The boy with the facial modifications whispered something.  Avery looked at him, then looked away.  Flesh had been cut away in specific designs, to create ridges, scars, and recessed spirals.  Gross gross gross gross.

The girl was walking away, carrying the small animal with her.  The man lingered.  Avery gave him a curious look.

“Where are you going?”

“We’ll be further down the path.  This is still the first length. The second is coming up.  I and the others will trouble you some.  If you change your mind about taking me to the end of the Path, you can tell me then.  I won’t make your life too much harder in the meantime.”

“That’s-”

Avery shook her head.

She was so confused, and kind of really spooked.

She looked the other way, and saw the doll’s head, staring and blinking, ceramic eyelids sliding over the broken glass of her eyes, which sat ajar but hadn’t fallen or fallen from their more-or-less approximate positions.

Avery looked back the other way.  The Others were lingering, as they slipped into the trees.  Ground splashed with paint had looked, through optical illusion, like more wall, but they walked on it now.

The boy who whispered.  Avery could see the scarring and the missing flesh, and she could see bone in the gaps.

She was on the lookout for a skull, and there was, technically, a skull.  But she was looking for a cat’s skull.

If she stretched, if she really thought about it, then were the horns at the top of his head like ears, lying flat?  Were the protrusions beneath his face intended to deform it, so he looked like he had a cat’s face?

She didn’t know.

“Snowdrop,” Avery said.  “Are you here?”

Her companion walked up the path a bit, to be easier to see.  She flounced, biting her lip as she looked at Avery with dark-ringed eyes.

“Did that boy with the tattoos and body modifications look like a cat to you?”

“Nah,” Snowdrop said, biting her lip.

“Facial feature wise?  The bulges around the upper lip, cheekbones, brow?”

“No,” Snowdrop said.

Avery had been fifty-fifty on it, and had intended to use Snowdrop as the tiebreaker.

But now she’d asked and she didn’t feel fifty-fifty about it any more.  She felt like asking Snowdrop and then doing the opposite was the biggest asshole move, but…

She tucked the bit of basket into her waistband, then, still holding her hockey stick as a kind of walking stick, the flat end up, she put out a hand for Snowdrop.

Snowdrop hesitated, then took her hand, looking confused.

Avery turned, to walk back the way she’d come.

So that was one thing answered.  This was a topsy-turvy place where things and people didn’t make sense.  Alice had the white rabbit who fretted about being late, that led her through the areas.  Avery had… a very belligerent, not-terribly useful urchin girl.

Who wasn’t supposed to be here?  Herself?  Was it Snowdrop, if Snowdrop was non-virginal?  One of the Others?  An invader?

Who would invade?  The Choir?

There was a giant doll head, the girl who carried the other opossum, the normal man, and the whispering cat.

She walked the way she’d come, and she didn’t recognize anything.  There was less and less wall, and the wall that was there was different, stretched between branches and between the trunks of trees like membrane.  Some trees looked artificial, like paintings on boards for a school play.  The ribbons were omnipresent.

When would she know if she got it right?  When she walked for hours and there wasn’t another landmark?

What did she do then?  Should she turn back again?  Bail out using Snowdrop as a sacrifice?

The slice of blinding white sky above was widening, as the walls ceased to be a thing.  At the same time, the foliage was denser, and the approximate light was similar.  The mannequins were still present, but less of them were propped up by the road, and more were draped across the ground in the distance.  Across roots, when there was nothing for the roots to dig into but swimming darkness.  Some dangled from trees, or were impaled by branches.

There was another sound, like someone banging on a wall.  Except there were no more walls, really.  Nothing that could produce that echoing boom.

Was it the cabin where she’d been left?  Were Verona and Lucy under attack?

No.  The cabin had log walls.  There was no way something could produce that kind of noise by hitting a log wall.

“Talk to me, Snowdrop?”

“I hope the wolf gets you like the other opossum said, lonely freak.”

“Talk to me about things in a way that makes me less anxious?  Please?”

“I want you to listen to me and I want you to believe me, Avery,” the kid walking beside her took on a more emotional tone.  “She could give you what you need, you’d be happier in the long run.  Switch me for her and I’ll be Lost and that’s better than the Wolf getting me.  You get to go back to your friends, you get to try and do what you need to with the Choir, everyone wins except that other opossum.”

“I’m not going to use her,” Avery said, “until I know more or see more.  I think I’m closer to understanding you, and I’d rather have a devil I know than an Other I don’t.”

Snowdrop was silent, head bobbing up and down at the bottom edge of Avery’s vision as she hurried to keep up.

“Come on.  Keep an eye out for the three objects.  I’m really, really hoping that the wolf doesn’t have the timepiece.  Whatever object is fifth and last is supposed to dictate how the Wolf acts.  And we don’t have the time for it to-”

Avery recalled what the girl by the wayside had said.

“-to keep me.”

Was that what she was talking about?  How long would it keep me?

She had to focus.  The cat skull was one of the more dangerous items  and she was hopeful that she’d spotted it.  She wasn’t sure if it counted as an item or landmark if it was one of the Others, but…

But she was pressing forward.  And she had the axe to watch out for.  There was also the coin, which could make her lose something.

It would be some kind of karma to escape this Trail and arrive at her destination, but to lose the necklace.

The banging continued, louder and louder, the sound of something massive striking wood.  The echo when there was next to nothing for the sound to bounce against.  The rattle of wooden planks that had been knocked ajar, when there were no planks.

There were more whispers in the trees.

They’re occupying this place, which might mean this is the second length of the journey.

Two objects on this part, instructions were to beware the Others, to keep to the path, not to step back, not to look down.

Leafless trees streaked in purple and black paint with bright white ribbons that shed no light clustered in thick and dense.  The path was five feet wide but the branches on either side were narrowing down until it felt like it was less than a foot wide, and any movement past that point made branches scrape at her arms.

The doll was there, head upright now, looking over and through the foliage with a painted face, a smile frozen on the lower half.  Sinister.

Part of Avery expected it to move all of a sudden.

There were more whispers.

“I am so very sorry for what I have to do now,” the normal man said, from the wayside.

“Who are you?  What are you?”

“I’m Todd,” he answered.  “And I’m so very tired of this place.  It’s like drowning in nothing for forever, and if you’re lucky, then once every twenty or fifty or one hundred years you can get to the surface, you find a place like this, with a role you’re supposed to step into.  If you’re clever about it, you can leave.”

“Todd, If you’re diplomatic, though, you can find someone willing to use the coin to free you,” Avery said.

“You’re already carrying the woven basket.  The Wolf will ask if you have more than one object.  It won’t negotiate if you don’t leave all but one behind.  I know you want to use the woven object.  I know why.  And I feel like shit about this, but I’ve got to stop your journey down the Trail now.  It’s my only chance.”

“But-”

“But you can’t save everyone, Avery Kelly,” the other opossum said, behind her.  “This is the second reality you have to face, as part of your journey along this trail.  The world is bleak, terrible things happen, and you cannot fix it, whether you are a thirteen year old girl or a master practitioner in her seventies.”

“I don’t believe that,” Avery said, looking back.

“No.  If you did, then it would not have to be something you had to face,” the small, pink white-furred thing spoke.  “Todd is a very good teacher, however, in the bleakest and most awful things.”

Snowdrop made an alarmed sound.

Avery turned.

Todd was in the middle of the path.  Avery stopped her forward march.

Todd had a gun, and there wasn’t anything resembling cover.

“Been a long time since I did my thing,” Todd told her, sounding very sad.  “I think if I wear your skin, I could get free of this path and return to your world.  I have to resist my instincts.  I don’t know who or what I used to be, that’s been Lost, but whenever I think about what I’ll do when I’m free in your world again, I keep thinking I’ll have to kill someone and lay my eggs in their corpse, and do that every day until someone gets around to exterminating me.”

“He’s a neat guy,” Snowdrop said.

“No, he isn’t,” Avery said.  “Todd… don’t be a dick.”

“Do us all a favor?  If you approach close and let me strangle you, I can minimize the damage to the skin the bullet would cause.”

“That’s a good plan,” Snowdrop said.  “Let’s do that plan.”

Avery hesitated.  “Would it hurt less?”

“I have no idea,” Todd said.  “It’s been so long since I laid my hands on a mortal I’ve entirely forgotten specifics about how you all work.  To think I used to do it a lot.”

“It would hurt less than the Wolf getting you,” the girl by the wayside said.

“Yeah, do it,” Snowdrop said.  “Let him strangle you.”

To Avery’s right, the whispering boy reached out from the trees, snatching for her stick.  She pulled it back out of the way.  She almost stepped back, trying to get her balance.  She kicked Snowdrop, who was taking cover behind her, instead.

“Sorry,” she said.

Todd was on the path because of the axe.  He had to be.  That was a problem.  Where was the axe?

Somewhere near him?  By him?  Under him?  With him?

Avery’s mouth was dry.  She had no friends here, and this freaky dude who looked super normal but laid eggs in people, and did it a lot wanted to kill her?

Game face, Avery.

“This is a mercy, believe it or not,” the girl behind her said.

“Shut up!” Avery said.  “The real mercy would be letting me go on my way and help people in trouble!”

“If you take me as your boon companion, I can resolve this.  I can take you past Todd here and past the Wolf.”

“You can try,” Todd growled the words, reasserting his grip on the handgun.

“I swear it to you.  Victory over Todd, successful negotiation past the Wolf, as you imagined it.  Then we will take that necklace to the people who are about to face the Hungry Choir, and we will tell them how to use it to best effect.”

Avery paused, wavering.

“Yes,” Snowdrop whispered.  “Yes, yes, yes, yes.”

How did it go?  Rub?  No, not rub.

Avery ventured closer to Todd, raising her chin.

He reached for her throat.  She let him.

Flick.

She hauled her hand out of her pocket, carrying a fistful of glamour.

The cat-faced boy reached from the woods, grabbing at her, keeping her hand from rising.  The dust poured out.

“Hold her, I’ll make it worth your while,” Todd told the boy, as his fingers dug into Avery’s throat.  He lifted her.  Her arm jerked, but her wrist was held firm, by a hand with rough and sharp things pushed under the skin of the palm.  Points dug into her.

“Strike the deal with me while you still have breath!” the other possum called out.

Avery kicked and Todd fended her off, twisting and pushing her up against trees, near the edge of the Trail.

Todd gulped, then smiled.  A dark blue and green stone was clamped between his teeth.

There was a jostling, and Avery’s wrist was freed.

Flick.

She brought her hand up to Todd’s face, some glamour still in her grip, and she raked her thumb from the pinky finger to the first finger, with a force and fierceness that made it feel like she’d drawn blood.

Flick was to make glamour brighter.

The glamour in Todd’s face turned a brilliant white, flaring.

Blinded, choking, he dropped her.

She didn’t have her stick anymore, so she kicked him hard in the side of the leg, then body-checked him in the way she totally wasn’t allowed to do in hockey.

Pushing him off the path.  Snowdrop ducked beneath him.  She’d been the one who distracted the whispering boy and loosened his grip.

She could see the axe now.  An image, carved into bark, a simple triangle with a line dropping from one point.  It was low to the ground, which made looking at it dangerous.  Avery couldn’t aim her kick as she raised her foot.  She kicked the bark free of the tree’s trunk, and she could see the bare trunk out of the lower edge of her vision, even though she couldn’t see where it had gone.

“We bring one thing to the wolf!” Snowdrop raised her voice.  “One thing!”

“One thing,” Avery said, “But even if we don’t bring this, we can do something about it, to be sure.”

She brought her foot down a few times, until she felt bark crunch underfoot.  She ground it under her heel, until the bark had broken down enough that she could be sure the image was disturbed.

She hurried forward, one hand finding Snowdrop’s head, and using it to guide the girl and keep track of her.  Her hand felt empty without the hockey stick, which had been taken from her.

“Avery Kelly,” the possum by the wayside said.

“Get bent!”

“Your parents didn’t want you, Avery.  You were an accidental pregnancy, when they thought they were done.  It was only after Kerry that they realized a medication your mom takes for her early arthritis counteracts her birth control.  They regret you.  They try to be good, but the reason they found it so easy to ignore you for those lonely months was because what they truly wanted, deep down inside, was a life without you.”

Avery grit her teeth, marching forward.  Coin and timepiece.

Coin and timepiece.

“I could resolve it.  I could tell you what to do, that would strike a chord in your mother’s heart, and kindle your father’s love for you.  It would require you to do something you’re good at doing, you simply don’t know the words or specifics, and you won’t in a timeframe that matters.”

“I believe my parents love me,” Avery said.

“They do, but it’s uneasy.  It was hard for them to let go of the stress that came with an unexpected child.  There are times the love wanes.  I can see to it that doesn’t happen.”

Avery shook her head.

“Avery… can I appeal to your better nature?  You want to save people.  Save me, at least.  I’ve told you the truth.  I recognize your problems.  I know you.  Allow me to help you.  Save me from this Lost existence.  The coin isn’t far and you’re liable to miss it.”

Snowdrop squeezed Avery’s hand.

“Ten paces ahead.  It’s under a shallow layer of dirt.  You can’t look down and you’re meant to scuff it with your foot, feel the ground slide beneath your toe, and realize you can’t go back for it.  Then you’ll lose something crucial.  It’s the Trail’s price, tonight.  Pick it up.  Bring me out, and with a subtle trick, I can help you avoid the danger that waits for you.”

Avery stalked ahead.

“Avery… please?  Please.  I beg you.  Please,” the woman’s voice followed her.

She grit her teeth.

She swept her foot over the dirt, back and forth, as she advanced.

“Please.  Ask for what you want, I’ll figure out ways to make it happen.  But don’t leave me to this.”

Avery found the coin.  No traction.

She dug her toe into the dirt, eyes fixed on the trail ahead.  Then, with care, and it was really hard not to look down, stepped ahead to put one toe in the hole and used the other to move the coin onto the top of her shoe.

“Please.”

“Snowdrop, is it in place?” Avery asked.  “Right in the middle?”

“No.”

Avery sighed, then did her best to adjust.

She frowned.

“Would you let that Other behind us go?”

“Yes.”

“If it meant you stayed and were Lost?”

“Yes, idiot.

“What if I used the Coin instead?”

“Yeah.”

“I could bring that abnormal Todd guy with.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Avery sighed.  “Is the coin in place?”

“No.”

Avery brought her foot straight up, flicking the coin into the air, and she was careful to step forward as she caught it.

The woven bit of basket popped free of her belt, dropping to the ground.  She kicked it ahead a bit.

“Please,” the Other behind them begged.  She was making crying sounds.  Avery would have looked, just to see what the baby possum looked like while crying like an adult woman, but…

She held up the coin at eye level so she wasn’t looking down at it.  Keeping things in bounds.  Sticking to the rules of this game.

“One item,” Snowdrop said.

“Yeah,” Avery said.  “I think I understand.  Thank you.”

She’d reached the end of the road the pleading Other had been hinting at.  Not the one that talked about the world being a horrible place where everyone couldn’t be saved.  That was… she had her reservations about that.

But the stories, like the Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, the Matrix.  Contained, nonsense worlds with their own special rules.

She wasn’t an English major, but the Practice seemed intent on making her one.  There was a common idea that tied them together.  A- a moral, she supposed.

The reason the Forest Ribbon Trail made someone better at finding lost and Lost things, and traveling paths and Paths wasn’t purely practice.  It was personal growth.  Self-discovery.  She was supposed to come to terms with something about herself, like Alice and growing up, or Dorothy and the idea of home.

“Please!” the Other screamed.

“What do you think she does, Snowdrop?” Avery asked.  “Does she have a deal with the Wolf, where she says something, or does she do something horrible in reality when she’s free?  Or maybe she possesses anyone she forms a partnership with.  Would she be holding me in her hands, like she’s holding that other opossum?”

“Nah,” Snowdrop said.  “Not as bad as any of those things.”

“Good to know,” Avery said.  She turned over the coin, then held it down for Snowdrop to see.  “Recognize it?”

“No.”

Avery nodded.  “I do.”

Guilherme had given her a practice.  A glamour, to bring out her best self.  But to capture it, she needed to chase it first.  Mark it like warpaint, worn after the battle.  After she was sweaty from a game well played.  After she was brave.  After she was noble.  It stressed that she had to decide who and what she wanted to be, then solidify it.

But to do that, she had to find that someone.  And this…

Every single trap so far had been marked by indecision.  Hesitation.  Even her boon companion evoked it.

She exhaled slowly, forcing herself to be calm, and she laid her hand over her heart.  There was still glamour in it, from when she’d thrown the fistful at Todd.

This is me, calming the fuck down as I figure stuff out, and find confidence.

As I leave a bit of that awful indecision behind.

So, you know, if I’m going to have any natural glamour, let it start with that.

When she pulled her hand away, there was no dust on it.  Only a trace of moisture, because she’d been running scared for most of this.

“You said we bring one item, huh?” Avery asked.

“One item, numbskull.”

Avery tossed the coin to the Other behind them.

Avery smiled.  Putting one hand on the back of Snowdrop’s head.  “Did you want another name besides Snowdrop?  Before the Wolf?”

“Yes.  I can’t get used to it.”

“Yeah,” Avery said.

She started walking, guiding Snowdrop.  She dropped her hand and pointed down as they walked.

The Trail continued to change as they walked.  The trees were more dense, the ribbons no longer white, but crimson.

The wind smelled stale.

Her heart pounded.

The Wolf wouldn’t be easy.

“I think if I’m grabbing one item, it’ll have to be the timepiece.  Because we need that time.”

“That’s dumb.  Loser.”

The path creaked beneath her feet.  She couldn’t look to see, but it felt like she was walking on boards with a thin layer of dirt over top.  It felt like the boards had absolutely nothing beneath them, the way they buckled and bowed beneath her weight, and she didn’t weigh much at all.

The Others hadn’t followed.  In a way, defeating each of them on a mental level had put them behind her.

The pounding sounds continued.  Now she felt them reverberating through the ‘floor’.  She couldn’t see the source, with the mist that had gathered, but she was getting closer and closer, and the inconsistent pounding was getting louder and louder.

There was a pause, and silence lingered.

Then a bang, and the edge of the Path to Avery’s right popped, a board springing into the air, as the rest creaked, and groaned.  She couldn’t see or look, but she could hear them coming away one by one.

Her focus was so much on her ears and tracking the sound that her eyes weren’t trained on anything in particular.

The Wolf appeared, leaning forward out of the mist.  A face twisted by age, as big as Avery’s upper body, pale, with shaggy black hair.  Eight feet tall, with breasts that drooped to the pelvis, held tight against her upper body and stomach by a stained, tight red dress.  Every feature was warped by what could have been arthritis.  Her movements were slow, but made imposing by the way the boards beneath them creaked.  Like one sudden movement from her could plunge them into oblivion.

Drool dripped down from the Wolf’s mouth.  Avery didn’t look to see what it did to the ground.

“Did you bring something from the Trail?” the massive, gnarled old woman asked, her voice drawn out.

“No,” Snowdrop said.

“I’m asking her.”

“I have nothing.  I want to take the timepiece, so you don’t keep me here for an inconvenient length of time.”

The woman stepped away, the ground creaking beneath her.  She reached off to the side, and plucked something from the tree.  She gave Avery a small toy hourglass, like the kind that would come from a cracker at Christmas.

The woman smelled so bad.  Avery glanced at the side of the trail.  A branch without a ribbon-

“How was your journey?” the old woman asked.

“It was-” Avery started, eyes still glancing.

The hand came fast, striking Avery in the side of the head, clapping one ear, striking her jaw, and dashing her thoughts to white noise.

She squinted her eyes shut, so she wouldn’t unintentionally look down.

“Look at me,” the old woman said, her voice wavering, her face leaning in until her chin was almost at Avery’ shoulder, “while I am talking to you.”

Avery straightened, and before she could open her eyes, a gnarled, dry hand grabbed her by the shoulder, two fingers touching her face to pry eyes open.

“I want to negotiate,” Avery told the old woman.  She touched her ear and her hand came away bloody.

“It doesn’t matter.  Neither the negotiation nor the blood you’re touching now.  It’s not true harm.  You’ll heal from that before you leave.  The true harm comes later.”

“I want to negotiate, as the Forest Ribbon Trail allows,” Avery said, again, swallowing.  She’d use the rule of three if she had to.

The old woman smiled.  “What are your terms, then?”

“That I be allowed to visit one location and see to affairs before you have me for the one hour, and that I forget what happens in that hour.  That I suffer no lasting damage.  That gifts are given appropriate to the token.”

The old woman wiped drool from her chin.  She worked her jaw, like it was sore, and broken partial dentures moved in her mouth, running up against teeth that had managed to survive.

“I don’t have the memory to remember all that.  I’m an addled old woman.”

“Then I can repeat myself, as many times as it takes.”

“The rules are that I can waste your time if the timepiece is the thing closest to me, child.  Even if you carry it, it is the closest thing to me.  You have a time limit.  Repeat yourself if you wish.”

Avery reached out in Snowdrop’s direction.

The opossum girl approached, and Avery put her hands on the girl’s shoulders, keeping the girl between herself and the Wolf.

“Aha,” the old woman said.  She smiled and drool dripped down.  Then she laughed, and it was an uneven sound, unhinged.

She hobbled away, pacing, moving.

“You figured out her trick?” the old woman asked.

“I did.”

Snowdrop carried the woven thing.

“But the rule for the woven thing, child, remember?  I may temporarily blind you.”

“I-”

Avery flinched as the old woman reached.  Her arm was long, even considering her height.  She gripped Avery by the side of the face.  With her other hand, she reached into her own mouth and crushed it against blackened gums.  The thumb came away black.

She smeared it against one of Avery’s eyes, and it stung.  Her eye didn’t open again.

Avery saw Snowdrop back away, off to the side.

“Stay close,” Avery told Snowdrop.  “Please.  I need the time.”

With the last moment before the thumb smudged against her other eye, she looked.  Checking.  The detour.

As a just-in-case.

She tracked the branches, searching, trying to tell a fork from an individual limb.

The hand struck her in the side of her head once again.  While she reeled, her eyes shut to avoid looking down, the thumb smeared against her eye.  She could open it, and it stung, but she could see some things.  Blurry outlines.  Snowdrop.  The clearing.

She shook despite herself.

“I want to negotiate, if you’re done.  By the terms.  I have kept to the rules.”

“You have.  It doesn’t matter.”

Her heart pounded.

“Why the heck not?”

The ground beneath Avery creaked as the Wolf drew near, kneeling so her knobby knees were almost at Avery’s toes.  She leaned in close.  “Who rules the kingdom of the blind, Avery Kelly?”

“I don’t- the seeing man.”

“Not a man, no,” the Wolf’s voice rasped in her ear.

“You?  Because you see?”

“No.  Not me.”

The wolf moved.  Avery couldn’t see how or where.  Her head jerked.  She tried to keep the rules in mind, about not looking down.  Even if she had only ten percent of her vision, that could be enough.

Something crashed through the thicket of trees.  Avery turned, doing all she could to avoid backing up, standing firm.

Snowdrop screamed.

“Stop!  What are you doing?” Avery shouted.

“Not me.  I’m here, waiting for negotiations to resume,” the Wolf said.

Avery blinked, trying to see.  She made out a shape.  A hand.  A massive doll’s hand.

The doll’s face was beyond the thicket, lying sideways.

“I know what to do!” Snowdrop raised her voice.  “I know what to do!  I’ll help!  I can bring help!  I can save you!”

Then the hand receded.  Taking Snowdrop with it.  The face remained.

The one who sees?  Not a man.

“Nicolette Belanger?” Avery asked.

The doll’s face cracked in an effort to make a smile.

Then it too receded.

“Wasting no time to secure a third win,” the Wolf rasped, beside Avery.  The ground creaked as she settled into a sitting position.

Avery remained silent and still, trying to think.  What did she have?  What options?

She couldn’t think of anything.

“The gimmick.  The opossum.  It plays dead even when it doesn’t mean to, fainting.  Deceives when it doesn’t mean to.  It says the opposite of what it means to, but it can deceive well enough to bring a token item into the Wolf’s negotiation.”

Avery swallowed hard, blinking, trying to clear her vision.

“What she said about knowing what to do, and being able to help…”

“Was a lie,” Avery said, rubbing at her eyes to no avail.  Her hands were shaking.

The wolf chucked, and it was an eerie sound, lilting, like a different person in a different mood had started it than the one who’d finished it.

“Avery Kelly, I did tell you to look at me when you talk to me, didn’t I?  I’ve stretched my patience, but you’re being rude.”

Anger laced the words.

“I can’t see.  You covered my eyes in guck,” Avery managed.

“I don’t see how that matters, does it?”

Avery heard the spatter of drool against the ground, and felt the ground beneath her feet creak and shift as the skinny, knobby, eerily tall Wolf crept forward.

“You did so well, up to this point.”

It was all Avery could do to avoid backing away.

[2.9 Spoilers] – End of the Trail

Stolen Away – 2.z

Interlude

Last Thursday: End of the Trail


One Hour Ago

Nicolette carried a serving tray of plates away.  The room behind her was smoky, heavy with the smell of cigarettes from the older guys and vape smoke from the younger guys, along with one or two joints.  The light from there was diffused by the heavy haze.

After so much Seeing, the Belanger Circle liked to unwind by situating themselves in the opposite.  Or that was the idea, anyway.  There were occasional machinations and plots, and people trying to one-up one another to climb in Alexander’s esteem, using Practice to do it, so they would See in the smoke, by learning to interpret it, or putting something in their vape juice or their joints that took them a little further from reality, so they could look at the situation from another angle.  They’d then try to act normal while interacting and maneuvering around one another.

Alexander loved it all.  He lived for it.  He’d grown up in the thick of it, he’d come out on top, and it had become his version of normal.

She couldn’t afford to indulge, and her manipulations couldn’t be in that hazy room.  Because she was too young to drink, sharing drinks was a tradition, and traditions had power.  Because she was the youngest and newest member present, and that meant she had to bring dinner and take away the dishes.  She had to return with tea and dessert, if any, and that necessitated long absences.  Any plots she tried to ravel would unravel while she wasn’t looking, and any chess game she played would see the pieces moved when she wasn’t looking.

She wasn’t the newest member of the circle, but the other two new members didn’t live at the Blue Heron Institute.  She wasn’t sure they were accepting any more.  Not until she picked her apprentice, and that was a trap.

She walked down dim stone corridors, candles lighting up as she approached and going dark as she left them behind.  Plates and silverware clicked, clattered, and shuffled on the serving tray, try as she might to move silently.

The bones of this place had once been an old stone church, picked up once and placed down again, stone by stone.  Alexander was almost always present, so he lived in the adjunct living quarters, where the priest and his family had lived.  Rooms had been rearranged, and many had a small stone room of their own, while Alexander had a proper area with multiple rooms and the office where the hazy conversation was currently taking place.  He had marked out his space as a demesnes, and once it was his in entirety, expanded it further.  Once someone was inside, it was larger than the old church itself.

She passed into what had been the church itself, now a multi-purpose area that doubled as classroom, meeting area, entryway, and, arguably, the Heron Institute itself.  Everything else was adjacent, supporting.  Pews had been removed, replaced with scattered clusters of chairs, there were no walls separating areas, and bookshelves had been set up wherever they didn’t block the light from the tall windows.  The place had been picked up and set back down stone by stone, but the windows were exempt from that, and the old stained glass work had been replaced by a dusky, blue-tinted glass, alchemically altered to make it so one could look out, but outsiders couldn’t look in.  Within the apse, the farthest point from the front door on the raised stage, a vast and complicated circle sat partially erased.  It had been there for months like that, possibly because Alexander liked the aesthetic, but she would be tasked with wiping it clean and ensuring it was both spotless and dry before the summer classes started, and if there wasn’t someone subordinate to her present, she would be painstakingly cleaning it up to ten times a day.

No using practice for that.  The line they gave her was that using practice affected the spiritual flows in the area afterward, which was bullcrap, and that the lines had a tendency to influence any practice that was used, which was… less bullcrap.

At her left middle finger, a tin ring of a snake animated, writhing and constricting lightly against her skin, scraping against the handle of the serving tray.  She braced herself, and on feeling no bite, instead stopped walking and stepped back and to the side of the way into the next part of the Institute.  She adjusted her grip on the tray to have one hand centered on the bottom, her other hand free to reach to her side and tug a black feather from her back pocket.  She held it with care, out of view, as a just-in-case, but she knew it was painted with a chalk drawing of a sword.

Chase stepped out of the doorway, and seemed a bit surprised to see her.  He held a cupcake in one hand, and a bottle of lemonade in the other.  He studied her, frowning a bit.

She ducked down in a light curtsy, her eyes dropping to the floor, before making eye contact again.

He swayed a bit, and his eyes were visibly red even by candlelight.  Alcohol and drugs lowered defenses, which was part of why she couldn’t indulge.  Chase hinted at his motives in how he looked at her, and in the faint frustration he evidenced.  His hair was a bit messy, and his shirt was unbuttoned.  He’d been a guy who had been good looking, and could be again, but for the time being, was about thirty pounds overweight, wearing pants that didn’t fit.  He thought he was being subtle, unbuttoning his pants to alleviate the pressure on his waistline, and using his belt to keep his pants up, but the ‘v’ of the zipper pulling open at the top betrayed his ploy.  His hair remained styled, an older-fashioned swoop of black hair at the brow, his chin shaven, his clothes business casual, even in ‘leisure’.

“Sir,” she said, acknowledging him, as though he’d spoken.

He continued to study her, as if he could decipher something about her that would answer his frustrations.  He was her sponsor.  The one who had brought her into the circle.  Alexander, in turn, was the one who had brought Chase in; Chase had been brought in because he was very, very good at dealing with certain kinds of Other, owing to his family ties, and because of the politics of it.  Making Chase an apprentice and teaching him all sorts of things about Seeing made for strong ties with Chase’s family.

He had expected something very different when he had found her.  Leverage against Alexander, maybe.  More power.  A grateful girl a year younger than him.  Instead, Chase had had to go to school, he’d left her here to act as eyes, ears, and hands on things here, and Alexander had started to barter with her, making her more Alexander’s apprentice than Chase’s.

The snake ring tightened, pressing against skin with teeth, but not breaking the skin.  She backed away a half step. “I should take-”

Chase stepped closer, reaching out.  He touched the bandage at her eye.

“Is it healing?” he asked.

“Yes.  I have an appointment with a healer.”

“When?”

“I’d have to check my agenda to know, specifically.  Roughly a week.”

“Be more careful,” he told her.  “Both with what you send, and what may come back.”

Two nights ago she had gone to the edge of the Kennet situation, contacted a Collector, and set it to the task of gathering eyes.  As summonings went, it wasn’t especially dangerous.  The things of the Ruins were to ghosts, astrally projecting practitioners, and other immaterial things what bogeymen were to the real, and vice versa.  There had been no reason to expect a countering or other issues, but she had let her guard down.  It had come back at her, hard.  Only Nicolette’s glasses had saved her from losing an eye.  As it stood, she had claw marks around her eye and a crack in her glasses, with the arm of her glasses now a little stubborn when it came to folding up.  Thirteen stitches.

“Yes, sir.  I should take this to the kitchen and bring the tea and dessert.”

“Grab a few more of these for me, eh?” Chase asked, holding up the cupcake.

“Yes, sir.”

He stuffed it into his mouth with one hand, pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket with the other, turning to walk away.

Nicolette dipped the feather she’d held in her hand into a half-filled glass of water, washing off the chalk, and carefully wiped it as dry as she could before laying it on the cleanest part of the serving tray.

The adjunct area of the Institute was new, and lacked some of the charm of the church.  Kitchen, some more apartments and guest rooms, washrooms, some storage rooms, some private labs, and a small library and study room containing resources that were too precious to keep in the main ‘church’ area, but not so precious that the other founders of the Institute didn’t keep them with them.

A wolf’s head mounted on the wall, a bit the worse for wear with age, was positioned so it looked at her as she entered the west end of the hallway.

The kitchen had a sign mounted on the door, with no handle: “We shall not thank them.  We shall not acknowledge them.”  A diagram was set beneath.

She adjusted her grip on the serving tray, and pressed a hand against the diagram, closing her eyes.

When she opened her eyes, the door was open, the sensation of contact with the diagram a mere trick of the mind.

The kitchen was redolent with the smell of baking, tea, and the harsh soaps. The dishes sat washed by the sink, the counters were wiped, and the floor mopped and drying.

“Three more cupcakes, tout suite,” she addressed the apparently empty room, setting down the serving tray by the sink, and picking the feather back up.  “I aim to be back in a few minutes.”

Her hands freed, she ducked out of the kitchen, back into the hallway’s east end.  The wolf’s head, mounted on the wall, was positioned so it stared at her.

I know you’re keeping an eye on me, Alexander.  Don’t worry, I’m not a danger.

She walked past the storage rooms and library to her room, just in front of the wolf’s head on the wall.  It was at the end of the corridor of guest rooms, the furthest sleeping area from Alexander’s demesnes.

The adjunct area of the Institute was partially stone, partially log, and it had taken some doing to make it livable.  She’d hung cloth on the walls, which she laundered fairly regularly, and hand-picked or hand-made her own furniture.  Anything and everything to keep her hands and head busy.

She had a headache, partially because of the smoke in Alexander’s study, and partially because she always had a bit of a headache.  She took some Naproxen for that, picking out the ‘immediate release’ bottle.

Her face hurt, where the Collector had gouged her, and it was worse since Chase had made mention of it, reminding her she was supposed to be hurting.  She took some painkillers.

She removed her hair ornament, setting it carefully aside, fixed her glasses and sorted out her hair, which she kept in a slightly modified pixie cut.  She had a crumb on her shoulder from the bread that had come with dinner, and she dusted that off.

Running her hand through her hair, her fingers found the familiar soft spots.  She adjusted her hair to cover them, even though the effect on her head was negligible.

When she was ten, Nicolette had been in the bathroom, waiting for the shower to warm up, and her older brother had stormed in.  Her parents had trusted him to watch her, willfully ignorant about his ongoing issues.  He’d accused her of stealing his drugs, which she hadn’t, and in the heated, terrifying altercation that followed, he’d shoved her.  A grown adult shoving a girl less than half his size.

She wished she didn’t remember what had followed.  Seeing him leave, she’d laid there, too hurt to move, sprawled in the tub with soaking wet clothes and the shower’s water running over her.  He’d been afraid he’d killed her and so he’d gathered up his stuff and left her there with her skull broken.  She had been told repeatedly by her mom and dad that they had come home hours after her ‘fall’ and they wouldn’t have left her home alone for a whole weekend with her ‘troubled’ brother, but she was fairly sure it had been at least a day that she’d laid there like that, desperately trying to drink the water that ran down into her mouth, feeling her body grow increasingly, painfully hot as the water ran cold over it, her thoughts slowly getting more and more confused.  More logically, trusting her gut alone, it might have been two days.

She had said as much, stating it as her Truth before the spirits, and nothing and no-one had gainsaid her.  It wouldn’t be the first, second, or hundredth time her parents had selectively edited the truth.

She’d slipped into a coma and woken up in the hospital three days later.  She’d had meningitis, leaving her with permanent deafness in one ear, fluctuating vision problems that necessitated four different glasses prescriptions, constant headaches and neck pain, and, thankfully, no other issues she could put her finger on.

Then, a month into recovering, she had completely lost her mind.  She’d heard voices with her deaf ear, and she had started seeing things.  And a lot of the time, when those voices had told her things, they’d been right.

Alexander would later compare the incident to trepanation.  An old custom of drilling holes into the skull, with skin replaced over the hole after, done as a spiritual thing.  It was still conducted as a medical practice in some areas, to alleviate building pressure within the skull.  She had a hole in her skull too, though not at the forehead, and it had and did let spirits and other immaterial things in.

At times those Others had fought, because her head made a nice hallow that was safe from the constant pressure of the Ruins and the chase of its collectors, gatherers, harvesters and devourers, because her emotions were like candy to some things.  As a consequence, there was a lot of competition for that safety and ‘candy’.  Some had stoked the fires of her rage and others had dragged her thoughts down into whirlpool spirals of stark terror.  Yet others had eaten every last bit of her joy and tore away her grasp on reality until she’d gone from wanting to die to wholeheartedly believing she’d already died and was somehow in hell.

She adjusted her glasses where the damaged arm was pressing too hard against her ear, then fixed her hair again, adjusting the hair ornament at the side of her head.  Today’s was red cedar and dove feathers.  A little clip fixed it to her glasses, while the rest nestled against the back of her ear.

She managed now.

She checked under the bandages, looking for signs of infection.  With the hole in her skull, it was very possible she could get meningitis again.  She was careful not to touch the grooves where the claws had dug into skin, and the stitches as she pressed her fingers into skin to check for swelling, daubed on some ointment, and replaced the bandages.

She dried the crow’s feather with a clean cloth, cleaned the nib, and set it aside.  She then picked another one out of a vase full of various feathers on her work desk, setting it down on her work mat, wiped it clean of trace dust, and carefully illustrated a sword on it in treated chalk.  A deft cut with a hobby knife sharpened the nib.

She uncorked ten jars that sat within diagrams she’d inlaid in her desk, being very careful not to move the jars from their positions, and dipped the pen into the first one.  A jar of blood that hadn’t been allowed to dry.  The diagram ensured that.  She blew on it to dry it, placed it on the mat and with two pens of white ink held in one hand, drew out a seal that ended in an ‘Aquarius’ squiggle.  The seal disappeared as soon as it was done its work.

She repeated the process nine times more.  Each jar was blood from different circumstances.  The first was blood shed during futile toils, obnoxious to acquire.  She’d ended up buying it for eight hundred dollars and had traded a favor to Alexander to verify its authenticity.  The second was blood shed in sickness, easier.  The third was blood shed in death, deceptive in its difficulty, when she didn’t want to arrange the death herself.  The fourth was blood shed in the midst of the worst of fates.  Being here made it easier to keep track of things that were happening, and she’d only needed to keep an ear out for some novice getting in too deep with the practice.  She had collaborated with another student to keep tabs on the man, waited for him to reach his lowest point, and had bartered, giving him a way out if he’d give her an ample quantity of blood first.

All in all, it had been win-win.  She’d helped him out, and she’d taken enough blood that ran thick with Moíra to sell to some others, much as she’d bought the jar of Város blood.  Eight hundred down, six hundred up.  He now remained in contact with the Blue Heron Institute, running errands in exchange for access to lesser texts.

Another jar with blood shed in pain.  Easy as pie.  Blood from discord.  Blood from fear.  Blood from ruin.  Blood from disaster.  Nuances were important.

The last was blood shed in madness.  That one had struck a chord within her, after her taste of it.  She had tried her hardest to arrange it so the young man had it easier, after.  He was one of nine individuals she tried to keep tabs on.

She had this down to an art.  There were two dangers, with these feathers.  One was real, one was an inconvenience.  The real danger was that she might prick herself or get blood on her fingers.  That would invite the fate in question.  The inconvenience was that she had to be exceedingly careful with the sealing of the blood the feather drank into its stem.  If she messed it up, then she could get some Enyo blood in the Typhon blood and both would be spoiled.

She screwed on a steel nib, focusing on not pricking herself, then slid it into the pocket-protector type case in her back pocket, alongside six similar feathers.  Some had only one type of blood sealed into them multiple times over, different colors of chalk for the swords, and variants on the illustration.

Augurs tended to focus on fields fairly far removed from combat practices and self defense.  It was often implied that if things came to that, there had been a dramatic failure on the augur’s part and they deserved whatever came.  Nicolette didn’t hold to that.  If anything, she saw it as more important that she be armed and ready.  It had saved her from her own Collector bouncing back at her, just a few nights ago.

She cleaned her workspace of drips with alcohol, replaced the lids with care, wiped her hands, and rose to her feet.

Time for cupcakes.

She stepped back into the hallway, beneath the wolf head’s watching eyes, let herself back into the kitchen, past the rather obnoxious reminder and the diagram that forced the interaction with the reminder, and collected the serving tray of tea and treats that was waiting for her.  As if to say ‘we made them’, the cupcakes sat to the side of the tray, still steaming, frosting melting slightly.  She collected them and found room on the tray, before picking it up.

She couldn’t express gratitude, or the brownies would turn on her.  With the one-sided arrangement, a karmic debt was accrued, but there were always rules.  The faerie-adjacent brownies might strike a deal, like never ever watching them work.  When a hapless, curious individual finally did, they would be blinded.  The more the debt, the worse the fate.

The last incident with the kitchen brownies had been six years ago.  Just over two thousand days and nights of breakfasts and dinners provided without a disruption of the arrangement.  At this point, the person who crossed the brownies would probably not be allowed to die, as the karmic debt came to roost.  Nicolette was careful to keep her expression neutral, taking it all in stride as she picked up the tray.

She wasn’t sure if a smile would qualify as ‘thanks’, but she wasn’t going to test those waters.

Walking back, down the adjunct area to the east, sideways through the church, and into the offices and apartments at the west hall, she heard a chime in her deaf ear.

She quickened her pace.

The haze was thick in the air, but she couldn’t let herself cough.  It was, at least, cooler inside the room than outside.

Alexander sat at his desk, leather swivel chair turned sideways, his feet resting on the corner of his desk, one ankle crossing the other.  He was skinny, which was not the case for most of the people she knew who were forty-five-ish, he wore a blazer with a linen shirt, black slacks, and loafers, and looked exceedingly at home.  His hair was longer, most of it pulled back away from his face, grey shooting through the sides of it, the top an orange-brown that seemed to almost glow in the light of the candles around them.

He was in his demesnes here, surrounded by people currying for his favor, and it made all the sense in the world that he looked so very at home.

He met her eyes for a moment, smiling slightly.

“I could put you in contact with him,” Alexander said, to Chase.

“That would be appreciated,” Chase said.  “Oh, that draft.  She’s back.  Took you a while, Nicolette.  Did you get lost?”

He struggled to turn around in his seat to look at her.

“You requested cupcakes,” she said, reaching up to the serving tray and handing him the plate with the three extras.

“Yay,” he said, sounding very much like a child.  He clapped his hands together once.

She then set down the tray, moved the teacups off the tray and into a row, and began pouring.

“I like that dress, Nicolette,” Tanner said, from her far right.  He was of a similar frame to Chase, but was four years older.

“It’s a bit too small for your frame, Tanner,” she said, as she poured the tea.  “I could give you advice if you’d like to change up your wardrobe.”

Chase and Seth jeered, laughing.  They were the ones smoking joints.  Alexander and Wye remained cool and collected.

Tanner’s discomfort was entirely his own making, she felt, so she deemed herself clear for the ‘no infighting’ rules of the Institute.  If he really did want to wear dresses, she really didn’t care and she’d even respect him a bit more.

“I don’t know, Nico,” Seth said, drawling out the words a bit, like he was testing how they sounded.  “Maybe, uh, take it off, hand it over, so we can see the dress without you in it.”

Nicolette’s fingers brushed against the leftmost feather at her back pocket.  She smiled, “Th-”

“Seth,” Alexander cut her off.

The tone of the room had changed.  The haze of smoke between Alexander and Seth cleared up with eerie quickness as Alexander brought his feet down from the corner of the desk.

“I was joking,” Seth said.

“Look me in the eyes,” Alexander said.  “I’m not.”

The lighting of the candles had changed in the smallest ways.  A few more shadows in the room.  A few more reds.

Alexander’s voice was chilly, “If I sent you to talk to another family, would you address their matriarch or daughters that way?  Their female apprentices?”

“No, sir.  I really was joking,” Seth said.

“Then why would you say such a thing in my domain, with my apprentice?”

“I was going with the flow of conversation.  I didn’t mean to offend you.”

Alexander rose to his feet.  As he did, the furniture moved, everything sliding to a new position.  The rest of the boys rose from their seats in alarm, moving to safe ground.  Nicolette held the teapot up and away from the cups, in case they moved as well.

Seth was brought before the desk, so close his knees pressed against the desk’s front.  He winced.

Nicolette resumed pouring the tea, her expression neutral.

“This,” Alexander said, reaching down, plucking the joint from Seth’s fingers, “is making you stupid.  No more, when you come to my study.  I’ll have to reconsider what errands I send you on.  Tanner?  You’ll take over until I’ve worked out where Seth may go.”

Tanner nodded once.

“It’s best you retire to your room, Seth.”

Even dressed nicely, Seth looked like the distillation of a sullen eighteen year old as he worked his way to his feet, the chair not moving for him and the desk right in front of him.  He uttered a single, “Sir,” and then left the room.

“One less cup of tea, then?” Nicolette asked.

People sat back down.  Alexander made a gesture to Chase, indicating the joint.  “Yes, thank you, Nicolette.”

Chase stubbed it out.

“If it’s no trouble, I heard an alarm for a simple ward I set up.  I’d like to go investigate as soon as tea is served,” Nicolette said, parceling out the treats onto the saucer’s edge.  She handed the first cup to Wye.  The oldest of the boys, at twenty-five.  Wye was calm, collected, calculating and very, very dangerous.  He wasn’t around much, but when he was, he commanded similar respect to Alexander.  A Belanger by blood, a nephew once removed of Alexander.

“Where is this ward?” Alexander asked.

“The small town, east of Thunder Bay.  Where the collector bounced back from, the other night.”  She made a point of not naming the town outright, so the boys couldn’t beat her to the punch.

She handed the cup to Tanner.  Slightly inebriated.  Tanner had come into the circle through talent.  He’d found an auspice, an almost literal sign of things to come, writing on a wall that told of coming hardships, and through that entry point, had lost his innocence and found his way to contact with Others, then to the practitioner community.  Alexander had taken him under his wing to avoid letting other Augurs have him.  He picked things up fast and was good at politics.  Alexander sent him on a lot of ‘errands’, networking and doing business with other families.  Tanner had meant something very similar to what Seth had said, but he had the common sense that let him get away with it.

“I’m very curious about that town,” Alexander Belanger said.  “Put that teapot down.  Go, tend to the ward, tell me what you find.”

“Yes, sir.  Thank you.  May I use the sanctuary?  I’d like to draw a diagram too big for my room.”

“Taking precautions after your last incident?” Wye asked.

“More like I’m trying to get as complete a picture as I can.  I want more eyes on it.”

“Do me a favor,” Alexander said.  “In two months, three days, I’m needed to go looking for someone.  I’ll have to leave my body behind.  You’d guard it.  Do me that favor and I’ll lend you the sanctuary.  You’ll need to clean it up after.”

She’d have to anyway.  She pulled her agenda out of her pocket, a wallet-sized book, and searched through it to find the calendar day.  The slot was empty.  She penned it in.  “Deal.”

“Go, be swift.  Good luck.  Chase, see to the tea and treats for everyone else, would you?  And take the tray back?”

Chase gave her a look as she left the room.

Whatever the man might have said to Seth, Alexander was not her ally.  The agenda was a safeguard against a deeper set of plots.

Another bell’s chime sounded in her deaf ear.  Another ward tripped.

She listened to the nuance of it, her eyes briefly closing.

Three sets of feet.  Too light to be the men who went on patrol, or the hulking Faerie.  Using directional hearing, she could place the sounds at the southwestern corner of the town.  Beyond its boundaries.  That opened up doors for her.

Alexander wanted to corner her, and she had a sense of why.  If she messed up, put down the wrong date, or slipped, forgetting to purify her hair ornament and thus allow only pure and clear spirits through into the hallow in her head, then she would risk being forsworn, or she would overbook, giving him more days than she had.  Every year, the contract had to be renewed if she was to keep the appointments and be there for his bookings.  In that confused first year, she’d wondered what he was doing.  Then, especially as she’d cleared her head of the noise and jumble, she’d worked it out.

She was sixteen now.  If she booked enough days that she had a contract renewal after she turned eighteen, the terms and protections would change.  As master, he would be free to marry her off, or to marry her himself.

He knew she knew.  That the favors he asked for were a currency.  That the days before she turned eighteen were a limited supply that she traded to him for this ‘free’ education and the resources he provided. His prize, if he ‘won’ this subtle game of theirs, was her, or whatever he could get for marrying a fairly talented augur to someone else.

What he didn’t know was that she had resources.  A larger coven of competing augurs was very interested in the Belanger’s teachings and practices, and had reached out to her.  They had given her ways to hide from his Sight without him knowing, and they had sat down with her and worked through the agenda and the favors given.  Subtle cases where she could challenge him, where he hadn’t fulfilled his terms of the arrangement, and weeks of her time given didn’t count.  It weakened the contract, gave her back time, and let him think he had her after she turned eighteen, when in reality, she could walk away with everything he had taught her.

It mattered enough that she’d had to check, and she checked regularly, paying a steep price each time.  To verify that fact and reality as Truth.  That he didn’t know.  She had to stay steps ahead of a man who could see the future.

She collected the things from her room.  Tools, chalk, reference materials.

She heard another chime.  They were walking through the woods, and she had a good idea about where.  A clearing with a cabin.  She had more wards near the clearing, subtle ones drawn out in spiderweb.  She had scattered a lot of the ones in the town itself when the Faerie had threatened her.

Everything in a box, box under one arm, she returned to the ‘church’.  Her snake ring came alive, tightening, and her arm jumped as the teeth bit in piercing flesh.

Seth stood in the doorway that connected the adjunct area to the church.  His eyes glowed with Sight as he looked through her and into her.

Nicolette smiled.  She adjusted her glasses, and her fingernail clicked into a groove at the rim, then to another.  Each ‘click’ was an adjustment, and each one made her Sight change to a different mode of Seeing.  Her headache pounded in the background as she switched to seeing him as a doll with chains run through him to seeing him as a figure of light, surrounded by splashes of color, to seeing the electricity running through the walls and the blood running through his veins.  She noted the tools and weapons he had, the colors and intensities of them in various Sights and angles.

“You know you’re not welcome here,” Seth said.  “He says it’s for your privacy, but you get the guest room instead of actual apprentice quarters because you don’t really count.”

“I know,” she said.  She was aware of the ring’s teeth, making the danger clear.  “Excuse me, I have a diagram to draw.”

He grabbed her arm with enough force that her other arm slipped from its hold on the box of tools and materials.  It dropped to the ground, crashing.

The wolf was behind her, turned to look, she knew.  It was one of the more obvious ways that Alexander kept tabs on things.  She suspected there were other ways, using things like the brownies as spies, or models, or cards, or anything else.

“He’s using you,” Seth hissed into her ear.  The eye of his that she could see glowed as he looked her up and down.  Past clothes, past skin, past bone and organ.

That’s a sword that cuts both ways.

“I know.  Now please let go of me.  Your uncle Alexander is already upset with you for disrespecting him, attacking one of his apprentices.  I don’t think it’s a good idea to repeat the process.”

“Your contract is up for renewal in a month.  Don’t renew it.”

“I have obligations and appointments that require me to renew.  He and I both know that.  It’s not optional, Seth.”

His expression twisted, his grip tightening.

“Please let go of me, I’m asking you a second time.  By the rules here, we’re not allowed to harm one another unless we’re harmed first.”

“You’re hurting the whole institute, Nico.  That bandage on your face is a good mark of that.  We all get up to stuff, pursue some side jobs or bartering.  But when you fail that badly, it hurts us all.”

Technically, he wasn’t quite accurate to the letter of that particular rule.  Technically, she could have called him out on breaking the rule, left him forsworn or gainsaid him.  Bonus for her, and a ding or a crippling loss for him.  Except there was more in play.  Politics, for one thing.  He was related to Alexander.  Alexander had the institute in part because he’d bartered with family, getting the power as a kind of loan to get it started, then bartering again to get the good words, references, and contacts to bring people in.

If Alexander’s distant nephew got in any real trouble here, it disrupted that whole engine.

If it was just that, she might not have held back.  But he wasn’t wrong, she’d been marked.  The mark came with bad karma, and bad karma tended to mean that things wouldn’t go smoothly.  It may have been accidental, or something he’d done unconsciously, unwittingly absorbed by growing up in a family of practitioners, but he’d invoked that and it was in play.

There were ways around that.  To build a shorter, more contained structure within this interaction.  “I’m asking you a second time, please let go of me.”

“What would happen if you got hurt, Nico?” the teenager asked, “badly enough you couldn’t attend that appointment?  Are there any you swore to attend?”

There were.  Quite a few.  There was a power in the swearing.

“I’d have help, you know.  More than one of us aren’t keen on having you here.”

Chase, she guessed.  He was the closest to Seth.  He’d have very conflicted feelings about his apprentice.  He probably couldn’t remove her from the appointment without risking someone else getting her.  Either Alexander, or he’d be afraid that someone from a rival group, like the coven she’d met with, would do it and Alexander would be incensed.

She kept her expression blank.

“You’d be forsworn, and you’d be entirely at the mercy of any of us, if we were gracious enough to give you sanctuary, after.  It wouldn’t even be a first for this family.  How do you think Alexander got to be as influential as he did?  It’s not because the Belangers were a big family.  I’d be following in his footsteps, bringing rivals low and taking everything from them.”

Again, he looked into and through her.

He went on, saying, “If we didn’t, that thing that happened to you, after you cracked your head open? That was just your head, that spirits and echoes and riders slithered into.  If you were forsworn, they’d have all the rest of you.”

“I suppose we’ll cross that bridge if we get to it,” Nicolette said.  “Now let go, you’re violating the rules of this house, threatening me and bruising my arm like this.”

She really didn’t want him to let go, so she smiled, small and personal, just for him.  Smug.

“I don’t think you’ll tell,” he whispered.  “I See it.”

“Neither will you,” she told him, and she scratched him, shallow, wrist to elbow.

“Christ!  Fuck!” he let go of her, and the snake ring bit her, deep, as he swung.  She didn’t have her balance, and she wasn’t much of a fighter.

Besides, this played out better in the long run.

He caught her in the side of the head, and she let herself fall.  Her ornament fell from the side of her head, and she caught it before it could be dirtied by the ground, using her right hand to catch it, even though her left hand was closer.  Her glasses slipped down her nose.

“You hurt me first, I told you three times, and you’re violating the rules of this place.  You-”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, cutting her off with a wave.  He made a face and looked at the cut on the side of his arm.

She wiped her fingernails off on the sleeve of her dress.

“You’re just making life harder for yourself,” Seth said.  “Watch out.”

“Isn’t that what we do?” she asked.  “Watching out?”

He smirked, and walked away.

By the time he was halfway down the hall, she could feel stirrings.  The way a hallow was used by practitioners, it was often framed or treated in such a way that it invited only certain things in.  Doing so limited the infighting and disruption within the hallow.  She used her hair ornaments to frame the hallow, that hole in her skull, and ensure that the things that came in were peaceful, learned, and cooperative.

Right now, as she picked herself up, she didn’t put the ornament back.  Instead, pain framed the hallow, throbbing where she’d been struck at a sensitive point, probably because he’d used that Sight to identify that point.  Pain invited painful things in, which was already starting to make her see things, even without her Sight.

She could hear bitter, angry whisperings in her deaf ear, reminding her of past things.  Of being attacked last night.  Of her family, and her time on the streets and in the hospitals.

She didn’t put the ornament back, because she didn’t want him to see that she needed it, when he looked back.

Instead, she touched her glasses, fingernail finding the groove that made the hallway bright, and the spirits of agency dark.

Prickly and black pónos spirits lurked on her shoulder, touching the side of her head.  She didn’t fight them or push them away.  Doing so would only make it hurt more, when they were like briar patches, hooked into her with barbs.  She’d cringe or wince if she tried, the pain surging as they parted ways with her, and she didn’t want to show Seth anything but confidence.

More importantly, there were spirits trailing after him.  Her Sight was clear enough that they were more than vague shadows.  A type of omen, they were dark and small, like little girls, excited and pushing at one another in their haste to follow.  Some carried small golden spheres.

Omens of eris, of discord.  Depending on how long he took to catch on, they would potentially do a lot of harm to his friendships with that boys club, in that hazy room.  To his relationship with Alexander.  With Chase.  They would swell in size over time, until it became obvious, but she’d have countermeasures before it became so obvious it was a problem.

She hadn’t used her fingernails to scratch him, but a feather.  The drawing of the dagger with the apple for a pommel had faded, the blood she’d put into it was spent.  She snapped it in half, carefully dropping the metal nib in the slot she’d had for the feather, then putting the feather part in the box of stuff Seth had made her drop.

She made her way to the church, and quickly cleaned enough of the floor for her diagram.

They couldn’t be far from the clearing now.

She used a compass with one pointed end and a chalk end to draw her circle, reinforcing it, quickly measured the distance from center to edge, then worked out the calculation to draw out a star using a meterstick.  Eight points, with a half-circle at each point.  A sign for Cancer in each half circle, quickly penned out.  She put down a template, like a rectangular cookie cutter, found it broken from when the box had fallen, and used the case for her reference cards as a template instead.

She put down a rectangle on the inside of each circle, the laid out cards.  Beside each card, she placed eyes.

Eight pets she had crafted, each bearing one eye from a pair.  She kept the other eye of each pair with her, and placed them within the diagram now, drawing circles to help preserve them while they were outside of their boxes.  Having them inside the box inside the diagram reduced her peripheral vision when looking through.

“Going all out, huh?” Tanner asked from the doorway.  Eight bookshelves, two clusters of fifteen chairs each, and a table sat between where he was and where she was drawing her diagram.

“This isn’t me going all out,” she said.

“Need anything?”

She shook her head.

She could hear more chimes.

She opened her agenda, and placed it on her knee as she sat cross-legged in the center of the diagram.  She penned out another Cancer sign in front of her.

Each one, now that she was inside the diagram, was sucking life from her.  Making her more tired, less her.  Her headache ramped up, as did the pain in her neck.

She reached over to the box, and set down three of the more full jars of blood.  Each laced with a different ill fate.  She had a lot of pain, fear was easy to come by in this era, and she rarely had occasion to straight-up draw on sickness.

Putting the ornament on hadn’t evicted the spirits and other forces that carried pain or madness.  It had only made the space more inhospitable.  As she quickly put down the diagram, it was hard to shake the sentiments that were settling around her.

She was an outsider here.  She had access to resources as long as she was useful.

Alexander was in charge.  Wye, the oldest, was in because he was family.  Tanner had talent.  Chase was from another family, apprenticed in as a favor.

Seth was another Belanger, but unlike Wye, he hadn’t taken the opportunity he’d been given and leveraged it to bigger and better things.  He took it for granted, he failed, he was rescued because that was what family was supposed to do, he failed again, he was rescued, and he found his way to success.  Dark brown hair, slight stubble, skinny, eyes glowing.

Nicolette was another kind of talent, of a very different sort to Tanner.  She’d had her eyes, ear, and sanity wrested from her by spirits that flowed into and through her head like water flowed into a drain.  Then, by steps and small measures, she’d found her way back to functioning.  Rituals, routines, grasping onto anything and everything and anyone that was nearby when she found some measure of herself again.  Through dumb luck, tenacity, desperation, and attentiveness, she had gotten to the point where she could get through the days, identify people who she could trust, and lean on them.  For two years, she had dipped into homelessness and hospitals.  She had made trinkets and charms and conspiracy theories about aliens and some of it had kept the worst spirits out.  She’d even turned some of the whisperings to her advantage, which let her find food and shelter.

Some Others had noticed, had tipped off Chase, and he’d approached her.  She hadn’t said yes.

Then her brother had come back, sober.  Her parents had been more mad at her for not forgiving her brother than they’d been at him for what he’d done.

So she’d gone with Chase.  She’d worked out Alexander’s plan for her.  She knew it to be Truth.

Right now, she was at a pivotal point.  She had enemies who would bring her low, and she had great opportunity.  If she could achieve a victory of sorts now, it would pay off triple.  To unravel this mystery or find out something that could be sold would disarm her enemies, like Seth.  It would give her more cachet with Alexander, which would translate to him being willing to teach her more, introduce her to more people, and empower her.

The more he gave her, the more she could bring to the table when going to the coven.  It would be more status there, more freedom, a better starting position that she could then climb from.  They already liked her.  She knew that to be Truth.  It would make them like her more.  Giving them what she knew didn’t mean she would lose it, either.

Tanner watched her work, arms folded.

Her agenda had notes on the individual creations, and the names she’d given them.  Spiderbones, Treecrawler, Blackhollow… names she was pretty sure weren’t being used elsewhere.

She touched the center Cancer sign.  Manual control.  She could feel the diagram slowly drinking the blood she’d so painstakingly acquired.  Her power source.  White chalk lines glowed pink.  Her eyes rolled up into her head and the top of her head opened up to the distant Seeing.

The center sign of the diagram gave her control over all of the things.  They were nonphysical enough that they didn’t really have difficulty moving to where she needed them.  Spiderbones laid some more tripwires behind the grouping as she moved them, so she could keep track of whether they were being tracked or followed.  Even abstract things could provoke it.  The crow took to the air, the squirrel to the trees, a serpent to the ground.

There was another chime, and she touched hand to ear, to sign.  Moving the cluster of her pets to the destination.

She saw with eight eyes, each taking a different course, but all moving in concert, staying near one another.

She found them.  The clearing.  The hut.  Three girls.  Her creations peered through the trees and the leaves, watching them do a circuit, looking for something.  The image was a bit blotchy, because of the sickness.  A bit jittery, because of the fear.  Overly sharp, because of the pain.  The cost of using such things as a power source.

Who are you and what are you looking for?

She tried to peer closer at the girls, but their faces were gone, replaced with animal visages.

Obnoxious.

Using pain to fuel the Seeing was making the wound around her eye hurt more.  It nettled at her.

The fox-faced girl stopped, peering into the woods.  Making eye contact with Nicolette, who sat in the diagram.

“-omens?” the fox-faced girl asked, raising her voice.  Nicolette hadn’t heard the first part.

Who was she talking to?  The other girls weren’t close and she wasn’t facing them.

“-looking with any – Sight or Seeing-?”

The words were indistinct, distorted.  She hadn’t made these pets of hers to listen in.  Only to See.

“-the Augur?”

Alexander’s voice cut in, “What do you see, Nicolette?”

“I hear.  They know we’re an Augur.”

“Not a stretch.”

“No.  I can’t remember the particulars of the other night.  Only the Faerie, but they came away from it with more knowledge of us.”

“You didn’t talk, you said.

“I didn’t do much more than agree to not stick my nose into things,” Nicolette said.  She could hear.  “They’re talking about it now, I think.  It’s indistinct.  More or less what I told you.  Essentially that we can’t go into Kennet or there’ll be problems.  I can’t see you.  Who else is here?”

“Wye and Tanner.  Tanner’s going to bed if this takes much longer.”

She nodded.  She focused, trying to draw up a mental map.  Early in her career, she’d done a ritual, while helping an acquaintance of Alexander.  A cartographer’s ritual.  It helped her keep a sense of where she was, which was very useful at times.

“They’re not in the town, technically,” she noted.  “I can’t see their faces.  It’s animal faces.”

“Interesting.  I can think of a few reasons why that might be the case,” Alexander said.  “Wye?  Tanner?  This is a teaching moment.”

“Obfuscation,” Wye said.

“Could be.”

“They’re hosting spirits to enough of a degree it’s visible even with a shallow Sight?” she heard Tanner.

“Not that shallow,” Nicolette said.

“Still.”

“It’s possible,” Alexander said.  He said it like he knew what the answer might be and it wasn’t either of those two things.

The deer-faced girl prodded at the remains of the last ward.  Nicolette heard the dull chime, which became the faintest of trills as she picked it up off the ground, holding it.

Conversation continued for a few more seconds.  She couldn’t hear it.

“Is anything happening?” Tanner asked.

“Talking.  I caught them off guard, and they’re discussing me.”

“You need to get better at surveillance.  Can’t interfere with the subject, or you won’t get what you came for,” Wye said.

“I don’t mind disrupting them.  Seeing what they do when put off their game could be telling.”

“Hello!” the fox-faced girl called out.  To Nicolette.

At the loud sound, Nicolette reached out for the part of the diagram that connected directly to the crow.  It reacted, ready to fly off, while not letting go of the branch.

“Can you hear me?” the fox-faced girl asked.

She adjusted her hand’s position on that part of the diagram.  Puppeteering the crow, making it nod.

There was a dim chance that there was an opportunity here like there had been with the coven.  She kept her mouth shut.

“I know being friends might be too much to ask, but are you willing to cooperate with us? Mutual benefit. We’d be open to trade, to exchange favors, or just talk.”

She felt a disruption of her diagram.  Weight.  Like she sat on a piece of land that was only six feet across, and it had just tilted fifteen degrees.

Alexander.  She could feel his presence.  He apparently had so much cachet with the spirits that even without drawing a diagram, he could exert his will through something she’d created.  Her being a subordinate of his would be a factor, but that was not a usual thing.

Sometimes she forgot how capable he was.

“Aha.  We have a mutual acquaintance,” Alexander said.

“What?” Nicolette asked.

“The trio and I.  An old friend of mine.”

“They’re friendly, then?” she asked.

The fox kept talking, “-in the process of being sorted out here. Let us finish sorting this out, and equilibrium should be restored. We have little interest in being your competition.”

“No,” Alexander said.  “I don’t think he’s able, but if he had a chance, he might destroy me and everything I’ve built.”

Nicolette reached to her pocket, then set down the feathers.  Her eyes being used up with the eight individual viewpoints of her pets, she had to draw the circle around the feathers blind.

She made her gaze a bridge, by which the omens could travel.  There were people who could do this naturally, with varying types of evil eye, but she wasn’t one of them.

“Good,” Alexander said, behind her.  He wasn’t tapping into her diagram anymore.

The fox-faced girl retreated.

As the omens gathered on the other side of the connection, the girl continued to back away from them.  The others reacted too.  With the added distance, Nicolette couldn’t hear them so well.

Until the fox-faced girl raised her voice.  “Sending omens like this led to innocents getting hurt!”

“This area is under our protection, and the intrusion the other night caused several problems, while upsetting the local systems and balances. This marks a second offense, in our area.  Stand down, disable your surveillance, and we can establish a loose working relationship where both sides benefit!”

Who was that second ‘our’?  It felt like it wasn’t the three girls.

One of the others replied to her.  Adding commentary, calm and collected.  The masks made it hard to see who was talking.

“What should I do?” Nicolette asked Alexander.

“Handle it.  Use your discretion.”

“We want to help people!  Help us or leave us alone!” the fox-faced girl asked.

She made the crow shake its head.

The cat-faced girl pulled the fox-faced girl away from the clearing’s edge, as the omens continued to gather.

“They said something about equilibrium, earlier.  We’ve already noticed that the town is becoming a well of negative forces,” she observed.  “It’s what drew me there in the first place.”

“I’d rather not fuss too much about equilibrium when I and we benefit from things being rather unequal,” Alexander said.

“Not disagreeing,” Nicolette said.  She’d been on the bottom for too long, she’d scrambled her way up to the bottom of that top ten percent.  To level the playing field now felt more than a bit unfair.

A minute passed.  She heard one of the boys yawning.  Was it just Wye now?

“Keep me updated,” Alexander said.  “Keep an eye out for a man, he may be roughly my age.”

“Only three girls of an age between twelve and eighteen,” Nicolette informed him.

“That’s a wide range,” Wye noted.

“They’re weird.”

The cat-faced girl began drawing with a stick in the dirt.

“Cat girl is drawing unstructured runes.  Crude blindness, nothing to anchor them.”

“They’re novices, then,” Wye said.

She reached for the crow, since it was right in front of her.  She flew it in with one hand, and with the other, drew an aquarius squiggle to start a radiating line, from power source to bird.  Empowering it.  Drawing more blood.

She could see the circle around her turn a deeper red, even though she couldn’t see anything else here.  The runes were disrupted.  It would have been easy even if they were structured.

“Countered,” she stated, for the benefit of her audience.

“Good,” Alexander said.

She pulled her hand back from the crow, her fingers tracing the edge of the central control sign.  The animals moved and reacted.

The three girls retreated.  “They’ve backed off.  I’m not sure of the next move.”

“What’s their goal?”

“I don’t know.”

“Wye?” Alexander asked.  “Do you have your bones?”

Nicolette watched, moving her animals through the trees, keeping an eye on things.

She could hear Wye’s roll.

It felt good, being the center of this, with good practitioners working alongside her.  If this was a regular thing, she could stand to be part of the Blue Heron Institute for the long term.

But it wasn’t.  She doubted there would ever be a point where she was sitting in that room, smoking cigarettes and talking shop, casually being given connections.  Practitioner ways and Other ways tended to the traditional.  She could prove herself a hundred times over, and Seth Belanger could maintain the shitty track record he’d held for this long, and he would still have more cachet and influence than she did.

Within the coven, she wouldn’t feel as vulnerable as she did right now, sitting blind in a circle, knowing people like Seth could be a matter of steps away.  Knowing that Alexander had intentions for her.

She just had to get there.  Two more years of this, increasing her value by gathering every bit of knowledge and practice they would teach her.

“They have a design,” Wye said.  “Something big.  They’re holding back because they don’t want witnesses.”

“Interesting,” Alexander said.

They remained huddled, talking with themselves.

“Please leave!” the deer-faced girl called out.  “We’d like some privacy!  We’re taking measures!”

“They’re asking me to go.  I’m getting that novice feeling again.  A practitioner would structure the ask.  She said they’re taking measures.”

The conversation between the three continued.  They straightened, and Nicolette had to move her pets as they paced a bit.

“Two of them are holding something.”

“A power source?”

“I don’t know.  I don’t get that feeling.  A handful of chalk or dirt or something.  Could be a fuel of sorts?”

“Hit them first,” Alexander said.

The fox began to draw runes.  Again, unstructured, basic.

Nicolette moved the animals closer, ready to disrupt.  She used three, so that if one was blocked or interrupted, she could clear away the designs with the others.

She drew a line from the omen feathers to the crow.

“Don’t.  Back off,” the fox-faced girl said.

The snake ring tightened, suddenly.  The teeth set in, hard enough they scraped bone.

Feeling a surge of panic, Nicolette pushed the feather itself toward the crow at the same time she reached to the crow, pushing directly to the fox, so the feather would reach that part of the diagram just as the crow reached-

The diagram shattered.

The diagram she was Seeing shattered, the image driving into her eyes, around her eyes.  Pain erupted at the same time that she ceased seeing or Seeing anything at all.

She reached up to her face, to move her glasses and check her eyes, and there was no glass in the frames.

Alexander touched her shoulders, and she flinched.

“It’s been a long, long time since I’ve seen anything like that,” Wye said.

“Not the time, Wye,” Alexander said.  “Can you stand?”

Speaking was beyond her.  Her mouth worked open and closed in silence as she fumbled, her hair ornament hitting her shoulder as it fell.  Maybe in two pieces.  Her fingers tenderly touched her eyes, and fluid immediately ran down from finger to palm to arm to elbow.

Her eye sockets were empty.  There were no eyes left inside.  Only points of shards that pricked and cut her shaking fingers as she tried to gauge the damage.  Her eyes kept twitching, her eyelids struggling to close, and provoking a bone-deep ache instead.

“Nicolette, can you stand?”

“I-” she managed.  Her voice came out as a squeak.

“Stand up.  Now.”

She tried.  He steadied her.

She didn’t like asking for or accepting help.  But she didn’t have eyes.  Another two holes in her head, after something had broken.  Could bad things get in?  What did she do now?  Was this her life now?

Panic surged.  She didn’t have her ornament, to frame her hallow.  Even without the trepanation-like hole in her head, she was going to lose her mind like this.

“Walk.  Forward.  I’ll guide you.”

She walked.  He guided her, hands firm at her shoulders.

“Keep walking.  We’re going to the washroom.  Wye, I want you to go to my study.  Second drawer down.  There’s a tin with a magnifying glass set into it.”

“I know it.”

“You have my permission to enter, and to take that one thing only.  Go.”

“They didn’t have a power source,” Nicolette said, her voice shaky.

“My dear, with an explosion like that, there was some power there.  They may be novices but they have a great deal of power at their immediate disposal.  That might be what they’re protecting.”

“I’m blind,” she said.  “What do I do?”

“Shhh.  Stay calm.  Base fear is of the unknown.  Be above that.  True fear is for when you know what you’re dealing with, so let’s wait.  I will take care of you in this.  I guided you to these ends, you are my responsibility.”

As much as she didn’t like Alexander, she was glad for that reassuring voice.

“They were carrying something, you said it was like sand, dust, dirt?”

“Something like that.”

“And this looks almost like glass, but it’s too fine.  It breaks at a touch.  It’s not cold.”

“No.”

“Good.  We will find our way to answers.  Many things can be undone.”

She wasn’t sure how this could be undone.  She could feel the fluids continuing to run down her face.  Eyeball fluids.  Blood.

Wye got to them before they got to the washroom in the adjunct area.  She could hear the handing over of the rattling case.

“Paper towel, Wye.  Lay it on the counter.  Nicolette, I’m going to pull the largest shard I can free.  It may hurt.  Try not to flinch.  I want it intact.”

She had to resist the urge to nod.  “Okay.”

She could feel him trying to use tweezers to pull a larger piece free.  It made her face feel like it had a toothache.

“That’s set in there.  Let’s try others.”

They did, and one finally came free.  She winced.

“I may need more.  We’ll see what turns up.”

“What’s this case or kit?” she asked.  “Talk to me?  Distract me, please.”

Someone, maybe Wye, pressed more paper towels to her face, below her eyes, to soak up fluids.  Some of the glass-like points at her nose and cheekbones jabbed through and caught on the paper.

“This kit is for diagnosing and identifying things.  I’ve got a little mortar and pestle, I’m grinding it up.  More of it is disappearing than is being left as dust.  That tells us things.”

“What things?”

“That there are starting points.  To begin with, my first thought was elemental with the sand and glass, but conservation of energy and matter tend to be more important there.  We can narrow this down, remember that you dealt with a Faerie the other evening, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Summer court.  I can swab some of this, see how it reacts to different materials in my kit.  Silver, yes.  Gold, yes.  Iron, yes.  Rusty iron…”

She felt hands at her cheeks, holding her head.

“Bear with me,” Alexander said.

She remained silent as he placed his hands against her eyes.  She felt the glassy points press in deeper around her brown and cheekbones, and grit her teeth.

“Shhh,” Alexander soothed.  “My dear, I’m going to tell you a Truth.  Tell me you hear me.”

“I hear you.”

“This is not nearly so bad as it seemed.  It’s a trick.  A very nasty, violent one, suiting a Faerie of the summer court.  This I swear to you.  You can still see.  You have eyes.  Tell me that you believe me.”

“I-” she didn’t want to lie.  She didn’t want to fall into a trap where she got caught in a lie, even through entrapment.  She’d heard the stories about what Alexander had done in prior years and decades.

But she didn’t believe he’d lie, or he’d be forsworn in turn.  Maybe even in a way that left her intact.

“I believe you,” she said, and she did.

He pulled his hands away.  The light was bright.  Some shards remained around her eyes and eyelids, and her vision wasn’t entirely clear.  She tried to blink her vision clear and couldn’t.  She felt a sharp pain at her eyelids.

“If you’d been quicker to believe me, you’d be even better now.  Those ones will take a little more doing, it seems.  Bear with me.  Wye, would you get eyedrops from the medical cupboard?”

“Alright.  Anything outside of that?”

“Did you have plans?”

“I was going to video call my girlfriend before it’s too late.”

“Then just the eye drops, Wye.  Thank you.”

It was Nicolette’s personal opinion that the lower one’s place in things, the more important it was to appear strong, unflappable.  She’d held onto that and it had given her strength or the appearance of strength.  Courage or the appearance of courage.

And in the midst of thinking she’d lost her eyes, she’d been weak and she’d acted weak.

She felt like she’d betrayed herself.

“How do you feel?” he asked, as he tried to extract one of the spikes of glass-like stuff, at one of her eyelids. It broke in half.

An involuntary tear, provoked by the pain and the status of her eyelids, rolled down her cheek.

Her hands were shaking.  Her very Self was shaken.  She was seeing things, hearing violent whispers in her deaf ear.

She searched for a word, and when she looked him in the eyes, her eyes stung, the scar beneath the bandage making itself known.

“Furious,” she decided.

“And I’m very curious,” he said, leaning in closer, like he was telling her a secret.  “And those are dangerous things for the enemies of Augurs, hm?  Especially when one of those Augurs has decades of experience, and the other is a scrapper.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, finding the equilibrium to remember the deference.  A scrapper.  Was that how he thought of her?

“If you wanted to retire for the night, I would not hold it against you.  But if you didn’t…”

“I don’t.”

“…Then I’d like to show you something.  As soon as we’ve taken care of those eyelids.  Whatever they’re doing will take some time, I think.”

The dollhouse was heavy, the box it came in heavier.  As much as he was very invested in her right now, Alexander made her carry it.  To her room.  Her vision was a bit blurry, because she wasn’t wearing the prescription that fit her current eyesight.

To the best of her knowledge, it was the first time he’d stepped foot in her space.  She was very conscious of the little things.  Bits of mess.  Scraps from projects.  Bits of dead animal from the last puppet she’d made.

Those puppets of hers had been two months of work.  A ton of investment.

“Dollhouse in the box, if you please?” Alexander asked, sitting in her chair, leaving her to stand.

She lifted up the dense, metal dollhouse, setting it in a metal box with about 20 segments.  There were a horrendous number of figures, pieces of furniture, accessories, animals, and little colored blocks inside, sliding around, rolling down stairs, and falling out.  The box itself had zipper-like creases at the edges of each segment, knitting them together.  She centered the dollhouse and then collected the fallen bits, pushing them in through windows.

“This was a find of mine.  A cursed object I cleansed.  It remains an interesting tool for observation.  A little cumbersome, but I have to admit, I like having an excuse to dust it off.”

She wiped off some dust.

“Most of the time, I prefer specialized tools for specialized jobs, but this is versatile, and has enough power left over from its past victims that it can power through some common defenses, like those runes you described.”

“How does it work?” she asked.  She blinked and her eyelid was messed up enough it made things worse.  She removed the cap from the eye drops.

“Seal it up, then hmm… let’s try flipping the box so the current top faces your right, then do that two more times.  Whisper what you want to see.”

She finished applying the eyedrops, angry she was slow and struggling.  She closed up the box around the dollhouse, and lifted it up.  It wasn’t easy, when it weighed about twenty pounds and was awkwardly sized, with the segments buckling and bowing with the movement.  She was worried it would pop open.

“Show me the trio that made me think I lost my eyes,” she whispered.

“Open it.”

She opened the box.  It unfolded around the dollhouse within.  The dollhouse was a diner, with cars around it, and various figures jumbled up in a pile around it.

“I’m out of practice.  Close it up, turn it so the current top points away from you.”

She did.  She whispered, “Show me the three girls with animal faces,” and opened it up.

Three simple figurines with rectangular blocks for bodies were topped with the heads of a fox, cat, and deer.  They were within a cabin with an open top.  Ribbons filled the space, tying to a center mass.  A circular bit of wood, shallow, sat in the center.

There was no sign of the other figurines that had been within, or the diner, or the old house.

“Excuse me,” Alexander said, as he leaned in to study.  He drew some cards from his pocket and laid them down.

The Chariot at the left, the Fool at the right.  Strength at the back, the Empress at the front.

Alexander tapped his finger on the Chariot.  “Hmm.  You can close it up and open it again, if you want to see how the scene changes.  Don’t open it up in exactly the same way twice, or it may start getting nasty.”

She did.  Folding up the box around the cabin.  Whispering.  Opening it again.  The figurines had moved, the ribbons multiplied.

Alexander picked up her hobby knife, and poked at some of the ribbons with the blunt end.  Already suspended in the middle was a small mouse model, tail hooked over one ribbon.  Easy to miss.

Alexander picked up his phone, dialing, and held it to his ear.

She closed it up again, whispered, then opened it.

Now the cabin was set off-center, so the door was right at the edge.  There was a figure crouching just inside the door, now.  Black from top to bottom.

Why was it off center?

She wanted to ask, but Alexander was on the phone.

“Yes, hello, Ed, sorry to call so late.  It’s Alex Belanger.”

He conducted in a few moments of small talk, shoulder pressing his phone to his ear, while he shuffled the cards.  He placed down a card by the figure in black.

Moon.  High Priestess.

Nicolette knew Ed.  He was the one she’d done the errand for, where she had been taught the map ritual.  It was the kind of ritual she liked, where she did it once and got a benefit thereafter.  It did close some doors, though.  To always know where she was, but to have a harder time navigating places that needed a little confusion.

Ed was a specialist in shamanism, specific to locations.  Talking to the spirits of cities, getting some spirits to bring him or cargo from one place to another.  It helped at times to know where he was going, which was why he stayed in close contact with Alex.

“I wanted to pick your brain about something.  I’m looking at a cabin, there’s a ton of ribbons tied within.  An excess number of ribbons to tie up one… I don’t think it’s a rodent, not when it’s upside-down.  Rodent-like.  Tarot cards are west facing chariot, east facing fool, north facing strength… you know it?”

Nicolette closed up the box, then opened it again.  The models and everything were stuck, as if magnetized, to one edge, and the entire setup tipped from the table, crashing to the floor beside her desk.  She backed away, alarmed, her eyes widening, and then watering because of the damage to her eyelids.

She mouthed a word of apology, terrified she’d broken something Alexander considered valuable.  This could cost her months of her time before she turned eighteen, if she was in his debt.

He stopped her before she could bend down to grab it.

“Thank you, Ed.  Very interesting.”

Alexander chuckled as he hung up the phone, rose from the chair, and then moved around her to crouch down.

On the mostly unzipped box exterior were a few scattered, fallen figurines.  The girl with the deer head was set on top, framed by trees.  The mouse sat next to her.

“It means something?” Nicolette asked, feeling very out of her element.

“She’s traveling.  Through emptiness, a beast waits at the end.  Ed called it the Forest Ribbon Trail.  It’s a major ritual.  Who taught them this one?  Because I don’t think it was my old friend Charles.”

“What was that black thing?”

“A mare.  Bringer of nightmares.  Not related to this place.”

“The Faerie either, I’m assuming?”

“No.  He wouldn’t be.  Fold it up again.  Be careful to leave it anchored, hm, there.  At the corners.”

She did, putting some of the stray fallen pieces back in the box as she ‘zipped’ it up again, the interlocking pieces interlocking, the setup forming a rough cube shape.

Then she tore it down once more.

A different arrangement of the same trees and figures.

“If she’s going to be at this for a while, it may be hard to catch her at a moment that matters or sheds clarity.  Ed says this particular ritual is one that will empower her, giving her more freedom of movement, in an esoteric sense.”

“She wants to be more powerful?” Nicolette asked.

“She likely will be, if left to her own devices.  Hm.  How badly would you want to interfere?”

Nicolette squeezed her eyes shut, feeling the pain.  The scratches at her brow.

“If you weren’t going to do it now, I think you should leave them be.  I’d have one of my other apprentices handle it.  Wye, possibly.”

“I found this.  Why would he get to wrap it up?”

“Because, Nicolette, the third confrontation is going to matter.  You should stay away from them and keep your head down, or you should decide things while you have the chance.”

She stared down at the figurine.  Stupid little painted wooden thing.  Her face hurt.  She hadn’t replaced her hair ornament, and she had the worst headache.

It galled her, that this girl would pick up power, just like that.  Especially when Nicolette didn’t even understand the power they were already tapping into.

“Why animal faces?” she asked.

“If it’s this omnipresent, it may be the Sight equivalent of labeling something at the root level.  I could see changing or obfuscating your name, taking on a title as part of the implement or demesnes rituals, but faces… I don’t know.  If it was one individual, I could say it’s a Host with an exceptionally strong rider, or a practitioner with a familiar strong enough it was leaking through, but I’d expect to see that leak somewhere else.”

“If the Carmine Beast disappeared, could it be that they took on that power?  Or tapped into it?”

“No,” Alexander said.  He rubbed his chin.  “Because then they’d be red.  Charles- my old friend, he used to make Others.  The eye glyph I taught you was something he did early on.  I’d halfways wonder if he taught someone else how to make these three, or… no.  I wonder if they did the awakening ritual in a funny way.”

“What family would they have come from?”

“Doesn’t have to be a family.  Could be… hm.  The same patron that’s been throwing wrenches in our works every time we get too close, maybe?  Powerful and subtle, and weirdly versatile?”

Nicolette nodded.

“Tell me, do you want revenge?” Alexander asked.  “Do you want to secure your third win?  Or should I take Wye away from his call with his lady friend?”

She tensed, looking down.

She touched her damaged eyes.  It wasn’t even the hurt or the pain, in particular.  It was that they’d scared her.  Angry voices whispered in her ear, encouraging her.

She picked up one of her hairpieces intended for use the next week, washed two nights ago, and used it to brush at the side of her head, quieting the voices.  The nervous fanning of the side of her head was a tic she’d had when in the throes of Other-induced madness.  It didn’t feel good to do it now.

She considered, now that the voices had quieted.

“I want revenge.”

“I’ll need four weeks worth of extended service,” he said.  “I’m giving up some power and I won’t be able to use this box of places for a while.”

She tensed.  She reached for and got her agenda, and crossed out four weeks worth of days.

“And you’ll need power as well,” he said.

“Tell me that before I mark down the days.”

“You can provide it yourself, or I can provide it for another, hm, six weeks of favors.  It’ll need to be a lot.”

She looked over at the bottles of blood.  Painstakingly acquired, often expensive, both in money and time.

“These?” she asked.  She touched them without moving them from the circle that kept the blood from drying out.

“That’ll do.  Lie down.  Bring your head as close as you can, now.”

She did.

“Closer.  Closer.”

She scooted closer, lying with her chest pressed against the side of her desk.

“Lift your head a scootch.”

She did, and Alexander slid one panel of the box under her head.  He began placing the figurines on the flat surface beneath her ear.  She realized what he was doing and tensed.

The box closed up around her head, a tiny gap left over for the light to shine in from above, and a hole just big enough for her neck, the zippered metal edge biting into skin.

“Show her the girl on the Forest Ribbon Trail,” he whispered, above her.

Then he poured in the blood.  She held her breath, feeling her skin prickle and burn.

With damaged eyelids and damaged eyes, she stared out over a model universe, trees without end or ground beneath them, and a narrow path between them.  She couldn’t breathe and was aware her body was dying, moving at a different speed than things here.

She watched as the girl with the deer’s head and her possum interacted with Others.  It all looked so small and far away.

The box came apart.  Gasping for air, Nicolette raised her head, face turned down so the blood wouldn’t run into her nose or mouth.  She really hoped the people she’d picked from didn’t have hepatitis or anything.  Not when she had open wounds on her face.

There was so much blood on her floor right now.

Alexander didn’t comment or remark, while she gathered her strength.  He folded up the bloody box, whispered to it, and opened it again.

“The rodent girl is guiding her.”

“Good.”

“The rodent girl thinks she’s supposed to die, as part of the ritual.”

“Lines up with what Ed said.  He told me he would have shared more, but he’d have to look it up, and that would be tomorrow.  For right now, we only know the basics.  She travels the path, faces the beast at the end, brings one item.  The companion dies to secure her escape.”

“Send me in again?”

“That was the intention.  Are you recovered?”

She managed a nod.  Her neck was stiff from her posture while lying down, the box around her head, and from the old meningitis symptoms.

“How much did that use?”

“A third.”

Painful.

“Again,” she told him.

“I did a reading while you were in there,” he told her.  “She has another means of finishing the ritual.  Two o’clock position.  Whatever that means.”

She nodded, her neck stiff, then laid her head down.

He constructed the box around her, being careful to set the corners so the box was suspended, situated ‘off the table’, so to speak.

Having seen it, she thought it made sense.

She drew in a deep breath as she felt the blood meet the side of her head, and held it as the blood filled up the void between her head and the box’s walls, thick against her nostrils, as she struggled not to breathe in, against lips that were pressed tight together.

She watched the altercation.  A desperate, crude struggle.  The use of glamour- dust like what had been used to make her think she’d lost her eyes, it was as crude as it got.  Should a Faerie have seen that, it would have been offended.

She didn’t participate.  She searched the path, looking for anything she could damage or disrupt.

Peering through trees as her animals had before the explosion, she saw an old woman that cast a vast shadow that didn’t match her body.  Her dress was so red that it made everything white nearby a bloody red by extension, her eyes were the same color, and her teeth didn’t match.  She smelled bad, even though the face that Nicolette wore had no nostrils.

“Do you want to negotiate?” the old woman asked.

“No,” Nicolette answered.  She knew better than to deal with strange others.  “I want revenge.  She can escape your reach by sacrificing her animal friend.  Does this seal her fate?”

“No.  I knew this.  I accept this.  I’ll have my fun,” the old woman said.  She laughed, off-kilter, like she was unsure if she should laugh at first, then unable to stop right at the end, so it was strained.

“She may have a means of escaping your ‘fun’,” Nicolette said.  “I don’t know what I can do about that, but I was told it was at two o’clock.”

The Wolf turned, looking at one specific part of her clearing.

“Does this get me my revenge?”

“I knew this, because others have escaped this way, but now that I’ve been told, I can do something about it when the time comes.  I’ll need your assistance.”

The Wolf laughed, more unhinged than before.

“How?”

“On the desk again,” Nicolette said, breathing hard.  She coughed, and some of the blood that had made it into her mouth spattered her desk.

She didn’t care anymore.

She was getting a sense of the scale some of these things happened at, and she would not lose at this scale.

Alexander helped her assemble the box and place the pieces within.  The congealing blood drooled over the lip of the desk and onto the floor.

Cleanup was going to be the worst.

“We wait thirteen minutes,” she said.  “Then she’ll be at the Wolf.”

“Good,” Alexander said.  “Then?”

Nicolette only focused on the box.

The thirteen minutes passed slowly.

There were six minutes remaining when Alexander commented, “We used half.”

She frowned.  “There’s half remaining?”

“No, Nicolette.  We used a third of the total bottle’s contents, and then we used half.  There is… a little over a sixth of the blood remaining.”

She tensed, checking the bottles.  He wasn’t lying.

She shouldn’t have trusted him.  If there was any trickery here, if there was anything-

Then what could she do?

Five minutes remained before the girl was supposed to be at the Wolf.

He’d planned this.  He’d seen enough of the future that he could figure out that it would come to this.

“How much?” she asked him.

“Nothing,” he told her.

Blood still dripping down her face, she gave him a suspicious look.

“This is fun,” he said.  “Dealing with her.”

“I wonder sometimes if you’re a sociopath.  If you enjoy putting the screws to people.  I heard stories about you when you were a bit younger.”

“I was a different person then, but some of my enemies won’t acknowledge that.  I contribute to society, now, teaching.”

She snorted, blood flying from her nostril’s edge to her lap.

“I don’t like unanswered questions, and I may lose reputation as an augur if this gets out, but I would much rather slice the Gordian Knot than fumble at it.  These three are a knot.”

He pulled some coins out of his pocket, old and possibly gold.  He tossed them into the box with the figurines.

She checked the clock.

Thirty seconds.

“Wait,” she gasped.  “I just realized.  Pull the desk away.  Fast.”

She rose to her feet, grabbing one end.

Alexander grabbed the other.

They pulled the table away.  Her computer monitor and speaker tumbled.

She circled around.  Until she was at the two o’clock position, and checked the time again.  So she could break the detour path for the Wolf.

“Swiftly.  I didn’t pay too exorbitant an amount, and the box may bite off your arm, if it decides it needs more payment.”

She turned the box around, and pressed down on the top until the sides buckled and she could see through the gaps.  The deer-headed girl before the wolf.  Through another gap, she saw the other two in the ribbon-filled cabin, sitting.

She peered through, then put her hand through one gap, while looking through the other.

Reaching in, through the cabin’s window, into the cabin itself.  Snagging the little rodent.

She smiled as she successfully pulled it and some of the ribbons out through the hole.

The ‘rodent’ screamed, struggling.  Small hands grabbed at her wrist.

Wide eyed, with dark circles under those same eyes, the rodent looked at her, at Alexander, and at the box.  At the blood.  It looked like a kid, wearing a t-shirt printed with ‘Trash Face’, and oversized cargo shorts that extended down to the tops of her mid-calf socks.  Her shoes were untied.

“Well, this is neat,” the kid said, breathing hard.

“We’ll need you to answer some questions, if you can,” Alexander said.

“Hunh?”

“Questions.  About her, about the trail, anything she’s shared.”

“Can’t.”

“Why not?  You don’t know who you were traveling with?  She didn’t say anything?”

“No, not at all.  And no, not really.”

Alexander sighed.

“Her name?  Why she’s walking the trail?” Nicolette asked.

“No idea.”

“Blocked at every turn,” Nicolette said, feeling very tired.

“Show me the girls,” Alexander whispered to the box, as he folded it up, then tore it back down.

The cabin had the fox and cat in it, lying back like they’d fallen over and hadn’t gotten back up, since she’d reached through.  The deer was still bound in ribbon.

The little girl breathed a little harder.

“Don’t be scared,” Nicolette said.  “We have no intentions of harming you.  Only inconveniencing her.”

“Small inconvenience, this,” the kid said.

“Is it?  She has other ways out?  Because I entered through this position, which should scatter her detour.  She doesn’t have you…”

“It’s perfect,” the kid said.

“Happy you’re not getting sacrificed?”

“Yes.”

“Cool,” Nicolette said.  “I don’t suppose you’d stick around, help?”

“Can do, if it screws with her.”

The kid stood on her toes to get a good vantage point to peer around the box and look at the diorama.

“Can you tell us more about the Forest Ribbon Trail?” Nicolette asked.

“Not really.”

“Can you tell us anything?”

The kid shrugged.  “Nah.”

“Well, the Wolf said she’d handle the escape route if I put the branch where she could get at it. She can’t negotiate without you there-”

“Love it.”

“I guess you can sit with me and wait and see if anything happens, next few times we check in.”

“There are only two possible permutations left with the box’s configuration and opening,” Alexander said.  “You can get others, but you won’t be able to look at the same locations after that.  You’ll need to move elsewhere.  You’ll clean it and return it to me tomorrow?”

Nicolette nodded.  She withdrew her agenda from her pocket and checked.  No other obligations.  “Yes.”

“I’ll leave you to it then.  Good handling, Nicolette.”

“What happens to her?”

“I think she’ll be fine,” the little girl said, investigating the diorama.

“Why?” Nicolette asked.

The kid gave her a funny look.

“You can’t answer, because of compulsions or whatever?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” Nicolette said.  “Alright.”

“I can’t imagine she’ll be okay, but we don’t know what resources they have,” Alexander said.  “I’ll see you tomorrow.  Get plenty of rest, let those eyes heal.”

Nicolette nodded.

Alexander took his leave.  Nicolette sat back for a bit while she caught her breath and digested.  Then, after she had to get up twice to keep the kid from poking around too much, set to doing what she could to clean up the blood.

She needed more than handkerchiefs and blood.  Bleach and towels.

She glanced back at the kid, who was staring at the scene, then drew a diagram around the model, warding it off so the kid couldn’t mess with it.  To be safe.  The kid poked a few times at the barrier.

“I’m going to get some things to clean up.  Do you need anything?” she asked the Other.

“Nah.  Pretty happy right now.”

“You’ll stay put if I leave you here for a minute?”

“Yes.”

“You won’t touch anything?”

“I won’t.”

“And you’ll be good?”

“Absolutely.”

Nicolette nodded.

She headed into the bathroom, and while she was there, decided to quickly rinse off.  So much blood, and it was drying on her face, tight against her skin, and just… gross.  So gross.

Her ring stirred, then bit her.  At the time that she could never shake feeling vulnerable during, while she was in or near the showers.

Still wet, she jumped out of the shower, pulling on her bathrobe, and tracking wet behind her.  She grabbed the towels and bleach she’d already set aside, and hurried back.  Something had happened.  Someone had come for her, or done something, or-

Her room.

The little girl was gone, and Nicolette’s room was on fire.  Fire spread across her sheets, across the workbench, her feathers.  The box.  Her ring bit her, over and over again.

“Alexander!” she called out, top of her lungs.  She reached into fire to rescue the treasure.  Because she could not afford to be in Alexander’s debt.  Not like this, not a room full of practice, and borrowed books, and-

She backed into the hallway, embracing the box.  Tanner and Seth were approaching.

They weren’t looking at her or her room.

The library.  Smoke was leaking out.

No.  No.  The cost- if she was deemed responsible for this-

They ran past her, pulling out some trinkets that might help with fire.

She set the box down, and reached for her agenda.  Always in arm’s reach.  She’d put it in the pocket of her bathrobe.

It was gone.  That first bite in the shower, it had been when the snatching was imminent.

Her backup was scanned on her computer, but it was out of date.  It was also in the cloud, but to access that she needed things.  She’d protected it as best she could to block out interference and anyone who might try to sneak in and get access to it to mess with her.  People like Seth.  Maybe even Alexander.

This was the cost of having her life limited to one stone and log room.  To one school and one teacher, to a limited number of friends she only saw when classes were in session, and a questionable future alliance with a coven.

It was so easy to lose everything.

Ruin and Disaster roared in her deaf ear, and images danced at the edges of her vision, encroaching in.  She could see spirits without her Sight, and it took effort to block them out.

She gathered what she could.  Spare clothes.  Trinkets.

The little blighter’s legs weren’t that long.  She knew which direction it would be headed.  Kennet.

She’d have to leave the library to the others.

She reached the front door, and Alexander was standing there.  Seemingly unconcerned with the two blazing fires.  He didn’t tell her to stop, nor did he get in her way.

She had no idea what to think about that.  If this was planned…

It didn’t matter.

If she couldn’t get on top of this, if she couldn’t get the kid-

Especially if she couldn’t get her agenda back, when it told her where she currently stood in the delicate interplay between herself and her teacher, and the various appointments she’d pledged to keep?  She lost everything.

She had to get to it before it got to Kennet.  She’d pledged she wouldn’t step foot inside without permission.  She hopped in her car and started it up.  Bought with weeks added to her apprenticeship, that she could no longer keep track of.  She used her Sight to search for the little asshole.

From the outside, driving toward the small town felt more and more like she was driving towards a depression.  Like it was sinking beneath the weight of the Carmine Beast’s absence.  Even when the nose of the car pointed up, her back pressed against the seat, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was driving steeply downhill.

Toils whispered in her ear, promising futility tonight.  She may well have Destroyed that girl who was facing that terrifying wolf.  It was not the only voice that had haunted her tonight.  Pain had.  And fear, and ruin, and madness and disaster.  She’d brushed shoulders with death, sticking her head into that box.  She definitely felt sick, scanning the road and using Sight to look through and past trees for a furtive little Other, and not seeing it.

There was nothing she could do to shake them or sanctify that hallow.  If she stopped long enough to try, there was a chance that kid would slip past her.

Moíra, Doom, was the loudest of them all, shouting after her, rather than whispering, to tell her that this could so easily end badly for everyone involved.  Herself in particular.

Out on a Limb – 3.1

Verona

The giant doll’s hand receded back through the wall, tearing ribbons.  The damage as the wall distorted with the force of the hand’s movements made the windows on the other walls shatter.

Verona had hit her head as she’d fallen back, landing on her rear end.  Lucy had done much the same.  Eyes wide, Verona switched from the Sight and back again.  With the Sight, she saw a giant doll hand.  Without it, she saw nothing except the wind blowing in and stuff falling down.  But in the instants where things were switching, she could see a hand with a ring on it, shaped like a snake with its teeth hooked over the end of the tail.  She switched back.  Doll’s hand.

But on changing back to using her regular vision, the ribbons throughout the room were a bright, ominous red.

Furniture and bits of wood tumbled.  The ‘cocoon’ of ribbons was surrounded by the wood and stuff that had been in the cabin, and some of the things fell inward, banging or catching on ribbons and swinging.  There was a drum-like rap against the back of a cupboard that had been moved to the center of the room.

“You okay, Ronnie?” Lucy asked.  “That came out of nowhere.”

“Don’t know,” Verona said.

“You cracked your head.”

Verona rubbed the back of her head, checking.  No blood.  “I don’t think I have a concussion or anything.  I just fell.”

“Was this- is this something that’s supposed to happen?  Was that the Wolf taking the sacrifice?” Lucy asked.

“If it was, wouldn’t we have Avery back now?”

The floor of the room was in a bad enough state that they couldn’t really approach, and both sat there, stunned.  Verona had been nodding off a bit when the hand had crashed through.

Verona.  Verona.  Verona.

It was like a whisper with no source.  Verona shivered.

Avery’s whisper.

“That’s-”

“Avery needs help,” Lucy said.

Verona nodded.

The two of them climbed to their feet.  Lucy navigated the broken floor to try to get to the point where she could see Avery, climbing on furniture and ducking under ribbons.

Verona stepped back, popped the door open, and looked.  Any doll?  other monsters?

Miss stood at the treeline, her face blocked by a branch.

Something that looked like Miss, anyway.

Verona looked back in Lucy’s direction, where Lucy was working to stick her head past ribbons and look down at where the Avery cocoon was protected by furniture.  “Is she okay?  Did the hand hurt her?”

“I can’t see her.  There’s like… a well.  She’s all the way down there.”

“Miss is outside.  I don’t think she wants to get close.  Do you want to go, should I go, do we go together?” Verona asked.

“I’ll stay.  I- we failed to protect her.  But I can try to protect this-” Lucy gestured at the ribbons, the furniture, her gesture interrupted as her arm bounced against a taut ribbon.  “-From further harm, I guess.”

“That came out of nowhere.  If we’d been standing on guard, if we had weapons in hand, we couldn’t have stopped it.”

Lucy’s frown deepened, and she didn’t reply.

“I’m going to go check with her.”

“Be safe.  Whatever that was, it could happen again.  The Other might still be out there.”

Verona nodded with some emphasis.  “I don’t know if it was an Other though.”

Lucy gave her a quizzical look.

“When I changed away from my Sight, it looked like a human hand for a moment.  Wearing a ring.”

“Woman’s hand or man’s?”

“Woman’s, I think.  Why?”

Lucy shook her head.  “Wondering if it’s anyone local.”

“I don’t think anyone wears a snake ring.  I’m going to go.”

“Give me the Hot Lead?” Lucy asked.  “Or do you want the sword ring?”

Verona reached for her bag, got the clasped box with the hot lead, and tossed it to Lucy.  She pulled on her hat, cape and mask, drew some cards out of the front flap of her bag, and opened the door as wide as it could go with the messed up walls.  She checked the coast was clear, then hurried forward.

She pulled out a card, a diagram already written on it, and held the pen, ready to make the final stroke that pulled it all together.

‘Miss’ called out, “I am not a threat, Verona.  Avery called out to me.  I wasn’t willing to draw any closer while the ritual is active.”

“Tell me something only you would know.”

“I don’t believe I can.”

“Why not?” Verona asked.

“Because any event meaningful enough to count had other people involved, witnesses, or forces that would track it.  I’ve dealt with Others and Practitioners, and forces tied to the Universe that have very long memories.”

“Tell me something,” Verona said, raising her voice a bit, anxious.  “Avery’s in trouble, and she’s one of the very few human beings I actually like.”

“I told you earlier that I was a Lost of the Paths, I escaped.  In the course of that escape, I got stuck on one area of the Paths.  A passing practitioner bound me.  He was very close to being immortal, and he used Others as a kind of protection, always in his company, compelled to take any bullet or knife directed at him, to use their power to ward off harm, and to make his life easier.  I do not remember my time before the Paths, because those memories and events are lost, and he was my very first introduction to practitioners.”

“What happened to him?”

“He did not leave the Path.  I do not know if he is dead or lost, but the effect is the same.  I’ve been dwelling on him a great deal, in context with you three.  With Avery in particular.”

Verona debated.  It was hard to picture someone who had to tell the truth telling that story and getting away with it.  It did feel like Miss.

“She’s in trouble,” Verona said, resolving to trust her.

“I know.”

“What do we do?”

“There are options.  One being that we could try to splice you two into the Trail to walk it.”

“Try?  No guarantee?”

“No guarantees.  Not without knowing what went wrong.  This is not the ritual, and would be leaning heavily on my understanding of these spaces and the rituals that mirror them.  The danger would be that if she’s stuck, much as I saw practitioners and roaming visitors get stuck in my time on the Paths, you could be trapped in the same mire.”

“Then what?”

“Then I would do what I could, as would many of the other Others of Kennet, but there would be a chance our only real option would be to leave you there.  We would seek out another practitioner or set of practitioners to fill your current role.”

“That easily?  Cold,” Verona said.

“It wouldn’t be easy.  We inducted you, we would all pay a karmic cost and that would likely manifest in our next picks being disastrous.  Where’s Lucy?  We should figure out our next steps.”

“She’s watching out for more trouble.”

“Trouble?”

“Giant hand reached in.  Doll’s hand, but it looked like a human’s for a moment.  It had a ring on.  Middle finger, snake.”

“Nicolette Belanger wears a ring like that.  It could be her or someone in the same circle of practitioners.  What did the hand do?”

“It reached in and took the baby possum.”

Miss reacted to that, though the trees and leaves in the way made it hard to see how, or to see exactly what that reaction was.

Verona pressed, “Is Nicolette nearby?  Can we go after her like the other night?”

“She isn’t nearby.  John and Guilherme are patrolling, as are goblins.  Bring Lucy here.  We should decide our next steps.”

“Doesn’t Avery need protecting?”

“Without knowing more, I would guess if she was going to attack again, she would have already.  There are other reasons she might not.  Karmically, Nicolette would be the aggressor, when Avery has done the least to her and perhaps suffered the most.”

“The most?” Verona asked.

“Melissa was her classmate and teammate.  A small distinction, but-”

Verona fidgeted.

“-but you should go.  Get Lucy and bring her here.  We can discuss the nuances of practice at another time.”

Verona turned and jogged back.  She would have run, but she felt like she would be running more later.  “Lucy!”

Lucy stepped into the doorway, one ribbon almost knocking her hat off.  She was wearing her stuff now too.  When Verona motioned for her to come, she looked back, then hurried over.

“We have options,” Miss said.  “The first being that you could try to stitch your way into her instance of the Forest Ribbon Trail.  I don’t know if it would work-”

“-and we might get stuck too,” Verona said.

“What would we do?” Lucy asked.  “While in there?”

“You wouldn’t be able to bring a prey animal inside.  You’d need to pass the same hurdles, figure out new rules corresponding to the empty spaces left behind if she took any items with her, and then face down the wolf.  Some of the protections afforded to Finders wouldn’t apply.  You’d need to face the Wolf at his or her strongest, get to Avery, and then get her to the detour.”

Verona looked at Lucy.  Lucy’s eyebrows drew together.

“I should add, if she’s asking for help and she isn’t taking the detour, then something’s obstructing that route.  You would need to bypass that obstruction.  If you couldn’t, you would be lost, as she may be.”

“Obstructed how?” Lucy asked.

“She may have deposited an Other as another complication.  How did the hand move as it reached inside?”

Verona and Lucy mimed the hand movements.  Lucy deferred to Verona’s interpretation.

“Then it doesn’t seem she was holding something she could deposit within the ritual when she reached in.”

“Could we deposit something?”

“No.  I admit, I’m speaking in terms of theory and the hypothetical.  This would have required a lot of power and appropriate tools.  With that in mind, I suspect the Belangers as a group are involved, not just Nicolette.  Leading us to option two.”

“Which is?” Lucy asked.

“Negotiating with them.  I would hope I don’t need to reiterate what I’ve already said about the situation and the current dynamic.  Negotiation is a tricky affair, but what our enemies have worked, they may more easily unwork.”

“What would they want?” Verona asked.  “Information?”

“About Kennet?  Assuredly.  If they sensed you were desperate, which I imagine you are, they would ask for more.  It is hard to negotiate when they hold the cards, but there are ways.”

“Like?” Lucy asked.

“With groups and personalities like theirs, there are times where, rather than obtain something, they would want to deny something to their many rivals.”

“Exclusivity?” Verona asked.

“Yes,” Miss said.  “But I cannot stress how dangerous this may be.  You would have some clout.  You’re the agreed-upon practitioners for this area.  But they may test you, they may seek to work around any boundaries we establish or lines we draw.  They may wrap you up in politics.  They may find avenues and angles to hurt you and sabotage you, out of envy, jealousy, greed, a desire for revenge, or because that is how some of them operate by default.”

“What are the other options?” Lucy asked.

“The third option would be to take what they took back.  Retrieve the sacrificial companion, walk the trail with the companion’s help, then have Avery sacrifice it.  Not an easy road, as you’d face the issue of both other options.  You would have to triumph over experienced, powerful practitioners who may be able to see you coming, and you would have to then walk the trail and use the detour at the end.”

“We have to deal with them anyway, don’t we?” Lucy asked.

“Yes, but I think we all would prefer to deal with them in a way that didn’t put us on the back foot.  Tomorrow is another day.  Tonight-”

“Avery,” Verona jumped in.  “Tonight is Avery.  Hungry Choir secondary.”

“Yes,” Miss said.  “There’s a fourth option, but let me postpone that.  For now, I’m going to go talk to the others, and bring them into this.  Charles may be a good contact if we’re dealing with the Belangers.  John and Guilherme need to know what to look out for.”

“What about Alpeana?” Verona asked.

“It’s good if she’s there on the other side.  For you two… if we’re going to walk the trail, one of you should get more ribbon.  Even if we aren’t walking the trail, it won’t hurt to have it.  Another one of you should make arrangements, in case Avery does not reappear in a timely manner.”

“Shops are closed and I don’t think we have much ribbon at our place,” Lucy said.  “Mostly gift stuff, and that wouldn’t be enough to wrap the baby possum, let alone both of us.”

“I might have some at my house,” Verona said.  “Remember those costumes my dad used to make?”

Lucy nodded.  “So you do that.  I’ll see if I can figure out how to keep Avery’s family from going nuts.”

“I think she just needs to appear to be in bed,” Verona told Lucy.  “There’s a lot of people in her house, so getting in is tricky.”

“No kidding about the number of people in there,” Lucy said.  “The trick Maricica taught me should let me take on some of the properties of the moonlight, like I did with the rain, and get in through the window that way.”

“Kerry, her kid sister, has a touch-activated lamp by her bed.  If you bump it it’ll glow.  I was playing with it.  And you’ll want to keep an eye out for Sheridan.  Avery said she’s on her phone late, even though she’s not supposed to be.  So she might be under her covers with the phone.”

“I’ll send Maricica to you,” Miss said.  “She’ll give you glamour and advice.”

Lucy nodded, her eyebrows drawing together again in concern or concentration.  It was so hard to tell whether it was one or the other that Verona wondered if they were one and the same for Lucy.

“We rendezvous here?” Lucy asked.  “Who watches Avery?”

“That is more the ritual than Avery at this moment, and Avery should be considered very far away,” Miss told them.  “If we’re rallying everyone against an imminent and ongoing threat, I could ask Matthew and Edith to guard things.  Between them, they should know the things to watch out for.”

Lucy shifted her footing, her voice hardening.  “If things were capable of going this wrong, like the emergency escape animal getting taken, then don’t you think maybe we should have gotten that kind of help from the start?”

“I gave the gift I did because I thought the trail and several of the boons would suit Avery in particular.  I would not have recommended it if I didn’t think she could walk it.  This kind of interference isn’t the kind of thing any of us could plan for,” Miss said.  “We can only decide how we handle it.”

“Then let’s handle it,” Verona said, interjecting before Lucy could get madder.  “Sooner is better than later.”

“It is,” Miss said.  “I’ll send Matthew and Edith.  I’ll check in once every minute or so until they arrive to watch.  If our enemies move against us any faster than that, there won’t be much any of us three can do.”

“Okay,” Verona said.

Not okay,” Lucy said.

Then Miss was gone, standing by a tree with leaves in the way of her face in the center of Verona’s vision, gone in the time Verona’s eye flicked right to look at where the eyeball animals lay dead in the woods.

“That’s not good enough!” Lucy called out.

Verona took Lucy’s arm, tugging.  At least for the part where they were going back to Kennet, they were traveling the same direction.

“That’s not the first, second, third, or even fourth time that we’ve heard about the dangers of practices and stuff after the fact.  Now this?”

“I think Miss is right, about this being the kind of thing you can’t really account for,” Verona stated, as they walked.  They were walking up a slight incline and they’d walked earlier in the day, and then walked here.  Verona’s legs were already tiring.

“I hate it.  They can’t lie, but we can’t trust them either.  At least one of them is involved in this huge crime that’s messing up the entire town.  We can blame Nicolette Belanger, but the people who are making all of this bloody-”

Lucy swept her hand out, indicating the path and the trees.  Verona turned on her sight.

Here wasn’t as bad as other places, for the bloodiness, but it was still apparent.  Trees looked hollow, with what looked like flayed animal corpses sealed in plastic bags stuffed inside them.  There were a few tree branches with bark missing, and it looked like they were hollow, the inside stuffed with more bloody plastic sheeting.

She turned off her Sight, and the tree branches now had wood showing where the bark was missing.

“We’re supposed to check with each other if we’re dealing with Faerie.  Miss is sending Maricica.”

“Decide what you want to do in advance.  Make a plan, you’re going moon mode, using your glamour thing, you maybe go cat mode or something if you need to, in order to get out or get where you’re going.  You’re setting up an Avery image.”

“I haven’t read the notes for that one in depth.  Someone took the notes to copy them into notebooks.”

“Technically that one was her gift to me.”

“Even so,” Lucy said.  “What do I do to create the Avery image?”

“Get her to show you the techniques for manipulating glamour.  If the animal thing I was taught applies, look for a brush, or something with her hair on it.  Use the hair as a starting point to rub or stroke out the bigger glamour shape.”

“So I can get in, moon mode, I slip over to her bed, being careful of Kerry-”

“Sleeps on the bottom bunk.”

“And Sheridan.”

“Bunk to… right of the window, if you go in that way.  There’s a bookshelf that cuts across the room, for privacy.  She may be focused on her phone.”

“I can look for a hairbrush-”

“Too problematic,” Verona said.  “Three girls with similar hair colors all in the one bedroom?  You might get a second Kerry in the top bunk, or a giant doll if Kerry borrows the doll to brush her doll’s hair, or Sheridan, or something.”

“Would she have hair on her pillow?”

“Probably.  You should be able to make a reasonable fake Avery that looks like she’s asleep and breathing, then you get out.  Moon mode again.  Maybe from the top bunk straight to the window.”

“There has to be a pattern I can mimic.  But I’ll see.”

“Stick to the plan, have Maricica teach you specifics.”

“I’m thinking I’ll leave a note.  “Woke up early, left early.  Buys us until the afternoon.  If it comes to that, we can block calls from the school.”

Verona nodded, her eyes wide.

They fast-walked in silence, making their way down the dark trail.  Lucy’s flashlight shone the way for Lucy.  Verona’s Sight provided help when the moon wasn’t enough light to find their way.

Verona didn’t say it, but she was pretty sure Lucy was thinking the same thing.

If this situation really did extend until later tomorrow, to the point that all of those countermeasures were needed, then the situation was really, really bad.

“I should head over that way,” Lucy said, as they reached the point where the trail opened up to the bottom end of town.  “I may stop by home to assure my mom everything’s okay, then slip out again.  I have my phone.”

Verona nodded.

“Good luck finding that ribbon.”

“Good luck running interference and dealing with the Faerie.”

“You drive me nuts sometimes,” Lucy told Verona.  “But I’m glad it’s you helping me out at a time like this.”

“Same.  I just-” Verona started.

“What?”

Verona shook her head.  She gave Lucy a farewell wave, and then picked up the pace.  It was easier to cover more ground now that they weren’t having to step over camouflaged roots and dips in the path.

I just wished we could be helping Avery out more right now.  What do we do?

She didn’t want to vent to Lucy, when Lucy had the same anxieties and issues.  It’d just be putting negativity on her friend.

“Get back as fast as you can?” Lucy asked.  “I’m not sure if I can, and I, uh, I don’t trust Avery with Matthew and Edith.”

Verona nodded.  “I’ll call when I get there.”

Her neighborhood was familiar, but after that sudden and violent attack from the giant doll hand, and just how… she struggled to identify the word for it.  Spooked?  Discombobulated?  She felt shaky, after the attack, and knowing Avery was in trouble, asking for help, and they could only talk about maybe plans with Miss?  It left her feeling like her insides had been shaken up by that shakiness and left with everything out of place.

The feeling and context made her neighborhood feel more sinister than familiar.  The feeling extended to her Sight, as she scanned her surroundings with her special mode of vision, looking out for trouble.

For the first time, the skinned meat things, and that spiderwebby plastic wrap felt a little bit sinister.

She pulled off her stuff, stuffing mask, hat, and cape into her bag, then let herself in quietly.

Straight to the basement.  She shrugged out of her bag and dropped it by the stairs.

The basement was partially refinished, with what looked like really basic office furniture or furniture from the teacher’s lounge, office carpeting, and drop ceiling installed, and a tiny bathroom where the sink was right in front of the face of anyone sitting down.  The laundry room was one unfinished part, as was the storage room in the other corner.  Wooden struts marked out walls that were eventually going to get put up.

It was dad’s long term plan.  He’d talked about it enough.  By the time she moved out, he’d knock out an exterior wall for a door, have this be an apartment area, separate from the main house, he could draw an income and escape his debt.

In reality, it probably was going to take until she was seventeen and gone, at the very least.  Work only got done when she and her dad both had vacation time, if she was home.  Most holidays, summers, March breaks, and long weekends had been her being asked to help with painting, putting in the carpet and the cork-bottomed interlocking flooring, doing insulation… stuff.  She’d do it until her mom came and picked her up, if her mom came and picked her up, go spend time with her mom, and then come back and resume it, with her dad acting anxious, like there was a time crunch.

On a level, she wondered if he saw it as quality time.

The storage area had a workbench in it, mostly covered in bags of stuff from last Christmas, that had never found a space on the wooden racks, with some rusty tools lying here and there.  The wooden racks were her target.

There were old costumes and stuff from back in the day.  When she’d get excited about a character or a show, and her dad would pull on his two years of tailoring from after he’d gone to high school, get some of the tailoring patterns from a store or online, and put together some amazing costumes.

She dug through it, finding the dusty, leftover fabric, ranging from the stretchy stuff from her supervillain costume to the fuzzy stuff for the cat costume. She set them aside.

Another big tarp bag had the costumes, the oldest at the bottom, put away as she’d grown out of them.  The last bunch just shoved away all together, from that time period she’d stopped dressing up altogether.  Right at the top, there was the thief costume, which… she had very mixed feelings about.  She’d read a book about a thief in a fantasy world, she’d loved it, and had gone to her dad, asking to be a thief for Halloween, talking about her book.

He’d pulled together a costume that consisted of a black turtleneck, black pants, a grappling hook made of silver pipe cleaners, and after she’d refused to put stuff on her face to darken it to ‘be a better thief’, a balaclava.

She’d wanted a cloak with a jewel clasp and hood, and superfluous belts.  But it had been too late to change it or do something different.

She hadn’t been able to hide her disappointment.  Then the next year, he’d left it up to her to put her costume together.  She wasn’t sure if it was because she hadn’t been grateful enough, if she’d hurt his feelings, or if it had been the divorce distracting him.

But that had been the end of the costumes.  A lot of things had ended around then.

There was some ribbon left over from her ‘Bathory’ costume.  She’d really hoped there would be more.  This was, like, a tenth of what they needed.  Of what Avery needed.

She emptied everything out, sorted through it, then packed it back up.  She moved on to the next thing.  There was some more tailoring and sewing stuff from Christmases long past.  More ribbon, in blues and reds.

Only a third of what they probably needed, and that would need two splices.

“Come on, come on,” she said, as she packed up the bag, shoved it back, and got another.  “Something else.”

“Verona!” her dad called down.

“What?”

“If you’re downstairs, can you put the laundry on?  I think there’s sheets in the dryer to fold, and you’ll have to take my work shirts out of the washer.  Do not put any of my clothes in the dryer!”

“I’m busy.”

“It’ll only take you five minutes.  I need confirmation about not putting my clothes in the dryer.  You’ve made that mistake a few times.”

‘Mistake’.

“Can I do it tomorrow?  Small emergency?”

“Did you forget a project until the last minute again?”

“No.  My friends need stuff.  Just give me tonight to get some stuff done, please, and I’ll help you with laundry and stuff later.”

This bag was old fashioned cooking stuff.  She searched it anyway, in vain hopes that there would be something.

What was Avery dealing with right now?

“Verona,” her dad said.  He’d come down the stairs, and now stood at the bottom of the stairwell, looking through to the end of the storage room, where she knelt.  “When you do the laundry, tonight, please, shake out all of my clothes when you put them on the drying rack.  You remember what I showed you, about holding it by the shoulders and not the sleeves or the bottom of the shirt?  If you do it the wrong way, it makes the sleeves stretch out.”

“Can we not do this right now, please?” she asked.  Nothing in the baking stuff bag. She’d hoped there would be something from wrapping up a thing mom or dad had brought to work.

“You can do something for your friends but you can’t help me out?  Even with the little things?”

“Please?” she asked.  “This is kind of a priority thing.”

“Yet I’m never your priority.”

“I cook dinner most nights.  I clean.  I do most of the laundry.”

“These are basic things that need doing, Verona.  To keep a house running.  It’s the two of us, I don’t have the time or wherewithal, so yes, some of it is up to you.”

He entered the storage room, blocking off a good share of the light from the main section of the basement.  The storage area was unfinished and still had a dull orange lightbulb that probably hadn’t been changed in five years.

She couldn’t keep searching while her dad was on her like this.

“Can’t there be give and take?” she asked.  “Can’t one of us pick up the slack for the other?”

“I’m always the one picking up the slack, Verona.  Every week.  Every time I go to work.  Every single time the month ends and I do the bills, and two or three times a year when I have to take out credit to keep things afloat, because taking care of you is expensive, and your mother does not contribute enough.  I should have asked for more, but I thought it was important we keep the house you were born in, for you, so I let her get away with murder.”

For you, Verona thought.

“Dad,” she said, standing.  That shakiness was worse.  “This is really, really important, and I can’t tell you why.  But if it isn’t a ten out of ten for major, freaky, top priority stuff, it’s really close.”

“Everything’s top priority when you’re a teenager.  Believe me, I remember.”

She didn’t know what to do with the feeling of frustration welling inside of her.  She’d kind of thought and hoped that those feelings had died, so she could process this sort of thing better.

But Avery- she couldn’t shake that mental image of those blood-red ribbons, and Avery stuck in that cabin, possibly having to run from monsters or something, where every minute wasted could matter.

If she’d been her dad’s height, she might have slapped him, and then kept slapping him, in some vain effort to get through to him.

Instead, she felt like she had when she’d been a small cat, a six year old stampeding toward her.  A little kid, completely unable to understand what she tried to express in body language or vocalizations.

She approached her dad, and after a moment’s hesitation, she hugged him.

“You don’t hug me enough, like this,” he said.

“Please, please, please.  Just this once, if you only ever ease up or listen to me once from now on, can you help me tonight?” she asked, quiet.  “Help me with this and I’ll step it up and try to be the daughter you want me to be.  But I need help tonight.  It’s an emergency.”

“Only ever once in our lifetimes?” he asked.  “Verona, I listen to you all the time.  I go easy on you all the time, when it kills me that I sacrifice constantly for you and you can’t do the smallest things for me.  You have to make it sound like the end of the world to get out of laundry, you promise me you’ll mow the lawn and you don’t.  You forget my birthday.”

She let go of him, backing up.  Her eyes dropped to the floor.

“When are you going to ease up on me?  When are you going to listen to me?  I need help, Verona!  ‘Just once’, what is that!?  Do you know how hard it is to have to fight with you and your manipulations, your lies, to get the most basic stuff done!?”

He was raising his voice as he got going.

“Just once, I’d like you to be grateful.  Just once, I’d like you to be thoughtful.  You never acknowledge what I do.  Ever.  No, instead, when it’s my birthday, you forget, and you bring me a towel with ‘I love Vancouver’ on it, like a consolation prize.”

She’d forgotten that.  Or, more accurately, she’d put it out of mind.  He’d been so upset, so hurt, she’d flailed trying to find a way to make it better.  The towel had been part of it, along with chocolates and stuff she’d brought back.  Stones and shells from the seashore in a nice glass cup.  He had those on his shelf.

“I held onto that, you know!  As a reminder!  And I still make sacrifices, Verona, despite that reminder, despite the hundreds of other ways you’ve cut me so deeply, lying, manipulating, doing anything you can to worm your way out of helping me in even small ways!”

“Sacrifices?” she asked, bitter.  “How much do I really cost?”

“Food, Verona!?  Electricity!  You leave the lights on!  Internet!  If it wasn’t for you I’d have basic internet!  Water!  Those clothes you just ordered were half paid for by me!  Me!  More than, considering your piece of shit mother can’t even pay your child support on the regular!  Yes, she sent that one e-transfer, but it’s all money from the both of us!  Mostly me!  Those pizzas you like!?”

“I eat like a bird, I barely leave one light on, and you have the television on in two rooms sometimes.  I’m gone most weekends anyway.”

“Paying for a whole other human being is a lot more than you seem to think!”

“I’m gone most weekends anyway because I can’t stand it here,” she said, raising her eyes from the floor to look him in the eyes.  “I’m not the only one.  Just about everyone I know who knows you thinks you’re weird.  People think you’re a bad father.  You’re not- you’re not all that.  Jasmine’s a single mom too and she manages, and she isn’t this shitty to Lucy.”

His expression darkened.

“I think your coworkers hate you because you’re toxic!  Your family doesn’t come to visit because you’re so bitter and just about all you do is talk about work and bitch and moan!  You hate work?  Boo hoo!  Most people do!  And I didn’t ask for you to take care of me!  I didn’t sign onto this life in this shitty house I have to clean all the time!  I asked you for help tonight and you did the opposite!”

“How does it feel, huh?” he asked, his voice choked with hurt.

“It feels-” she grasped for words.  For an idea.  She was trying to be careful not to lie, at the same time.

Like if I spoke, I’d swear never to hug you again, and the only reason I’m keeping my mouth shut is because I don’t want to put myself in a position to be forsworn.

Like I’m brimming with hurt and anger and I can’t do a freaking thing about it that doesn’t involve the practice… and I want to save my juice for helping Avery.

“I’m going to go help my friend.  Can you move out of the doorway?  You’re in my light.”

She bent down to pick up the ribbons.

He didn’t budge.

“Move!” she told him.

“If you’re not going to listen to me, why should I listen to you?”

She drew in a breath, bit back a retort, and that retort bumped up against the frustration that was surging in her throat and chest, overflowing.

She screamed at him, top of her lungs, until the lack of available air made it taper off.

Then she gulped in a breath of air and did it again.

“You’re going to bother the neighbors!”

“I don’t care!  I want them to be bothered!  You freak me out!  Go away!”

“Verona, don’t-” he reached for her and she fought, scratching, kicking, backing away until she bumped into a shelf.

Then she screamed at him again.  It felt feeble, because she didn’t have the air in her lungs.

“Go away!”

“Verona-”

“Go!  Go!  Go away!  Before I do something we both regret!  Go!”

“If you’d stop-”

She screamed at him, charging at him, to push him in the stomach.  When he backed up enough, she slammed the door in his face.

He opened it almost immediately, as she bent down to get the cloth material, ribbons, and other stuff she’d put aside.

He looked bewildered, and she couldn’t even bring herself to hope that the bewilderment would lead to some introspection or thought.

At best, she hoped that he wouldn’t call the police, because of the screaming.

She pushed past him and hurried to her bag, which she snatched up.

“Verona, stop, and let’s have a conversation,” he said, behind her.

She carried on upstairs.  Avery needed her.  She wanted to get to the part where they saved Avery.  Even a more dangerous Forest Ribbon Trail had to be better than this.

He seized her by the wrist.  Her entire body jerked to a stop, her shins banging against the toothy metal stair-edges that were by the side door, so people coming in the side way wouldn’t slip off the stairs.

“Stop and listen-”

She turned and on finding his face at the same level as hers, screamed at him, her nose an inch from his.

He reached for her mouth and she pulled back, eyes wide.  Then she leaned forward and spat in his face.

He released her wrist.

She walked up to the side door, hauled it open, and left.

Verona used her narrow scissors with care, her Sight on to give her the vision in the gloom.  The ribbon-filled cabin was drafty, but draft wasn’t so bad.  The bugs were annoying, but she could endure that.

The red ribbons all fed into the hole in the floor in the middle of the cabin.  Avery was still in there.

Cut, cut, rotate.  Cut.

The scissors parted fabric with a soothing ripping sound.

“You look tranquil,” Matthew said.  “Surprising, considering.”

She looked up, meeting his very dark eyes with her purple ones.  He stood there with his hands in his pockets.

She sat, working to cut the cloth she’d scrounged up from the storage room into ribbons.  They turned at odd angles at times, but… it was better than nothing, and it at least let her feel like she was helping.

“Cute traps,” he said, indicating.

She looked over the clearing.  She’d scattered a bunch of the notecards around, each with a sketched out rune.  If some doll thing or attacker came for her or Avery, there’d be some flash and noise.

She had some of the more destructive runes with her.  She didn’t want to put them out there in case a friendly tripped them.

“Miss had a message.  Stop whatever you’re doing, and go very still.  Don’t speak, don’t move a muscle and definitely don’t touch any ribbons.  Or, if you’re okay leaving Avery here, step away from the cabin and the clearing.”

“Why?” she asked, speaking for the first time.

“She wants to investigate, but she describes it as being like a fly navigating a spider’s web.  Every disturbance, even a disturbance in the air, makes it harder.”

“Okay.”

He nodded, and then he walked away, picking his way across Verona’s improvised minefield.

She exhaled, setting her scissors and the cloth down.

She saw Matthew wave.

Miss, hands in her pockets, hair blowing across her face, walked over.  Several of the little notecards blew in the wind, some in her direction.  They danced around her but didn’t make contact.

Verona kept her eyes down, remaining very still, her breaths shallow.

Easy, when it felt like she’d spent a week’s worth of emotion in the last hour, with nothing left to spare.

It was a raw sort of tranquil, if it was ‘tranquil’ like Matthew had said.

She saw Matthew and Edith talking, standing amid the trees at the clearing’s edge, while Miss walked a circuit around the cabin.

Then they stepped out of sight, and Miss stepped into the cabin, walking past Verona.  The woman picked her way through ribbons with care.

“They got lucky, we got unlucky, or they know a dangerous amount about the Trail,” Miss said.  “I would guess the last one.  Knowing dangerous details is the Augur’s trade.”

Verona remained silent, keeping her head still.

“There is no detour anymore, judging by this orientation and angle of attack.  That closes off options one and three.”

Option one was splicing themselves into Avery’s version of the trail, walking a harder road to catch up to her, and leading her to the detour.

“Making your own ribbons out of cloth?” Miss asked.

In keeping with Matthew’s request, Verona remained silent.  She glanced up toward Miss.

“It’ll do in a pinch, if we end up needing the trail for some other reason.  A rougher road with less defined edges, perhaps.”

Made sense.  Verona was glad if it helped at all.

“Munch enlisted some help to tighten the perimeter.  More eyes on the periphery of Kennet.  They reported John had an altercation with a driver on the road.  He was driving Matthew’s truck, and Matthew may be upset when he hears about what’s happened to it,” Miss said.

Verona blinked slowly.

“Nicolette was racing here.  According to the goblins, John Stiles drove her off the road, then drove off before she could figure out what to do with him.  When I’m done here, you should summon him, to expedite his trip back.”

Off to the side, Lucy had arrived.  Matthew and Edith intercepted her, keeping her from drawing any closer.

“She’s at the Wolf’s part of the path, enduring its company.  She can’t use the detour and she can’t negotiate without the animal.  If you brought the animal to her, you couldn’t use the detour, so one or both of you would then be stuck.”

Verona remained still.

“There were ribbons torn out,” Miss said, and there was a strange tone to her voice.

Meaning what!? Verona thought, and she almost moved.

“…This is a complication.  I’ll go, so you can move, I’ll explain when I address everyone.  Thank you for cooperating.”

Then Miss was gone.

Verona waited until she saw Miss near Lucy before she rose to her feet.  She felt stiff, exhausted, and it didn’t have anything to do with walking.

“Keep strong, Ave,” Verona spoke in the direction of the hole in the middle of the cabin.  “We’re on it.”

She walked over to the others, stepping around the scattered, windblown runes.  In the background, others had gathered.  Miss, Charles, Edith, Charles, Toadswallow, and Munch.

“I had my phone on mute while I was sneaking around the house,” Lucy told Verona.  “I only got your message about your dad maybe calling around after.  I had to pretend to be Avery, midway through the drawing up of the fake in her bed.”

“Sorry,” Verona said.

Lucy gave her a curious look, studying her expression.

Then Lucy gave her a hug.

Verona accepted it, hugging back tight.

“We’ll work this Avery thing out, and this thing with your dad will be over in a few years.”

Verona nodded.

As they parted the hug, Verona pulled off her dog tag, and threw it down.  She didn’t have a massive threat or confrontation to march toward, but she could take a step in the direction of home, and of Kennet, which was a bit bloody from the Carmine Beast’s death, and getting bloodier over time.

“Thank you,” John said.

Verona turned.

“You trashed my truck?” Matthew asked.

“I scraped the side,” John said.  “And left it by the side of the road about a half hour up the road.  I’ll fetch it as soon as this situation is resolved, and I can cover the costs.”

“You have money?” Lucy asked.

“I take it off the Others I kill.”

“Do Others have that much money?” Verona asked.

“I don’t spend much,” John said.  He turned to Miss, then stopped.  “Miss, are you okay?”

Verona looked.

The branches were denser, and Miss stood further back.

Almost everything about her head was hidden, now, not just her face.

“The cost of getting too close,” Miss said.  “You were about to say…?”

“Nicolette Belanger was after something.  Moving to points she could stop and search.  Lookout points, bridges.  She’d get ahead, then look back the way she came.  I put a stop to that, but she was quick to react.”

“Standard for Augurs.  She saw you coming,” Miss said.

“She had a shadow about her,” John said.  “Around her head.”

“She could have looked too deep at something dark,” Matthew said.

“Good,” Lucy muttered.

“It wasn’t there when we confronted her the other night.”

A tree limb bowed, as Maricica perched on it.  Her wings draped down to pool on the ground.

Even more brilliant and eye catching in the moonlight.  Verona averted her gaze.

“Our practitioners’ families have settled.  You may want to go back soon, Lucy.  Your mother will look in on you in thirty minutes or so,” Maricica said, smiling.

Lucy nodded.

“Dish, Miss?  Verona asked.  “Options one and three were out, and there’s other problems?”

“They tore ribbons when they extracted our new friend here,” Miss said.  “Ribbons are the path.  A patching together of two ribbons can be a telling bump in the path.  A tearing is…”

“We can’t travel it?” Lucy asked.

“No,” Miss said.

“So we’re down to negotiating with these practitioners?” Verona asked.

“And a fourth option,” Lucy said, to Miss.  “You hinted at it.”

“Yes.  I could go after her.  I know how to walk the Path.  I may have to, if Avery’s staying there for any period of time.  I can’t negotiate with the Wolf, and I can’t be a sacrifice for her, but I could try to keep her focused and sane.  I could hope to see some means of escaping, as I did when I first discovered the detour.”

“You discovered it?” Verona asked.

“Known by me, Avery, and some of those present, as far as I’m aware.  I thought about trading the knowledge to Finders for currency that could be used with the Belangers, but I am almost certain that would exacerbate every single problem we have.  Including Avery’s entrapment and the increased attentions of the outsider practitioners.”

“So it’s probably negotiation,” Lucy said.  “What did Nicolette want?  Could we get there first, if John slowed her down?”

“Och, aye,” a voice said from the treetops, not far from Maricica.  “I haf ta think this bairn is part o’ it.”

“You’re back,” Miss said.

“Bairn?” Verona asked.

A kid, eight or nine or so, flipped down from the branch, dangling by her knees so she was upside down.  She wore cargo shorts and a tee that said ‘Trash Face’, her hair was greasy, and she had dark circles around her eyes.

“Hate ta say, but she’s a wee bit glaikit.”

“I am,” the kid said.

“Our opossum,” Miss said.  “Hello, dear.”

The kid dropped from the branch, landing on all fours, as Miss approached.  She backed away a half step, then stopped retreating.

Miss bent down, until her face and head were at a level with the kid’s  She reached up to wipe at a smudge of dirt and fix the kid’s hair.

Everything hidden from those present, except for the kid.

“She followed me.  I don’t know why, I don’t have anything.”

“What do you have?” Miss asked.

The kid reached into a pocket, pulling out a book, along with various other scraps of paper.  Spell notes, maybe, crumpled papers, torn pages.

“Is this what she’s after?” Miss asked.

“No.”

“Not you?”

“Nah, I don’t matter.”

“That’s something, then,” Miss said.  “How was Avery when you saw her?”

“Great.  But she’s a real wimp when it counts.”

“And Nicolette?  The woman with the snake ring.”

“Peachy.”

Verona watched the exchange.  “Hunh?”

“She’s not ‘glaikit’, as you would put it, Alpeana.  She’s contrary by nature.”

“You couldn’t have told us this before?” Lucy asked.

“I didn’t know the opossum’s rule until I saw her here, as this spirit of the Path.  But even if I knew there was no way to tell how the rule or tendency would manifest.  Another opossum could have had a different approach than expressing the opposite of what she means.”

“This wee bairn went to tha meeting place I was to meet tha lassie at.”

“I didn’t know anything about what that Avery twit was planning, where she came from, or any of that,” the little girl said.

“Nicolette thought the companion animal would come straight here.  She went there,” Miss said.

“Couldn’t hitch a ride on the back of a truck.  Made for a boring trip.”

“Does this help?  If Nicolette needs these papers- could we trade?  Get her to undo what she did to Avery?”

Miss paced, walking through the trees.  “Undo… I don’t know.  We can hope, and we can broach the subject, but that’s only one part of the problem.  Do the other Belangers know, or was Nicolette acting in secret?”

“The head honcho doesn’t know crap.  I dunno about the others.”

“Alexander?” Charles asked, speaking for the first time.

“Nah.”

“That’s a yes, Charles,” Miss supplied.

“I get that.  I’m not an idiot,” Charles grumbled.

“If there are no objections,” Miss said, “I will go talk to Nicolette, to broach the subject of a meeting.”

“I mean,” Verona said.  “If there’s no other way…”

“Be prepared to declare yourself practitioners over this area.  Depending on their response, this could be war, extortion, or the beginning of a siege.”

Verona looked at the various Others around the group.  Edith’s eyes burned.  Matthew’s were dark.  Maricica looked amused, her legs kicking, while Alpeana was next to her on the branch, knees drawn up to her chest.  Toadswallow and Munch had sidled up to the opossum girl.  Guilherme was off patrolling, as were the other goblins.

The only other absence was telling.  The Choir.

Verona didn’t want to think about that.

“No objections?” Miss asked.

There were none.

Miss stepped behind a tree and disappeared.

“I gotta go home.  Are you staying?” Lucy asked Verona.  “Watching over her?”

Verona nodded.

“I’ll be back.  Miss?  Stop in and let me know what’s next?”

“Okay,” Verona said.

“Oh.  And I’ve reread my old notes about stuff, but I don’t suppose we could trade books?” Lucy asked.

“Trade?”

“I want to look over spell stuff.  You can have my books if you want stuff to read.”

Verona shrugged, nodding.  She turned to Charles, pressing her hands together in a plea.  “Charles, if you could give us any details that would give us an edge against the Belangers…”

“Few things would please me more,” Charles said.  “Keeping in mind it was ages ago.”

Verona nodded.

“When dealing with an Augur, a key point is that when they see, they open up a vulnerability for you to attack them through.  Every seeing is a weakness,” Charles said.

Verona, sitting in the cabin, her cloak around her for warmth, took notes in Lucy’s book.  It was hard to write with the little kid curled up beside her, head mashed in between Verona’s hip and thigh, using her leg as a pillow.  Every movement jostled her.

“They focus primarily on immaterial things.  Echoes, spirits, incarnations- often especially incarnations.  Any sentiment or pillar of human nature can be something they specialize in.  Alexander was good at seeing the kinds and shapes of Strife, capital S, and karmic flows.  When he incurs a karmic debt, he is good at staying ahead of it until he can discharge it or pass it on.  I would imagine that if he’s a teacher at this school of his, he would be teaching some classes on Karma.”

Verona took notes.

“The Strife aspect was part of what we were going to summon, that day I was forsworn,” Charles said.  “The specialty in tracking karma was… something I should have anticipated.”

“With Nicolette sending omens in to investigate… she was looking for trouble, and then more trouble happened.  That’s how Melissa got hurt.  Does Alexander cause strife to happen by turning his Sight on things?”

“It surrounds him, yes.  He’s good at navigating it, to the extent that it may be something of a shield of his.  His underlings may fight more among themselves as a consequence.”

There was a knock on the door.

Verona glanced at the ribbons, then at the door.  She touched her spell cards.

“It’s me,” Miss said.

“And?”

“There’s an appointment, midday tomorrow.  With Nicolette and others.”

“Why midday?”

“She refused to budge on that point.  She had things she was sworn to look after.  She promised to make a concession in exchange.”

“Okay,” Verona said.  She looked again at the red ribbons and the spot she’d last seen Avery.  “Who are the others?”

“Other augurs from Blue Heron, Alexander included.”

Charles groaned.

“We’re working out a bit of a plan,” Verona said.

“Good.  I hope I’m there to see it,” Miss said.

“What do you mean?” Verona asked.

“You’re going in?” Charles asked.

“I told Avery Kelly that if she guessed my true nature, it might matter,” Miss said.

“Yeah?” Verona asked.

“I’ve decided I’ll make my way to her, so she has an advocate, someone by her side.”

“Will we see you again?” Charles asked.

“I don’t know,” Miss said, crossing into the room.  Her head was hidden by gloom, then by the thickest intersection of ribbons.  “But if you don’t, know that I’m happier braving the Paths once again than I am dealing with practitioners.  I found my way out once.”

“Tell her we said hi, okay?  That we’re on this,” Verona asked.  “That Lucy came up with something.  So she just has to tough it out a while longer.”

Verona held up her phone to show Miss the text.  Miss didn’t seem like she read it.

“I will.”

“Goodbye Miss,” Charles said.  “You were fairer than most.”

“If it’s all I’ve done, I hope I inspire you both to be the same,” Miss said.  “Whatever paths you walk.”

Every ribbon in the room stirred, like they’d been plucked.  The torn ribbons fluttered as if a wind had passed through.  Miss was gone.

“Good riddance,” the opossum girl muttered.

“Let’s resume,” Charles growled the words.  “Where were we?”

“His underlings fight among one another,” Verona answered him, her eyes glowing in the dark cabin with the red ribbons.

[3.1 Spoilers] Interview Notes 2

Alpeana
Mare
Capabilities:
–  Tampers with dreams & nightmares
–  Harvests bits from immaterial things & places, like echoes.  Makes nightmares worse and makes them matter more in the big picture.
–  Works for the universe, maintaining balances and undoing snarls.
–  Can travel easily between places and realms.  Teleports sometimes?
–  Climbs on walls, ceilings.

Means
–  Has access to the ruins, where the beast was stored.
–  Not very strong though.  Would have to be an acomplice instead of a true culprit.

Motive
–  Associates more with the Sable Judge, who was a peer of the Carmine Beast.  Could he ask her and use his position if she lied?
–  She says her schedule and way of working was really messed up by this

Opportunity
– She says she was working.

Note: Was watching us and visiting us in our rooms.

Maricica
Autumn Fae (Dark)

Capabilities
– Mastered ‘glamour’.  Illusions that can become real.
–  Incredible manipulator
–  Autumn Fae are very good at transformations.  Dark autumn Fae are good at animal changes, changing people into animals.
–  Fae in her court apparently steal kids and sell them or take parts & traits from them.

Means
– Glamour is apparently bad at direct, blunt applications.  Would be hard to use to kill.
–  At the same time if you believe it enough and don’t disprove it, any illusion can become reality, apparently.  Could it be a big “you’re dying” illusion?

Motive
– Longstanding grudge.  “I see something like her, imperious and powerful, and I want to challenge it.”
–  temporarily blinded the beast, weeks prior.

Opportunity
–  Was in the cave.

Guilherme
Summer Fae (Light)

Capabilities
– Subtle, powerful glamour (Illusions)
–  John & Toadswallow described him as a romantic warrior.  Really strong but not in a way that relates to ‘real’ war and fighting.
–  Summer Fae are said to be big on adventure, high drama.

Means
– Badass warrior?  Isn’t out of the question.
–  Glamour thing mentioned in Maricica’s entry applies.

Motive
– Beast wanted Guilherme to work for her.  ‘a tool’.
–  His court sounds like the sort to get excited about hunting big game.
–  ‘She disliked me, I disliked her’ (to paraphrase)  He called it boring and boredom is like death to a Fae?

Opportunity
–  No real alibi, except a meeting with an unnamed stranger.  Swore to this.

Note: Fae are hard to draw so I fudged this art & Maricica’s.

The Goblins
Toadswallow, Bluntmunch, Gashwad, & Cherrypop

Capabilities
– Capable of smelling trouble.
–  Natural instinct for violence, grossness, depravity.
–  apparently pretty good at making vicious weapons and messed up tools.
Toadswallow – specializes in practitioner -> goblin relationships, teaching goblin magic.
Bluntmunch – muscle & theft.  Lots of goblin contacts
Gashwad – Tainting things
Cherry – Not good at much, apparently.

Means
– Not very strong, but goblins seem to group.  can’t rule out a big ‘heist’ for means.

Motive
– Goblins love trouble, and this whole thing has created a lot of it.

Opportunity
–  They were out and about when the beast died.
–  They seem to have one another as alibis, or have other alibis.
–  They don’t seem that crafty, to be able to keep a secret like this.

Miss
Lost of the Stairwell Web

Capabilities
– Obscured, including from many practices
–  Has picked up a lot of esoteric knowledge.  Especially about the big picture.  Solomon, practitioners, rules.
–  Has a leadership role in Kennet

Means
– not a fighter.  But the locals listen to her.

Motive
Hates the idea of practitioner involvement, which is the biggest immediate concern the Kennet Others seem to have.  Hard to image she wouldn’t anticipate that.

Opportunity
–  No real alibi, but even then… she wouldn’t really benefit from one?  She’d be the mastermind, telling others what to do and when.  Wouldn’t matter where she was at the time of.

Notes:
–  Gave us some sketchy gifts.
–  Evasive during questioning.
–  Miss is gone now, possibly forever.  This doesn’t mean we should stop considering her.

Bye miss.

Out on a Limb – 3.2

Lucy

Last Thursday – Interview Notes #2


Every moment that Avery was gone felt like added weight on Lucy’s shoulders.

Girls were chattering, making plans for lunch, and talking about a television show.  Pam was talking about summer plans, and Alayna was describing her family’s cottage to Brooklynn.  Mia, Hailey, Emerson, Alexa, and Sharon were coming back from the showers, having dressed in the stalls.

The tenor of conversation changed as they joined Melissa, who sat on the end of the bench closest to the door, crutches leaning against the wall beside her.  Melissa’s foot was in a big black brace that extended from knee to foot.  Lucy could remember seeing her ankle snap, as they’d watched the gymnastics team from the spirit world.

“What’re those?” Melissa asked Verona.

Verona was digging through her bag, getting sorted, putting notecards into her back pocket.

“Flash cards,” Verona said.

“Huh.  I didn’t take you for the studying type.”

“I’m not,” Verona answered with a matching shrug.  “That’s part of why I’m going more in this direction instead.”

“Huh.  Does it work?”

“Pretty well.  Hopefully it stays that way,” Verona said.  She looked at Lucy.  “For later today?”

“Do we have a test today?” Melissa asked, sounding alarmed.

“Wait, what?  Test?” Mia asked.  “Which class?  Hardy or Lai?”

“No idea if there’s a test.  This is more a side project with Lucy,” Verona said.  “Sorry if I scared you.”

“Jerk,” Mia said.  She quickly pulled on her shirt and flashed a disarming smile as soon as she was done.  ‘Just joking’.

“Hey, Melissa,” Alexa said.  “We were talking about going to Heroes.  Do you want to come?”

“I can’t really hike it,” Melissa said.  “These crutches are already bruising my armpits like crazy.”

“I could try calling my brother,” Emerson said.  “He drives his friends.  It might take some convincing, but he could drive us over, maybe.”

“I don’t want to be a bother.  But thanks.  I think, uh, just for today, I’ll stay behind and recuperate.  I’m going to swing by the front office and see if they have any painkillers.”

“They didn’t give you anything?” Alexa asked.

“They did but it makes me too groggy for school, so I took a half dose.  It’s not really denting it.”

“If someone gave me a ton of hard painkillers I’d be all over that.  Screw half doses,” Haley joked.

“That’s not a good thing, Haley,” Pam said, from the other end of the room.

“I hope you feel better,” Mia told Melissa.  “Do you want company?  I could carry your bag to the nurse’s office.”

“No, go get sandwiches, have fun.  Catch me up after.”

“You’re sure?”

“Go, really.  I’d be bad company anyway.  I barely slept, I’m cranky.”

“You’re super sure?”

“Yes.”  Melissa sounded exasperated now.  “You’re being annoying.  Go.”

Gym class was over and the way things tended to go, the girls who were planning on hurrying over to the fast food places tended to be the ones who rushed through getting showered and changed, and the ones who weren’t planning on it or who had friends they talked to would stay and linger, though not usually in the changing room, with the ambient aroma of stale sweat.

For now, almost half the girls were out in the hall, including the main troupe of Dancers, led by Mia.  The other half were just now getting to the showers.  Only Pam, Caroline, Alayna, Brooklynn, and Melissa remained, and half of them were on the other end of the room.

Lucy and Verona were quietly getting sorted.  Lucy pulled the chain necklace out of her bag, and it jangled lightly.

“Cool.  What is that?” Melissa asked.

Lucy paused, then out of sympathy, held out the necklace so the contents hung at Melissa’s eye level.  Dog tags, the weapon ring, and her house key were strung on it.

“That’s a crazy ring.  Don’t you stab yourself on that?”

“Not often,” Lucy said.

“Who’s Corporal Bloggins?”

“Don’t be nosy, Mel,” Caroline chided.

“Sorry,” Melissa said, shrinking back.

“He’s supposed to be a soldier that didn’t make it back,” Lucy said.  “Another soldier gave it to me.”

“Well that’s heavy,” Melissa said, eyes widening.

“A lot of stuff is pretty heavy right now,” Lucy said.  Beside her, a silent Verona was zipping up her bag.  Dressed and ready to go.  Lucy still had to lace up.  She pulled the necklace over her head, working it past her afro-ponytail, and dropped the contents down the front of her shirt.  She glanced at Melissa, and saw the girl’s expression had changed.  Melissa stared off a bit, which prompted Lucy to go against her instincts and ask, “You okay?”

“Yeah.  I’m cool.  I’m just… I’m so tired I’m nauseous, and the painkillers I took aren’t helping.  Makes time slip by.”

Lucy took a seat next to Melissa, pulling her sneaker up onto the bench, and began lacing up tight.  “That thing with your friends bailing…”

“I told them to go.”

“But you wanted them to stay, right?  To insist?” Lucy asked, quiet.

“Um,” Melissa said, and her expression darkened a bit, her eyes just a bit unfocused for a moment before she gathered herself together and looked at Lucy.  “We don’t usually talk, do we?  Is this a pity thing?”

“Maybe a bit,” Lucy answered, trying to keep her volume down, even though she was sure some people were listening in.  “I think you should take Emerson up on that deal the next time she asks.  Be greedy, take advantage of that stuff.  Or, like, in a few weeks you might find yourself in a place where your head is clear again, your ankle’s still not one hundred percent, and they’ve fallen out of the habit of including you.”

“I didn’t really fit in to begin with,” Melissa said.  “They think I’m annoying, but I tried hard, I was the smallest and lightest, so I was essential if they wanted a good flyer for the junior cheerleading team.  They had to include me.  Now they don’t.”

Lucy switched shoes.  “I think the lower you find yourself on the totem pole, the more important it is to hold your head up high and make your voice heard.”

“Oh?” Melissa asked.  “Is that your sage wisdom, as one of the three kids left over when everyone else has found a group?”

Woah,” Verona said, behind Lucy.  “Talking like that is one way to tank the goodwill you have.”

“And those kids are me and Alayna,” Pam said.  “Not Lucy and Verona.  Especially not Avery.”

“Ow,” Alayna said, placing a hand over her heart, her head lolling back.  “My pride.”

Brooklynn said something, but she was talked over by Caroline.

It was something Lucy despised.  It was something she’d never gotten into the hang of and never figured out, and probably tied into what Booker had said about finding people to spend time with and connect with.  Put five or ten or twenty other kids from their class, a year younger, or a year older into a room, and every single one felt the need to be the main character, to butt in, to make the joke.  But it became noise and it made her resent every single one of them.  More than she resented Melissa’s comment.

“I’m sorry,” Melissa said.  “I didn’t mean that.  I’m tired, like I said.”

“I have enough assholes to deal with,” Verona said.  “If you’re going to be another one of them-”

“Hey,” Lucy cut in.  “Let’s leave it.  She gets a pass, as far as I’m concerned.  One.  We’ve got other stuff to do.”

“A pass would be appreciated.” Melissa looked ashamed.  “It’s cool of you.”

Verona pulled her bag off the hook on the wall and pulled it over her shoulders.  “I read once that love isn’t finite.  You can give someone some love and it doesn’t deplete any reserve or anything like that.  But the bad stuff, like being an asshole?  That’s kind of the same.  Assholes put shit out there and spread it around-”

“Gross,” Pam said.

Verona pressed forward, ignoring the interruption.  “Don’t do that.  That’s not the Melissa I know and it shouldn’t be the Melissa from now on.”

“Yeah,” Melissa said, sitting there looking miserable.

“I like what you said about love,” Alayna sighed, acting overdramatic still, her hands pressed over her heart.   “It’s like faith, warm and worth sharing.”

“This is why you’re one of the kids left over after we’ve all picked groups,” Caroline said.

“Go suck one of your horse’s dicks,” Alayna said.

The jeering and backtalk continued.  Lucy checked with Verona as she grabbed her bag.  Other girls were just leaving the showers now.

“Come on,” Lucy told Melissa.  She held out a hand.  “It smells like old armpits in here.  You’ll just be more miserable if you sit here like that.”

Melissa looked up at Lucy’s hand.

“Come on.”

Melissa took her hand.  Lucy helped her get to her feet, then held her steady while she got her crutches.  Verona held the first of the double doors open as the girl crutch-walked through, Lucy following to get the next door as soon as the first had closed.

The boys were already loosely lined up at one side of the little hallway, the girls at the other.

“Melissa,” Mr. Bader said.  “I wanted to have a word.”

“Uh huh?”

“I talked to your mom and one of the women from Wavy Tree.  They mentioned you sometimes lead exercises at the dance studio?”

“For the littler kids, kind of?  We take turns walking them through the stretches and stuff at the start.”

“In the interest of giving you some excuse to participate more, would you like to lead a class?  You’d have to come to me with an idea of what the class would entail.”

“I guess?  I kind of thought we could do more stretching and stuff.  There’s this yoga challenge I’ve watched hundreds of videos for.  I thought it would be fun to get everyone to pair up and try that.”

“Yoga?” Justin groaned the word from the tail end of the boy’s line.  “Eww, no.”

“It was just an idea,” Melissa protested.  “And it’s harder than it sounds.”

“The only yoga I want to do is that guy from the fighting game who breathes fire,” Xavier joked.

“I thought it would be fun,” Melissa said, almost drowned out.

Mr. Bader’s attention was split between her and the boys and it kind of looked like he wasn’t getting anywhere with either.  Melissa deflated further.

“Mr. Bader?” Lucy asked.

He frowned at her, now giving her his full attention.

“Melissa said something like she wasn’t feeling well and she was going to go to the office.”

“I was actually thinking of going and calling home,” Melissa said.

“Can we take her over?” Verona asked.

“Go,” Mr. Bader said.  “Try to stick it out for the rest of the day, Melissa.  Be good, all three of you.”

He glanced at Lucy as he said that parting line.  She wondered if he held a grudge, after her mom had called the school, or if it was something else, or just him trying to make eye contact with all three of them, and lingering on her longer for other reasons.

“Awkward,” Melissa said.

“Hm?” Verona made a quizzical sound.

“I didn’t think the boys would fight so hard about my idea.  Paired yoga is really fun if you’re good at it and funny if you’re not.  Kinda felt on the spot, and I already feel like everyone’s staring.”

“They’re not, really,” Lucy said.

“Well, thanks for getting me out of there, anyway,” Melissa said.  She grunted a bit with each use of the crutches.  Her shoe clopped down, her foot in the massive brace was held up off the ground, knee bent.  It had to be heavy.

“Glad to,” Lucy said, meaning it.  “And I do have ulterior motives.  We’ve got a place to be, not a lot of time, and the front office is closer to the door than the gym.”

“Crafty,” Verona said.

“Trying to think of Avery,” Lucy murmured.  To Melissa, she added, “If you don’t mind, we’ll drop you off at the office and then bail?  We can be square over the comment in the changing room.”

“Yeah” Melissa said.  “Sure, that’s cool.  I hope Avery feels better soon, by the way.”

They walked down the hall, Verona and Lucy on either side of Melissa.

“I do too,” Lucy finally said, and there might have been a gravity to the words, because Melissa gave her a concerned look.

It wasn’t hard to get Melissa refocused on moving forward, especially as they reached the short hallway that led to the principal’s offices and the main office.

They dropped Melissa off, helped her sit in one of the oversized puffy chairs, then left, heading for the door.  Once there, they waited with a handful of other students, while a staff member watched, arms folded.

No setting foot off school grounds until the bell rang.

“You’ve been quiet,” Lucy murmured to Verona.  Verona had changed into a black v-neck top and denim shorts.  She had a choker and a black lace belt that didn’t look strong enough to hold much.

“Planning,” Verona answered.  “Why the focus on Melissa?”

“I didn’t really intend it.  But maybe it’s some good karma.  I don’t know.  It’s not like we’re losing time or anything.”

“No, no.  It was good.  Just… I don’t know.”

The bell rang.  There were two double doors at the front of the school, and they pushed one set open, hurrying down the concrete steps doubletime.

The timing of this was kind of inconvenient, but whatever.

Matthew’s truck, side scraped, was parked just down the road, not in plain view of the front office.  Matthew stood beside the door, his back to the school.  He jerked his thumb at the cab of the truck.

Lucy stepped onto the wheel, vaulting over, then gave Verona a hand in getting over the side.  Charles sat in the passenger seat.  No Edith.

“Where’s your wife?” Lucy asked.

“At the meeting place, keeping an eye on things.  Heads up.  You’ve got a Faerie on board, and another one hitching a ride as soon as we’re outside of the city itself.”

“Faerie?” Verona asked.   She looked down the truck cab, which had some tarps and stuff folded up down one side, along with the tents, still from two weekends ago.  She reached for one bit with her toe.

Lucy switched to the sight, and saw swords and crimson.  “Care-”

Verona jumped, scrambling back.

In one corner of the truck bed was an arrangement that could have been a collage or a really stellar photo.  A really creepy, stellar photo.  A spiderweb, dense and scintillating, with a bat and a moth the size of Lucy’s head caught in it.  The bat held a centipede in its mouth, and twitched, flapping its one free wing, while the other pulled at the strands.

“Maricica?” Verona asked.

The moth folded its wings, then unfolded them.  The pattern on the wing became eye-shaped.  Maricica’s eye.  It blinked.

“I thought we would talk before we get there,” Maricica’s voice whispered.

The truck rumbled as the engine turned on, then pulled out of the spot.  Lucy ducked her head down so the tarps and tents blocked the view, in case they got in trouble for illegal riding.

“Talk about what?” Verona asked.

“A lesson, free of traps of ploys,” the spiderweb whispered.  The eye changed in subtle ways each time the moth managed to fold up and part its entangled wings.  It happened in a way that left Lucy feeling like she couldn’t see what the differences were from instance to instance, but when it got a few steps down the line, she could think back and realize how it was different from a few seconds ago.

“Why couldn’t you give us our gifts without traps or ploys?” Lucy asked.

“That wouldn’t be fun.  Shall we talk about the use of practice in negotiation?”

“I wouldn’t mind tips at this point,” Lucy said.

“You’re negotiating with a master practitioner.  He has years of experience in these affairs.  The first step is to know your enemy.”

“We talked about him last night,” Charles said, from the back seat.  The weather was warm enough the truck had both windows and the little window at the back open.

“You did.  I can guess the gist of that conversation.  Having information about an enemy who doesn’t know who you are is a tool.  At the same time, consider who he is and what he deals with.  He’s used to interacting with incarnations, often lesser ones.  Incarnations are literal, they are personifications of concepts, and are stubborn, single-minded, even short-sighted.”

“Oh no,” Verona said, looking at Lucy.  “Sounds like you.”

“Ha ha.”

“If you play his game, he’ll have no difficulty getting the edge on you two.  If you don’t, he’ll at least have to work for it.  He has decades of experience dealing with walking and talking concepts, or surrounding himself with them.”

“Like clusters of personified Strife,” Verona answered.

“Yes.  I do believe you were taught by Matthew and Edith about shamanism.  You know why most practitioners dabble in it?  Working with spirits and diagrams?”

“Because all practices can use some form of it,” Verona said.

“He uses spirits of seeing, of teaching, of information.  He communicates with them.  This is his habit, his tendency.”

“So if we get into that general area, or talk like those spirits do, he’ll be more comfortable?”

“And comfortable is dangerous,” Maricica said.  “He spends his time around learned practitioners vying for favor.  Students, apprentices, and the sorts of professionals who would hire an investigator who can see through walls or read the future.”

“So… if we’re going to be something very different from that, we’d have to be not stubborn, not single minded, not learned or wise, and not cunning?” Lucy asked.  “And still somehow win the argument?”

“Something like that.  It’s…”

The Faerie went quiet.

The truck slowed.  There were people at the corner.  One of those people put one hand on the side of the truck cab, and vaulted over without needing to step on the bumper or tire.  He crashed into a sitting position.

It took Lucy a second of studying his features to realize why he seemed so familiar.  He was a guy, light brown skinned, older teens, with his hair buzzed short, an earring in one ear, and a bit of beard at the corners of his jaw.  His eyes were like a hawk’s, and he looked very fit.

“Hi Guilherme,” Verona said.

The facial features were Guilherme’s, sized to match the body he wore.  His clothes were modern.

“Grotesque,” he said, putting his foot into the spider web.  Spider, bat, and centipede scrambled out of the way.  The moth came free and flapped, settling against the back window over Verona’s head.  “Has that wretched under-Faerie been misleading you again?”

“Telling us how we should approach the conversation,” Lucy said.  “To take him away from the familiar.”

“I don’t know that I would even try,” Guilherme intoned, his voice deep.  He lounged, one leg outstretched, arms draped over the side of the truck bed.  “You currently straddle the line between child and adult.  Perhaps be more child.”

“This was my idea,” the moth whispered, and the whisper was like knives against a sharpening stone, a fine rasp that cut straight through the wind that whipped around the truck.  “He would take credit for it.”

“I don’t want to get between you two.  The child thing is a maybe,” Lucy conceded.  “It’s hard to think of how we’d fit that into what we discussed last night and this morning.”

“Consider it,” Maricica said.  “We should outline how a master practitioner may handle a conversation.  You know of karma, of debt?”

“Some,” Lucy said.  “Charles explained that Alexander Belanger is pretty clever about karma.”

“When the conversation opens, he may announce himself.  Alexander Belanger.  Teacher at the Blue Heron, Augur, uncle of so-and-so, master of apprentices Nicolette and so on.  He may tell you he is grateful for the meeting, he would be happy to clear things up.  How are you?  Now, how do you respond?”

Lucy looked at Verona, then at Guilherme.  “This relates to karma?”

“It does.”

“When we were going to meet you two, we were warned not to give you our thanks,” Verona said.  “That you could take them and keep them if they were freely given.  Is this that?”

“It could be, but the chances are slim.  The effect is more subtle.  There are traps being set.”

“Ownership of the conversation?” Verona guessed.  “You told us about the, uh, Winding Signatures practice.  Where we put a bit of ourselves into the deal.  Is the mistake that we’re letting him get the first word?”

“That is a small advantage he would be eking out.  There are others,” Maricica said.  “How might you answer?  Give me an example.”

“I’m Lucy, that’s Verona,” Lucy said, perfunctory.  “How much can he trap us if we give him next to nothing?”

“A fair bit.  Karma is subtle but accrues.  If he gives you something and you fail to give something back, then the universe is likely to see it as you being unfair to him, in a sense of ‘fair’ the universe can care a lot about.  He told you who he is and who he’s related to, among all the people in his company.  He told you where he works and what he does, his intentions for the meeting, and extended courtesy.  Do you give him a matching and fair amount of information and courtesy, or do you let him have the karmic advantage?”

“How do we counter that?” Verona asked, twisting around to look at the moth.

“You don’t.  You can circumvent it, challenge it if you see an opening.  Try to do the same to him.  Give him something you don’t value at all that costs him a great deal to match.”

The truck pulled onto a wooded path.  It wobbled as it went over some roots that crossed the dirt road.

“Conversation is like a swordfight,” Guilherme said.  “Parry, thrust, attack.  Reputation is your footing.  Take away his.  Challenge, keep him wondering.  Try not to let him take the lead.  To ask a question when you don’t know the answer is like letting your opponent’s weapon out of your sight.  You’ll often find such a metaphorical blade between your ribs.”

“Guilherme forgets that not everyone is familiar with swordfighting,” Maricica said.  “It’s a strained metaphor.”

“Works for me, kind of,” Lucy said.  She frowned a bit.  The Faerie might not have been the best teachers for this kind of thing.  It was kind of like getting a PHD to teach math in kindergarten.  The pacing wasn’t there.  The metaphor worked better, because she could at least think of this as a scrap.

“You’re treating this as a lesson, but why don’t you just tell us what to do?” Verona asked.

“Because I don’t know you as well as I would want to, to have you be puppets, or to have you say certain things in the tones I would want,” the moth that was Maricica purred, “because the idea of ‘best’ varies, and I suspect I would quite enjoy the drama that would come from my view of ‘best’.  The rest of the people on this truck wouldn’t.”

Guilherme spoke, “And because technically, practitioners are meant to look after the affairs of Others.  If we led you to conclusions or undermined you, then they could argue Kennet is not being administrated and other practitioners would be needed to ensure it was all handled.”

“Right,” Lucy said.  She heaved out a sigh.

The truck rumbled over a patch of road with a lot of rocks.  Lucy held onto the edge.

“What do you think?” Verona asked her.  “Good cop, bad cop?  I’m guessing you want to be the bad cop.”

“Heck yeah.”

“I don’t want to be ‘good’.  Can I be me?  What if- can we mix it up?  If we try to put him out of his comfort zone, there’s like, a bunch of bases to cover, so what if we each cover different ones?”

Lucy thought about that.  She leaned her head back, looking at the moth.

“That is a way,” the moth purred.  “There are ways to tie it together, but this way isn’t wrong.”

Lucy turned to Guilherme.

“Do you truly care about my opinion?  You asked that dust-stained Faerie before you asked me,” Guilherme rumbled, his voice deeper than before.  “We’ll adapt, whatever you choose to do.”

The car rounded a bend, and Guilherme went from a sitting position to pushing himself off the side of the truck, landing on the road amid the dust the tires were kicking up.  When he stood up, he was taller than his teenaged guise had been.

They left him behind.

“Nervous,” Lucy murmured.

The truck continued down the dirt road, until the tires weren’t traveling down dirt anymore.  Clouds of smoke rolled past them.

Lucy gripped the truck, bracing her foot for further leverage, as she lifted herself up to look over the top of the truck, ducking her head to avoid the leaves and possible branches that passed over the roof.  The truck slowed.

The dirt was black, and candles in bowls drifted slowly across the surface.  The smoke rolled past them in waves, and each time it did, the scene was subtly different.  Darker, with brighter trees, more candles.

There were papers stuck to the trees, and the bottom edge of each paper burned but didn’t consume.

The tires sloshed through the ‘dirt’ like it was thick mud.  Globs flew and were absorbed by the rest.

The truck rounded the last corner, passing through the thickest of the smoke.

The cabin was cracked open, and red ribbons extended through the open roof to the sky, disappearing into the darkness above.  More ribbons wrapped the building and filled the interior.  With the burning papers on every tree and two hundred little candles floating on what looked like a lake of black oil, the clearing around the cabin was illuminated with an orange-red light that only barely reached the building.

The truck rolled to a stop, skidding on the surface.

By the cabin, Edith knelt.  No toque like the first time they’d seen her, but the same bleached blond hair, recently done so there were no roots.  She wore a white dress, and leaned far enough forward her face almost met her knees, her back arched.  At the spine, it had parted, ribs splaying and pointing upward to form a circle.  Half the ribs had candles of varying lengths perched at the points.

Inside that circle of ribs sat a woman, her skin faintly patterned like she’d been burned, but not distorted or misshapen by that burn.  Her eyes were orange lights, her hair ash white, and she wore clothes that burned at the edges, like the papers did.  A white candle that might have been five or six feet tall and thick as a tree trunk was set across her shoulders, burning at both ends.  Whichever way she leaned, wax dribbled down its length.  At varying times, it ran down her arms, onto her shoulders, back, and down her front, with enough of it pooling in that circle of ribs that her legs were mostly hidden.  Sometimes it solidified, other times it congealed, and other times it broke away.

Matthew climbed out, walking through the sea of what might have been wax, just tall enough to cover any grass.  He said something Lucy couldn’t hear.

The woman bent down, wax dripping and breaking away in segments as she lowered her face to his, kissing him.

Lucy climbed over the edge of the truck, stepping onto the tire, then testing her footing on the ground.  Smoke from multiple candles and burning papers seemed to braid and collect together, forming larger masses that moved over the area.  It reminded her of the ‘manna’ of the spirit world.

The liquid was hot wax.  It was just warm enough she could feel it through her sneakers.  She hoped it didn’t ruin them.

Guilherme was already at the far end of the clearing, walking with John.  He’d gotten here before Matthew’s truck had, despite his earlier departure.

Maricica- Lucy looked back.  Maricica was sitting on top of the truck now, wings wrapped around her and draped over a good portion of the truck.

“Where’s Snowdrop?” Verona asked.

Edith straightened and pointed.

Snowdrop was running along the expanse of black wax like it was solid, practically skipping as she ran ahead.  Cherrypop perched on her head, holding her hair, while Bluntmunch and Gashwad fought to wade through.

“I didn’t think Edith was that powerful,” Lucy admitted, looking at all of this.

“It’s a specific kind of power,” Maricica said.  “Candles are set within home, temple, or sanctuary, in times of darkness.  There are Others who can bring the spirit world with them, at least for a little while.  It makes spirits stronger, but that’s not what we need right now.  They may have more spirits than we do.”

“Is this a problem?” Verona asked.

“No,” Maricica answered.  “This is only preparation.”

Even as she said it, the smoke began to withdraw, reversing direction to flow toward candles and papers.  The wax was a pool in the clearing, but the edges began to recede, the pool shrinking.

Edith had blown one end of the candle out.  Candles along the ground began to go out.  She turned her double-ended candle around.  Already, the pool had shrunk to half of what it was.

Lucy looked with the Sight, and it was easier to see the spiritual, A little sword holding every paper to the nearby trees.  Her normal vision seemed to ‘forget’ the aesthetic, seeing the pool as smaller, more of the candles unlit.

Edith blew out the other candle, then embraced it, ducking her head down and crawling into Edith James’s back.  Liquid wax sloshed and overflowed, heavy with soot and smoke, rolling over Edith’s hair, body, and clothes.  It dried and solidified into a thin layer that became nonexistent a second later.  Not truly there or solid.

‘Edith’ moved again, lifting her head and stretching.  She took Matthew’s hand and stood.

Then there was no obvious sign that anything had been done.  A few more blades in the trees than there had been last night, maybe.

Cherrypop screamed as Gashwad pounced onto Snowdrop.  They didn’t have the speed advantage now that the turf wasn’t so ‘spirit world’.

A small, unfamiliar goblin scampered across the clearing.  Bluntmunch caught it, lifting it up.  As Snowdrop ran by with Gashwad clinging to her and pulling her hair, Bluntmunch grabbed Gashwad too.

“News?” Matthew asked.

“They’re almost here,” Bluntmunch announced.  He gave the new goblin a shake, then said, “Go, or I’ll use you to wipe myself for the next month.”

He dropped the goblin, and it ran off into the trees.

Lucy and Verona caught up to Matthew and Edith.  Guilherme and John approached.

Even Charles came, venturing out of the trees and into the clearing.

“It has to be you two who approach this,” Matthew said.  “Anything else gets more complicated.”

Bluntmunch pointed.  All of them walked up to and past the cabin, which was no longer ‘exploded’, just a regular wood cabin with a broken wall and a lot of bright red ribbons within.

Lucy got her mask, hat, and little cape from her bag.  Verona already had the mask out, and grabbed the rest from her stuff.  They left their bags leaning up against the wall.

Lucy put on her weapon ring.  Just in case.

“Should we know what you did?” Lucy asked Edith.  “The spirit world stuff?”

“I’m so curious,” Verona added.

“I prepared the area, in case there was a fight.  Put myself into it.  Fire, light, and smoke are best, if you have to use any practice.”

“Funny thing,” Verona said, looking around.  The goblins had settled at the edges of the trees.  “You taught us a good bit about fire, light, and smoke.  I’ve got spell cards.”

“It won’t work, Edith,” Maricica purred.  She was full-size, half-draped over the tin roof of the cabin.  “They see it already.  They’ve decided what to do about it.”

Snowdrop approached, leaving Cherrypop behind.  She turned, hopping up a bit to look inside the window, then dropped down, slumping against the wall.

Birds took flight above the treeline.

“Always with the birds,” Charles grumbled.

“Birds?”

“Seers like to use birds,” Charles said.  “Eyes above, auspices, symbols of wisdom and learning.”

The birds gathered, then slowly descended, in pairs, threes, in groups.

All around them, birds found perches on branches at the clearing’s edge.  Every single one of those birds proceeded to catch fire and tumble, flapping, to the dirt and grass below.  Papers appeared out of nowhere, igniting and burning.

“Hey, Edith?” Verona asked.  “Do you think you could tweak the papers? Is that asking too much?”

“What tweak?  It would have to be small.”

“Bright, more than hot?”

“A little bit brighter, perhaps,” Edith said.  She turned, her eyes roving over the trees, as birds continued to land and burn, tumbling as the fire got too bad.  Where her eyes traveled, the outlines of papers appeared, the diagrams on those papers emerging like they were scratched into the bark.  The same lines and diagrams shifted, symbols translating from underlined triangles to circles with dots, lines moving to become crowns of three rather than single lines.

Birds continued to land, and the fires were more like flashes, abrupt and bright.

Lucy couldn’t be sure, but there were a lot of birds in the air, and now the vast majority of them circled instead of landing.

The Augurs emerged.  Five of them.  A man of about forty, narrow, with very light brown hair that might have been reddish and might have been catching the lingering flames.  Lucy didn’t know that much about fashion, but it looked like his outfit was ‘bulletproof’, so to speak, an expensive blazer, shirt, and slacks that may have all been custom fit.

Three men, one thirty-something, maybe, she wasn’t good at ages, with similar hair, a little wider at the shoulders.  Two good looking men, closer to being teenagers or early twenty-somethings, who were a bit more casually sloppy in a way that a lot of guys tried and only a few succeeded at.  They succeeded.

And the girl that had to be Nicolette.  She had brown hair that was arranged so it all fell down on one shoulder, the rest pinned back by a hairpin with white feathers.  She wore glasses with branches for the arms and thick, stark white frames that matched the feathers.  Her blouse had a ruffle at the collarbone, and her skirt had a thin belt, pockets with a pocket protector and things slid in, including feathers and possible pens.  She wore sandals for the heat.

Smoke and the smell of burning feathers filled the air around them.

“Well,” the older man said.  “Charles.  You don’t look well.  And… two girls.  You-”

“Wait!” Verona interrupted.  Then she strode forward.  Crossing the gap between the two groups.

Lucy’s heart pounded.  If Verona was attacked now…

Nicolette backed away a step as Verona approached her.  She hesitated as Verona reached for her wrist.  When she pulled her hand back, Verona grabbed her belt instead, giving her a tug.

“Come,” Verona told her.  “Fix this now.”

“There’s a great deal we need to discuss before-”

“Shut up,” Lucy told Alexander.  “No.  This is between us and her.  Nicolette.  You’re the teacher?  You’re responsible for your apprentices?”

“No, I’m the-”

“Then you’re-” Lucy tried to talk over him.  He kept talking, and there was just noise.

“-you’re not responsible for your apprentices?  You don’t have leadership?” Lucy pressed.

“Come,” Verona insisted.

Nicolette reached for the pocket, where the feathers were.  “Don’t repeat that instruction.”

“Why?  Would it matter?  You’re not that weak willed, are you?”

“Every pattern matters,” Nicolette said.

All four of the local goblins inched closer, as if drawn in by the chaos.

“Every pattern matters,” Alexander said.  “As does-”

“Shut up!” Lucy raised her voice.  “If you’re not taking proper responsibility as a leader, are you at least willing to accept responsibility for everything that happened here?”

“-As does decorum,” Alexander said.  “I’m somehow not surprised Charles is with you; a forsworn practitioner would fail to instruct those that follow in the basics.”

“Are you willing to accept responsibility for what happened here?” Lucy asked, her voice raised.

“That’s a ridiculous notion,” Alexander said.  “And you belittle yourself by asking it.  You should know better.”

“We are the local practitioners of this area,” Lucy called out, stepping forward.  “Your group has intruded, invaded, and attacked without just cause.  We’ve offered fairness, warnings, and you’ve routinely violated them.  Most importantly, you’ve violated your own precepts and rules.”

“Have I now?” Alexander asked.  His eyebrows raised.  “How?”

“We intend to get to that shortly.  You have not answered my question.  You’ve evaded but not denied.  Do you accept responsibility for what happened here?  Answer or let the spirits decide.”

“No,” Alexander said.  “I do not.”

“Then why are you here?  You and your apprentices intrude on this dealing between us and Nicolette Belanger.”

Lucy’s hands were sweaty, her leg was jittery.  She did her best to not show it.

“I’m curious.”

“Your curiosity is not our responsibility,” Lucy said, improvising from a ‘your emergency isn’t my problem’ line she’d heard once.

“But it’s mine, and that responsibility brings me here.”

“Are you only an observer then?”

“I’m not only an observer.  I’m an observer and more.”

“You weaken your position, being vague,” Lucy challenged him.

“I maintain my position by remaining free to do what’s needed, here.  You haven’t declared your own position, children, except that you are local practitioners.”

“We are the local practitioners serving this area and current needs,” Lucy said.

“And what we currently need is for Nicolette to make restitution and make things right,” Verona said, as she walked back toward Lucy.

“I was attacked first,” Nicolette said.

“You intruded before you were attacked,” Lucy challenged.  “You deprived this area of needed resources by clawing apart our ghosts to spy on us.  We witnessed how a force that works to help smooth over snarls and restore balances the universe was found deprived of what they needed to do their work, because of your greed-”

“A Mare of middling rank and power?” Alexander asked, with a laugh.

“Still an agent of the universe.  Nicolette Belanger sent omens in as scouts and an innocent was hurt.  We only recently talked to the victim.  The course of her life, her friendships, her family, and her academics has changed because you chose to look for trouble and trouble found its way to her feet.”

“Found its way to Her ankle, literally,” Verona said.

“Are you done?” Nicolette asked.

“No!” Lucy raised her voice. She let herself get angry.  The words were coming more easily now.  “You attacked our companion, stole her boon companion, and left her stranded.  She’s done the least to offend or obstruct you out of all of us, as much as our offenses and obstructions were just answers to your invasions and attacks on innocents.  And in attacking her, you’ve violated your own precepts and responsibilities.”

“Again, you’ve said that.  Explain it before you say it again, or it will have no substance,” Nicolette said.

“We are, as of the first of May, prospective students of the Blue Heron Institute, your school for practitioners.  In attacking our companion, you attacked a fellow student-to-be.  In leaving her where she is, you do her ongoing harm.”

“That argument falls through the moment I refuse your applications.”

“You cannot,” Lucy said.  Her mouth was dry and the smoke around her didn’t make it any better.  Everything hinged on this.  She swallowed.  “You cannot.”

“Why, pray tell?” Alexander asked.  “The school’s bylaws and terms clearly outline the tuition requirements, the process for applying, and the fact that the board must review every candidate.  You’re apparent dabblers who have tapped into an unclear power base.  You bring nothing to the institute and so the institute should give you nothing in return.”

“It should give us the ability to apply,” Lucy said.  “Because of things having nothing to do with bylaws or terms.”

“On August ninth, two thousand and sixteen, you received permission to set up a demesnes on school grounds,” Verona said.  “Claiming a place of power for yourself.  At the start of the ensuing term, you found your way to the role of headmaster and chief instructor.”

“Helped,” Lucy added, “by the fact that you made promises and deals, tying your demesnes to the school.  You stated your intent to use your place of power and the associated building to serve, educate the young practitioners of western Ontario.  You were not specific about dues-paying members.”

Charles laughed, and it was a mean laugh.

“Oh, hush, Charles,” Alexander said.

“You got greedy, Alexander,” Charles said.  “You cast your net wide, attached your place of power to the school, so you could have power over the school and the people in it, and implied the school, in abstract, would be more charity than anything else.”

Alexander looked more amused than distressed.  “How on Earth did you find this out?”

“We have an acquaintance who looks or looked for edges against practitioners whenever she could,” Verona said.

This was Miss’s gift to Verona.  Their means of applying to the school.

“Technically,” Lucy added, “I don’t know that any of your students have to pay dues, I mean, if you want to keep your office and place of power.”

“Did you swear it?” Charles asked.

“No,” Alexander said.  “But it would weaken my place of power and my hold on the school, true.”

“Hey, does that mean we could contact every other student and let them know?  And rivals?” Verona asked.

“I think it might be something we can do,” Lucy said.  “So, Alexander?  Please, for the third time… shut up.”

Maricica laughed, tittering, and it seemed to echo a bit, with her face close to the tin roof.

It was Maricica’s trick.  The first gift she’d given, at the outset of their interview.  The notion that a three-beat of a phrase or idea could help sign, seal, and deliver an argument, making it more theirs.

Now please, please, please, don’t call us liars, Lucy thought.

“Would you want to attend in the fall?” Alexander asked.

“I don’t especially want to, but as you pledged, we have the right, and we have the intent.  All three of us will.”

“There are only two of you in the masks, here.”

“We come as a trio.  We awoke as a trio, and we stay a trio,” Verona said.  “Also, nah.  Summer school, please.”

Nicolette turned her head, looking at Alexander.

“I’ll grant you attendance.  Tuition free, in exchange for you keeping quiet about this.”

“That’s not the entirety of the deal, Alexander Belanger,” Lucy said.  Again, she let the anger into her voice.  “Did you have any part in the events of last night?”

“I have a small part in everything the students of my school do.  It’s the responsibility of a teacher.”

“Bullcrap!” Verona raised her voice, joining Lucy.  “You attacked a prospective student.”

“How would I even know she was a prospective student?  You only introduced the idea a short bit ago.”

“You’re an Augur, Alexander,” Lucy said.  She approached, drawing closer.  The two sloppier young men drew closer, stepping between her and Alexander.  “To look at the future is to help make it so.  If you didn’t look forward and anticipate this possibility, you were reckless and a reckless leader is a poor leader, and so you weaken your position. If you did, then you knew you attacked a student, and-”

“And I can see where this response of yours is going,” Alexander said.

The little tidbits about Augurs were from Charles.  That they locked themselves to futures by seeing those futures.  It made for a tricky road to walk.

“Nonetheless, she had not applied and had demonstrated us no interest in applying to the Blue Heron Institute,” Alexander said.  “This is not the masterstroke you think it is, and if you want to dwell in the future, you should know I remain very comfortable there.”

Those words felt like they had weight.  Like he was finally bringing out the guns, with a simple turn of phrase.

“We want restitution,” Lucy told him.  “And the freedom to deal with Nicolette Belanger unimpeded.”

“What sort of restitution?”

“Because of your failed leadership, and possibly because of your involvement, Nicolette Belanger was led to trespass and deprive our area of needed resources-”

“Mere ghosts,” Nicolette said.

“-Harmed an innocent-”

“Who may have been due harm anyway.  Responsibility isn’t as clear as you draw it out,” Nicolette said.

She was picking up steam.  She’d been quiet while Alexander had taken the lead, but she seemed to have sensed that he’d ceded ground, and didn’t completely have her back anymore.  Now she was standing up for herself.  She seemed more imposing now.

“-And harmed a fellow student,’ Lucy said.  “Depriving her of a needed resource in an unwarranted attack.”

“If you are a trio from start to end, you can share the responsibility for sending my own minion to attack me.  My actions were not fully unwarranted, nor were they the beginning of hostilities,” Nicolette said.  “They were merely the conclusion.”

“It’s not concluded yet,” Verona said.  “She’s still there, dealing with the Wolf.  You’re still here, because we have something you want.  Stolen by a little Lost opossum girl.”

“I didn’t take anything,” Snowdrop chimed in.

“She can lie,” Alexander said.  “Cute.”

“Alexander, Nicolette,” Lucy said, trying to maintain the momentum, keep Nicolette on the back foot.  “Through your actions, our companion was interrupted from saving innocents from the Hungry Choir.  Three wrongs, in engagement, allowing a greater wrong to continue unabated.  It doesn’t feel like this is the way the world should work.”

“I would say the world makes more wrong turns than right ones,” Alexander replied.  “And that it is better to go with that flow.”

“The Choir has been around for a while,” Nicolette said.  “There’s no reasonable expectation you could have stopped it.”

“Can you swear, right now, that we couldn’t have?” Verona asked.

“I don’t know who you are or what you can do,” Nicolette said.

“We can make you bleed twice,” Lucy said, raising her chin.  The light changed as it passed through the eyeholes of her mask – the wood around those eyeholes didn’t really get in the way of her sight or Sight, but the eyeholes were framed with a diagram and they made her eyes shine red from within.  Now the same effect changed how the light looked as it filtered through the trees and passed through to her eyes.  A slight rosy tint.  “Our acquaintance can set your place on fire for the third instance.”

“For fair restitution,” Alexander spoke up, “If our interference stopped you from possibly impacting the Hungry Choir, would it suffice to give you some ability to impact the Choir as recompense?”

“Depends on a lot,” Lucy said.  “What ability?”

“Answers.  I’ve briefly looked into it, and I am very good at looking into things,” Alexander said.  He smiled.  “I could let you ask questions and tell you what I know.”

“Feels like a trap,” Verona said.  “You could have looked into it for three seconds.”

“If there’s nothing useful in my answers, or if I don’t tell you everything I know, then say it’s so, and we can agree on another form of recompense.  Further, for my involvement in last night, I’ll make restitution by withdrawing my involvement today.  You may deal with Nicolette as you see fit.”

“You bastard.  You gave me the tools and pointed me in their direction,” Nicolette spat the words.

“Agreeable?” Alexander asked.

“Not yet,” Lucy said.  “Give her a bit of prodding.  Withdrawing involvement isn’t enough, if you were that much of an instigator last night.  You need to make this better.”

“Nicolette,” Alexander spoke, his voice authoritative.  “This feud should end.  Fix what’s been done, or it will impact your future as a student.”

Nicolette drew in a deep breath through her nose.  “I could tell students about the tuition issue.  That you pledged education to local practitioners, without qualifying it was if they paid.”

“Signing up as a charity when you’re not,” Charles said, his voice rough.  He smiled, his scraggly beard turning up a bit at the sides of his mouth.

“That would also impact your future as a student, Nicolette,” Alexander said.  “And Charles… I wouldn’t poke the metaphorical hornets nest when I could say you’ve rendered yourself deathly allergic to everything, especially the hornets.”

“Charles is protected by Kennet,” Lucy said the words with as much authority as she could muster.  It sure felt like they’d cleared the biggest hurdle, dropping the enrollment on Alexander.

“And Kennet is being looked after by us, in all matters a practitioner is needed,” Verona added.  “So you don’t need to stick your noses in anymore.”

“Ask your questions,” Alexander said.  “The Choir.”

“Where did it come from?” Verona asked.

“I don’t know,” Alexander said.

“That’s not the kind of answer you need to be giving,” Lucy warned.

“It’s the truth.  I can tell you I tried to look into it and I was interfered with.  Liberally.”

“When was this?” Lucy asked.  “When did you look and why?”

“I looked into it because there was a lot of power bundled up in it, even early on.  That much power that fast has to come from somewhere, and then be given form as a ritual by someone or something.  A strong incarnation, a lesser god, a great Goblin.  If it had appeared in the last month, I might think it had something to do with the current state of the Carmine Beast.  That could be a big enough power source… perhaps.  Even that might not be enough.  And yes, we do know.  Someone went to appeal to the Beast and found it missing.  Word is getting around.”

“What has that kind of power?” Lucy asked.

“There are things that have that kind of power, like gods and strong incarnations, but I’m not aware of anything that strong that could have any connection to the Choir, and I’ve done some extensive searching.  It’s why I’m so curious.  I looked and every time I got close, I had wild spirits on my doorstep, or goblin problems, or pointed fingers jabbing through the metaphorical peepholes, trying to gouge out my eyes.  Ever since, I’ve set lesser apprentices to the task, to see if they can surprise me by finding something relevant.”

“Did Nicolette?”

“Not yet.  Chase here has.”

He indicated one of the boys with the disheveled look.  Bit pudgy, Lucy noted.

“Did you find anything?” Lucy asked.

Chase remained silent, giving her a level stare.

“He did not,” Alexander said.  “If you’ve looked online you know most of it.  It likes to locate itself in ghost towns, especially ruined ones.  Every phase of the moon, the ritual rolls forward.  Those who eat the meal succeed.  Those who don’t become part of the Choir.  So it’s been from the beginning.”

“Did it evolve?” Verona asked.  “Start as something else, then become the flyer and website?  Gain more rules?”

“It didn’t need to,” Alexander said.  “It was this from the beginning.”

“The internet hasn’t been around for that long,” Lucy said.

“Neither has the Choir,” Alexander said, with a smile.  “Wye here found the oldest pattern of victims we’re aware of, and that was nine years ago.  Eight students at a school in Kingston, Ontario.  There were periods it lay dormant, because it didn’t have enough applicants, but the flyers started to spread.”

“But the ghost towns,” Verona cut in.  “How?”

“It likes ghost towns as a location, and hunting grounds near ghost towns.  I don’t know why.  And it likes here.  But it did not make the towns into ghost towns.  The Choir as we know it has been here for what I estimate to be nine years, it started out much as it appears now, with no major changes in rules, and that continuity makes it harder to break and disrupt.”

Lucy nodded to herself.

Small consolation, but it was a starting point.

“We don’t have long before we have to go.  Can we contact you if we have more questions?”

“You can, but you should bring the questions when you attend my school this summer.  Cooperate with me, and I’ll cooperate with you.”

He smiled.

Charles made a spitting sound behind Lucy.

“We need you to leave Kennet be,” Lucy said.  “Your underling has already upset balances-”

“I tampered with ghosts,” Nicolette said.  “It’s like saying I disturbed the ecosphere by trimming weeds.”

“Our weeds, in a place under our protection,” Lucy said.

“For how long?” Alexander asked.

Lucy and Verona turned to look at him.

“Leave it be for how long?”

“For good,” Lucy said.

“No.  If young practitioners can come to me from here, I can’t be that blind or uninvolved with things here.  The blade cuts both ways.  If you’re acknowledging my position then you have to acknowledge my need as head of education for this area.”

Lucy turned, looking back.  The Others of Kennet were mostly gathered.  Snowdrop, the goblins, the two Faerie.  John held a rifle.  There was Matthew and Edith standing next to one another.  There was Charles, who wasn’t an Other but was essentially as offputting as one.  Alpeana was absent, but she couldn’t really operate in the day.  The Choir was absent, but the Choir was a whole other mess.  The absence was a good thing.

Charles leaned in close to whisper something to Matthew.  Matthew stepped forward and leaned in to talk to Verona.

“Until the affair with the Carmine Beast is settled,” Verona said.

“That could be never.”

Verona and Lucy looked back.  Matthew held up his hand.  Five fingers splayed.

“Or five years.  Whichever comes to pass first,” Verona said.

Alexander nodded.  “I will not communicate word or symbol, and I will keep my other students, apprentices, and acquaintances from doing so, about Kennet.  I will avoid it and keep my other students, apprentices, and acquaintances away from it to the best of my ability, unless given cause the highest authorities would deem Just, such as revenge for greatest wrongs or direst need that impacts us all.”

“Do you really think it will come to that?” Lucy asked.

“No, I do not,” he said.

“Do you know it will come to that?” Verona asked.

Alexander shook his head.  “But it’s a good proviso, as a just-in-case.”

Lucy looked at Verona, then the others, then nodded at him.  “Thank you for your cooperation.”

He smiled.

She felt uneasy.

“Leaving you,” Lucy said, setting the burning red eyes of her fox mask on Nicolette.

“I want my book,” Nicolette said.  “Whatever else she took, as well, please.”

“I took nothing!” Snowdrop called out.

Goblins tittered and cackled around her.

Verona held up the book, pocket sized and leather-bound.  She paged through it.  “You made a lot of appointments.  Many with Alexander.”

“I would rather not go to war,” Nicolette said.  “I will if I have to in order to get that back.”

“It feels like an empty threat,” Lucy said.

“I’m willing to deal.”

“And you’re offering what?” Lucy asked, a little angrier.  “I’d really like to hear you guess what it is we want or need, because it would say a lot about your character.”

“I was thinking that some goodwill could go a long way.  You may be on Alexander’s bad side.  If you’ll be attending the school, having some friends there will help.  My word could make or break your relationship with a half-dozen other practitioners around our age.”

“You’re kind of ignoring the fact that our friend is in there,” Verona said.  “And has been for most of the night and all morning.”

“I don’t know what you want me to do about it.  You have the companion.”

“You destroyed the escape route and ruined the way.”

“What do you want from me?” Nicolette asked.

“I want you to pledge to take her place, and soon.  Deal with what she’s dealing with, and find your own way out.  Let her free.  I want you to make restitution to those you hurt with the practice.  You’ll provide something to restore the balance you upset with your first offense against Kennet.  You’ll provide something of equal value to the harm you did to the girl your omens hurt, and make it up to her.  You’ll make it up to the victims of the Choir from last night.”

“I’m not especially inclined to throw myself into a broken ritual I know nothing about.  I can look into ways to get her out.”

“Take.  Her.  Place,” Lucy said.  “Or get her out now.  Don’t give us weak words like that.”

“Nicolette,” Alexander said.

Nicolette closed her eyes.  “What?”

“I can put you in contact with those who would help you find your way out.  For a price.”

“What do you want?”

“Copy a tome for me.  You can pick the day, but it must be this summer.”

Nicolette opened her eyes.  She looked at Verona.  “Would you check the date?  Say, the nineteenth of August?  Is it open?”

Verona flipped through.  “There’s no entry for that date.”

“I remember making an appointment for then.  It’s my grandmother’s birthday.  Did you interfere with my notebook?”

Verona smiled.  “Tons.”

Nicolette was stiff.  She clenched her hands.  “What did you do?”

“I took all the appointments out.  Looks like I cleared your schedule,” Verona said.  She drew her feather pen out of her sleeve and waved it around, and then she threw the notebook, and it landed halfway between them.

“Did you save them anywhere?”

“Yeah,” Verona replied.  “But I’m not telling you until after you’ve pledged to help.”

“I can’t pledge until I have a date clear to make a deal with Alexander,” Nicolette said, a bit emotional.  “You’re being unreasonable.”

“What’s unreasonable,” Lucy growled, “is that you left our friend in there to deal with a nightmare situation for twelve hours.  If you’re scared at all right now, then I hope you realize that she’s been dealing with worse.  If you don’t give us what we need, and what my friend needs right now, I fully intend to destroy you.”

We intend to destroy you,” Verona said.

“The eighteenth,” Nicolette said, to Alexander.  “I’ll set the time aside to copy out the book.  I leave the day open to travel to see my grandmother.  I’ll… figure something out.”

“Tell us,” Lucy said.

“I pledge to take her place as soon as I’ve secured a reasonable belief that I can escape, and I pledge to do what is necessary to establish that belief promptly.  I will think of a way to make restitution for the girl that got hurt, roughly proportionate to the harm done, and I will find and offer ghosts to Kennet, at your discretion and general request, as fodder and fuel, until I’ve provided you with a whole ghost for every one my Collector gathered from.”

“In due time,” Matthew said.

“One a season at a minimum,” Nicolette said, “Or four a year, minimum.”

“You’ll bring it here where it will be managed by us, our predecessors, or an Other.  You don’t have permission to enter Kennet,” Lucy said.

Nicolette nodded.

“And the Choir?” Lucy asked.

“I don’t-”

“At least tell us you’ll help when we ask for it.”

“I’ll try.”

“Go do what you need to do to rescue our friend.  Promptly.  We could ask you to spend an hour there for every hour she was there, but right now I just want her out.  Return that goodwill with some of your own and be fast.”

“I will try,” Nicolette said.

“Thank you,” Lucy said.  “When you’re done, if there’s no fuckery, we’ll send you your schedule.”

Nicolette ducked her head in a nod or a bow, then turned.  She was stiff as she hurried back toward the treeline, presumably toward the road where she and the other Augurs had parked.

The Others of Kennet, Verona, and Lucy remained where they were as the Augurs departed.

It took a few minutes before the flock of birds disappeared from the sky above.

“We have a bit of time, then,” Matthew said.  “Before he’s free to tell others that we have a number of Others here.  John?”

“Yeah,” John said, quiet.

“What’s this?” Lucy asked.

“We may have to put a bullet in him toward the end of those five years,” Matthew said.  “To keep ourselves safe.  Don’t worry.  We wouldn’t ask that of you.”

Lucy remained silent, peering at the window, and the back of the opossum girl’s head, as she peered over the window ledge and into the room with the ribbons.

Where Avery still was.

“We have to get back to school,” Verona said.

Lucy nodded.

They left the Others there without another word.  She felt bitter and frustrated, and it was hard to say why.  Feeling that angry, at Alexander and Nicolette, and being unable to really unleash it because she was trying to be smart about this… it sat badly.

More than just that sat badly.  They were halfway back to the truck when Lucy turned.  “Why does it feel wrong?  Like this wasn’t a win.”

“It was a win against Nicolette,” Matthew said.  He touched her shoulder lightly to get her moving toward the truck, pulling his keys out of his pocket.

“What about Alexander?” Lucy asked.

“He got exactly what he wanted, and he didn’t have to concede much.  He wanted answers about Kennet.  You’ve enrolled, and he has the reasonable expectation he can get those answers now.  If not then, then in five years, or when the issue of the Carmine Beast is handled.  It’s a problem for the future.  For today, you have class, and we wait for Avery’s return.”

Lucy frowned.

She was almost of a mood to tell Matthew that he and Edith were leading culprits for the issue of the Carmine Beast.  They were also some of the last interviews that needed to be conducted.

But that was an issue for another day.  Lucy climbed into the truck and helped Verona in, and once she was in, she slumped down, exhausted, pulling off her mask.

“She’s gone!”

The words were screamed by a messy possum girl, who stood in the doorway of Ms. Hardy’s classroom.

Verona already had papers prepared, laying them down.  Lucy had to act by another means.  She’d had her knife with her for the meeting with the Belanger Circle, and she pulled it out now, dragging it across her desk, drawing crude lines.  A few heads turned.

Those same heads got distracted by Snowdrop’s inarticulate noises.

Connections broken, bags grabbed, they followed.  Snowdrop broke into a run as soon as she was sure they were keeping up.  When Snowdrop proved too small, Lucy picked her up and swung her into a piggyback position.

Her legs burned as she ran with the added burden.  Verona huffed.

They caught up to Avery about two thirds of the way to the clearing, in the midst of the woods.

She looked so tired.  Shaky.  She was dusty, and pale like she’d been sick.  Her hair wasn’t in a ponytail.

“Hey,” Avery said, her voice hoarse, quiet.

“Are you okay?” Lucy asked.

“I feel like I was just screamed at, threatened, and told horrible things by the most unpleasant person I may ever meet, for what felt like days,” Avery said.  She swallowed.  “Am I bleeding?”

Lucy looked, searching, then shook her head.

“Miss kept the Wolf from hurting me, once she got there.  Distracted her.  She said she couldn’t come back for a while.  But she felt she had to, because she set me on the path, and I was right in saying she came from there,” Avery said.  She sounded a little shaky.  “She said you were trying to help.”

“We tried.  We had to enroll at magic school to get the leverage to get you out.  You’re enrolled too,” Verona said.

“Thank you,” Avery said.

“She’s such a wimp,” Snowdrop said, walking over to Avery and taking Avery’s hand.  “Being such a baby right now.”

“I want to, Snowdrop.  I want to sleep for the next day and I want to cry and curl up and be a baby about this.  There’s so much I don’t know how to deal with it.  That was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.  Nicolette offered to barter with the Wolf, to take my memories of the last twelve hours.  I said no, mostly because I wanted to leave sooner than later.  And because I wanted to- I guess I’d rather be someone who remembered I could tough it out.  I don’t- I…”

Avery moved her hands, dropped them.  She looked frustrated and angry, and Lucy felt like she could connect to that feeling.  It looked a lot like Lucy had felt, personally, when she was angriest at herself.

“Can I hug you?” Verona asked.

Avery nodded, stiff and unsure.

When Verona hugged her, Avery hugged back so fiercely that Verona made a small sound.

“Can-?” Lucy asked.

Avery motioned with her hand.

Lucy joined the hug, doing her best not to bludgeon Snowdrop with her hip, when Snowdrop was already part of the hug.

“The worst, absolute worst part of it was thinking I might never get out.  Then Miss came, and said I should trust you.  So I did.  With all of my heart.  Thank you.”

“I wish it was sooner,” Lucy said.

“Me too,” Avery said.  “But I’ll take what I can get.  Thank you.  I mean it.”

The hug lasted a bit.  Lucy blinked tears out of her eyes as the hug broke up, then fiercely wiped them away before the others could see.

“What happened with the Choir?” Avery asked.

Lucy swallowed, and shook her head.

“Reagan?”

Lucy shook her head.

“Nobody made it,” Verona admitted.   “The flyer changed.  New locations and dates for the next eight nights.  There’s no new applicants from Kennet, and for the first time, there’s eight straight nights with no events taking place here.”

Lucy sighed.  “It’s staying away.  We’re guessing it’s going to keep staying away for a while now.”

Avery turned, looking around.  There were only trees.

“We have to stop it,” she told them.  With a bit more conviction.

“Okay,” Lucy answered.

“I want to do things differently.  Better.  The next time it comes around, or the next thing like it, I want to be ready to tackle it.”

“Cool,” Lucy said, feeling lame.  It was hard to respond to Avery, when Avery seemed to need these things.

“I’ll be running the other direction,” Snowdrop said.

Avery put her hand on the opossum’s head, rubbing hood against hair.

“Do you want to go to class?” Lucy asked.  “Play hooky?  We could hit up a convenience store, buy snacks.  Go watch your favorite movies.  Whatever you need.”

“You should go back to class,” Avery said.  “I think I’m going to go for a run, sneak back into my place, shower, and crash hard.  We’ll figure out what to do with you, Snowdrop.”

“Yeah, shower me with praise and affection,” Snowdrop said.

“There have to be fifty other things that are better than you going off on your own,” Verona said.

“It’s what I want,” Avery said, firmly.  She reached into her pocket and pulled out a frayed black rope.  “Miss brought me this.  Bit of a consolation prize, when I couldn’t save Reagan and the others.  I kind of want to play with it.  Figure it out.”

Lucy wanted to say something, but her own feelings on that subject were a bit too heavy.  And new.  She’d been trying not to dwell on it while focusing on the subject of Avery.

“What does it do?” Verona asked.

Avery wrapped the rope around her hand, then walked backwards, until a tree blocked line of sight.

She kept walking backwards, but now she was ten feet away.  She kept walking, and whenever line of sight was broken, she appeared a distance away.

Moving like Miss had, kind of.

“Stay in touch?” Lucy asked.  “I’ll worry if you don’t.”

Avery nodded.  Rope still wrapped around her hand, fist closed around the ends, she broke into a run.

Covering an easy ten times the distance as she cut from tree to tree, ducked behind a rock and appeared twenty feet away from behind a tree, took two paces until she’d disappeared behind another tree, and appeared another thirty feet down the path.

Snowdrop gave chase.

Lucy remained where she was, tense, Verona beside her.  Waiting, worried.

She heard a distant Avery, hollow and echoing through the woods.  A whoop.  Whatever else she might be feeling, she’d found escape and freedom in the hard run and the new toy, her companion chasing after her.  A bit raw, emotional, but not wholly or even halfway negative.

Beside her, Verona let out a breath, as if she was thinking and feeling the same thing.

All was not lost, and Avery was still Avery, and Lucy could let a bit of that tension slip away.

Out on a Limb – 3.3

Avery

Kerry’s cackle rang through the house.

“Avery, last warning!  Countermeasures have been deployed!”

Avery lay in bed, face mashed into the pillow, her arms sticking out over the top end of the bed.  She’d slept, which might have been inevitable, but the sleep hadn’t even touched the bone-deep exhaustion she felt, and it hadn’t brought her closer to a mental or emotional normal.

Countermeasures were usually stuff like having Kerry jump on Declan until he got out of bed, or, on weekends, threatening to let Kerry boot up Declan’s game and play with the save files.  For Sheridan, dad would use the smart-house speakers to play songs from the 80s and would turn up the volume.  The songs would play until Sheridan was out of the house, even if she was quick to get out of bed.

Avery wasn’t usually one to sleep in, so they hadn’t worked out a specific punishment for her.  She kind of didn’t want to give them the opportunity to work it out, but she also didn’t want to move.

“Who’s in there?” Kerry asked.

“Sheridan,” Declan answered.

“Can I go in next?  I-”

No.”

“But I want-” Kerry lowered her voice.  She was out in the hallway, and Avery couldn’t hear her from here. “-bucket.”

“I’ll allow it,” Declan said.

Kerry cackled.  “Sheridan!  Sheridan!”

“Leave me alone!  I’ve got time!”  Sheridan’s voice was muffled by the door.

“The ten minute timer is up!” Declan complained.  “I’ll let it go if you let her in.  This’ll be good.”

Ganging up on me.

Avery couldn’t hear the conversation that followed, but the door opened, and the tub started running.

Avery could hear plastic bang against the side of the tub.

Water, bucket.  Right.

She made herself rise and get out of bed, grabbing the black rope from the space between the mattress and the frame of the bunk bed.  It was coarse, with strands pricking and rubbing at her hand as she gripped it, balling it up so she could kind of hide it in her fist.

“You filled it too much,” Declan said.

“Shh!”  Kerry had reached the ladder of the bunk bed.  The bucket clunked and sloshed audibly as she worked her way up the ladder, apparently setting the bucket down on each rung.

Kerry’s approach would have been annoying on any other day, but right now, it was a time pressure, it was just a bit of dread, and Avery didn’t have the tolerance for dread right now.  More than anything, that was what got her to lift her head from the pillow.

Avery got moving, as much as she didn’t want to.  She grabbed the side of the bed, then hopped down to the ground from her bunk, nearly colliding with Declan, who was there as an observer.

“Awww!” Kerry complained.

Declan pushed Avery while she was still recovering from the landing, and she bumped into Sheridan’s bed.  He hurried back to the ‘line’ for the bathroom, and immediately began banging on the door.

Coward.

Kerry, meanwhile, was perched on the angled ladder, a partially full four-gallon bucket on the rung by her head.  She didn’t seem able to get down with the ease that she’d gotten up.

Don’t soak my bed,” Avery warned.

Kerry got a mischievous look on her face, like she wanted to do it more, now.

Avery considered for a moment, then stepped up onto Kerry’s bedside table.  With some exertion, she lifted up her mattress until it sat at a forty-five degree angle against the wall.

Then she left it, taking a spot in the line to the bathroom, where she could kind of see her bed through the door.

“I’m next,” Declan said.

The bucket clunked as Kerry climbed a rung higher.  The mattress bounced as Kerry reached past the bucket and tried to get the mattress to lie flat.

She could be heard audibly grunting as she lifted the bucket.

There was a crash and splash as the bucket hit the bedroom floor.

“Oh no!” Kerry could be heard.

Sheridan left the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, and followed by a choking amount of scents and chemicals.

“Geez, you took forever,” Declan said.

“Says the boy who takes thirty-five minute showers.”

Sheridan passed them.  Avery reached over and tapped Declan’s shoulder.

“What?  I get the bathroom, I was waiting-”

He turned to look at her, and she could feel the rope expand in her hand, the fibers pulling away, poking at her palm, entangling her fingers.  She whipped the end forward.

A fraction of a second passed where it felt like there was no air resistance, no air, no ground under her feet.

Then more humid air, heavy with everything Sheridan had used for her shower and facial cleansing.  The tiles were clammy under Avery’s bare feet.  The rope calmed down in her hand, going smooth as Declan set his eyes on her.

“What?  How?  You sneaky b-!”

She slammed the door in Declan’s face.

He began hammering the door, shouting, but she’d locked it.  The light switch was on the outside, by the door, with a fifteen minute timer for the ventilation fan above.  Sheridan had taken longer than the fifteen minutes they were allowed, which meant the fan had been stopped long before she’d wrapped up her shower.  Now the bathroom was foggy and Declan was mashing the light switch and fan on and off, in between his pounding on the door.

Avery did a five-minute washing-up.

“The floor’s all wet!” Sheridan shouted.  “I just stepped on broken plastic!”

Kerry’s response was indistinct.

“It was my turn!” Declan hollered.  The lights went in and out.

She was free and clear of the Path.  Life went on as normal.  Yet she couldn’t shake a general feeling of dread.  It had been so intense, so nasty, that she felt like she was still there.  As if some small part of her was more willing to believe she was still there, but so mentally worn down that she’d descended into this, a fantasy of life as usual.

Teeth brushed, hair combed.

Declan pounded on the door up until she opened it.

“I’ll get you for that,” Declan said, with all the intensity a preteen boy could muster.

On any other day, it would have been the background noise at her house.

Today, her heart felt… not heavy.  Heavy was the wrong word.

Tired.

Her heart felt tired, in the same sort of way that if her body was that tired, she’d barely be able to stay upright.  His words drove that feeling home.

Kerry was crying, Sheridan was grumbling, and the bedroom floor was soaked with a massive puddle nobody had cleaned up, and some fragments of the bucket.

Avery used her toes to pick a piece of laundry out of the basket by the door and kicked it around the floor to get the worst of the puddle.  She went to get dressed, and where she might have normally picked a cool shirt and shorts that weren’t too wrinkled, she felt unsure now.

Like she was supposed to do something different, reach for something, make decisions that could somehow shake that heart-tired feeling or put her time on the Trail further behind her.

“Mom has a plate of breakfast cooling on the table!  Someone needs to come down and claim it!” Dad called up.

Avery pulled on a white tee with an orange and purple graffiti scribble across the front and around one sleeve, and dark purple jersey-cloth shorts with a Vikare swoop on the side.  Ankle high socks, white running shoes, hair in ponytail, and she was good to go.  She was downstairs before Sheridan was.

“I’ve got to stop by Carl’s to get the folding table for Kerry’s event next weekend,” Dad said, opening a cupboard to get a glass.  Avery ducked under his arm and into the kitchen proper.  “I’ll need the station wagon for that.”

“How long will that take?” Mom asked.

“Not long.  Fifteen minutes?  Work’s been keeping me late with the FISCA reporting.  PA gets behind, they take forever to get it to us, we have to do it before the day’s over, Anya’s away on maternity…”

“You did mention that.  When will you get out?”

“Can I take the Ion?” Rowan asked, as he munched on bacon.

“We’re figuring that out.  I should wrap up at five thirty?  Six?  Then let’s guess fifteen minutes there and back.  Then we’re at six thirty.  Then I can cook a quick dinner, but we don’t have food.”

Avery navigated around her mom, as her mom went from the fridge, where some post-its were stuck, to the calendar on the wall.  She grabbed the fruit punch.

Kerry came down from upstairs, crying.  Dad swept her up into his arms.

Mom answered, “Sheridan wants more driving lessons, so I can have her drive me to the grocery store and back.  Then you cook, I can run to see Karen B for that informal meeting about Declan’s file and the ADHD testing.  Dad’s appointment for his meds re-up conflicts with that.”

“What’s wrong, hon?” Dad asked Kerry.  “We don’t want him crapping-”

He covered Kerry’s ears.

“-blood again, yeah.”

“Yeah,’ Mom said.

“Eating,” Rowan said, putting down his bacon.

It felt like a dream.  Fatigue, and that way that dreams were laid out, like everything tied back to reality in ways that only seemed familiar or sensible in retrospect.

The line about blood.  About crap.  Declan’s groundless threat.

“I broke the bucket and Sheridan yelled at me,” Kerry complained, around her tears.

“You can take the Ion if you’re willing to run by the pharmacy with Grumble.  And fill up the tank,” Mom said.  “Or you can give Sheridan a driving lesson.”

“Oh my god, pharmacy, please.”

“There’s so much catching up to do after I’ve been away, oh my god.”

Avery claimed a plate of cooling food, and picked some grapes and a cranberry muffin from the fruit bowl and cooling rack.

Her dad touched her head as she passed by.  “Did Kerry soak you?”

Avery shook her head.

Kerry cried harder and louder, as if great injustices had been done to her.

“You have to pick up Kerry from school, too,” Mom said.  “Three thirty.”

“So wait, I’ve got to pick her up and deal with her from the time school ends, then Grumble’s appointment is…?”

“Six.  It won’t take long, but we have to make that appointment.  It’s his health on the line.”

“But I have to pick him up and bring him there.  That doesn’t leave me a lot of freedom, does it?  What’s the point of having a car if you’re making me do this stuff?  I thought it was supposed to give me freedom?” Rowan complained.

“You have a two hour window of freedom in the middle there.  Just make sure you hand Kerry off to dad, me, or Sheridan before you go do anything.”

“Sheridan’s useless.”

“Don’t talk about your sister that way.”

Avery sat down at the table.  From where she sat, she could see Grumble in his armchair in the living room, watching the morning news.  Occasionally he would make inarticulate noises of protest, or lift his hands to emote his frustrations.

Avery ate.  Fruit salad, some grapes.

Finger-sized sausages sweated, browned on four sides.

She felt a mess of conflicting feelings she couldn’t put her finger on.  Thoughts of the Wolf chewing on and swallowing what Miss had later told her was her exit from the Path.  The very real thought that she might be eaten alive.  The feelings of regret about Snowdrop, and that idea of sacrificing a living, thinking animal as a casual part of her plan.

Just the idea of meat and fluids and fat made her stomach tense.

She picked up the muffin and ate that instead.

She took her plate back to the kitchen, setting it down by the sink.

Please tell me you’re not becoming a vegetarian,” Sheridan said.  “Don’t make things in this house more complicated.”

“Just didn’t feel like it,” Avery said.

“Eating when you’re hungry is a good policy, but remember to get your protein.  You need that for all the sports stuff,” Rowan told her.

“Yeah,” Avery replied.  “Gonna go bike to school.”

“I’m off too.  I’ll pick you up after school, okay, Kerry?” Rowan asked.  “Don’t take the bus.”

“Yeah.”

Avery grabbed a thermos and filled it with milk, then brought it with her.

The bench in the front hall was a deacon’s bench, and the bench could lift up to put stuff inside.  Usually their bags were all stowed on the bench, if they weren’t up in their rooms, but someone had gone digging for something, judging by the way there was a raincoat or something stuck out the side, keeping the bench from closing all the way.

“Declan!  You have two minutes!  You’re going to have to eat in the car.”

“He’s taking another forty-five minute shower,” Sheridan said.

“No he’s not.  I will turn the water off in the basement if he tries,” Dad replied.

Avery had to look for her bag.  Living room, between one of the lounge chairs and the door.  She sighed, putting the thermos inside, then zipping it up.

“Depraved indifference!”

The words were rough, loud, and accompanied by airborne flecks of spit.

A wrinkled hand raised-

Avery backed up, and collided with the book cabinet, which had glass doors, and dishes on the top shelf.  It rattled, and something clattered violently inside.

The only sounds were from Grumble’s news program, where something about politicians was playing out.  There was the sound of a door closing upstairs as Declan hurried through the rest of his morning routine.

Mom, Sheridan, and Rowan were in the front hallway, just to the side, looking at her.  Dad and Kerry were at the door that led from the living room to the dining room.

Grumble, in his chair, twisted around as best as he could, looking at her.

She looked scared and he looked so hurt by that fear.

She needed to say something and she had no idea what to say.

Dad reached down and turned the TV off.  Grumble looked away from her, and at Dad instead.

“Overreact much?” Sheridan asked.

And then people started talking again.  A jumble.  If you’re going to get this worked up over the news then- -are you okay?  did you hurt yourself?- -what happened to Avery?- -gonna sit outside-

This was reality.  She’d been feeling like she needed to wake up from that sensation, like the memory was real and this was the dream pulling on that reality, and she’d broken through.

She felt awful, as a consequence.  Seeing Grumble head toward the backyard to go sit outside.

Avery grabbed her bag and ducked past people and out the door, muttering a quick, “Sorry,” without a specific target.  It wasn’t a lie, even if she wasn’t sure who she was addressing, or what specifically she was sorry about.

Her bike was between their garage and the neighbor’s garage, collecting some spiderwebs.

She was biking away before her mom had even made it down the front steps.

Her house had a view of the water, with a slope down to the bank with the little flat, sharp-cornered slate rocks.  Where weeds could grow, they grew in massive clumps.  She headed that way, instead of straight to school.  She wanted to pedal hard and move fast, and if she headed straight to school, then the ride would be over before she got anywhere.

Snowdrop sat on the bank, by the weeds.  Avery coasted to a stop.

As she got closer, she saw that Cherrypop was sitting next to Snowdrop, hidden in the shadows of one bush.  She was banging two of the slate-like rocks together without rhythm.

“Hey, Snow.  Hi Cherry”

No cars or anyone really seemed to take notice of the kid.  Nobody gave her weird looks for stopping to talk to Snowdrop either.

Snowdrop looked at her.

“Doing okay?” Avery asked.

“Weather’s awful,” Snowdrop said, looking skyward.  “Company sucks.”

It was slightly overcast, a few droplets falling down here and there.  Warm but not the spike of heat from last week.

“Sucks to be you,” Cherrypop cackled.

Avery pulled her bag around and pulled out the thermos.  She held it out.  “Milk?”

Snowdrop rose to her feet.  She was wearing her ‘opossum’ jacket with the button eyes and the actual teeth sticking through the edge, and a long-sleeved shirt that read ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAA’.

“I hate milk more than anything,” Snowdrop said.

“Take it.”

“Yeah!” Cherrypop exclaimed.  “Drink it!  Make her chug it!  Make her barf!  Bloorgh!”

Snowdrop took the thermos, undid the top, and drank.

“Chug, chug, chug!” Cherrypop chanted.

“She doesn’t get how you work, huh?”

Snowdrop gulped, lowering the thermos just long enough to say, “she does.  She’s smart,” and then resumed drinking, both hands on the thermos, eyes closed.

“Chug, chug!”

“I was thinking I could set aside a corner of the garage for you, if you wanted to camp out there,” Avery said.

Snowdrop shrugged.

Didn’t matter that much?  Okay.

“Chug, chug!” Cherrypop clacked the rocks together with each utterance.

Snowdrop finished, grunting.

Cherrypop cackled maniacally.  Snowdrop sighed heavily, and Avery felt a bit like her heart was less tired, seeing her little friend content.

“I was going to say you could bring the thermos to me later, when we touch base, but I guess I can take that now and rinse it out.”

Snowdrop gave it back.

“What are you doing today?” Avery asked.

Snowdrop shrugged.  “Stay active, run around.”

“Hang with us!” Cherry piped up, climbing up the side of Snowdrop.  “We’ll show you the ropes.”

“Yeah, I’ll hang out with them for the whole day,” Snowdrop said.

“Want to meet up later?  I don’t know what Lucy and Verona are doing, but we might hit the convenience store.  Do you like chocolate milk?”

“Awful.”

“Strawberry milk?”

“That sounds gagworthy.”

“Make her drink it allll!” Cherrypop cried out.  “Force it down her throat!”

“Oh no,” Snowdrop said, monotone.  “Don’t.”

“I’m going to go steal some!” Cherrypop declared, before running off, ducking into deeper grass.

“You’re horrible,” Snowdrop said.

Cherry cackled from the weeds and grass, strands moving as she pushed through them, heading off toward the bridge with the convenience store on the west side.

Avery leaned over her handlebars.  She felt like if she was in bed, she could fall asleep in a minute.  A few droplets found her arms and the back of her neck.

“You going to get lost, now?” Snowdrop asked.

Avery winced a bit at the wording.  “Gotta go to school.  I sorta hoped to see you and check if you were okay.  I was a bit tuned out last night.”

“I’m terrible.”

“Ok.”  Avery nodded a bit.  “Want a ride to nowhere in particular?  Or do you want to stay and see what Cherrypop scrounges up?”

“I’ll stay.”

Avery extended a hand.  Snowdrop sat on the little guard that extended from the back of the seat, and hugged Avery’s bag.

She had to cross at a crosswalk, so she stopped there.  “I don’t know what kind of routine you want to fall into, or if it would be an imposition, but if you wanted to help out-”

“Pshh.  Nah.”

“-How sneaky are you?”

“Terrible at it.”

“Do you think you could keep an eye on some of the locals without tipping them off?  If the goblins are hanging around, they might leak word, so don’t tell me-”

The light changed and Avery resumed biking.  Snowdrop squeezed the bag tighter.

“-Don’t tell me you’ll do it if you think you might get caught.”

“I won’t do it, then,” Snowdrop said.

“Stuff the goblins said about Matthew and Edith and their schedule around the time of the Beast dying… do you think you could keep an eye on them?  See what they do, if there’s anything weird, then tell me or one of the other two girls?  I’ll pay you in milk.”

“That’s a must,” Snowdrop said.

“You’ll let me know if you need anything to be more comfortable?”

“Nah.”

“And if the goblins end up being too much.  They seem to gravitate towards you.”

“Neh.”

“Right,” Avery said.  “I gotta say, it’s nice knowing there’s someone besides Lucy and Verona that I can trust.”

She rode into the dip that let her coast toward the hill that led up to the school, then began pedaling hard.  It felt good, feet going down, flying forward.

“This is nice.  Having company for a bike ride.  I wish it was the weekend, so I could just go biking, running, or playing with the rope all day.  Hanging out with you and my friends…”

The next part took more exertion.  The ground was spare grass and dirt, with a lot of hidden ditches.  Only a few kids were actually biking across it on their way to school.

It took actual effort to get up the last bit to the parking lot.  She saw Ms. Hardy, but steered clear, avoiding a car as she navigated her way to the line of racked-up bikes.  It was slow going at points.

Some of the youngest kids were glancing at her passenger, but others didn’t care.  Her classmates in particular.

Verona and Lucy caught up to her as she arrived.

“You have company,” Verona said.

“She went quiet.  Snowdrop?”

“She conked out,” Verona said.

“Can you keep her from falling off my bike while I get up?” Avery asked.

Verona did.  Lucy had to tug to get Snowdrop to let go of Avery’s bag.

Snowdrop roused as Avery climbed off the bike, pushing it into the rack.

“I’m tired too,” Avery said.  “Slept all night and I feel like I didn’t get a wink.”

“Bad dreams?” Lucy asked.

“Some.  Alpy said she’d keep the worst of them away, but she couldn’t stop them all.  I want to get out and do stuff, and now we’ve gotta sit through class.”

“That’s how I feel for most days at school,” Verona said.  “I feel like I’d learn more if I could sit down and draw, or paint, or read, than if I had to sit in class and wait for the teacher to say the same things three times because she has to make sure the dumbest kids get it.”

“With some of the grades you get, you could be mistaken for one of those dumb students,” Lucy said.

“With your face, you could… I don’t have any good one-liners.  Why does the day start so freaking early?” Verona complained.  “It doesn’t feel like we had a weekend, even.”

“I don’t want to draw or write or anything like that.  I want to do stuff.  It feels like school’s the opposite of that.  Stuck in one place, waiting.”  Avery locked up her bike.

“We are so on the same page about that last part,” Verona said.

Avery put her hands under Snowdrop’s armpits, with Lucy helping, and lowered the girl to the ground.

“I’m fully awake!” Snowdrop protested, eyes half-lidded.  “The milk didn’t make me drowsy!”

“I was wondering,” Lucy said.  “Since possums are nocturnal.”

“You don’t have to do that stuff I asked about,” Avery said.  “If you’re tired, sleep.  If you’re hungry, go find food, or find us at lunch.”

“I won’t do it!” Snowdrop took on a belligerent tone.

It felt weird, talking to Snowdrop with kids milling around.

“I’ve gotta go to class.  Here,” Avery said.  She reached into her pocket and pulled out the rope.  She pressed it into Snowdrop’s hand.  “In case the goblins pester you and you need to slip away.”

Snowdrop hugged the rope to her chest.  She leaned her head against the side of the bike, her hair drooping into the gears.

“Be careful.  I was experimenting yesterday.  It tells you if you’re being observed, but it seems to be worse with strong and hostile connections.  And if you’re seen when you try to use it, you pretty much always fall down.”

“That makes zero sense,” Snowdrop said, holding the rope out a bit so she could look down at it.

“And don’t try to move too far in one go.  Again, you’ll fall.”

“How badly did you get hurt yesterday, practicing?” Lucy asked.

“Palms and knees, a little bit,” Avery said, showing Lucy.  The heels of her hand were a bit roughed up.  Her knees were worse but the shorts were just long enough it wasn’t too obvious.

“Price for everything, huh?” Verona asked, quiet.

“With the Path especially.  Cool toys and perks, but…” Avery trailed off.

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “I’d understand if you never wanted to do something like that again.  I’d thank you, if you never wanted to do something like that again.”

I don’t know, Avery thought.  She really didn’t.  Would she rule out the Paths forevermore?  They were scary, the Wolf was scary.  She felt dread in the pit of her stomach just thinking about what had happened and how it could have ended up.

But…

She wasn’t sure about the ‘but’, yet.  But there was one.

Avery rubbed hood against hair, then straightened.  “You might want to go hunt down Cherry.  See if she found that milk.”

“She’s good at stealing and stuff,” Snowdrop said, sounding surly.

Then, hands at her chest, holding the rope, she ducked into the crowd, disappearing as the mob of students arriving at school blocked her from view.

“Trusting her with the rope, huh?” Lucy asked.

“As much as I’d trust you guys, I think.  She’s in our corner.”

“I pick good companions, apparently,” Verona said, as they made their way into the school.

“It’s partially built from Avery’s internal landscape,” Lucy said.  “She gets credit.”

More energized, Verona gave Lucy a push on the arm.  “No, stop, listen.  I was going somewhere with this.  Avery, listen, I picked Snowdrop, right?”

“Yeah,” Avery said.

“Went cat mode, sniffed around, and found a squeaky little thing that had been abandoned by its mom.  And she’s great, right?”

“Yeah,” Avery said, raising an eyebrow.

“With this in mind, I want my instincts to be appreciated and valued when it comes to other long-term and important companions.”

“That is not a good argument for you to take Alpy,” Avery protested.

“Be careful, you don’t want to lie.”  Verona stuck her finger into Avery’s arm.

“Don’t be a pain to Avery after what happened,” Lucy told her.

“Do you know what might make me feel better?” Avery asked.  She glanced back to make sure nobody was listening in.  “Taking Alpy as my familiar.”

Verona laughed.

“Maybe you two could, I don’t know, ask her?” Lucy asked.  “Considering she’s half of the partnership?”

“Of course,” Avery said.

“We’re just messing around,” Verona said.

They got to Mr. Sitton’s class, and settled in at their desks, left of the back row, closest to the windows.  Avery set down her bag.

Gabe’s desk was almost in the opposite corner, second row in from the front, far right.  Noah sat in it, next to Ian.  Melissa had arrived early, and had changed her seat as well, sitting next to the window so she had a wall to lean her crutches against.  The big black plastic boot that secured her foot was sitting on a chair that had been pulled up next to her desk with a cushion beneath it.  Her new seat put her behind the rest of her friend group, which mostly sat at the front left.

Gabe was gone.  Melissa was hurting and might never return to the team and the dance stuff, depending on how things went with her ankle.

And-

Pam walked in, laughing about something with Alayna and Justin.

Pam, at least, was still happy.  Still lit up the room with positive energy.

It just sucked that Avery couldn’t and shouldn’t go talk to her, that she had to stay away.

That thing this morning had put a gap between herself and her Grumble.

It made her heart tired.  She pushed her chair away from her desk, grabbed her pencil case, and headed for the door.

“Class is starting soon,” Mr. Sitton said.  He glanced at the pencil case.  “You’ll be quick?”

“I’m-”

“She’s not feeling one hundred percent, I don’t think,” Verona said, from behind her.

He moved aside, letting her past.

Avery headed for the bathroom, and went straight to the sink.

She splashed water on her face.

She hated things like this, where there wasn’t a clear path forward.

Except… it wasn’t that.  There was an ‘obvious’ answer.  Just like there had been with the long silence, earlier in the school year.  Just talk to someone.  Be more outgoing.  Be cool.  Stand up for yourself.  Easy, right?

Just get over this uneasy feeling.  Easy, right?

In her pencil case, she had a bit of glamour.

Relax, be cool, be strong.

She rubbed her hands together with the glamour and the moisture from washing her face.

There was nobody else in the bathroom, and it helped to be authoritative.

“I survived the Wolf,” she said.  “I stayed strong.  I made it through.”

She ‘washed’ her face and hair again, using the glamour.

Guilherme had encouraged her to find the moments of strength and pride.  To mark them with ‘warpaint’, for lack of a better way of putting it.  The effect was supposed to be subtle and long-term.  Probably similar to some of those motivational speakers and how they got people to practice being mindful and crap.

She wanted and needed to find other ‘wins’.  Against the Choir.  For Gabe.  For Melissa.  For Pam.  Now for Grumble.

The door opened.  Lucy and Verona.

The two of them sidled up beside her, standing so their three faces were framed in one mirror.

Lucy spoke, “We can take a break from the practice stuff if that helps.”

“Or, other option,” Verona said, reaching past Lucy to give her shoulder a light push.  “we dive into it, keep it low key and fun, and distract ourselves thoroughly.  Totally up to you, Ave.”

Being proactive was a better way to change things, right?  “The second one.  Verona’s idea.  I want to get moving, run-”

She moved, running, the rope wound around her hand so it formed a loop at the fingers and an ‘x’ at the back, before forming another loop at the wrist.  There weren’t any eyes on them in this neighborhood, owing in part to the stuff she wore.  The cape she wore around her shoulders had a connection breaking diagram written along its length.

She swung her hand as she hopped into the air.  There was that moment of nothing, then her foot landed on the top of a narrow wooden wall that bounded a property.  She wobbled a bit, made it about five steps along the top of the wooden wall before she lost her balance, and then toppled.  She punched her hand out again, off to the side.

It was easier when she used the Sight.  That nothing she skipped through was like a fog, and she could kind of see the fog.  As her hand moved, she could see shadows rolling through the haze, of buildings and poles and cars and other things.

There was an RV parked in front of a house, in the shade of some trees.  She moved her rope-hand, feeling her way through the fog for the landing point she wanted, and waited until the rope bristled before skipping ahead to the roof of the RV.

Standing amid the branches, she turned on her heel, walked back three noisy steps on the vehicle’s roof while she watched Lucy and Verona following, and reached back with the rope.  She could trust the intervening trees to block their sight, if she timed it right.  Just… there.

She pointed her hand up at an angle.

Wind whipped around her.  She swayed, nearly falling over, on the narrow platform.  There might have been enough space for her other foot if she placed both feet side by side, but she wasn’t about to move the first foot to make that space.

Avery stood on one foot on the top of a telephone pole, wires stretching out ahead of and behind her, her other leg cocked.

Snowdrop, just big enough to fit in the palm of her hand, crawled down her arm, shirt, and used the cocked leg to navigate her way down to the telephone pole itself.  She shrugged off the smaller, opossum pup guise and became a regular nine year old kid, grabbing one of the support struts of the pole with one hand and hanging from it, one hand and both feet dangling.

“This is Matthew and Edith’s place,” Avery observed.

“Nah.”

Off to the right, Lucy and Verona arrived, flapping their wings and landing on the chimney and peak of a roof.  Lucy shrugged out of the bluejay glamour and crouched down by the chimney, holding onto the brick column for support.  Verona remained a crow.

In Matthew and Edith’s backyard, many of the Kennet Others had gathered.  Guilherme and Maricica sat at opposite ends, both wearing human guises.  John sat on the wooden stairs that led from the back porch to the lawn.  Charles was on the lawn, leaning against a fence, arms folded, perpetually scraggly, grouchy, and a bit scarier than he’d been before.  Two of the goblins were there, too.  No Toadswallow or Cherry.

“Did you say they’ve been here all day?” Lucy asked.

“No,” Snowdrop said.

“Snowdrop wanted to tell us they’ve been coming and going, right?  Different Others and people at different times?”

“Nah,” Snowdrop stated.

Part of the reason Avery liked using her scarf for the diagram was that it let her have the scarf piled up around her shoulders, so the edge of the diagram was right in front of her mouth, where she could track it with a glance downward.

It was fading

“Check your diagrams,” Avery said.

The other girls did.

“Crap.  I think using glamour like that burns through the diagrams.  Only way it’s this bad this fast,” Lucy said.

She slid down the roof until she reached the overhang by the front porch, and started to climb down.

Avery hopped down to the base of the telephone pole, near the front bumper of the RV, and gave Lucy a hand.

A cat-Verona dropped down hopped down to the grass beside them, followed shortly after by Snowdrop.  Verona left the cat form, manifesting as human, sitting on the grass at the edge of some stranger’s property, in the shade of trees and the RV.

Avery dug in her bag for the carton of strawberry milk and gave it to Snowdrop.  “Who, and when?”

“That’s easy, uhhh, at first, it was a big group.”

“Consisting of?” Lucy asked.

“John, Guilherme, Alpeana, the four goblins, uhhh, the Choir, and Miss.”

Subtract those ones, then.

“Then the homeowners were the only ones gone, Charles left for a bit too.  A few regular people, not like me or that thing inside Edith, they came by.”

“Spirits passed through?” Lucy asked.

“Just a few.  They’re hanging around Kennet now.”

“They sent them away?” Verona translated.

“Makes a degree of sense.  Drawing battle lines, preparing for future confrontation.  More eyes,” Lucy said.  “Spirits are common, easy to work with, and most are dumb.”

“They’re still figuring out who’s in charge after the Miss situation,” Snowdrop told them.  “Then, uh, it was pretty neat.  Big groups stopping in.  Then another situation, not the one you just saw.”

“I may be getting a headache,” Lucy stated, rubbing at her forehead, and nearly dislodging her hat in the process.  She pulled it off and checked the diagram.  Then Verona took it and began redrawing it.

“Did they talk about the Carmine Beast?” Avery asked.

“A ton.  No mention of the new deadline or Alexander.”

“And us?” Avery asked, even though she already knew the answer.  Snowdrop had brought them here for this specific reason, but not all three of them had been gathered, so soon after school, and they hadn’t had the full picture of what the meeting might have looked like.

“I heard most of it.  You weren’t that important to the discussion,” Snowdrop told them, while looking off in the direction of the meeting.  “They trust you more now, after yesterday.  With Miss being gone, they can watch you better.  Right?”

“A bit of a shakier relationship, maybe,” Avery said.

“Could be more than a bit shakier.”  Lucy’s expression was grave.

“Having heard what we did about the practitioner-Other relationship, can’t blame them for wanting contingency plans,” Verona said.  “Sucks those plans are against us.”

“Sucks more that if the culprit really is mixed into this whole thing, this kind of dynamic makes it a lot easier for them to mess with us,” Lucy said.

“So we watch for the messing.  And we keep investigating, like we don’t know anything’s wrong?” Avery asked.  “Keep things with the locals positive?”

The other two nodded.

“I wonder if they’ll tell us they met,” Lucy said.

“I might be willing to bet they won’t,” Avery told her.

“Alpeana wasn’t part of today’s meetings, right?” Verona asked.

“Yeah, she was,” Snowdrop clarified.

“Doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” Lucy said.  “She seems to sleep during the day.”

“Doesn’t mean nothing either,” Verona said.

The connection breaking diagrams were fading more, chalk flaking away in the light breeze.  They’d been bold white before and now they had almost disappeared into the dark blue fabric of her cape.

“We should go,” Avery said.  “Before they realize we were here.”

The others nodded.

They hurried off, pulling off hats, masks, and capes, to stow in their bags.  Snowdrop helped, occasionally holding stuff so it could be organized and put away better.  They were just themselves now, walking briskly through rural streets.

“Thanks, Snowdrop.  Good work,” Lucy said.

“Nah, I’m thrilled I was able to confirm you’re all safe and there’s nothing to worry about,” Snowdrop said.

“Yeahhh…” Avery drew out the word.  “Thrilling’s a word for that.”

“We don’t know what the exact situation is,” Lucy said.  “So let’s not panic.  But we stay safe.”

Avery and Verona nodded.

“Do you want to split up, head home?  Keep a low profile?” Lucy suggested.  “I’d understand if you wanted to rest.  It’s been a long day.”

Avery thought of her Grumble.

She shook her head.

“Want to come over?” Verona asked.

Avery must have made a face, because Verona laughed.

“Can we hang out?” Avery asked, because she’d responded to two questions with silence, and she couldn’t fall into that trap again.  “Lucy’s house or just… somewhere?  Until we have to go home?  It’s not like there’s any shortage of stuff to do.”

“Can do,” Lucy said.

“Speaking my language,” Verona said.

Lucy’s earlier comment had made Avery wonder if she’d walk the path again.  That but had remained there, without a sentence to go after it.  It was scary, it was intense, it was messy.  It had pushed her to her limit and she wasn’t sure she’d go back to normal for a long time, if ever.

But.

But… she was getting the feeling that the rest of the world was kind of like that too.  It was just also so big that she wasn’t sure she could wrap her head around it all.

That was why her heart felt so tired.  Like she was a bird that had flapped its wings as hard as it could to get through a small but intense storm, and escaped it to find there was still an ocean to fly over before she could reach dry land.

Moving forward made it easier to find more ways forward.  Doing this instead of sulking and going home helped her to find her resolution, the drive that would get her past that ocean.  She had to keep moving, keep looking.  Educating herself, getting centered and stronger.

After the uncomfortable moment with Pam, she’d found herself wanting to look into and try Guilherme’s glamour.  Because she could see ways, even if the last one had been uncomfortable.  She could see the Paths as a similar thing.

She reached down to rub Snowdrop’s hood against the kid’s hair.  The kid was finishing her milk.  The kid rolled her eyes up to look at Avery, then smiled, showing missing teeth.

Avery could see herself continuing to look for the Snowdrops that sprung up in the scary places.

[3.3 Spoilers] – Timelines

Out on a Limb – 3.4

Lucy

Last Thursday – Timelines


“Can you keep a secret?” Alexa asked.

The desks in Mr. Lai’s class were arranged in twos, so that everyone was sitting next to someone else, and seating had been assigned alphabetically, starting with Brayden Black and Mia Campbell-St James in the front left seat, and Alayna Weagle and Bryson Whitehead in the back right. The seating put Lucy next to Alexa in the front row, Verona was a row back and at the far left of the class with Caroline, and Avery sat a row behind and a column to the left of Lucy with Amadeus Kent.

Because they were in the front row, Mr. Lai wasn’t that far away.

“I can,” Lucy murmured.  “Do I want to?”

“The seniors do this thing at the end of the school year,” Alexa said.  She glanced over her shoulder, and Lucy did too.  Sharon and George were leaning in a bit.

They were in on this?

“What thing?” Lucy asked.  She kept taking notes as Mr. Lai talked science.

“They’ll rent a cabin, and hold this big party at the end of each school year.  It’s this big thing, right?”

“My brother mentioned it once,” Lucy said.

“Well, Hailey’s going around trying to arrange a similar thing for kids who aren’t seniors.  Some of the cool parents and older siblings know and are helping out a bit with everything.  One of the groups that manage the ski hills and stuff say we can rent a cabin if we cover rental, cleaning, and insurance.”

“It’s a deal for him,” George said.  “Cabins are a money sink when the hills aren’t open.”

“Sounds cool,” Lucy said.

“We’re getting twenty bucks from every student who’s coming,” Alexa said.  “Or ten bucks and you bring stuff we need.”

“Like… snacks?”

“Like beer, but only a very little bit.  We’re keeping it to a strict one drink per person.  It’s part of the deal we made.”

“You can have other stuff if you bring it,” George whispered from behind Lucy, leaning over his desk.  “But you gotta keep it secret and if you get drunk or get caught and it lands on the rest of us, everyone’s going to hate you until the end of high school.”

“This sounds like a disaster waiting to happen,” Lucy said.

“It’s going to be great,” Sharon said, from behind her.

“Who’s going?” Lucy asked.

“Everyone in eighth and ninth grade.  Some of the guys and girls from the Catholic school.  It could’ve been the tenth and eleventh graders, but they’re going down to the lake for fireworks and stuff.  They did last year too, when they were our age.”

“How many are you thinking?”

“Like… about a hundred.  Maybe a hundred and fifty.  We’re still working out how many cabins we need for this many people, but we’re thinking of getting two cabins that are a really short distance from one another, and we’ll have battery powered lanterns on the paths between them, so there’s space, and a whole bunch of lemon candle torches to keep the bugs away.”

“A hundred and fifty people paying ten dollars each?” Lucy asked, incredulous.

“It used to be cheaper but last year Logan’s older brother was part of the senior party and he set a fire,” George whispered, “So they ask for more now.”

“It’s a rite of passage,” Sharon said.

Mr. Lai was pacing down the rows.  He came closer, and the conversation terminated.

“…would be abiotic,” he said, his voice fairly heavily accented and placing a lot of emphasis on syllables.  He pointed to the lights overhead.  “And the lights…?”

“Biotic?” Kyleigh asked.

“Explain your reasoning.”

“I, uh, because lights are important to photosynthesis?”

Sunlight is important to photosynthesis, and some U.V. lights will do too.  It’s good reasoning but give us a good excuse to go over this again.  Light, temperature, water, and gases can all be abiotic factors aboveground.  Underwater we have factors like salinity, currents, and pressure.  Now… Wallace here.  Biotic or abiotic?”

Very biotic,” Brayden joked, coughing and gagging.  The class laughed.

Mr. Lai’s expression changed, Lucy saw, upset.  But the class was laughing and Wallace was laughing with them, as hard as anyone.

It was like she could read his mind, and the thought process.  He wanted to be on top of bullying, but how could he be on top of it in this situation, when Wallace was laughing and Mr. Lai had inadvertently set up the situation?

“We are talking about ecosystems.  Pressures on ecosystems, factors in ecoystems.  Our classroom is an ecosystem too.  Closed, four walls.  It needs balances.  It has variables.  It’s miserable to be in when it’s hot like it was last week.  We couldn’t thrive if it was like that all the time.  Yes?”

There were some nods.  Lucy added hers to the group’s, a little hesitant.  Was the Wallace thing going to-

“And it’s a much nicer system to be in when we’re good to each other and we cooperate.  We don’t want to make mean comments, even in jest, right Brayden?  Yes?  Confirm or deny?”

“Yes,” Brayden said, sounding annoyed.  “Sorry Wallace.”

Wallace snorted.

B+, Mr. Lai, Lucy thought.

“You in?” Alexa asked Lucy.

Lucy thought of Booker’s recommendation.

Socializing, joining these groups, it was a different way of protecting herself.  Becoming bulletproof, in the same way she did by dressing a certain way and doing her hair up in a way that was nice to look at.  A few hours spent in a cabin at the end of the year were nothing compared to twenty minutes spent on her hair in the morning, or the careful selection of clothes.

She nodded.

“Cool,” Alexa said.  “Tell Verona and Avery, if other people don’t get to them first.  If you think they can be trusted.”

“I think so.  They can keep secrets.”

Alexa nodded.

It was, if nothing else, an excuse to talk to Booker, get some advice on navigating these things.  It would make him happy, even if the night ended up being a long pain in the ass, a babysitting job, or a bore.

She couldn’t really imagine it being fun, exactly.

“…ecology,” Mr. Lai said, indicating words on the blackboard, and the flowchart that followed from it.  “Biosphere, with abiotic and biotic factors-”

He indicated himself this time, not a student.

“You’re not biotic!” Logan leaped out of his chair at the back of the class.  He struck a pose, finger extended.  “J’accuse!  You’re a robot!”

“Sit down, Logan,” Mr. Lai said, clearly annoyed.  The class was laughing or chuckling.  Including Alexa, to Lucy’s left, and Sharon and George behind her.  “I want to go over this one last time, and I’ll keep you all a few minutes after class if I have to.”

Logan didn’t move until Andre pulled on his arm.  He sat.

“Under biotic, we have biological communities.  A diverse set of populations all interacting with one another.  Someone define population for me.  Anyone?  I want to go home as much as you do, but I want to make sure I’ve taught you well, too.”

Mia put her hand up.  When he indicated her, she said, “A scientific word for group?”

“What makes it a particular group?  Are we in a population with mosquitoes?  When we decide a population, do we consider ourselves part of a population with people in, say, Uruguay?”

“Wallace is part of a population with mosquitoes!” Logan jeered from the back of the class.

Lucy looked through the assembled students, giving Logan an annoyed look.  About half of the other students were laughing.  The other half didn’t seem to care.

“Stand outside the door, please, Logan, I want to talk to you after class,” Mr. Lai said. Then as students made ominous sounds and Logan answered them by strutting through the door with a ‘funny’ walk.  “Come on, let’s hurry through.  What makes this general grouping a population?  What separates them out?  Mosquitoes and humans?”

“Species,” Alayna said.

“Wonderful.  Yes.  A population is made distinct by species.  And?  Uruguay and Kennet?  Anyone?”

Lucy put her arm up.

“Lucy.”

“Place,” she said.

“Yes.  A group of species in a given location is a population.  We could track the number of Caribou in Ontario and record their population, for example.  Multiple populations together make an ecoysystem…”

The bell rang.

“We’ll expand on this tomorrow.  No homework.  Go, you’re free.  You listened well at the end there,” Mr. Lai said.

He was drowned out by the commotion of students packing up.  Lucy dropped her books into her bag, then got them to sit straight so they wouldn’t jab her back.

“Are you doing anything, Mr. Lai?” Pam asked.  The first students were heading out the door.  Lucy would be following them or catching up, but some students were packing up bags and blocking the aisle.

“Trying to revive my herb garden.  I planted too soon.  Then homework.  So much homework.”

“You have homework?” Jeremy asked.

“I have your homework.  You can complain and whine, but remember, whatever you do, I have to do times twenty-eight, in addition to what I do for two other classes.”

“I hope it’s not too bad,” Pam said.

Being at the front of the class meant being the last ones out.  Lucy rolled her head back, then side to side, taking small steps as the other students filed out.

“Hey, Lucy?” Alexa asked.

Lucy turned her head.

“Why don’t you ever laugh or smile?”

“I do.”

“Not in class.  Logan was being funny and you were being a-”

Lucy’s eyebrows rose.

“Stick.  In the mud.”

Lucy opened her mouth to say something, but George commented, “You should smile more.”

He smiled as if to demonstrate.

“But hey, come to that party,” Alexa said, smiling, giving Lucy a push on the arm.

Avery had joined them.  Verona was in the other aisle and didn’t have a good path to them, apparently.

“You heard about it?” Alexa asked Avery.

“Yeah.”

“Shh,” Sharon said, pressing her finger to her lips, glancing in Mr. Lai’s direction.

“Mr. Lai!”  Alayna called out from the front.  “Logan’s gone!”

The procession to the front was stopped as Mr. Lai made his way to the front, navigating the crowd of students until he was at the door.

“Logan’s running!” Brayden crowed, from the window.

Even from her vantage point, Lucy could see the first students leaving school for the day, and well ahead of that pack was Logan, carrying his stuff, jogging away, looking back furtively every few seconds at the window.  He picked up speed when he saw people looking.

Alexa, smiling, shot Lucy a look.

“I laugh when I find stuff funny,” Lucy said.  “This is more annoying.  I want to get out of here.”

Alexa threw up her hands in surrender.

Students gradually filed out.  The placement of the classroom put the exit right by the stairwell that led down to the ground floor, which was by the side door of the school.  All of those places, including the area just past the door, were points of congestion.  They’d missed the window to start filing out and now they were blocked.  Because of Logan.

Lucy watched Alexa get gradually more annoyed with the lack of forward progress.  Alexa looked back at Lucy, and made the same ‘surrender’ gesture as before, before mouthing ‘you’re right’.

Lucy smiled.

“Mr. Lai,” Lucy said.  “Can I ask you a question about what we were just learning?  Or would you rather not be bothered after school hours?”

“I certainly didn’t get into teaching because I wanted to sharpen young minds,” Mr. Lai said.  “No.  Ask away.”

She thought for a second, then asked, “Say we’ve got a contained system… an ecosystem, maybe.  And there’s a bunch of overlapping areas, and adjacent areas, and they’re all contributing.  You have, I guess, populations in each.”

“Biomes?” Mr. Lai asked.  “In one ecosystem, you could have, for example, birds in the air and trees, squirrels keeping mostly to a tree-filled area, fish in a river.”

“Okay, yeah, that works,” Lucy said.  “And let’s say we have a single thing that’s really important to it.  And we take that away.”

“Something like… an apex predator?  The top predator of the area,” Mr. Lai said.

“I don’t think it was,” Avery said.  “Custodian?  Or… what’s the word for the people who keep the balance of an area?  Conservationist?  The guys in uniforms who patrol parks and stuff.”

“Something like that,” Lucy said.

“I think it could lead to a collapse of the ecosystem, or a disruption.  But I don’t like the word collapse,” Mr. Lai said.

“Why not?” Lucy asked.

“Because much like with global warming… things don’t often collapse.  The world will keep turning, and life will find a way.  Our lives?  Humans will have a harder time once the environment is no longer one they adapted toward.”

“Except for the rich and the privileged,” Lucy mused.

“It would help if I knew what you were talking about.”

“Secret project,” Avery said.

Borrowing a cue from Verona, who was… talking to Jeremy, it seemed.  Half of the class had escaped out the door now.  It got slower, though, as students opened up their lockers and the space outside the door got more congested.

“I find myself thinking- do you mind if I talk about something not related to school?” Mr. Lai asked.

“No,” Lucy said.

“I bought my first house here in Kennet, and I put a lot of attention into making it as nice as I could.  The gardening was what I really wanted to do well, but I struggled.  It turns out that the gardens we tend to make, they are very artificial.  They need the gardener, because the soils we use don’t make for good long-term sustainability.  They need watering, because the layouts and setups don’t hold water well.  We have to weed constantly, because weeds are often better suited for the environments we make with lawns and garden plots with flowers, than the grass or the flowers are.  They reach deeper, get more nutrients in soils we inadvertently leave barren.  Is this too much?”

Lucy shook her head.

“I like sustainable gardening,” Mr. Lai said.  “Designing things in a way that can last, that retains water, and encourages soil diversity.  Mushroom cultivation to feed nutrients across the plot.  I think if we were all scooped up and everything was left alone, my lawn and garden would thrive.  I would have to ask… does your secret project need the gardener?”

“I think the gardener is and always was going to be there,” Avery said, looking at Lucy for validation.

“If the wrong so-called gardener ends up in place, or if it takes too long for someone to pick up the job, we might end up kinda barren,” Lucy said.

“Ah.  Now I’m picturing something closer to a family.  A key figure leaving?”

Lucy made a bit of a face.  “I could see that but the garden one is probably closer.”

“How do you fix a messed up garden?” Avery asked.

“You can do what I’ve done, and try to plant the seeds for something long-term, that doesn’t need a gardener.”

“I don’t think we have the authority to do that,” Avery said.

“Probably not,” Lucy said, folding her arms.

“Then figure out what’s been done so far, what didn’t work, and adjust.  Be careful about adding new biodiversity, or removing any.  There are a lot of horror stories from times when governments added new animals to an area and they took over because there wasn’t enough competition.  Rabbits in Australia.  Lake Trout, European Starlings, and Nutria here in North America.  Many of them were added on purpose.  The trout were a food source, meant to restock a single river, and spread from there. The nutria were to be fur trade for the Hudson’s Bay Company.  The Starlings were added to the ecosystem by a fan of William Shakespeare who wanted all of Shakespeare’s birds brought over.”

“Any cases of it working out?” Lucy asked.

“Some, I’m sure.  Domesticated animals have done better, I think.  Horses spring to mind.”

“Are you thinking of the thing six weeks ago, or the thing last weekend?” Avery asked Lucy.  “Our missing, uh, ‘gardener’?”

“Six weeks ago,” Lucy said, her eyebrows drawing together.  “But I’m thinking about last weekend too.  Taking something out of a system… or something taking itself out.”

Avery nodded.

Lucy looked up at Mr. Lai.  “Thank you.  Sorry, um.  Thinking out loud.  Thanks for letting us bounce ideas off of you.  I’m going to read up on some of this stuff. I’ve already got some ideas and I think if I keep going, I could get more.”

“Wonderful,” Mr. Lai said.  “And confusing.  But wonderful.”

Avery gave him a thumbs up as they headed to the back of the classroom, where Verona was waiting.  The hallway was still a bit congested.

“Get the party invite?” Avery asked Verona.

Verona nodded.  “Jeremy asked if I was going.  I’m not sure.  Not really my thing.  People.”

“Feels like people are generally a pain,” Lucy said.  “I feel like I’ll be tense all night, waiting for stuff to go wrong, and I don’t trust half this class to handle it right when it does.”

“Emerson made it sound like the main plan was to hook up.  I already know there’s no point.  I wonder if that’s the long-term of Mari’s ‘gift’.  A warning about a party.”

“Ah ah ah!” Lucy made a warning sound.

“Right.  No talk about Mari and G or their gifts.  Can’t go down that rabbit hole,” Avery said.  She sighed.

Jeremy was in the hallway.  The conversation went quiet as they headed into the stairwell, downstairs, and out the door.  They walked down the sidewalk.

“Jeremy asked you, huh?” Avery asked, smiling.  “Huh?  Huh?”

“The stupid app tipped him off that I voted for him.  Then we ran into each other.  Now we’re talking semi-regularly and stuff.”  Verona made a face, like she’d stepped in something.

“Poor Jeremy,” Lucy said.  “Why’d he have to pick you to like?”

“Poor me.  Who has time for this stuff?  Like, why can’t we cut straight to the end bits?”

“Marriage?” Avery asked.  “You want an arranged marriage?”

“I don’t.  I was talking about other stuff,” Verona said.  “But if I had to get married, I could see it being an arranged one, I guess.  Cut past the crap.”

“Your dad would be the one picking your partner in most of those situations,” Lucy said.

“Send me to hell first,” Verona said.  “No arranged marriage for me, if that’s true.”

“I’m still stuck on how you’re seeing what I presume is the rude stuff as the end part,” Avery commented.  “That’s just part of how you figure out if you’re compatible for the real end goals.  Getting together and being comfortably boring with one another, growing a big family.”

“I don’t think I’m ever having kids,” Verona said.  “Because that sounds awful.  Especially kids-with-an-s-on-the-end.  I feel strongly enough about it I could swear it right now, but I’m not going to set myself up to fail the moment I get an accidental pregnancy or whatever.”

“Thank you,” Lucy said.  “For not making it an oath.”

“Three or four kids feels like a good number to me,” Avery said.  “Maybe I’d stick to three, because I guess we’d have to introduce our kids to the practice, huh?”

“Weird thought,” Lucy said.  “I mentioned looping in our significant others, too.  That’ll be a weirdly high-stakes conversation when it comes.”

Verona huffed.  “It’s just… ugh.  Jeremy’s fine, but I’ve got spells to learn, school, mysteries to solve…”

“Friends to save…” Lucy added.

“Thanks again,” Avery said.

“Dad stuff…” Lucy added another one.

Verona’s eyes went very wide, even as her face was normal.  It somehow conveyed a lot more than the disgusted face of a moment ago.

“How is that going?” Avery asked.  “You said you had a fight?”

“It’s going,” Verona said.  “It’s… always going.  Why should it change because I spat on him?  One more grudge for the pile, and he wants my attention more now, like he thinks he can make up for stuff that’s gone wrong.”

“Want to stay over?” Lucy asked.

“Can’t, really.  He said he’d call the police and report me missing if I did.  He wants to fix things, apparently, and he can’t do that while I’m gone.”

“Want…” Lucy winced.  “Me to stay?”

“Yes,” Verona told her.  “But that’s not an option either.  But thank you.”

“Sorry it sucks,” Avery said, making a face.

They stopped on the street corner, then backed off the sidewalk and onto grass to let some people by.

“What’s the plan?” Avery asked.  “Last night we talked about-”

Lucy held up her hand, gripping her thumb with her whole hand wrapped around it.  “Big thing is Matthew and Edith interview.  Last big one we need to do.”

The other two nodded.

She gripped her index finger.  “The Witness.  Unpowered, but she saw things play out from a distance, she overheard stuff.  She’s our big fact check.”

“Probably doesn’t give us much,” Verona said.  “Might have been better if we did her first, to get the basic outline.”

“Maybe,” Lucy said.  “But we know some stuff we didn’t.  The Ruins, for example.  It sounds like the Beast was dragged there.  Then apparently moved on the night Reagan lost her other eye in the Hungry Choir ritual.”

The girls nodded.

“And we know who was where and who was supposed to be where.  And we know, um…”

Lucy looked around to check.  No goblins in bushes.  No moths in spiderwebs.

“Rope says there’s nobody paying any specific attention to us, but it’s not perfect,” Avery murmured, her hand in her pocket.  “I don’t think it’s meant to be used for that, so there’s a lot of wiggle room for it to mess up if I try to use it for that instead of actual skipping around.”

“Thanks.  We now know that someone like Nicolette can swear to Guilherme to forget stuff.  Which means the Others we’ve been interviewing who say they don’t know stuff or that X detail is true… aren’t one hundred percent.  Maybe.”

“How would we even work around that?” Avery asked.

Lucy shrugged.  “Look for discrepancies.  Or cases where someone was somewhere and should know something but didn’t.”

“You know what I wish?” Verona asked.  “I know we can’t because it’s not summer school yet, and I get that they’re assholes who hurt Avery, but I wish we could contact other practitioners, get the dirt, and learn some more tricks and stuff.  Imagine how useful some of that seeing-eye stuff would be.  Or if we could do something funky and get something to answer one question and have the answer be true.”

“I feel like that would be costly.”  Avery’s voice dropped a bit as she said that.

Verona sighed.

“You managing okay?  Was today better than yesterday?” Lucy asked Avery.

“I think so.  We haven’t gotten all the way through today though.”

“Good answer,” Verona said.  “Talking like a practitioner, and I like that you think you’re doing better.”

“I want to hug my trashy hobo child,” Avery said, “but she’s sleeping.  I had her on a mission last night and she needs the extra rest.”

“Who was she watching?” Verona asked.

“Alpy.”

“Hey,” Lucy exclaimed.  “Good for you.”

“I thought we should be impartial, and if we’re going to continue to talk or joke about taking Alpy as a familiar…” Avery drifted off.

“I respect that a lot,” Lucy said.

“I respect it,” Verona said.  “And I can call it out as a possible clue that your heart really isn’t in it.”

“Did you know there was an old wives tale about grabbing a cat by the tail and swinging it around your head nine times to ward off evil?” Avery asked.  Her eyes narrowed.  “I know your favorite form for glamour and you have been nagging me to experiment more.”

Verona laughed.

“Again, you could ask her.”

“But this is fun,” Verona said.

“Snowdrop couldn’t keep up the entire time, even with the rope, but she was pretty sure Alpeana didn’t go to the spirit world, ruins, abyss, or warrens.  She says there’s a smell or a trace of something that follows after you’ve stepped into those places.”

Lucy nodded.

They were still standing in the grass by the crosswalk.

“Who do I send her to watch next?” Avery asked.  “She’s going to get caught sooner or later.”

“Maybe Matthew and Edith,” Lucy said.  “But we’ll decide for sure when we’ve interviewed them.  No use making a call now.”

“So they’re next?” Verona asked.

“They’re next,” Lucy said, “but… we hesitated at first because we wanted them to teach us more runes, and because the couple dynamic makes it harder.  And now they’re our main suspects.  According to Gashwad, Edith wasn’t where she said she was going to be.”

“How do we even bring that up?  Do we bring that up?” Verona asked.

Lucy shrugged.

There wasn’t a really good answer.

Lucy asked, “Is that a now thing?  A today thing?  If it’s not, what do we do today or this week that prepares us for it?”

“What was that you were asking Mr. Lai?” Avery asked.  “Gardens and gardeners?  Custodians?”

Lucy looked over the town, her eyes turning red as she used the Sight.  Red watercolor and blades everywhere.  There was a woman standing at the crosswalk with a thin knife blade sticking out of her butt.  She spoke aloud, her eyes scanning.  “We’ve got a contained ecosystem here, that’s been very carefully tended.  Miss handling the nuance and subtle parts of it.  The Carmine Beast as one of the figures keeping things in a certain kind of balance.  Now both are gone.  There’re enemies at the gates, the new Leaders are apparently sending spirits as soldiers to hold a perimeter, and things here are getting worse in a subtle way.  What Mr. Lai said about invasive species kind of lines up with the invading practitioners. Once they’re in, they breed, there’s nothing really higher than them to ‘feed’ on them.  Even the black, gold, and white judges wouldn’t be able to, I don’t think.”

“See, this is exactly what I meant,” Verona said.  “Jeremy talks to me for five minutes about cats, and I miss this whole thing.”

“I think he might bring some of it up in tomorrow’s class,” Lucy said.  “You could get some recap then.”

“That would require me to pay attention in class instead of breaking connections and reading a book.”

“Maybe don’t do that,” Avery said.

“He said a few things that put some thoughts in my head, but I haven’t fully worked through those thoughts to see where they go,” Lucy said.

“Good thing he was teaching about ecospheres and stuff today,” Avery said.

“I think there’s a lot of other topics he could have brought up and they would have put my mind on the same track, since I’m thinking of this,” Lucy answered, a bit absently.  She thought hard.  The gardener, the missing pieces…

“Give us some of those starter thoughts?” Verona asked.

“Want to hit the convenience store?  Then we can go wherever we’re going?” Lucy asked.

Verona nodded with some vigor.

They walked, crossing the crosswalk primarily because it separated them from the people on the sidewalk.

“If the garden is cultivated, and I do think the Kennet Others did control things to get them looking like this, having John go after outsiders, and keeping things secret from practitioners, then who cultivated it?  How did all of this start?” Lucy asked.

“Could be half and half,” Verona said.  “Happened naturally, then people organized to ensure it stayed that way.”

“Who made that move, then?” Lucy asked, quickly enough that she felt like it might have come across as aggressive.  “I mean… we fell into a kind of quick template of questions to ask, about means, motive, opportunity, the lives the Others lead and how they go about their business.  We got their alibis, we got the details on what they can do, and an idea of their power, especially as it relates to the Carmine beast.  I kind of wish we could go back and ask everyone another really basic question.  Why are they here?  Why did the Carmine Beast come here?  Why did the Hungry Choir set up shop here?”

“We could go back and ask,” Avery said.

“We could, but it’s awkward, and I’m worried that if it matters, then going to them with one follow-up question is going to be what tips them off.  Then our target will be running scared and we’ll be… I guess an inch further along the path.”

“I had a thought too,” Avery said.  “Based on what you said a few minutes ago, not what Mr. Lai said.”

“Share,” Verona told her.

“About the invasive species.  Lucy, you said outside practitioners could fit that mold, and I don’t think you’re wrong.  But… multiplying out of control, no clear force that preys on them, and apparently created or brought here… you could draw a lot of comparisons to the Hungry Choir.”

Lucy nodded.

Avery sighed.  “Every time I mention them, I’m worried I’ll see some creepy kid standing around the corner, or get a ring on my phone and it’ll say I”m signed up for the next night.”

“It really feels like this ecosystem doesn’t know how to deal with the Choir,” Verona said.  “They kind of shrug and work around them.  They warn us not to mess with it, but they really don’t know.  When we act like we might have a plan, some even seem a bit relieved.  Nobody’s complaining or happy they’re gone.  They’re just this… really messy thing that was introduced here nine years ago and they’ve gone out of control ever since.”

“Leaving the question…” Lucy trailed off a bit.  “Introduced by who or what?”

“Possibly something in Kennet,” Verona said.  “It’s rooted here, and here isn’t a ghost town.”

“Possibly,” Avery said.  “Maybe Kennet and ghost towns have something in common?”

“No real Others or practitioners?” Verona suggested.  “No competition.”

“That’s one thing,” Lucy said.

They crossed the bridge.  Rain drizzled down around them, and the clouds were heavy above, blocking out the sun and the worst of the temperature, so things were just a bit gloomy and cool.  She preferred it to many of the alternatives, but she would still look forward to winter, when she could bundle up.

“Shelter,” Avery said.

Lucy shook her head.  “The Hungry Choir doesn’t need shelter.  You mean the Other or force or whatever that made it.”

“Yeah,” Avery confirmed.

Lucy made a face.  “It’s weird to imagine something that strong, that it can just poop out a Hungry Choir, and still be like… boo hoo, it’s raining, it’s cold.”

Verona added, “It’s also a lot of ghost towns.  A lot.  The website listed a bunch.  There’s something like sixty-eight.”

Avery suggested, “Maybe they didn’t go there for shelter, but they went there to get something?”

“Like an incarnation of… something, picking up on the leftover essence of whatever happened?  Poverty and sickness?”

“Or they went there to put something down,” Verona suggested.  “We draw circles and triangles and stuff to frame diagrams, because it makes it easier to give them structure, and have all the bits sticking out or through or inside the circles… but that’s definitely not the only way to do it.  Look at what Edith did with the trees at the edge of the glade.”

“The whichwhatnow?” Avery asked.

Verona sounded more excited now.  “Before the Belanger negotiation.  She put papers on the trees to burn things that passed through.  A ring of fire in case it became a fight, where the papers weren’t connected, but they influenced the area.  Imagine putting down a bit of something at each ghost town, and then having that be just this huge ritual that encompasses a province-wide area.”

“Mark against Matthew and Edith, again,” Lucy mused.

“Isn’t it?” Verona asked.

“But there’s a few problems with that.”

“Tell me,” Verona said.  “Let’s break it down.”

“First off, people from the website have scoured some of the locations, haven’t they?  Looking for clues?  Anything that might help them unravel what’s going on, or clue them into the upcoming night.  And they found nothing like this.”

“Sometimes little things can be hidden,” Avery said.  “The Forest Ribbon Trail had the axe as an etching on bark, and the woven basket was hidden under paint.  The coin was under dirt.”

“Conceded, but-”

“Or invisible,” Verona said.  “When Edith did the thing with the paper on the trees, the papers became invisible.”

“But,” Lucy said, holding up a finger.  “Practitioners have looked into this.  Alexander has.”

“Practitioners were turned away,” Verona argued.

“They were turned away from the details, figuring out what the Choir or its origin was,” Lucy said.  “But I’m like, ninety percent sure that was Miss distracting outsiders from looking into Kennet, and the Hungry Choir being protected incidentally.  That wouldn’t cover a ghost town.”

“We don’t know for sure that they went to the ghost towns in the way the participants and website guys did.”

“Maybe,” Lucy said.  “Second part is that complex diagrams that interconnect, link, wait for triggers or whatever else tend to burn energy every second they’re active.  Sixty eight little diagrams set out all across Ontario, sometimes a sixteen hour drive away, all burning energy?”

“Could be a group,” Verona said.  “Or… or we go back to fundamentals.”

“I’m listening,” Lucy said.

They were off the bridge and just outside the convenience store now.  They didn’t go inside.

“Patterns make expectations, which become rules.  But practices aren’t always neat and tidy.  They expand, they adapt, they touch things they’re not supposed to.  Glamour can run away with us, breaking too many connections can cut us off from people who weren’t the designated target,” Verona said.  “Even a badly drawn diagram can break and spill out, and diagrams are some of the basic stuff.”

“You think this spilled out?” Avery asked.

Verona nodded.  “Could have!  Like, if it was just ten ghost towns at first, and then expanded out because there was so much power?”

Lucy replied, “Alexander said it hasn’t really changed or adapted since it became a thing.”

“In execution!  But maybe the starting point is like a drop of food coloring in a cup of water.  It starts out as a drop and expands out.  It’s still the same amount of food coloring, just… diffuse.”

“But shouldn’t the starting point influence the end point?” Lucy asked.  “That feels thin.  I can’t imagine drawing a big messy diagram that bleeds out to include small towns, and getting a really stable ritual at the end.  And that still leaves out the Kennet factor.  Why is it rooted here?”

“Yeah,” Verona said.  She sighed, but she didn’t look unhappy.  “Damn.”

“You actually like this.  This… you and me, going over stuff.”

“Yeahhh!  This is what it’s about, Luce.  And I want you in this too, Ave.”

“This is a lot of thinking so soon after school,” Avery said.  “Sugar?”

“Sugar!” Verona said, with energy.

They raided the convenience store, buying drinks and striking up a deal to each get something they could share.  Shrunken head gummies, licorice spears, and chips.  Lucy bought some green tea soda, Avery got some apple soda, and Verona got cola.

“What if it’s not competition?” Avery asked, as they paid.

“Hm?”

“We wondered why they settled here in the end, right?  What if they were scared of… interference.  And then they came here because it’s the biggest way to avoid, you know, interference?” Avery asked.

The cashier handed them the receipt.  Verona stuck it into her pocket with the change.

“You’re sharing that change, right?” Lucy asked.  “Since we pooled money together just now?”

Verona smiled.

They headed outside.

“Practitioner interference?” Lucy asked, once they were out.

“Assuming Miss didn’t mean to protect them, because yes, we were suspicious of Miss, but she hasn’t given us any blatant signs she was a baddie… what if they came here as part of the mojo or to leave something behind because they knew about this situation and thought they’d be safe?” Avery asked.

“Keeps going back to origins and beginnings.  Why was this garden made, and why did the later arrivals come to it after?” Lucy asked.

The others nodded.  Verona was squinting with one eye as she bit into a shrunken head gummy.  Sugary blood came out the stitched eyes and mouth.

Lucy counted on her fingers as she said, “So to recap… ghost towns could be because of concern over competition, maybe over claims to power.  Easier to do big stuff if people aren’t looking over your shoulder or stealing your power.  Could’ve been shelter, but that’s a lot of shelter to be taking.  Could be setup, could be taking something away, could be putting something down.  But at the end, they came to Kennet.  Why?”

She batted at Verona’s shoulder with the chip bag as she asked.

“To leave power behind?  Or because it was the best long-term hiding spot for a secret weakness or key to unraveling the Choir, or a place for the Choir’s creator to hide, among other possibilities.”

“A creator with enough power to create the Choir, hiding incognito?” Lucy asked.  “That’s asking a lot.  Especially if they’re hiding it for a long time.  Who would it be?  Alpeana?”

No,” Avery said.  “And that makes almost no sense.”

Lucy swatted Avery with the chip bag too.  Avery stuck her with a licorice spear.

“Leave her alone.  Really.  At least until we have enough evidence to actually consider her,” Avery warned.  “We have enough enemies.  Let’s not go taking the few friendly Others around and making them to be big horrible threats.”

“Alright,” Lucy said.

They made their way back over the bridge.  The water beneath the bridge flowed so slowly that the individual droplets of rain could be seen on the surface.  Cars whizzed by along the road.

“It feels like this would be hard to disentangle from what happened to the Carmine Beast,” Verona said.

“All roads lead to Kennet?” Avery asked.  “Miss talked a lot about entanglement.  Is this a really big snare?”

“Or something big that someone wants to keep secret?” Lucy posited, before eating a chip.  “Kill the judge-cop-and-executioner in red who would finally investigate it?”

The wind went from being blocked by the mountains to the west and east of Kennet to coming straight through it, and each time it came straight through, the rain came down harder.

“I feel like these are some things that Alexander could answer,” Verona said.  “He said to bring our questions to him when we enroll, but… that doesn’t help now.”

“Not to mention, if we brought this stuff to him, the locals would crap houses… metaphorically,” Lucy said.

They stopped at the midpoint on the bridge.  Verona clinked her can against the rusty metal railing.

“Interview with Matthew and Edith, interview with the witness.  We still have gifts to collect.  Some experimentation to be done with the gifts.  A road trip to a ghost town isn’t out of the question.  Then what?” Lucy asked.  “If we can’t figure it out from that much, what do we do?  Wait until magic school, hope to get a neat trick or tool we can use?”

Avery answered, gesticulating with the red licorice spear, “Watch the locals.  See if anyone’s acting funny.  The Carmine Beast is a big power source, right?  So maybe we hint that we’re going to go search the Ruins again.  See if anyone makes any moves.  Or we check out the Warrens, or the Abyss, same idea.  It’s like criminals with a huge haul.  They’ll want to protect it, right?  Keep it out of sight?  Possibly two hauls if these events are connected.”

“Two hauls?” Verona asked.  Her arms were up on the railing, and she leaned her head sideways, resting them on her arms.

“I was thinking maybe it’s not a person hidden from practitioners in Kennet, but a power source.  They might need one for the Choir, right?”

Two massive power sources hidden in our town?”  Lucy asked.

“Why not?”

“Well, for one thing… wouldn’t that be noticeable?”

Avery shrugged.

“I don’t want to come across like a jerk, shooting down ideas.  I’m trying to suggest some, but I don’t want to go on a road trip to some rando ghost town if there isn’t a good basis for it either.”

“All good,” Avery said.  “I wouldn’t mind another road trip, but I get what you mean.”

“Where are we tripping to today though?” Verona asked.  “Because I really don’t want to go home.”

“Me either,” Avery said.

Lucy felt compelled to be the one to suggest it, even if she felt a bit wary about it.  “Matthew and Edith’s?  I don’t know how they’d take a sudden visit, especially considering the current climate.”

“That we’re not so trusted anymore?” Avery asked.

Lucy nodded, frowning.

“Yeah.”

Matthew and Edith’s house was painted wood, with cedar chips instead of grass in the garden and a lot of trees.  The more time Lucy spent around here, the more she felt like it was layered inside jokes between Edith and Matthew.  The spindly bushes, the three willow trees, and the wood all kind of suggested the place could go up in flame like nothing.  It was a dark aesthetic, and a wood heavy one, which seemed to suit Matthew, who worked at an outdoor shop and housed a dark spirit.  Even from the outside, it seemed like there was a comfortable amount of clutter.

They were walking to the foot of the driveway when a horn beeped, making all three of them jump.  Avery managed to turn one hundred and eighty degrees as she jumped, stepping back as she landed, and didn’t fall on her ass.

It was Matthew, pulling up.  They had to step back and onto the red cedar chips to give him room to get his truck onto the driveway.

“What brings you here?” he asked.  He smiled.

He was a good looking guy, in a way that made Lucy think that he’d been a stellar looking guy once, and being his age or maybe carrying the doom spirit had made him look really tired.  His chin was similar, telling a history, like maybe he’d been overweight and shucked the weight, but it hadn’t quite left his face.  Or he’d always had a bit of babyfat.  His smile cut through the tiredness and always seemed really genuine.  He was still wearing his work apron with the hunting and fishing logo on it and ‘Buckheed’ printed below, dark brown print on the medium brown canvas.  Knife in a sheath in the pocket.

“We figured we’d wrap up our interviews with the local Others.”

“Already,” he said.  He puffed out his cheeks.  “Give us an update if you’re close?  Or- if you don’t trust me and Edith, update someone?  Just so we aren’t blindsided.  The deal you made gives the augur permission to start interfering when the crime’s solved.”

“Sure,” Lucy said.

It felt tense and it felt awkward that it was tense, because Matthew could notice and then what?  In their meanderings, they might have been avoiding this feeling and situation.

“Edith’s out.  She’s visiting family.  I have a bit and then I’ve got to go pick her up.  Do you want to put this off?  Tomorrow?”

“I’ve got an appointment tomorrow,” Lucy said.  Therapy.

“Practice,” Avery said.

“I don’t have anything that gets in the way, I’m pretty sure,” Verona said.  “But I think we have enough questions about things that I couldn’t solo it like I did with the goblins.”

“Yeah,” Matthew said.  “Well, if you don’t mind a twenty minute break right in the middle of this, we could do it today.  Do you want to stay for dinner?  That makes it easier.  Barbecue?”

“Possibly.  We’d have to check,” Lucy said.

“Not a problem,” Matthew said.  “We had a sense of what we were getting into when we decided to awaken three girls who still had school and parents to worry about.  It’d be awful of me to complain now.”

“Sure would,” Verona said.

“Do you want to head around to the backyard?  I’ve got to drop some stuff inside, and run upstairs to change.”

“Sure,” Avery said.

“Pull the string to open the latch.  I put it there for the goblins, it works for someone who can’t reach over the gate.”

He let himself into the house, going back to the car to get some bags and groceries.  They let themselves into the back yard.

The backyard was nice.  They’d seen it just yesterday, from the rooftop.  Telephone pole for Avery.  It did have grass, and it also had a sprawling wooden deck with two different barbecues in it, and an inset pit that might have been for a campfire.

They found spots to lounge, favoring the deck and the steps that flowed from different tiers of that deck.

Lucy swatted Verona with the chip bag.

“Stop that!  Are you going to make that thing your implement, swinging it around like that?”

“Why’d you have to drop that ‘sure would’?”

“I wasn’t really thinking that deeply about it.  We’re fine.  Being intense and weird is what’d be a problem.”

“I wonder if he’s going to mention the meeting yesterday.  Or the fact he and Edith are in charge now,” Avery said.

Lucy reached for and took a shrunken head.  She bit into it and then spit it into her hand.  “Sour.  I didn’t expect sour.”

“You know I don’t love sweet,” Verona said.

“You’re drinking cola.”

“It’s the least sweet one I’ve found available.”

Lucy made a face.

Verona took the slobbery shrunken head from Lucy’s hand and popped it into her own mouth.

“That’s so gross.  Don’t be that gross.”

Verona smiled, showing the ‘blood’ from the shrunken head over her teeth.

The door rolled open, and Matthew stepped out onto the deck, pushing a chair in at the patio table.  “So.  Where are we at?”

“Mostly we’ll go over a standard set of questions, I think,” Lucy said.

“Sure.  I did ask others what kinds of questions you guys were asking.  It’s good.”

He dusted the little bits of guff from the willow tree off a patio chair, then sat down, the chair creaking under him, like he was heavier than he was.  He looked casual and unbothered, and Lucy was left to wonder if he could divert his anxieties or negativity into the Doom to appear this comfortable if he were guilty.

“What brought you to Kennet?” Lucy asked.  “Were you born here?”

“Ah.  No, I wasn’t.  I found the Girl by Candlelight.  Nurtured the flame, if you want to put it that way.  I noticed the doom and followed it to her.  She was fending it off, but the way a curse, an omen, or a sending works, if you can’t bounce it back at the sender, or if there’s no sender, it can magnify.  The doom had swelled, going away for a time, picking up strength, then returning.”

“Is there a way to tap into it as a power source?” Avery asked.  “Drain it?”

Good question, Lucy thought.

“Not much.  A little bit at a time, when I need to do stuff for Kennet, but it mostly sits inside of me and I try not to stir it up much.  It grows faster than I can drain it.  But I grow too.  I’m managing, and I’ll grow for a long time.”

“Why Kennet then?” Lucy asked.  “Is Edith’s family here?”

“No.  They’re passing through today.  Mostly, each town we passed through had practitioners.  Kennet didn’t.  The city itself became something of a hallow.”

“Explain that to us?” Verona asked.  “It’s been touched on, but…”

“There are three ways of binding something.  I’m not going to tell you the others, because it would make me enemies with the locals here.  A Hallow is the most pleasant.  You make a space into a home for something.  Usually something without a strict body.  Goblin no, they’re too solid.  Alpeana is a maybe, she’s not as solid as she seems.  The Doom in my body isn’t physical.  You couldn’t hold it.  It’s an easy candidate.  Mark out the location and make it as suitable as possible.  You can do it like you’d build a birdhouse.  The birds come to roost.  Imagine the markings or specific treatments you give that birdhouse to be the way you attract a specific bird.  Or Other.”

“Like how if you draw a square with tape on a floor, a cat will sit in it,” Verona said.  “And if you put a cat’s favorite toy by it, it’ll be the cat you want.”

“Yeah,” Matthew answered.  “You can also do it as a specific treatment for a specific abstract force.  Kennet kind of ended up being that.  Just as you might purify a hallow, waving incense around it to clear it of problematic forces and attract spirits of fire or air… Kennet was purified.”

“Miss was keeping practitioners away.”

“And then some of us settled.  The Faerie were already present.  Alpeana was.  One of the goblins.  We helped keep the practitioners away, gave her a bit of power or assistance if she needed it.  Reinforced the hallow, made it more attractive.”

“More moved in,” Avery concluded.

“I think that’s a big part of why,” Matthew said.

“How old were you?” Lucy asked.

“Nineteen or twenty.”

“And you’re currently?”

“Thirty.  Edith’s thirty-four.  Why?”

Because timing, Lucy thought.

“The thing that happened with John and Yalda wasn’t that long after?”

“It was… sad,” Matthew said.  “Really sad.  But it also told me that we could stand together when we needed to.  Support John, support the town.”

“It wasn’t long after you came?” Lucy asked, again.

“No.”

“So… nine or ten years ago.”

He nodded.

“You said you were with Charles when the thing with the Carmine Beast happened?” Verona asked.

“I did.”

Verona went on, “And you can’t tap into the Doom.  You don’t have any other tricks or powers?”

“I know some things, but practicing is dangerous for me.  It doesn’t take much to shake this Doom loose and if it escapes it hurts me or Edith.  I can take being hurt but I can’t take my own stupidity hurting Edith.  I remember each and every time.  I mostly stick to using tools; items are something you can use, even if you’re technically innocent.”

The questions continued.  Stock, ones they’d been over with each of the Others.  Means, motive, opportunity.  He didn’t have the strength, he didn’t have the motive.

All of that was background.

Lucy stewed in thought, considering the variables.

The wind blew north-south through Kennet, and the droplets came down more intensely.

Matthew offered to let them come under the umbrella, but it really wasn’t much in the way of rain.  They refused.

And Lucy didn’t want to break her train of thought.

The chair squeaked as it slid across the patio, metal dragging across wood.  It startled Lucy out of her head and brought her back to the backyard.

“Going to go pick up Edith.  I don’t know if you guys want to use the time until now to call and check about dinner.  You’re totally welcome.  You can keep interviewing me while I barbecue.”

Lucy nodded along with Avery and Verona.

“I’ll leave the back door open so you can use the bathroom.  I’ll extend you guys that trust.”

“Bad karma mojo if we violated it anyway, right?” Verona said.

“Be good,” Avery said, thwapping Verona with the chip bag.

“Matthew,” Lucy called out.

He stopped.  “Yes?”

There were about five questions she wanted to ask, and she couldn’t ask most of them.  If he really was involved in something deeper here… these might indicate the way.

She decided to ask the least offensive one.

“We got different people giving us different info, and with Miss gone and Bluntmunch being a goblin, it’s hard to get good info on this, it’s bugging me… is Yalda a Sick Dog or a Black Dog?”

“I don’t honestly know,” Matthew said.  “The thing happened pretty soon after we arrived.  I didn’t see her or interact with her much.  I think Sick Dogs are a subcategory under the broader category that is Black Dogs, but you can have standalone Black Dogs too.”

Lucy nodded.  “Who could we ask?”

“John?” Matthew asked, making a bit of a face.  “That’s a touchy subject, though.”

Lucy nodded.

Matthew ducked out, grabbing his keys from inside.  They could hear the front door close on the far end of the house, and his truck starting up.

“So do we scout the house for trouble?” Verona asked.

“If she can booby trap the clearing, she could booby trap evidence and stuff,” Avery said.  “And it’s bad karma to violate someone’s hospitality like that, you just said.”

Verona nudged Lucy.  “Hey.”

Lucy looked at her friend.

“Normally you’d bug me to be good.  I know I promised not to make you manage us all the time, but… what’s up?”

“You were asking about John more than you were asking about the Carmine Beast,” Avery pointed out.

Lucy looked down, then she stood up.  She held a finger to her lips.  She had to fish in her bag for something suitable.

Chalk.

She walked over to the concrete path that led from the backyard to the driveway, blocked at one point by a gate.  It was the only area that wasn’t broken up by grass, cedar chips, leaves, or wooden slats.

She drew out a circle, and drew the connection symbol to frame it.  Extensions to block it out.

“This is serious,” Verona said, once it was drawn and they all stood within it.

“Might be,” Lucy said.

“About… John?”

“Yeah, maybe other things,” Lucy said, her eyebrows drawn together.  She nodded, mostly to herself.  “What if the events are connected?  In the same timeline?”

“Charles and Yalda getting shot?” Avery asked.

“Charles and Yalda getting shot and the Hungry Choir,” Lucy answered.  “Charles said John would be hard to bind because…”

“Because he’s tapped into a massive power source,” Verona said.

“And then they go on the run.  They’re avoiding practitioners, they’re wary, they’re careful, and Yalda can’t be around people, and…”

“And they go to ghost towns?” Avery asked.

“Maybe.  Before eventually settling in Kennet,” Lucy finished.  “He said something about being drawn here.”

“Where Yalda gets shot.  Or… not shot?” Verona asked.

“Something,” Lucy said.

“Why ask about the sick dog, black dog discrepancy?” Avery asked.

Lucy frowned.  “Because… someone’s not right.  It’s not out of the question that Charles is lying to us, or that someone’s misleading us about the timing.  What if she was the kind of Sick that leaves people ravenous?  Or a Famine Dog, and Charles was lying about the Sick part?”

“She sings,” Verona said, out of nowhere.

“What?”

“John mentioned that Yalda would sing.  He sings too, with the guitar and everything maybe out of memory for her.”

“Do you think he knows?” Avery asked.

“I don’t know,” Lucy said, quiet.  She felt acutely disappointed.

A part of her had been thinking about John as a familiar.  Strong, competent, serious.  The incidents with the gun and the Hungry Choir had told her she didn’t enjoy fighting, so having a familiar that could handle that would make her feel whole.  Maybe.

Maybe.

Not now.

“What do we do?” Avery asked.

“Snowdrop should tail him.  And we should check in.  See if he’s acting weird.  He’d have to know we’re focusing on this and zeroing in, after Alexander mentioned the nine year timeline.”

“After she was allegedly shot, but not long after,” Avery said.

Lucy nodded, with emphasis.

“Do you want me to check on him?” Avery asked.  “I could swing by with my rope.  Connection blocker.  See if he’s agitated, calm…”

“Be back before Matthew is?” Lucy asked.

“I’ll try.”

Lucy nodded.

Avery wrapped the rope around her hand as she walked backwards, out of the connection breaker diagram.  She grabbed her hat and scarf, leaving her mask in her bag, and then stepped past a tree.  Lucy could hear scuffling as Avery made her way up the roof to the peak, slipped past the chimney, and was gone.

“Let’s clean this up,” Lucy said.  She indicated the wide broom that was used to sweep the back patio of leaves, judging by the leaves speared on the bristles.  “We’ve still got to deal with Matthew and Edith, and they’ll have had time to confer and coordinate on what to say while driving over.”

“I’ll put this stuff away,” Verona said, taking the chalk.

And Matthew wasn’t upfront about the change in leadership, or the new policies and attitudes being aimed at us, Lucy thought.  Something she couldn’t voice now that she was outside the connection breaking circle, and they were in what could easily be enemy territory.

Out on a Limb – 3.5

Avery

It was good to get away from the tension.  Good to move.

Turning the real world into an obstacle course was a kind of practice for any future visits to the Paths.  Movement and confidence of movement was so important, and learning how to navigate strange places was something she could use, in the same way she’d pulled on instincts drawn from running on the painted grass of a soccer field, or minding her enemies while she skated.

Plus, y’know, fun.

Her cape flapped around her and her hat sat low on her brow as she ran along the peak of a rooftop.  A van was trundling down the street, too slow to really intersect with her path, so she slid down the roof at an angle, controlling her descent, threw herself away from it as she reached the gutter, and skipped forward with the rope.

Two steps on the van’s roof, the second step almost a misstep that saw her fall over the back, then another skip forward using the rope, onto a grassy slope.  The momentum from the roof and her forward jumps let her slide down the slope.  It wasn’t perfect or even that fast, because of the tiny slate-like rocks on the slope that broke up the slide, but she was able to skid down the hill at a diagonal, rope her way back up to the top of the slope, a little further along, and slide down again.

Eventually the little rocks and the traction of the grass made the sliding ineffectual.  She jogged to a stop from the bottom of the slope, onto the dark, rocky shore that consisted of flat flakes of slate lying on stone that had been washed into gentle rises and falls by the passage of water.  Her feet twisted on the toes and balls of her feet each time she set them down, to find the traction past sliding bits of rock.

John’s house… she didn’t recognize it from this angle, but she recognized some of the houses from near it.

Rope in hand, she skipped-

And tripped.  Her shin banged against rock, little corners of slate digging in.  She made a face, looked around, and saw some people by the water.  She flipped up the bit of scarf in front of her chin, and checked the diagram.

Faded to the point of almost being gone.

That had burned out fast.  She pulled it free, leaving the hat on, and pulled out a chalk marker-pen.  She started at one end and traced along the already-drawn lines as she went, ascending the hill and keeping to the shelter of the trees.

It took a few minutes.  Her eyes scanned the gaps in the trees to make sure nobody was springing up.  Especially John.  Or John’s friends, like the goblins.  The four local goblins seemed to like hanging out in the dead bushes, trees, and ditches around the edges of civilization.

The faint chemicals of the chalk pen was thick in the air as she replaced the scarf.  She checked her leg, which had only a bit of blood running down from a scuff, and then resumed moving, skipping across the street to John’s neighbor’s house.

The house backing up on John’s backyard was unoccupied too, and she found her perch on the upstairs patio, which used the ten or so feet of garage that overlapped the house as a platform for an extended balcony.  Dead leaves and plants littered the corners, where the short fence and railing at the edge kept them from blowing away.

It gave her a view of John’s place; she could look through and see the guitar on the back porch, the beer bottles, and the interior, which hadn’t been cleaned up in a while.  Some windows had newspaper or boards put up, to keep the light out.

John’s movement through the bottom floor of the house was so abrupt she jumped a little.  Moving with purpose, from the one corner of the house to the other, disappearing from view because the one corner didn’t have a lot of visibility.

Then going the other way.

She had the impression he was getting ready for something, but his hands were empty when he walked by the big window.

It wasn’t until the fourth crossing that it dawned on her that he was pacing.

He has two modes.  Hurry up and wait, and shooting.  They’d been told that early on.  She’d seen another side of him that was tense and hinted at being dangerous, but casual.  Playing his guitar and smiling over a gift of video games.

‘Hurry up and wait’ hadn’t felt this ominous before.  Like there was a latent energy or frustration behind the hurrying and waiting both.

“What’s going on, John?” she murmured.  “What did you do?  What part did you play in all of this?”

This was the observation the others had wanted.  John had heard or been told about the nine years ago thing, and now he was acting different.  Could that be explained away as the threat of outside practitioners?  He was one of the Others who protected the perimeter of Kennet, kept the monsters out.  This agitation could stem from that, right?

She watched him pace.

He stopped, mid-pace, by the largest window.

The smell of chalk and the marker’s chemical filled her nostrils.  She pulled the cape away so she could check it, and she saw the chalk coming away in curls of smoke.

Crap.

She bolted, jumping from the ledge, using the rope to carry herself away.  The nearest good landing point was the fence where three yards met, and she landed there, the diagram smoking.

She looked over her shoulder before her next skip ahead, and saw John at the window, looking at her with that thousand-yard stare she’d seen a few times.

Avery carried on, heading to the street, using the rope to gauge that the way was clear, then skipping over to the trees.  She hunkered down, put the rope away, and checked her scarf.

That had burned through fast.  Was she weaker?  Maybe she’d lied and hadn’t realized it?

She still had to head back to the others.  She set to work fixing up the cape, sitting on a fallen tree in the middle of the glade and moving the cape across her lap so she had a flat-ish surface to work with for each portion.

“Is there anything I need to worry about?”  His voice was deep.

She grabbed the rope from her pocket and lurched to her feet, flicking it as she slipped past the tree, her other hand holding the cape.

Ten feet away, her back to a tree, she peeked.

John Stiles stood at the edge of the glade, holding a rifle.  It was off to the side, butt end on the ground, barrel pointed up and away.

“That’s a tough question to answer,” she told him.  “We have no plans to do anything to you that’s really worth worrying about… uhh, unless you have something to hide.”

“Don’t we all?” he asked.  Then, after a moment’s consideration, he added, “I didn’t think I needed to hide that much.”

“I was just checking in.  I didn’t want to bother you so I used a connection blocker.  It burned out fast, there.”

“I wouldn’t be very effective at what I do if it was that easy to blind me to you.”

“I’m not a confrontational person,” Avery said.  “I’m not angry, I’m not after you.  We were just wondering how you were doing.”

“But you ran.  You hid yourself.  Your first instinct was to flinch, dash away, and hide,” he said.  She couldn’t really see much of him past branches and tree trunks, but his voice was clear.

“I’m a little easily spooked right now.  Last weekend was a lot,” Avery ventured.

John was silent.  She had to check he was still there.

The silence felt judgmental.  Her heart pounded.

“You’re a bit scary right now.  More intense than I’ve seen, except for our first meeting at your place.”

“I don’t mean to be scary.”

“You’re kinda standing there with a big gun.”

“I always have a gun, Avery.”

“See, that?  That’s a scary thing to say.”

“I’m going to go walk the perimeter and look out for trouble,” he said.

“Is it okay out there?” she asked, trying to sound a little more friendly.

“It’s harder.  We’ve recruited general spirits to plague those who get too close.  They apparently haven’t realized there’s a perimeter yet, and once they do, they’ll test it.  It makes for very tough judgment calls in the moment.  What warrants a bullet, for example?”

“I hope nobody’s getting shot,” Avery said.

“We’re clear for now.”

“Good.  That’s good.”

“I’m going.  I’ll be available tonight if you want to visit.  Please don’t make any surprise visits like your most recent.  For your sake and mine.”

She formed a few half-thoughts, of things she could almost say, but couldn’t articulate.  She settled on, “Bye.”

She heard him walking away.

Maybe she wouldn’t send Snowdrop over.

She peeked, and saw John walking through the woods at a quick march, ducking under a branch, and using the length of the rifle to push another aside.  He was strong enough to maintain a good foot pace despite the barriers the branches provided, and no wood or twigs broke.  He left no trail.

She used her Sight to watch him.  Fog rolled out, handprints and paw prints traced some of the trees, and ribbons trailed from branches.  She saw the thread of connection between him and… at her left hand, she wore the charm bracelet, with a wristband over it to keep it in place and hide the specific charms.  The dog tag was held over her pulse.

“Sorry,” she said, as he slipped out of sight.

She was, wasn’t she?  She had to be careful about lying.  Which left her digesting the word.

The reality was that she was sorry.  Even if he was the mastermind, even if he was responsible for Gabe dying, and Reagan, and those hundreds of others over the years.  Nine years of a ritual most phases of the moon, except for some of the early days.

If he was the source of all that pain and hurt, she was still sorry she had to take on this role in opposition to him.  That he had to take on that role.  That the pain and hurt had to happen.

She reached out for a tattered ribbon that dangled from a tree, then laid her hand against one of the crimson handprints.

She finished scribing the rest of the connection blocker, then started the run back to the others.

“Hurt yourself?” Matthew asked, as he stepped through the back door.  He wore a t-shirt and jeans, with a nice leather belt and matching chukka boots.  He didn’t look like a container for something horrible, like a life-ending Doom.

Avery was putting a bandage over the spot of her shin that was bleeding.  Making use of that small first aid kit she’d stowed in her bag, finally.

“I went out, got some practice with the rope.  It has drawbacks.”

“You okay?” Matthew asked.

Avery nodded.  “I get worse scuffs during soccer and hockey practice.”

Edith followed.  She looked perpetually tired, with hair and clothes that sorta followed that line of thought, like nothing she wore was her first choice of thing to wear, but was something she’d grabbed from the back of the closet.  Those clothes you wore when your good clothes were in the laundry because frigging Sheridan was supposed to do laundry as her chore for the day and only washed her own clothes.

In this case, a strappy red top with stretched out straps, and mom jeans that made it clear that she had a slightly disproportionate amount of hip and butt for her height and other dimensions.

The trends Avery had observed back at the campsite were back in force.  Edith followed behind Matthew, sat after he did, and even though she was at home, she really didn’t look like she was one hundred percent comfortable here.  In her own backyard, in her house, in her clothes, in her skin.  It made her seem diminished, in that way that Avery had initially mistook as her being less because of Matthew.

He had bags with him, and laid them out on the table.  “You staying, by the way?”

All three of them confirmed.

“About your rope, the practice can be contradictory at times,” Matthew said, as he turned on the gas, then stepped away from the barbecue to get the meat from the bags.  Edith motioned her hand toward the barbecue, and the gas ignited.  “They might tell you to keep a winning streak going, use that rope and don’t make any mistakes.  Patterns become expectations become rules.”

“What’s the contradiction?” Verona asked.

“If you break the rules, you get in trouble,” Matthew told them.  Behind him, Edith began chopping vegetables on the patio table.

“So by doing well on a consistent basis, we’re setting ourselves up to fail?” Lucy asked.

“Can be, can’t it?” Matthew asked.  “There’s a power in being the one to set expectation and make the rules.  You get bigger, more important in the grand scheme of things, but then you have a steeper fall, should you mess up and abuse those expectations.”

“Is this about us?” Lucy asked.  “Us three as Kennet’s practitioners?”

“It- no, I didn’t intend it to be that,” Matthew said.  “It’s kind of me talking to Edith about her family, and really, we’re the ones who set the expectations on you three, not the other way around.”

“Bad visit?” Verona asked Edith, as Lucy opened her mouth to say something.  Lucy didn’t say whatever it was.

“They want me to be someone else,” Edith said.  “Someone further along in life than she is.”

“If it’s not too personal…” Lucy ventured, a little cautiously, “…Where are you, and where do they want you to be?”

“I’m thirty-four, I work intermittently.  I got a high school education and went no further.  Edith James’ family is… passionate.  Her father found law and he started his own practice.  Her mother found teaching, and could talk to you for seventy-two straight hours about it, she loves it and her students so much.”

“Anyone we know?” Avery asked.

“She was the vice principal and sometimes teacher at St. Victor’s, but she retired two years ago.  I doubt it.”

“Got it,” Avery said.

“Edith James’ sister found music.  I…” Edith settled into a patio chair.  “…I started off behind everyone.  My way forward was harder.”

“Why?” Verona asked.

It was Matthew who answered, “I think if you looked to the upper echelons of the social ladder, at celebrities, at the moguls, at prime ministers and other leaders… you wouldn’t find many Others.  Or practitioners for that matter, though there are more of them than Others.  You’d think you would.  After all, Others have power that humans don’t, don’t they?”

“Yeah,” Verona said, her eyes wider.

“That isn’t our world.  It doesn’t embrace us.  It’s… not quite karma, but it’s not a clear way forward, either,” he said.

“The cogs of bureaucracy turn slower when they push the paperwork or finances of someone like Matthew or me through,” Edith said.  “People won’t even realize they’re doing it, but they’ll leave us behind, or miss our names.  The higher we climb, the less room there is for something or someone with an oddly shaped configuration like Matthew or myself.”

“Or us?” Avery asked.

“You have a lot more control over your place in the big picture,” Matthew said.  “Practitioners can keep their ordinary lives distinct from their practitioner lives, and fit their ordinary lives into some place in the big picture.  Or they can find themselves in positions and configurations like mine or Edith’s.”

“I guess that’s what we’d want to ask you,” Lucy said, twisting around.  “Where you came from, your position now, where you’re going.  If you don’t mind, Edith?”

“We’ve told you three where I came from.  I am the spirit that occupies the otherwise invalid body of Edith James.”

“But other stuff past just that.  Your parents don’t live here, so why here?”

“The Doom that chased me would settle down, seeking traction where it could find it.  It would occupy places, things, people.”

“Hallows?” Verona asked.

“Shallow and incidental ones, yes.  There weren’t many prepared ones I was aware of.  It would be a voice in the radio static of a television left on overnight, the words shouted by a person left insensate after a car accident.  As it gained more strength, it would take on forms in reality.  Sleek figures without a face or any features.  Slow to move at first, then faster, bigger, stronger.  Either it would draw the attention of practitioners and forces in the area, like hostile Bogeymen or Goblins, hoping they would end me, or I would have to fight back, to diminish that Doom, or stave off the attacks… and that would draw the attention of practitioners.  Then I would leave, going to the next small town, the next place out in the middle of nowhere that was willing to give food and shelter to a girl with twenty dollars in her pocket.”

“The Doom would come back stronger each time.  Incarnations and things stemming from them, like omens and the doom, they lean heavily into the inevitable, or the illusion of the inevitable,” Matthew said.  “It’s in their makeup.”

“And here was safe?” Avery asked.

“Safer.  Practitioners didn’t come this way.  Now they’re trying.”

“There were three who were nosing around, who Miss kept at bay.  One ended up being Chase of the Belangers,” Matthew said.  “She turned him away, but Nicolette took interest, possibly wanted to snatch the prize out from under Chase’s nose, and sent her collector in to take eyeballs and give her the ability to send in seeing eyes.  Two more are out there.  You’ll meet them if and when you go to the summer school.”

“Who started this?  The whole thing?” Lucy asked.

Matthew shrugged, casual, before lifting up the lid to check on the food.  “I think it was a place without any practitioners.  That helped it become more of a place without any practitioners.  Then Miss arrived and capitalized on that, encouraged it…”

“Setting up a metaphorical garden in a nice spot with good soil?” Lucy asked.

“Sure.  Yeah,” Matthew said.

“And now the danger is you’ve got a good streak going, and if we fall, it’s a long way down?” Lucy asked.

Matthew shrugged.  “I really hope not.  Because we’re already… not falling, but you could say we’re slipping.  We’re on an apparent ledge.”

“So where are we now?” Avery asked.

“Trying to do what Miss was doing.  There are five of us on the task that took one of her to do, and we’re not doing it as well.”

“Is there another way?” Verona asked.  “Another tactic that does suit you?”

“There is,” Matthew said.  Even without Avery’s sight being turned on, his eyes suddenly looked a lot darker.  “But practitioners tend to have tight networks and sprawling families.  Ending one with doom, fire, bullet, or goblin can bring two more to our doorstep; one to investigate the disappearance, and one to continue their work.”

They’ve pledged not to attack us, Avery reminded herself.

Edith stood, bearing vegetables chopped, drizzled in oil and herbs, and wrapped in foil.  She set them on the barbecue.

“We have the Faerie, don’t we?” Avery asked.  “Can’t they help?”

“The Faerie have the Faerie,” Edith said.  “Each time we call on them to help, we’re rolling dice.  Will they fix it?  Will they give us a monkey’s paw of a fix, with a hidden trap?  Will they turn the tables on us and reveal a greater ploy?”

“If they get bored, they get dangerous,” Matthew added.  “Repetitive assignments to quash practitioners bore them.”

“Best to stay away from them,” Edith said.  “Maricica in particular.”

“Both, I’d say,” Matthew told her.

“Her in particular.  Trust me on this,” Edith said, looking at the girls.  “You’ve interviewed her, you got your gifts.  Leave it at that.”

“Is this because she’s got the moth thing and you’re a candle?” Verona asked.

“She has a moth motif, and I’m a complex spirit with some candle-related imagery associated with it.  I’m not ‘a candle’.”

“Sorry,” Verona said.

“And no,” Edith said.  She reached out a hand and got a grip on Matthew’s back pocket, tugging him closer to her.  “He’s the Moss drawn to my candleflame.”

“I am,” Matthew said, smiling.

“I don’t have a deeper connection with Maricica,” Edith said.  “We know each other, we’ve interacted.  We’ve worked briefly together on projects for mutual benefit and for Kennet.  I know enough now to be wary of her and what she might say or do.”

“On that note, what do you do?” Lucy asked.  “For or in Kennet?”

“I help with abstract threats.  Rogue spirits, echoes, omens…”

“Can you give us examples?” Lucy asked.

“Of?”

“Of some of these jobs?”

“A boy drowned in a dip in the river, when the water level was high enough the flow was pronounced.  There was a drop in the water flow, and it formed a tube that trapped him inside, flipping end over end.  Enough of a violent and remarkable end to create an echo.  Enough left unresolved around him that it encouraged spirits.  He became a petitioner spirit, plaguing people by the water with whispered questions.”

“Like a ghost by the side of the road who asks for a ride,” Verona said.

Verona sounded so casual, in the midst of this.  Like she didn’t care about where they stood.  Avery was unsure if she was a good actor or so focused in on the practice that she’d lost sight of the danger.

“Yes.  But he wasn’t mature or coherent enough to ask good questions.  If such a spirit learns to ask questions with a design, or to attach a pattern of action to the questioning, the actions can gain strength.  Your roadside spirit could gain enough strength to punish the wrong or unwanted answers with a push, putting the victim in the way of incoming traffic.  He wasn’t that strong.  He whispered nonsense about being caught in the wash.  Left to his own devices, he could have become a wraith, a spectre, a malign spirit, or connected to a thing of the Abyss, or enough collective sentiment to become a spot for an incarnation to emerge.  I burned him, ending him.”

“Is this common?” Avery asked.

“Those spirits?  They weren’t, but they’re appearing more while the Beast’s seat remains vacant.  I’ll burn ghosts and I’ve learned to spot forces like Death, Desire, and Filth getting a foothold in the world, from my time evading my Omen.  I burn them too.”

“Desire?” Avery asked.  “Don’t we sorta need that?”

“Not if it’s taking a malignant form.  Incarnations and incarnate things aren’t even a single clear concept when they emerge, and absorb a lot from their surroundings in early days.  If a Desire isn’t healthy, she can reflect something stunted, something frustrated, or something loveless.”

“That’s so sad,” Avery said.

“Not as long as she’s burned away before she gets too large.”

“Do you confer with Alpeana on this?” Verona asked.

“Sometimes.  We keep different hours, but I’ll mention when I’m considering dealing with something.  It’s rare she says she needs it badly.  She’s most likely to throw some nonsense swears at me if I’m overzealous.”

“And your family?” Avery asked.

“We keep limited contact.”

“They want you to elevate yourself, and you can’t?” Lucy asked.

“I can, but it’s hard, Lucy,” Edith said.  “My efforts are better placed elsewhere.  I may not have a passion as explicit as my mother’s love for teaching, but I love Matthew.  I’m building a life here.”

“Where’s that life going?” Avery asked.  “What’s the long-term plan?  Kids?  Starting up a business?  Or-”

She saw Matthew and Edith exchange a look.

“No kids,” Matthew said.  “Unfortunately.”

“I’m sorry,” Avery said.  It was hard to shake the feeling that the next wrong statement would be the thing that made the Other couple blow up.  This felt like she was bringing them closer to that.

“I think we’ve made our peace with it,” he said.  He reached over and gave Edith’s shoulder a squeeze.  She gave him a half-smile.  “I talked about Hallows, before.  A child that is yet to be born has no defenses and forms a vessel that… many things could inhabit, let’s say.  The body of a mother protects the child within, but it doesn’t readily protect the child from what’s already within the mother, or that which is part of the child.”

“I don’t understand that last bit,” Avery said, “but it’s okay if you don’t want to get into it.”

Lucy elbowed her, like saying that was unnecessary, but it was necessary to avoid being a total asshole.

“If the child is of me, in the same way it’s half Edith, the mother’s body won’t protect it from my influence.  The Doom could and would slide into the child without resistance.  With the way the hallow would be far better at holding something like the Doom than my own body is… it would be like water flowing downhill.  No resistance, and it would go around most barriers.”

Edith spoke, eyes on the barbecue and the fire that licked the meat.  Her eyes glowed.  “If I as the Girl by Candlelight didn’t find myself drawn into the child and trapped there until it was born and grown, then the Doom would enter the child and he or she would kill Edith James before Matthew or I realized what had happened.”

“What would happen?  Again, don’t have to get into it,” Avery said.

“Aneurysm.  Blood clot.  Blood poisoning.  If the child was large enough, it could claw its way to something vital,” Matthew said.

“Could it?” Lucy asked.  “Babies aren’t that strong.”

“Given time, and the fact that an influence on an unborn baby would shape its growth… possibly to something less human, it’s a risk,” Matthew said.

“I would rather avoid that scenario,” Edith said, burning eyes looking down at her hands and belly.  “So…”

She indicated Matthew.

“…We had to make our peace with it,” he finished.

“One of many things my parents love to nag me about,” Edith said.  “Beer, honey?”

“Please,” he said.  He looked at Avery and her friends.  “If you don’t mind.  Do you want anything?”

They shook their heads.  They still had their drinks from the convenience store.

“End of a workday,” he told them.  “Start of my other two jobs.  Edith and doing my part for Kennet.”

“Is that how you think of me, sweetie?” Edith asked from inside, her voice arch and laced with something.  Her eyes were bright as she stepped back onto the patio, carrying two beer bottles.

“All good relationships are work and it would be a shame if it was easy,” he said, giving her a one-armed hug, the other arm holding a spatula.  “You’re warm.”

“I’m a little heated, yes.  Still not loving that ‘job’ comment.”

“I love two of my jobs.  You in particular.”

“You don’t love looking after Kennet?” Avery asked.

Beside her, Lucy and Verona shifted position.  She realized too late that she’d gone straight to the ‘in charge’ thing, and they hadn’t explicitly been told about that.

Matthew didn’t seem to notice.  “I don’t love my part in this.  I respect it.  I know we need everyone on deck in their individual ways.  I used to be on the other side of the fence.  If I had made different decisions, my dad might never have been caught, and I might be someone like one of those boys that served under Alexander Belanger.  Someone with money, power, influence, and knowledge.  Amoral, possibly, from the vibe I got from them.”

He wasn’t announcing it.  He wasn’t saying that they’d had a meeting yesterday, that the Others had allowed him and Edith to take over as leaders.

“We don’t want to become that,” Lucy said.

“Good,” Matthew said.  “I’m glad I didn’t become that.  Someone who would use the Girl by Candlelight and then dispose of her.  Who would carve out the eyes of every echo in the area and then when the balance was disrupted and more dangerous Others emerged as a counterbalance… enslave those too, until things were a disaster to be left for the next practitioner good enough to turn it to their advantage.”

“How does this end?” Avery asked.  “With the practitioners, and the locals?  Do people leave?  Come?  Is it possible to negotiate a lasting truce?”

“I don’t know,” Matthew said.  “I worry that makes me sound incompetent.”

“Being able to say you don’t know makes you wiser than someone who refuses to say it,” Edith said.

Matthew plated the burgers, and unwrapped the foil with the vegetables, before portioning them out.

The wind blew through Kennet.  Droplets of rain fell.  Avery made herself close her eyes and turned her face up toward the sky, letting the droplets fall where they wanted to.

“Do you want to come to the table?”  Matthew asked.  “I can put up the umbrella, though I can’t promise it’ll do much good.”

“We could draw something,” Verona said.  “Bit of a diagram?”

Avery felt off-balance, as she stood.

There was an Avery she wanted to be, and the Avery she was, and both wanted to stand in different ways, wanted to handle this conversation and this meal in different ways.

Wanted to react to Verona being so casual in different ways.

Lucy put a hand on her shoulder, on her way up to the part of the patio with the table.

It helped.  Because both Averies wanted the same thing.

I’m not alone.

Refocus.

She took her seat.

“Can we ask about the night the Carmine Beast disappeared?” Avery asked.

“Did you wait until we were breaking bread before asking that?” Edith asked.

“I didn’t know that was a thing,” Avery admitted.

The light in Edith’s eyes dimmed.  She picked up her burger, held it in front of her mouth, and seemed to consider for a moment, before saying, “Okay.”

“It’s a thing,” Matthew said.  “Old customs and hospitality.  You can ask.  It’s fine, I don’t think we have anything to hide.”

“Standard questions?” Avery asked Lucy.  Reaching out, trying to collaborate.

“Sure.”

“So… question to the both of you.  Did you have any history with the Carmine Beast?”

“Not especially,” Edith said.  “But I made pilgrimages to the Alabaster, and to the Sable, and the Aurum came to me, at different points.”

“That’s a lot.  Why?” Lucy asked.

“I think because I’m naturally fragile and unstable.  This body stabilizes me.  But I needed some answers that other Others couldn’t provide.  The Alabaster for questions on innocents, and bringing a child into the world.  The Sable to talk about death, and Matthew and my exits from the world.  The Aurum came to audit.”

“Audit what?” Verona asked.

“I don’t know.  But the centipede is said to be a spirit with ties to civilization.  Primarily in the East, but… Canada absorbs cultures from all over.  It’s not unusual that we drew that in.”

“Did you get the answers you were looking for?” Lucy asked.

Avery ate the grilled vegetables.  She kind of wished she had grown her nails out like some of the girls in class, so she could pick up the food with the nails without touching them with her fingers, but she’d kept them short for the sake of playing sports.

“You already heard the answer we got about bearing children,” Edith said.  “We got answers about our endings.  We can lead long and full lives together, if we can keep this body healthy and Matthew’s doom restrained.  When we pass, we’ll have to figure out what to do.  The audit… the Aurum cautioned us to avoid collecting too many odds and ends.”

“Enchanted things, cursed things,” Matthew said.

“And have you?”

“Charles had a lot,” Matthew said.  “We took them so they couldn’t be stolen.  We drained some of power, put some in storage, and traded a good few others away.  A shame.  If we’d kept them, we could have given them to you.”

“Edith sort of gave her answer,” Lucy said.  “Did you interact with the Carmine Beast?  And Edith?  Specifically?”

“You’re so much better at the practitioner speak than I was at your age.  Or than I was at eighteen,” Matthew said.  “I did not.  I was there for the meeting with the Alabaster Doe and the Sable Prince.  The Carmine and I had no reason to interact.  The Aurum never approached me directly.”

“I never approached the Carmine,” Edith said.  “If I’d continued on the path I was on without finding Kennet, she might have found me.”

“Any hard feelings?  Upset?  Even if you never met her?” Avery asked, trying to be a little more firm now.

“No,” Matthew said.  “If I hadn’t been told I would have barely known she existed.”

“No,” Edith said.

“If you wanted to, could you have hurt it?” Lucy asked.

“I don’t think so,” Matthew said.  “Not in a way that would take it out like that.  Disappeared or dead.  I- maybe with the right tools, the right practices, but I’d run the risk of the Doom inside me slipping free of its confines.  Anything I channel through my body or spirit is a possible escape route.”

“Could the Doom have hurt it?” Verona asked.  She was talking the least and making the most progress through her burger.

Avery looked down.  She hadn’t touched her burger, and thinking about it made her tense.  She ate more vegetables.

“Possibly, but not killed it.  It’s not that strong, and I’m not strong enough to keep something capable of killing the Carmine Beast inside me.”

“Edith?” Lucy asked.

“No, I’m not that strong.  And my fire isn’t… as much as I describe burning up spirits and immaterial things, it’s not a fire meant to harm.  It can change a place or the meaning of a place, or that place’s potential, like its potential to burn in the right circumstance, and it can bring about disaster by way of inferno, given the right situation, it can do little, useful things, but it’s… not a flamethrower.  It’s not a weapon that could kill something like that, even if I was that strong.”

“Can you practice?” Verona asked.  “Matthew mentioned it.  It’s been sort of vague.”

“I can’t Awaken because Awakening presumes some measure of innocence, and I am far from that.  I’m Other.  The full omnibus of spirits don’t answer me, new practices would rebuke me or fail to respond, gods don’t draw particular power from my worship so much as they would create things like me in exchange for the worship of people.  At best, I can use practice-like behavior to do things I can already do, better.  Burning, fire, light, smoke, and things related to that.”

“There’s no indication the Carmine Beast was burned, right?” Lucy asked.

“No,” Matthew said.

Avery finished her vegetables.  She grabbed her burger, and… didn’t pick it up off the plate.

“Everything okay?” Matthew asked.

“I had a similar reaction at breakfast, I thought it was a one-time thing.  I don’t mean to be rude, really.  I would have mentioned it if I thought it’d be a problem.”

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Just… complicated feelings, after the Forest Ribbon Trail.”

“Do you want more veg?” he asked.  “Slide that over to me?  I’ll have a second burger.”

“More veg would be great,” she said, feeling weirdly grateful he wasn’t making a big thing of it.

Verona gave her a squeeze on the arm, and a bit of a smile.

“Matthew already told us where he was the night of.  The goblin verified.  Edith…?”

“I was at home,” Edith said, before taking a bite.  She turned.  “Can you grab me another beer while you’re up?”

“I can,” Matthew said.

Verona and Lucy glanced at each other.  At Avery.  They weren’t getting full answers about everything.  Maybe even a lot of things.  About the leadership, about the night of.  About the Kennet Others’ plans for them.

But asking, in this context, when the couple was being kind…

Was that by their intent?  How were they supposed to challenge that or ask something?

I don’t want to be a wuss. 

“The whole night?” Avery made herself ask.

Matthew paused, midway through portioning out the grilled vegetables.  He turned.

Edith chewed.  The wind blew across the table, from Edith to them, and the air was hot and smokey, and it wasn’t from the barbecue, at the other corner of the patio.  Where droplets passed the umbrella and fell on Edith’s bare shoulder, they dried up in a similar way to how they did on the barbecue’s surface.

Avery could feel her heartbeat in her throat.

“No,” Edith said.  “Not the whole night.  I went to the Arena with Matthew when I heard from Gashwad.”

“Where were you before that?” Avery asked.  “Can you walk us through your night?”

“Are you accusing me of something?” Edith asked.

The air was hotter.  Matthew didn’t go to get that beer, and he didn’t bring the vegetables to Avery.

“We’re treating each Other we interview as a potential suspect, and we’re trying to be fair,” Lucy said.  She patted at her bag, which sat beside her chair.  “More or less equal consideration to all.  Even with the Others we’re big fans of and friendly with.”

She looked at Avery as she said that, and Avery thought of John in that little wooded glade with the rifle.  Then Avery realized that Lucy probably meant Alpy.

Why was this so hard?

“Sorry.  Can you answer?” Avery asked.

“Matthew went out, to shop at the department store, buy some groceries, and swing by to talk to a friend,” Edith said.  The rain came down in another smattering, and the drops cleared off Edith’s skin almost as fast as they arrived.  Her clothes were resisting any damp.  “I’ve struggled in the past with being alone.  I harbor constant worries that Matthew will get in a car accident, and the Doom will be loosed, and I’ll only know he’s dead or hurting when it comes for me.  Or that something else might happen, weakening his resolve or protections, or filling that hallow with the Doom inside and displacing it so it can roam free.  I’ve struggled with it, and I loathe that I’m having to spell it out now.”

“I don’t mind.”

“I don’t want you to know how worried I still get,” Edith said, with some heat.  “You shouldn’t have to.  I deal with it.  I-”

She turned to face Avery and her friends.

“I was dealing with it.  I went for a walk.  I slipped into the spirit world at one point, I needed to stretch out.  I put the body aside.”

“Could something have taken it?  Slipped in or borrowed it?” Verona asked.

“No,” Edith said, with more anger, more upset, like Verona had hit a nerve.  But how could they have known that nerve existed.  She turned to look at Matthew.  “No.  I was careful.  Okay?  With myself.  With Edith’s body.”

“Okay,” Matthew said.  “I trust you.”

“Did you notice anything?” Lucy asked.  “Disturbances in the spirit world?  Flows?”

“No,” Edith said.  She rose from her seat.  “I was focused on me at that point.  Staying whole, remembering the shapes I take.  And before you ask, no, I don’t have an alibi, but you can take me at my word in that.”

“Then-” Avery started.

“No,” Edith said.  “I’m sorry.”

Avery stopped, looking up at Edith.

“Tonight wasn’t a good night for this,” Edith said.

“I asked if they’d be willing to reschedule.  I’m sorry.”

Edith nodded.  “I’m cutting this short.  I just dealt with my family for the better part of the afternoon, and it’s not easy, on many levels.  I did not kill or harm the Carmine Beast.  I had not seen it for months, and the most I saw of it that night was the bloodstain it left behind.”

Avery nodded.

“Excuse me.”

Edith stepped inside.

An awkward minute passed.  Matthew sorted out the vegetables and brought Avery a plate, went inside for two long minutes, then emerged with a beer.

“She’s a good person,” he said.  “And her spirit is… it’s beautiful.  Every facet of it.  But dealing with family like she did today, it challenges her very Self.  They’re so glad to have a living Edith James with them, most of the time, but sometimes they get suspicious, or feel like something’s off, and that cuts to the core of her being.  It weakens her, threatens that fragile, unbalanced complex spirit within her.  Today was apparently a lot.  And this investigation…”

“Same dealio?” Avery asked, feeling bad.

He shrugged and nodded.

“Matthew, gotta ask, did you have any involvement with the Carmine Beast?” Lucy asked.

“No.  Not before, not the night of.  Only saw the bloodstain and went from there, as you know.”

Lucy nodded.

Avery pulled out her phone, created a conversation, and began typing.

First hard question.

Do we ask him about the leadership?

The other girls checked their phones.

Lucy sighed.  “Matthew.  Why didn’t you bring up that you and Edith were elected leaders of the Kennet Others?”

“Because it shouldn’t matter,” he said.

“Shouldn’t it?” Lucy asked.

“It’s between the Kennet Others.  It’s not your responsibility, and it shouldn’t affect how you handle this.”

“Shouldn’t we know what’s going on?”

“Should you?  I know you’ve been told that knowledge is dangerous in practitioner hands.”

“How is that knowledge dangerous?” Verona asked.

“There’s any number of reasons.  Knowing we’re in charge could mean you could bind us and lay claim to everyone subordinate.”

“Why would we do that?” Avery asked, and this time it was her turn to sound upset.  “What indication have we given that we might?”

“Not today, not tomorrow, but in the future?  In the summer?  In the fall?  Five years from now, when Alexander might get involved?  You have to understand, a lot of the local Others are… they may be around when your great-grandchildren, if you have any, are graduating from school.  The mistakes we make today are mistakes they have to live with later.”

“I don’t like not being given the benefit of a doubt,” Lucy said.

“And I don’t like not giving it to you,” Matthew said, with more intensity, and more darkness in his eyes.  “But I have to be responsible.  What happened with Avery and the Forest Ribbon Trail?  The investigations?  Those weren’t things that happened over the last ten years.  And if this all goes south, then it’s going to be a regular sort of thing.  Shitty people dicking one another over and using us, you included as pawns in their games.  We took a giant leap toward that future this past weekend.”

“Is it responsible to condone something like the Hungry Choir?” Avery asked.  “Letting people get picked off every few days?  Stuck for… who knows how long, as hungry children who maybe get to eat if they can grab a scrap of meat during the ritual nights?”

“It’s irresponsible to tamper with that sort of thing when we don’t have a surefire way to handle it.  Making a mistake only adds to the casualty count.”

“What-” Avery started.

Lucy reached out, holding her wrist, and squeezing it.

Avery met Lucy’s eyes, then looked past Lucy to Verona.

They didn’t speak.  They didn’t text one another.

There was a lot to consider, and a lot to communicate without words.  She was pretty sure they were all on the same page.

Avery clenched her fist.

Lucy let go.

“What if…” Avery started, glancing at the others to make sure she hadn’t misread.  “What if we know a way?”

And knowing a way made enemies, if anyone local was involved.  Maybe not John directly, but… it entangled John.  There had to be others.

They didn’t know enough.

They could only trust that Matthew didn’t know and wasn’t involved.

“If we had a plan,” Lucy said, “would you help us?  And would you get the other locals to help us?”

“We could discuss it,” Matthew said.  “That’s a big move to be making, and I’ll be frank, some of the locals aren’t one hundred percent confident we can trust you three right now.”

“We haven’t done anything to violate your trust,” Lucy said.

“It’s not about us,” Verona said.  She pushed her plate away so she could lean over the table, lounging forward a bit.  “It’s about them.  They want us under their control.  That’s not me saying you’re bad or evil or anything.  It makes sense.  And now we have people to talk to and get power from that they don’t know about.  And they can’t compare notes and make sure they aren’t giving us enough to destroy any or all of them, because some of the notes are Alexander’s.  Or whoever’s.”

“I wouldn’t have phrased it quite that way,” Matthew said.

“But?” Verona asked.

“But yes.  Something like that.”

“Can we pledge to share our notes about what we’re learning, and to keep complete notes?” Avery asked.  “Would that make you less nervous?”

“It might help for some,” Matthew said.  He looked up and back, toward the upper floor of the house.  “Edith’s one of the more nervous ones.  So is John.  They might not be so happy with the idea, as fair as it sounds to me.”

“We’d need help with this,” Lucy said.  “Power, backup, tools.  And I know this is touchy, but… maybe a means of binding.”

“I’ll have to have a long conversation with the others about that one,” Matthew said.  He stood from his seat.  “It’s better if we teach you than have Alexander teach you, but… it would be good if you left.”

They stood.  Avery picked up the paper plate with the veggies, holding it like a taco, picked up her bag and shrugged it over one shoulder, then got her drink.

“I agree with you in principle,” Matthew said.  “Stopping the Choir.  But the timing of this couldn’t be worse.”

“We couldn’t leave it alone,” Avery said.

“I know.  I and we don’t mean you any ill will.  But at the same time…”

“Kind of the same deal?” Verona asked.

Matthew nodded.

“Thanks for dinner,” Lucy said.

They left out the side gate, heading out onto the driveway.  Because of where Matthew and Edith’s house was, there really wasn’t a long way to go before they had to split up to go their separate ways.  Avery to her house.  Lucy and Verona over the bridge to their houses.

“Did I do that wrong?” Avery asked, as they stood, delaying the split.

“No.  It was good, I think,” Lucy said.  “We needed to act.  Now we’ve got to think about the Hungry Choir, and I really don’t want to do this like we did the Forest Ribbon Trail.”

“Please no,” Avery said, without affect.  Inside her chest, there were vague feelings entirely disconnected from the statement, even though they were rooted in the same ideas.

Verona held the straps of her bag, her bag at her side, and swung it a bit.  “More backup, and… I guess we’re going straight for the heart of it?”

“If Matthew goes asking about stuff, the people responsible might get antsy,” Lucy said.

“Which might make it easier to find the ‘heart’,” Verona said.

“Man,” Avery said.  She tried to think of something to say.  “Mannnnn.

“I gotta go.  Curfew.  Send texts when you’re home safe?  And then a bunch more?  You especially, Ave.”

“Why me especially?”

“Because you disappeared and we freaked out?” Verona asked.  “I flipped on my dad and I wouldn’t have done that if I wasn’t worried about you.”

“Just like Edith worries about Matthew, we worry about you, you ditz,” Lucy said.

“I’m not that big of a ditz.”

“No,” Lucy said.  She gave Avery a light punch on the shoulder.  “You’re getting better.”

“Ha ha.”

They separated.  Avery didn’t use the rope to go home, but she held onto it to feel the ebb and flow of people’s attention, she used her Sight to watch for movement and see connections, and she navigated the streets that way, without hat or scarf.

She got home, saw her bike had been moved from its spot between their garage and the neighbor’s, and went to push it back in.  Declan had a scooter he kept further back in the same aisle, that spiders used more than he did, for webs and stuff.  He must have gotten it out.

“Bluh,” a voice said, as she pushed the bike in.

She withdrew the bike, then bent down.  With the overcast sky and the setting sun, the figure was barely visible in the gloom.  Snowdrop, wearing jeans, no shoes, a jacket, and a shirt reading ‘Aesthetically Off’.

She helped Snowdrop extricate herself, pushed the bike in, and then settled into a seating position, her back to the corner of the garage, bike to her left.

Snowdrop plopped herself down in front of Avery, leaning back.

“Rest well?”

“Terribly.”

“Well, the afternoon wasn’t so restful for me,” Avery said.  She opened her bag and got out the thermos, filled with milk from the trip to the convenience store, and handed it over.  “Want a recap?”

“No,” Snowdrop said, accepting the thermos.  “I bet it was stupid and boring.”

Avery began outlining the events, best as she could.

Off to the side, she could hear the dull clamor of voices and people talking over one another within.  As the streets were plunged into darker blues and blacks, the light of the house glowed orange, and Avery put off going inside for as long as she could, hugging her companion from behind, while the girl periodically took gulps of the milk, and squirmed to look or say stuff.

Her eyes scanned the darkness.  It felt like they were close to the answer, a working strategy.

Beating the Hungry Choir.

Every time they’d gotten closer or more involved, before now, the Choir had responded.  Sent waifs their way.  Trying to catch her with the change in the website.  Grabbing Lucy.

Was the complete absence of waifs now a sign that the Choir was scared, or was this all a terrible mistake?

[3.5 Spoilers] Gifts Received

Out on a Limb – 3.6

Verona

Last Thursday: Gifts Received


Well, apparently Thursdays were going to suck until Summer.

A matter of minutes after Avery headed off to Soccer practice, Lucy was jogging ahead, because her mom had pulled up, and cars were already honking their horns out of impatience.

Lucy’s mom wanted to be one hundred percent on top of her therapy, so she’d jumped to this frontloaded therapy session thing where Lucy had like, five therapy appointments in the first week, then scaled down over time.  Lucy had explained it as a bit of a cover-your-ass thing, in case Paul pressed charges for the damage to his car.  Which he wouldn’t, but it was good to do.

Verona kinda thought there was more to it than that.  That Jasmine was really scared for Lucy and that she’d missed out on something that major.

Yesterday they’d talked to Matthew and Edith, and the plan was that the Kennet Others would discuss and decide about some stuff, like dealing with the Choir, and some lessons on binding.  With Lucy and Avery being busy, and the difficulties of making plans after dinner, that was a thing that might happen tomorrow.  So… no big planning session or anything.

Couldn’t interview Louise either, with the other two gone.

Couldn’t go hang with Matthew and Edith because they were suspicious and it wasn’t like things were hunky dory with them.  Goblins were dangerous and hard to track down.  Faerie were easy to track down but dangerous and complicated.  Alpeana didn’t wake up until sundown and was busy for part of the night, and John was kind of a suspect.

She texted Lucy and Avery as part of a group conversation:

Verona:
I want to go be a cat. Gimme permission

Lucy:
You’re doing that too much.  Take time off to be a human.

Verona walked along with the crowd of students, alongside the fence that bounded the field.  She saw Avery jog out, and matched pace with Avery.

“Need something?” Avery called out.

Verona jerked both thumbs toward herself.  “Cat?”

Avery frowned.

Verona pointed at Avery with both fingers.  “Say yes.”

Mr. Bader whistled.

“No,” Avery said, “Or ask Lucy.”

Then Avery was gone, jogging over to gather up with the rest of the students.

Lame.  They could be so lame sometimes.  They didn’t get it.  That being a human was boring.

What else?  Options.  Places, people.

Jeremy Clifford was… complicated.  Because he was a boy and he liked her and if she spent too much time around him she’d get tied up into a relationship or something.  She’d talked a lot with him at the end of class yesterday so today she wouldn’t seek him out.

For his sake, more than for hers.

She wished she could reach out to Alexander or someone to get the details on something like the Demesne ritual.  A ritual to make a place hers.  She’d have to pick the right place, convenient to get to, probably with some other requirements, but then she’d have a place to go in times like this.

Alexander Belanger had one, apparently, as part of the school.  That was how they’d rescued Avery.  Charles had had one before he was forsworn and lost it.

She wanted to know so much more about that.  About the implement ritual, which she was a lot less clear on.  The familiar ritual was more complicated because the only local other she really liked was Alpeana, in terms of the power, the aesthetic, and a personality that Verona could imagine working with in the long term.  Goblins would be a pain, John was too serious, the Faerie were Faerie, Matthew had Edith and Edith had Matthew.  The Choir was a mess.

Alpeana, at least, was someone who was probably content to do her own thing while Verona did her own thing, and they could hang out, and watch each other’s backs, and that was cool.

She headed home.  Not because she wanted to go home, but because she had a full backpack.  Her dad worked late some nights, and if he was out, maybe she could sit and stream age-inappropriate movies and TV shows for a while.  Both cartoons and shows for little kids while she drew, and sci-fi epics with gratuitous scenes she could pause on, to use people as models, while trying to work her brain around some of the mechanics.

She wanted to figure these things out.  Practice, diagrams, demesnes, familiars, implements, bodies and the way bodies fit together, art, life and how to avoid getting checkmated by it, and stuff.

She wanted to figure out the Choir, unraveling that mystery when so many others hadn’t been able to, like Alexander.  She could see the appeal in that.  It wasn’t that she didn’t care about the victims like Gabe and Reagan.  Seeing Gabe disappear, seeing him later as a waif, and hearing about Reagan and the others was eerie and those things were clearer than anything in her mind’s eye, when so few things were, even with her art.

But it was a puzzle too and it was easier to think of it as a puzzle.

She wanted to solve the Carmine Beast thing, because it felt like it was the big thing getting in the way of all of this being fun and free.  How cool would it be if Lucy could stop fretting over interview questions and be cool and on board with stuff like the soda can gun?

Home, at least to drop off her bag, then streaming video and art.  Or… library.  The library was such a walk though.  Ugh.

She was across the bridge before she was free of the mass of students leaving school.  She passed by the lot where the kitty had been.  No Jeremy.  Some mom had brought over an inflatable pool and left it there.  Kids aged seven to nine had removed their shoes and socks to kick water around.

Two turns through the maze of houses on the west side of Kennet, and she was on her street.  Aside from a woman watering her garden with a hose, it was empty.

Man, she should have asked to borrow the rope.  She could have used it to get home faster in a time like this.

Her dad’s car was in the driveway.  Her heart sank.

When had that started being the case?  When was the last moment Verona had been excited or happy at the thought that her dad was home?

She had nothing.

Or that he was right around the corner?  She thought back to birthdays, to imminent presents, and days that were supposed to be hers, like Christmas, or Halloween, and… nothing.

At least, not after the divorce.  And before the divorce, her parents hadn’t really been people.  They’d been more nebulous authority figures.  People you loved because you were supposed to love them, you were full of love, and life hadn’t ground that love out of you.

Good memories like cakes and costumes and trips and stuff helped keep it afloat.

Asking her dad to be someone she could count on just one important time and being let down?  It sank it.

She let herself into the house.  On instinct and habit, she made the opening and closing of the door quiet, so the lock wouldn’t make much noise, and so the door wouldn’t bang.

How long had it been since she’d started doing that, in hopes that he wouldn’t know she was home for a little while?

It made the moment feel heavier, and it made her feel vaguely angry, like she was gearing up for the next fight, before anything had even happened.  She hated being angry.  Because, like they’d been warned about giving the Faerie thanks, because the Faerie might take those thanks in a bigger way, being angry meant she was giving her dad something.

She unloaded her books, putting them off to the side of the front door.  Quick and quiet.

“Verona!”

She hated this.  She hated this she hated it she hated it.

He was in the kitchen, close enough to hear her.  He carried glasses to the cabinet from beside the sink, ones she’d washed last night.

She felt like she was on the cusp of flipping out on him and nothing had even happened yet.  She hated it.

She hated this.  She couldn’t stand five more years of feeling like this.

“You there?  Hello?  Lost in thought?” he asked.

“I’m here,” she said, shifting her weight to one foot, bag dangling from her hand, brushing against the ground.  “I was thinking I’d head to the library, read up on stuff.”

“I’m heading over that direction soon.  A key on my keyboard is sticking and I’m going to buy a replacement.  Do you need anything from there?”

“Not really.”

“A game?  Your computer’s working okay?”

“I haven’t really played video games in a few years.  My computer’s fine.”

“Well, that’s good.  Mine’s slow but I can’t replace it for a while.  Money, you know.”

She shrugged.

“If you’re willing to tolerate my company, do you want a ride?” he asked.  “We can swing by Killaloe Dough, I can drop you off at Global Sustainable, then if you want, I can pick you up when I’m done and we can get food, or you can go to the library from there, and I’ll give you some money for grabbing food on your way back.”

Killaloe Dough made flat, fried pastries, and could be topped with sugar and cinnamon, or savory stuff.  Right now, fried dough with a spinach and cheese topping was really frigging tempting.

Global Sustainable’s whole thing was that they engaged only with countries and areas that were in need, and maintained only healthy deals that bettered communities.  Stuff from there was expensive, with a lot of tribal stuff, rugs, art, pottery, and, Verona’s favorite, some embossed, leather-bound notebooks and sketchbooks.

And it was a long walk to get to the library.

And-

“Well?” he asked.

“I’m thinking,” she said.

He carried more dishes from the drying rack to the cupboards, watching her.  He was wearing a white tee with a company logo on it, and jeans.  Not work wear.  Big, hair short and greasy-spiky with whatever he put in it, his belt pulling in tight against his lower belly in a way that made Verona wonder how he could tolerate it.

This was a ploy, she knew, to get back into her good graces.  He had to be aware that things were bad after she’d spit in his face.  He hadn’t even mentioned it, or said much except that she wasn’t allowed to stay over at Lucy’s.

And now this.  This was the balance.  Back and forth.  What was normal for Lucy and Jasmine was an enticement from Verona’s dad.  Being asked, being given options.  A bit of normal.

“Okay,” Verona said.

“Alright,” her dad said.  “Want to help me put stuff away, first?”

She did.  Or, when they almost collided with each other three times in short succession, she headed over to the sink and washed some stuff while he continued putting things away.  They’d stacked up in what Verona had kind of felt was an impressive arrangement of plates and glasses, and a drying rack in the middle of the kitchen was more convenient to get plates and glasses from than a cupboard, but… whatever.  Tidying up, fine.

“Had a half day at work today,” her dad said.  “Trying to use the opportunity to get stuff done.”

“Uh huh.”

“The IT team really dropped the ball.  Server isn’t connecting to anything on anyone’s workstation, and Renault said it’ll take so long to fix we might as well go home.  I don’t know why we pay the IT team, because this is the third crisis in a month.  When things are working again, we’ll have a bunch of updates, twice the work to do to catch up and meet the big deadline, and then Louis is… a constant slacker, I don’t even know how he hasn’t been fired.  You remember Louis, right?”

“Yeah.”

“He alone means I have to do twice the work.  He made a massive mess of the client lists last month and I’m still working on that one.”

“Hard to believe he hasn’t been fired,” Verona said, to entertain her dad.

“Renault has been saying he’d fire Louis for five or six months now.  He just can’t muster up the balls to do it.”

“Yeah.”

“And now my computer’s not working, it’s running so slow.  I’d ask you to fix it if I didn’t think you’d play some prank on me.”

He nudged Verona, elbow to shoulder, smiling.  She kept her expression neutral.

“You’ve done a few,” he told her.

“Yeah.”  She’d screenshotted his desktop and moved the icons, and changed his autocomplete to replace one coworker’s name with another, and put tape over the mouse laser.

She’d also used notepad, copied down code she’d found on the web, that made warning and startup sounds go off every two to fifty hours, and set the ‘code’ to run at startup.  A couple of times a week she heard it from her dad’s room, sometimes followed by cursing.  He didn’t know it was her doing.

She smiled at the thought.

“There we go,” her dad said.  “A smile.”

Her expression went neutral again.

He set his hand on top of her head, and she shrank down, lowering her head until she basically had no neck.

“I’m sorry,” he said.  “The IT stuff at work, and Louis, and god, the company culture, with the younger coders and everything, it’s gotten to me.  I’m sorry for my part in what happened the other night.”

If I asked you, would you be able to tell me what you did wrong? she wondered.

She didn’t say it out loud.  “Okay.  Thanks.”

“I want to do right by you.  It’s why I work so hard.  For your sake.”

She nodded.

“I put laundry on earlier.  Let me go grab that, or it’ll get musty and the clothes will wrinkle before I can hang them up.”

She looked in the direction of the front door.

“Can you grab a laundry basket for me?  I did some of the socks and underwear.  It’ll be the last thing, I promise.”

She nodded.

This had to be better, right?  Walking the line of ‘tolerable’, to get to almost normal.  It was annoying and tense and she felt like she had to bite her tongue with every other exchange, but it was better than feeling like she was going to flip out on him from just seeing him.  Right?

She went down to the basement with him, and he opened the washer and dryer, transferring the dry clothes to the basket.  “Did you order those clothes?”

He wasn’t facing her, so he couldn’t see her nod.  She was tempted to grab the basket and walk away.  “Yeah,” she said.

If he could kinda reach out, she could kinda reach back.

Plus spinach and cheese at Killaloe Dough.

“When’s it arriving?”

“I dunno.  Stuff ordered from the States takes a while sometimes.”

“It’s also more expensive.”

“Sometimes.  This wasn’t.”

“Okay,” he said.  “Sock basket is on the chair.”

‘The chair’ was one of the flimsy stackable office chairs he’d brought down to furnish what was eventually meant to be an apartment for some renter.  The handle was one that Verona had intentionally dinged and banged with the door of the dryer on every passage, and was now chewed up enough it bit into her hand as she lifted it.  Small prices to pay for the small stress reliefs of yesterday.

She carried it up the two flights of stairs to the upstairs, and sorted out the laundry.  Socks were paired, and some of the more similar pairs of hers were mismatched, which she wouldn’t have cared about if she’d matched them, because who really cared if socks matched perfectly.  Her dad’s socks were all the same, so matching them was easy.

Her dad also just dropped underwear into the basket, with hers on one side and his on the other.  Gross briefs she really didn’t want to touch, and a bunch of her stuff, with some tangled-up bras.

She put her stuff away, dropped his socks into his sock drawer, and kicked the basket with his underwear so it slid over to the corner.  She wasn’t touching that.

Then she grabbed her school stuff from the front hall and took it to her room, setting it out and looking over the notes from the project for Ms. Hardy’s class.

She heard her dad ascend the stairs, and felt that dread and disappointment, like she’d felt on seeing his car in the driveway.  Then she dismissed the feeling.  It was reflex at this point.

She heard her dad putting laundry away in the hall closet.  Her door opened simultaneous with the knock her dad made.  He tossed her her ratty sweater.

She bit her tongue on the knocking thing.  She tossed her sweater onto her bed, and followed him out, just in time to see him turn on his television.

“Going to check the weather report.  Five minutes.”

She nodded.

She put a show on for the theme song music, spread out her homework, and made some tentative answers.

The show ended.  She ventured out of her room.

Her dad was lying on his bed, over the covers, pants and shoes on, hands folded over his belt buckle.

“I’ve been waiting for this episode.  I was thinking, do you want to do dinner instead?” he asked.

She retreated back to her room.  She put on another show, one aimed at people more like Booker and maybe Lucy’s Aunt Heather, all dramatic and dark and ‘sexy’, and tried to ignore the sounds of her dad’s comedy show, too loud, in the next room.  Canned laughter.

She watched, bored, through a makeout scene involving two women, and wondered if Avery would want the recommendation or if they wouldn’t be her type, or if it’d be offensive or whatever.  Was it really for people like Avery?

The episode ended, and the next one began, with a twenty-something guy getting out of bed in just his underwear.  She went back and forth a few times, paused, and used him as a study, drawing.

She put down her pencil and sketchpad.  When she left her room, it was in the same way she’d come into the house.  Quick and quiet.  Not making a sound.

But she did venture into her dad’s room.  His pants were lying by the door, the lights hadn’t ever been turned on, but the room had gone dark because the sun had set.  There was only the light from the TV.

Her dad had a sheet pulled up to his belly.

“I thought we were going to go out,” she told him.

“You didn’t seem that excited about it,” he said.

She hated this.  She hated this so much.  She hated it hated it hated it.

She wanted to push that television over.  She wanted to scream at him.  She hated that she’d entertained him even that little, listening to him and she hated that she was letting him get any emotion out of her at all.

“What?” he asked, indignant, as she stared at him.

She shrugged.

This wasn’t even a plan on his part.  His plans were more transparent.  She could work around his plans and ploys and read him like a book when it came to stuff like him wanting to fix their relationship after Sunday night.  But this was the sort of things she wouldn’t and couldn’t adapt to.

“Can you preheat the oven for dinner?” he asked.  “I’ll pop something in ten minutes.  Or you can, if you want a choice over what we eat.”

She stared him down.

“And rotate the laundry while you’re downstairs?  It’ll only take five minutes.”

She turned to go, deliberately stepping on his work pants by the door, to leave a grey footprint on them.

“Please and thank you!” he called after her, even though she wasn’t gone.

She kicked the pants down the hall so she could step on them again.  She felt the weight of his wallet against her toe, bent down, and pulled it out.  Sixty bucks.

“Oh, Verona!” he called after her.  “Can you check if there’s milk while you’re setting the oven?  If there isn’t I’ll give you money to run to the convenience store, and you can buy us both snacks.”

“I steal, and that seems to me that it’s probably karmically bad,” she murmured, holding the money between her hands, like she was praying.  “But he wronged me.  He pledged and he did not deliver.  I don’t feel this is wrong.”

She considered, then put twenty back.  She kicked the pants back to the door of his room.

Then, grabbing her bag, lighter with only her spell stuff, hat, and mask in it, she headed out, slamming the door behind her.

My mistake, she thought.  Like giving the Faerie thanks, I gave him something.  A bit of hope that things could be normal.

Now I’ve got less than I ever did.

More than half of Kennet was dark now.  But here, ‘downtown’, it was bright.  The lights were orange and artificial, the rest of Kennet dark blue.  The air was hot and the people who were out seemed to be idling.  Like there wasn’t much to do except sit in a parking lot and dick around, talking.

Verona ate her fried pastry, trying to control the paper so it caught the drippings of oil from the bottom end, while one finger was hooked into the little ventilation hole for a box of fries, dangling.

She could imagine that she felt like an Other.  When pretty much everyone who was out was out as a family, or gathering as a group, or dating, or something.

It was beautiful, viewing it as an outsider.  Bright and dark and living and it was any number of interlocked, interrelated systems that she had next to no interest in.

She didn’t even need her Sight to make it all seem strange.

Logos and brands she didn’t buy into.  Ads and bright signs that drove her away rather than pull her in.  Music she didn’t love and fashion that didn’t appeal.  If it wasn’t for Lucy, she might have already left it behind.

She’d bought a notebook with a panther or something embossed on the cover, along with braided leather at the edges and a bit more leather as a built-in bookmark.  She’d bought some school supplies, and picked up a black top with a lot of white lace at the straps and uppermost edge.  She’d worn it out of the store and now her skin faintly itched, probably because it was covered in chemicals that needed to be washed out before first wearing.

It was as if everyone in the crowd was walking left or right, except for one person that stood still.  A woman with long brown hair, wearing a red dress and sandals with straps that wound their way halfway up her calves.

She seemed familiar, and she seemed to stand outside of the flows and currents of the people around them.

Verona switched to her Sight.  The world was plunged into darkness and wrapped in cocoons.  All around her, red masses pressed against the transparent films, writhing and bustling.  The people in the crowd that were watching televisions through the window now watched a bit of red meat with a band of teeth corkscrewing down from its ‘head’ to its ankles, headbutting a bit of meat that hung from the store ceiling by stretches of tendon, like someone turned inside out and bound in their own flesh.

Verona would have loved to study and decipher that, to work out the why of it, because cool, or smirk at kids staring and acting like it was normal, but the woman…

The woman had the same hair and expression, and stood in a similar stance, but she wore a white dress, painted ninety percent red by the blood that flowed from fresh bite wounds at her chin, at her ear, at her neck, shoulder, breast, and side.  Most of one hand was missing, and blood ran freely down to the ground.  The strappy sandals were gone; both of her legs were missing, one mid-calf, one at the knee.  Replaced with splintered wooden pegs that dug into raw, gnawed flesh.  She swayed slightly, unbalanced on those feet.

The Winner.  The woman Avery had saved.

The woman turned, staggering away at a good clip.  Verona turned off her Sight, and the woman was striding, instead.

Verona started forward, weaving through the crowd.  Past a man with film wrapped around his head, the film expanding out into a bubble and sucking halfway into his mouth with each effortful breath.  Past a younger girl with film around her eyes.

If it was Avery, Verona felt like she would be able to do this well.  Avery was quick, good at navigating crowds.

Lucy… probably would have done something.  Shouted.  In a way that mattered.

Verona didn’t even know what she should say or do if she did catch up, so she didn’t shout.  When it came to navigating, she felt like groups, pairs, families were the biggest obstacles, moving slowly and moving together.

It didn’t help that she was short, or that she hated running and didn’t have a lot of practice.  She couldn’t see over people’s heads.

Sight.  When she used it, she was tricked over and over again, seeing red behind film and thinking it was the red dress, but she could see the blood that dripped off the woman.  Sometimes other blood, leaking through the plastick-y cocoon film, but usually hers, if she was willing to look down long enough to spot the trail.

If she turned it off, there was less deception, and she could navigate the crowd better.

She followed the trail, crossing the street, and had to quadruple-check to be sure the light was giving the right signal to cross, because it felt like that was the sort of thing her Sight would mess with her on.  Across the street, and the light changed before she could cross.  The woman was on the far side of the street, moving parallel.

Verona ducked through the crowd, stepping onto the road for a few paces to get around a cluster of older folks.

What was she doing here?  Was she a threat?  Something else?

Verona waited impatiently for the next set of lights to change.  Her eyes scanned the crowd, trying to find the woman.  Then she crossed.  The corner she was walking toward had a mom with a toddler in a carriage way too frigging big for the sidewalk real estate.  The toddler was screaming and flailing.

Verona used the Sight to see if there was anything going on there, and… there wasn’t, she was pretty sure.  But the wrapping around the kid was loose, and every flail was scattering fluids around.  The red stain that spread around the toddler was obscuring the trail.

Verona kept walking, scanning the ground.  An abandoned storefront had tarp over the front.  To her Sight, it was like foggy plastic sheeting, and an eyeless, mouthless, armless man rubbed his face against the sheeting, making it poke out.

“See her?” she asked him.  “Woman with the chewed feet.”

He jerked his head to one side.

She reversed course, looking both ways twice before jogging across the street.

She found the trail, but it was a minute old, trampled by passing feet.  She did her best to track it, while pulling out her phone.

“I’m here,” Lucy said.  “What’s up?”

“Here where?  Where is here?” Verona asked, a bit absently.  She searched the ground.

“My mom’s, still.  Reconnecting, why?”

“Woman from the Choir is here.  Downtown.  The one Avery saved.  She’s wandering, but I can’t track her.”

“Do you need me to come?  It’s tough for me to get away.”

“I’ll call Avery.  She could get here fast.”

“Good luck.  Want me to handle anything?”

“Call Matthew and Edith?  Let them know?”

“On it.”

Verona hung up, then hit the button for Avery.

“Hi, Verona.  What’s up?”

Chatter could be heard in the background.  Overlapping voices of different pitches and volumes.

“The winner from the Choir is here.  Downtown.”

“I’m downtown.  Where are you?”

“By the vet’s, heading north.”

“Right!” Avery exclaimed, then hung up.

Verona blinked a few times, then refocused.  She could appreciate that kind of brevity.  Doing away with the crap.

There weren’t any good bits of meat to ask, and no trail of blood, but she was pretty sure the woman had headed this way, by process of elimination.  Outside of a bar, a bunch of older people who looked like life had dealt them hard hands were all standing in a cloud of accumulated smoke from their cigarettes.

“A bit late to be out on your own, isn’t it?” one older man asked.

Verona ignored him, hurrying ahead.

“I can’t find her!” a kid’s voice screeched.

Snowdrop.

Avery made a grunting sound like she’d just jumped from a high place as she stepped out from beside a light-post, falling into stride beside Verona.  Snowdrop scrambled to catch up, with legs shorter than even Verona’s.  She looked up at Verona, eyes wide and surrounded with dark rings from apparent lack of sleep, biting her upper lip so that her teeth and the gaps where teeth should be were on display.  Her eyes flicked down.

Verona looked down.  She was still holding the last third of the fried dough with spinach.

She handed it over, and Snowdrop began devouring it.

“What are we looking for?” Avery asked.

“Red dress, brown hair.  With my Sight, it looked like she was bitten all over.  There was a blood trail, but I lost it.”

Avery nodded.  “Do we have anything from the Choir?  The paper?”

“Back at my place.  I’m always nervous it’ll get free of the little binding circle we did.”

“Dang.  Okay.  Eyes open.  She’s around here?”

“She’s downtown, I thought she headed north, and I don’t think she stepped into any stores, unless she slipped into the bar back there.”

“She saw you?  She’s running?”

“I don’t think so and I don’t think so.”

“Okay.  Split up?  You stay with Snowdrop?”

Verona nodded.

“Keep an eye out for the goblins.  They’re around.”

Verona gave Avery the thumbs up.

Then Avery walked the other way around a tree that was planted in a little circle of earth on the sidewalk, and was gone.

Cool.  Good to have backup.

Verona divided her attention between her phone, updating Lucy, and searching for the blood trail.

Snowdrop took in a deep breath, like she’d been eating at a pace that didn’t let her breathe.  All finished.

“One of my favorites, that,” Verona said.

“Awful.”

“Can you smell blood trails?  Or anything else hinky?”

“I’m like a bloodhound,” Snowdrop said.

“Right,” Verona said.

They zig-zagged, and on seeing Avery on the far side of the street, Verona chose a course that covered more ground, along the other sidewalk.

“How’s Ave?” Verona asked.

“She’s great.  A bit of a wimp, though.  Such a loser.”

“You’re looking after her?”

“Nah.  Screw that.  Not my job.”

“Good.”

It wasn’t just that tracking the woman required her to keep up, but every time she got off course, she was taking steps away, which necessitated two steps to catch up once she was on track again.

Had she gone into a store?  What were the stores?  Would the flayed things have signaled her or reacted more if she’d gone inside?

“What were you doing?” Verona asked.

Snowdrop looked over at Avery.  “I’m keeping secrets from her.”

“Oh?”

“Steering her away from little hiding spots and weird ways to get around.  The first one was the goblin hideyhole.”

“Ah ha.”

Avery whistled.

Verona checked both ways, then jogged across the street as soon as the way was clear.

“Handprints,” Avery said.  “She was missing fingers, right?”

Verona nodded.

“The handprints are too.  And there’s some trailing bits of ribbon in the wind.”

Verona couldn’t see it, but she could take Avery at her word.

The road they were going down wasn’t a busy one.  It ran parallel to the off-ramp onto the highway, and led to some residences at the base of the mountain.  A lot of them were constructed so the rainy runoff from the mountain would flow around them, and the very base of the mountain itself was damp from the rain of two days prior, not yet dried up because of the shadow the mountain cast, or the sheer quantity of moisture.

Jaundiced yellow eyes glowed in the gloom.  Then red pinpoints.  A single yellow eye and light reflecting off of a lens.

Off to the side of the road, three goblins moved through the ditch, Toadswallow and Gashwad almost climbing over one another in their hurry and bustle.

“Snowdrop was showing you good hiding places?” Verona asked Avery.

“Uhh, ways through places.  Some ways into buildings.  The goblins showed her, she showed me.  She led me to Munch from Downtown’s place.  We were talking.”

“About?”

“Nothing particular.  I was killing time, mostly.  Putting off going home.”

“Same.”

“Your dad?” Avery asked.

“Yeah.  The usual, pretty much.  Just… maybe the last straw.”

“What happened?”

Verona saw blood.  She pointed, and then tracked the trail off to the side.  A dirt road.

“Nothing that major.  One more promise broken,” Verona said.  She pulled off her bag, then got her mask and cape.  “This feels dangerous.”

Avery nodded, pulling stuff off her charm bracelet, and shaking them until they grew to full size, dust rolling off of them.

“Face it head on!” Snowdrop exclaimed, eyes wide.

“Yeah!” the three goblins echoed her.

“We should be okay, Snow,” Avery said, her deer mask in place.  To Verona’s sight, the strap of the mask was a ribbon, blowing in the wind.  So was the band that held her ponytail in place, and the length of what would’ve been chain, tying the dog tag into place around her cloak, at her collarbone, “We have backup.”

She gave Verona a look, as if to communicate what she couldn’t with words.  They did have backup, but it was unreliable backup.  The local Others were nervous about things, and that could extend to the goblins.

“I can’t look my Granddad in the eyes.  I can’t sleep, but if I toss and turn then my sisters give me flack,” Avery said.  “While I was stuck on the trail, I wanted nothing more than to be back and home.  Then I got home and… I want a vacation from home.”

“I want a vacation from home every day,” Verona said.

“I kinda get it now,” Avery said.  “And I really don’t intend any offense saying this- not sure I should say it.”

“Don’t say it,” Snowdrop said.

“Say it,” Verona told her friend.

“It scares me.  I don’t mean anything bad, I don’t mean I dislike you or think there’s anything bad about you, but-”

“Nah,” Verona answered.  “Nah, I get that.  It’s good.  That’s good.”

“Don’t- I’m so worried that even if you’re okay with it now, you’ll resent me later.”

“Nah,” Verona said.  “Not wanting your family situation to become like mine is… common sense.  Reality.  I’m not Lucy, and I’m not going to get cranky.  I think I get what you mean.”

“The moments where things are good at home are… so nice.  When Grumble is telling me he’s proud of me and how I’m doing at sports, and I can barely understand him, and when my brothers and sisters are on my side against the parents, or the parents are defending me against my siblings, or there’s a thing everyone thinks is funny, like Grumble trying to play bum darts at Christmas, and dad trying to keep him from falling over while he’s laughing so hard… that’s family, you know?”

Verona scanned the area, searching for blood.  She looked at the goblins, who jostled one another.

She really, really wished she knew, or could remember a good time when she knew.

“On Sunday, when you were gone and we couldn’t get you back,” Verona said.

“Yeah?”

“I needed him to not let me down.  I think if he could’ve had my back and given me the benefit of a doubt just that once, if he could’ve considered the world beyond him and himself… I could have eventually forgiven him for just about anything he’s done.  But he didn’t.  So I left.  I cut connections and I stayed out the whole night, slept in the cabin where you were stuck.”

“I didn’t know you stayed out all night.”

“Talked to Charles, but he left.  Kept an eye on you.  Snowdrop too.”

“Thanks Snowdrop.  Thank you for worrying, Verona.”

“You owe me one,” Snowdrop said.

Verona continued, “Not looking for thanks, just… filling you in.  Lucy relieved me in the morning.  We passed the baton, so to speak, to Matthew and Edith.  Lucy made me go to school.”

Avery pointed at the ground, then pointed in a direction.

They changed course a bit.

“I think because of the connections shenanigans, my dad’s been a bit in my face.  Trying a litle harder, for a little longer… and it’s still not even trying.  Today, it was a super small thing.  A ride, and a cinnamon roll.”

“The cinnamon rolls from the dumpster are the worst,” Snowdrop said.

“Decadent dumpster rolls,”  Toadswallow said, batting his belly.

“He let you down again?” Avery guessed.

“It shouldn’t be this that gets to me this much,” Verona said.  “But the big things and the little things and… I think I might be done trying.  And I think if you want to avoid going down this road… maybe fight a little harder.  Because it was somehow really easy to let things get to this point.”

“It’s hard,” Avery said.  “The family stuff.  Like, the good moments are so good and I want those, but the rest of it is work and… I’m really tired, ever since Sunday.”

“Yeah.”

Verona looked and saw a meaty thing hanging from the tree by its ankles.  The wrapping around it was giving it a wedgie, and it thrashed, flayed skin bulging around and past the wrapping.

She ventured closer, breaking away from Avery.

Blood trail.

“This way.”

“Good,” Avery said, waving over the goblins.

But as the goblins arrived, Verona motioned for them to go ahead.  “Give us a bit of privacy?”

Gashwad sniggered.

“So we can talk,” Verona added.

“Do you want me to stay?” Snowdrop asked.

Avery looked at Verona.

“You can stay,” Verona said.

They followed the trail for another minute.  Verona tried to work through the implications.

“I don’t want you to tell Lucy this.”

“Tell her what?  You’re making me nervous.”

“I don’t think I have it in me to stick around,” Verona said.

“Stick around, like… you’re leaving Kennet?  Staying with your mom?”

“No, no.  Like, I don’t ever want to leave Lucy.  Or you, for that matter.  You’re important to me.  But I can’t bear my dad, so much of the time.  And every time something like today happens, it gets harder.”

Avery nodded, swatting at her neck where a bug had settled.

Verona scanned the surroundings with her Sight, to make sure nothing was weird.

Just regular bugs.  They were in the woods now, and the damp runoff from the mountain made this territory for mosquitoes and blackflies.

“I was thinking of becoming Other.  Except when I hinted at it, Lucy freaked.”

Behind her deer mask, Avery’s eyes went wider, mist rolling over the surface, the edges of the irises and the black of the pupils clear in that foggy green soup.

“I thought, feeling like you do right now, maybe you’d understand.”

“I kind of do and I’m kind of geez,” Avery told her.  “That’s… a big decision.”

“And every bit we hear about what it’s like to be Alpeana and work and have to keep intact, and the scariness of practitioners, and Edith and Matthew running into roadblocks, or life being harder, I get that.  I’ve been listening so carefully.  But I’m also  like… fuck, I hate moaning about my feelings.”

“If you’re not going to do it with your friend, in a dark forest, in the company of an awesome opossum and a bunch of degenerate goblins, when are you going to moan?” Avery asked.

Verona smiled.

She still didn’t volunteer more.

Avery pointed out handprints that Verona’s sight couldn’t see.

Verona liked the idea that one of them could pick up where the other left off, with only periodic stopping to find the trail again.  If Lucy was here, would the three of them together be able to follow this trail without interruption?  Leaning on each other, each offering their own power?

She simultaneously wished Lucy was here with as much intensity as she’d wanted anything since getting Avery back, and was really, really frigging glad that Lucy wasn’t present.

“You never finished your thought,” Avery said.

“It was just that.  A thought.  I dunno.”

“It sounded like more than that.  Dish.”

Verona shook her head.

“Dish.  I’ll be Lucy-like if I have to,” Avery told her, stern.

“I feel like I could go crazy, when it’s bad.  So then I think, hey, there’s a way out.  Become an Other, leave it all behind.  And it’s not always a serious thought, but it’s like… bam.  All that feeling that’s been building up has a place to go that’s not inside me.  But to keep doing that, I have to keep considering it, more and more seriously, and I don’t know what happens later.  Do I lose it and do something I regret?  Or do I snap and find myself doing what I used to just be considering?”

“I don’t know,” Avery said.  “But if it’s that serious, maybe talk to Lucy?”

“It’s so stupid, that a car ride is what’s getting to me this much,” Verona said.

“Nah.  I freaked out and left dinner over a singing show.  I think Lucy gets it too.”

“And it’s even stupider that I’m moaning about this crap, and you went through… scary stuff.  And you have to be feeling weird, walking through the woods at night.”

“I am, some.  But I can deal.  I’m trying to be braver, and chase the me I want to be,” Avery said.

“And I’m trying to be the most useless little shit,” Snowdrop piped up. “I’ll heck off and leave Avery high and dry, you can look after her, and to hell with your own problems.”

“Thanks, Snowdrop,” Verona said, then to Avery, “I’m glad you have her.  But let me know, if you need to talk or vent or whatever?  Because I don’t know how to help you handle this thing you went through, and I want to help you handle it, so let me know and I’ll be super glad to.”

Avery nodded.  “I don’t know how to handle it either.”

They chased the trail, and it was getting thinner.

They were slower than the woman was, because they had to find their way.

“I haven’t seen your shirt today,” Verona told Snowdrop.

Snowdrop unzipped her jacket.

‘Dumpster Firiest’.

Verona gave her a thumbs up.

“Love the shirts,” Avery said.

“Where do you get ’em?” Verona asked.

“They’re a part of her, like her hair or teeth, or the buttons on her hood,” Avery said.

“Nuh uh!” Snowdrop made a sound of protest.

“Huh.”

They followed the trail deeper into the woods.  There was a little house or cabin down the way, and it looked a bit like the trail was going that way, but then it turned.

Verona ventured, “So, hypothetically, if I found a tv show with a cool woman-woman relationship, and probably-hot topless making out, would you want me to fire you a link, or…”

“If it’s got nudity, I think that’s blocked at my house.”

“That’s a thing parents actually do?  Frig.  Would you want to come over to check it out, or would that be weird?”

“That’d be weird.  Like watching with my siblings in the room.”

“Don’t you do practically everything in your house with siblings-?”

The conversation stopped short.  The goblins were hunkered down by trees, and Toadswallow pressed a finger to his lips.  Cherrypop was with the group now.

Bluntmunch motioned for the three of them to come closer.

They crouched down.

Off in the distance, peeking through the trees, was a diffuse light.

“Cherrypop f- messed up,” Bluntmunch growled.  He lightly punched Cherrypop with a fist about as big as she was.

“Augh!” Cherrypop exclaimed.

“I dare say, this fetid little bit of shat was supposed to watch this last mile perimeter.  She’s derelict in her duties.”

“Auuugh!  No!”

“A mile of perimeter sounds like a lot,” Avery said.

“Yeah!  A friggin’ lot!” Cherrypop piped up.

“Quiet!” Bluntmunch snarled, swatting her lightly.

“What’s ahead?” Verona asked.

“Your woman.  And a stranger with summons.”

“Summons as in- like, a practitioner?

“One of the ones who was nosing around,” Toadswallow said.  “It seems they’ve done away with some of the spirits we set up, and are finding their way in.  A somewhat innocent dame can go where a practitioner or errant Other might make a ward fart or a traps go off.”

“Fart?” Avery asked.

“A goblin ward.  You start with a good round animal, like a hedgehog or owl, a bit of wire to tie it down, some soda, cabbage, or other gassy food, gotta treat it to make it more gassy, then a bit of gum, to plug up its-”

“Okay, okay, I think I can see where that goes,” Avery told him.

“They go off violently enough you can hear the detonations from miles away, sometimes,” Bluntmunch said.  “Especially if you have an ear for it.  They stopped before setting off one, and Cherry didn’t spot ’em.”

Cherrypop wailed until a hand was clamped over her mouth and head, pressing her down.

“You gotta deal with them,” Bluntmunch said.  “It gets messy if we do.”

“I’ll call Matthew and Edith,” Avery said.  “Verify, decide a course of action.”

Verona nodded.  She pulled out her own phone.

“We can be your backup,” Bluntmunch told them.  “You can call John.  I’ll bring some more with, so we outnumber them.”

Verona texted Lucy.  While she did, she asked, “What are they doing?”

“Sitting in the car and talking,” Bluntmunch said.

“But they’re not leaving?”

Bluntmunch shook his head.

Snowdrop pulled her head down, then ducked ahead.

“Hey, sorry to call so late.  We’re at the perimeter with the local goblins,” Avery said.

Verona updated Lucy.

Lucy’s response was pointed.  Be Safe.

“…outside practitioner.  Cherrypop apparently messed up-”

Cherrypop made a sound, beneath Bluntmunch’s hand.

“-and they got close.  Sent the winner from the Hungry Choir ritual in.  We don’t know what she did or got.  Blunt says we should handle it.”

There was a pause.

“The Goblins are offering backup.  We can call John.”

Another pause.

“Thanks.  Okay.”

Avery hung up.  She gave Verona a serious look.

“I can call friends,” Bluntmunch said.

“He’s good at that.  Having dregs he can call,” Gashwad said.  “Not good at much else though, are yeh?”

Bluntmunch shifted his grip on Cherrypop, then flung her at the other two.  “Keep her quiet.”

Toadswallow and Gashwad fought each other to be the one to hold onto the smallest goblin.  Cherrypop squeaked.

Bluntmunch prowled across the area, found a tree with a decent sized hole in it, and spat in his hand.  He drew in the spit, then shoved his hand into the hole.

He brought out a goblin, kicking, scrabbling and making sounds of protest, then held a calloused mitt to their mouth.  The goblin was hairless, pear-shaped, alarmingly smooth, and wore frilly granny panties.

“You can call this one-”

“Mind your manners and keep it f’ing polite,” Toadswallow warned.

“-Butty McButtbutt,” Bluntmunch said, deadpan, and the expression on his twisted face made it look like he was dying inside.

He repeated the process twice more.

Another goblin, of Gashwad’s size, with dreads that trailed to the ground, and a chimp-like build with overlong arms.  The face behind the dreads was perpetually snarling.

“Doglick.”

And a female goblin, with asymmetric muscle that formed a ridge most of the way down her spine, twisting her upper body and head into a question mark shape.  One of her arms was twice as long as the other, and bristled with hooks and needles stuck through the skin, until there was more metal visible than flesh.

She fought the hardest, raking Bluntmunch’s arm four or five times and backhanding him across the face before she seemed to recognize him, where she retreated.  She had one eye that glowed in the dark as she backed up into shadow, so round it didn’t look like an eye in the dark.  The other was lost in the scarred mess at the right side of her face.

“Snatchragged.”

“So disappointing, I told you to mind your mother-molesting manners,” Toadswallow said, shaking his head.

“That was politer,” Bluntmunch said.  “These three are some regulars from my crew, when it’s not the Kennet goblins.  You’ll see them around some.”

Butty smiled, ear to ear, showing off mismatched yellow and black teeth that were at odds with how smooth and pink he was, beady black eyes unblinking.  He rubbed his belly with both hands, and it distended, like organs beneath the surface rolled over one another and pushed against skin in the process, or sat out of place until they could slide into another position.

“What’s this?” Snatch asked.

“Might be a fight.  I’ll pay you.  Double if it isn’t one,” Blunt said.

She nodded, glowing eye moving up and down in the dark.  Doglick yipped.

Verona got her cards, and pulled out the thorn, moving it to a position where it was available if she needed to grab it.

Avery pulled a hockey stick charm from her bracelet, and shook it out to full length.  Diagrams were already drawn on it.

“How many of those do you have?”

“This is the second last of two,” Avery said.  Her eyes were misty green behind her mask.  She looked out toward the light.

Verona did the same.

When they moved, it was at the same time, without signal.  Ducking through branches and beneath trees, goblins following.

It’s not out of the question the goblins attack us, Verona reminded herself.  Bluntmunch might be at odds with the deal he made during awakening, if he did, but… he might not, too.  If the non-Kennet goblins lashed out and he wasn’t fast enough.

She kept an ear out for them.  Her Sight helped with making her way in the dark.

Avery, rope in one hand, stick in the other, passed through the trees to Verona’s right, emerged at her left, then returned to the right again.

They drew closer.

The car was at least ten years old, a station wagon with wood panel sides that had seen better years, with an antenna sticking out the top.  The headlights were bright enough to illuminate the dirt road.

The practitioner leaned against the hood.  Maybe sixteen or seventeen, he wore a wife beater, jeans, and had a denim jacket tied around his waist.  He was short, stocky, with light brown skin, and hair that had been shaved at the sides and grown longer on top, slicked back. A bandanna sat around his neck, red.

The woman was beside him, wearing the red dress.  Her arms were folded, and she periodically waved her arms to dismiss the bugs.

A radio from the car buzzed, ninety percent static, overlapping with the static from a smaller radio that sat on the hood of the car.  He reached over and adjusted the dial.  More television static than shadow, with very faint edges, a silhouette appeared by the car.  He adjusted again, and it became three.

“We’ve got company,” the practitioner said.

“Who?  What?  Where?” the woman asked.

He pointed right at Verona.

She ducked beneath a branch, fixed her hat, and stepped out onto the road, just to the side of the headlights.

Avery emerged on the far side of the road, a bit behind the pair.  She backed up as a static-y figure stepped out of the shadow, between her and the car.

“It’s them,” the woman said.  “The ones who saved me.”

“So it seems.  Unfortunately…”

“No need for anything unfortunate,” Avery said.

“They brought goblins.  You don’t bring goblins to a tea party.  You bring them to a mean fight.”

“Can we talk?” Verona asked.  “There’s a way to handle this peacefully.”

“If not, we get the car, radios,” Bluntmunch growled.  “They’re important to him.”

“Yeh,” Snatch replied.

Doglick snorted violently, walking up with Gashwad a foot to his right.

“You shouldn’t threaten a guy’s car,” the practitioner said.  “That crosses lines.”

“What’s that guy’s name?” Verona asked.  “Who are you and what do you want?”

“Zed, apprentice to Rad Ray Sunshine, and I was curious.  This sort of thing is my jam.”

“Uh huh,” Verona said.  “Verona.  Avery.  What thing is your jam?”

“Website, music, strange signals.  New-ish Others.”

“The Choir?” she asked.

“This place keeps coming up when we’re looking into it,” the woman in the red dress said.

“We never got your name,” Verona said.  She wished Lucy was here.  She liked Lucy being on point more than she liked being on point.

“Brie.”

“Hi Brie,” Avery said, from the back.  As she paced, the static-y figure remained in the way.

More of the static figures kept between the car and the goblins.

“What will you do when you get the info you want?” Verona asked.

“Depends on a lot,” Zed replied.  He looked very casual, one hand in his pocket, the other by the radio, sitting back.  He glanced periodically at the goblins.  “I haven’t seen enough of it to know what I can do with it.  But I’d like to dismantle it for parts, so to speak.”

“We wouldn’t necessarily get in your way,” Verona told him.  “Your timing is awful though.  Why now?”

“It shifted patterns, ever so slightly.  First time that we’ve recorded that the new flyer came out and Kennet wasn’t on the list.  That makes me curious.  I think you’re at the heart of the pattern change, girls who intervened, and I know that makes the ritual weaker.”

“Zed thinks that if he can bind it, he can dampen it enough it’s not really active, but it won’t cut off the benefits,” Brie told them.

“What does not really active mean?” Avery asked.

“It means the ritual would continue, but it would be opt-in only.  It wouldn’t look for the rest of the contestants.  You might need to get eight willing participants together, to make it even work in the first place.”

“Wouldn’t it be better if we just stopped it once and for all?” Avery asked.

“If you did, then people like Brie who won wouldn’t get to keep the rewards.”

“Is that really that important?” Avery asked.

“It’s a matter of life and death,” Brie said.

“So’s keeping the ritual alive,” Avery retorted.

“Uh,” Verona butted in.

Zed locked eyes with her.

“This is stuff we could negotiate,” Verona said.  “But we have responsibilities.  Kennet is our turf, so to speak.  We’re the practitioners for this area, we are actually in the midst of getting a handle on this.  Negotiations really need to start with you agreeing to back off and ignore Kennet.  Then we can talk about giving you info, sharing resources…”

“Is there a chance your way of handling it ends the Choir?” Brie asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Verona admitted.  “This isn’t our full group.  We need to consult before we make any hard decisions.  And again… really need to get an agreement that you’ll ignore Kennet.”

“Or?” Zed asked.

The goblins bristled.

Zed turned up the volume on the radio.  The static images clarified, the grey dots becoming stark white ones, the outlines firmer.  Now the static-y figures were making a static sound themselves.  In the midst of the static, Verona could hear murmurs, moans, and angry shouting, as if from far away, almost drowned out.

Yeah.  Verona could see how someone who collected these sorts of things might be interested in the Choir.

“Just asking for the sake of asking, right now.  Trying to get the full picture.”

“The fuller picture is that we can’t allow you to get the full picture.”

“That just makes me more curious.”

“Curiosity gets the cat dead, dear sir,” Toadswallow said, from the sidelines.

“Please don’t comment,” Avery said.  “You said you wanted us to handle this.”

“So you’re in charge?” Zed asked.  He shifted from leaning against the hood to standing.  He smiled.  “You keep implying threats, but I don’t get the sense you’re that bloodthirsty.  You have goblins but you’re not goblin queens.  You’re not carrying an assortment of nasty tricks.”

“We’ve got a couple.”

“But you’re not loaded to bear like one of them would be.  You’re not on the same page as them.  I’m so darn curious.”  He smiled, excited.

“That’s not good,” Verona said.  “We’re willing to cooperate, and I’d be happy to give you a good deal, but the big thing is your curiosity has to remain unsated.”

“Curiosity is what got me into the practice.”

“That’s great.  Me too, kinda.  But again… no go.”

“I think… my stubbornness in this trumps your willingness to dissuade me.  You’ve got some clout, but you’re not that aggressive.”

“We are,” Bluntmunch said.

“We’re the practitioners for this area, it’s our responsibility.  We’ve faced danger and hostility trying to protect it.”

“And you protect it.  I couldn’t get close for a while without something interfering.  A woman I couldn’t see, even with some really good tools.  Now she’s gone, and I still can’t get near, because there’s other layers of defense.  But she can get in.”

He indicated Brie.

“I think, uh, she should stop,” Avery said.

“I rented a bed and breakfast for the week.”

“I hear bad stories about that place,” Verona said.  “Crackheads.”

“Yeah.  Saw some.  But I’m kind of stubborn too.  You don’t get through all eight rounds of the ritual without having something.”

“We helped you.  You could return the favor by backing off.”

She seemed to consider, then shook her head.

“Please?” Avery asked.

“It doesn’t feel like that chapter of my life’s ended.  My life is weird now.  Like everything’s disconnected.”

Verona winced.  “Could we strike another deal?  We’d have to consult-”

“With the third member of your group?” Brie asked.

Everyone, but- “Yes,” Verona confirmed.  “What about a deal that you could study, but you couldn’t share that knowledge, or use it against the Others here without permission?”

“Not good enough,” Toadswallow murmured, off to the side.

“I don’t operate that way,” Zed told them.  “Freedom of information is a personal precept of mine.”

“Girls,” Toadswallow said.

Both Avery and Verona looked at him.

“If he’s right, and you’re not willing to draw blood, we should think about consulting Mr. Stiles.”

“That sounds ominous,” Zed told them.  “Let’s say that if you try that, I’ll end up turning this volume knob up all the way.  And the voices in the static here will get agitated.”

“Try, and we’ll agitate your insides,” Bluntmunch told Zed.

“Let’s not start a fight,” Avery said.  “Can we-”

“We can’t,” Gashwad growled.  Doglick yipped.

“He won’t budge until we make him,” Bluntmunch said.

“Get in there, so John doesn’t have to,” Snowdrop said, off to the side.

Avery swayed on the spot, then backed up.

“We keep getting told, there’s something wrong with outside practitioners,” Verona said, as she backed up as well.  “This might be your last chance to prove them wrong.”

“Well, cat-faced Verona, that’s an interesting detail all on its own.”

“It’s not meant to be.”

“Back off?” Verona asked.

“No.  Sorry.”

“I’m sorry too,” Avery said, off to Zed’s right.

Zed turned to look, but Avery was gone.

She was in the woods on the other side of the road, almost behind Zed.

And John emerged shortly after, striding forward, gun in hand.

Zed didn’t even see, but Brie did.

“Zed!” she shrieked, before lunging forward, grabbing Zed’s arm, and pulling him to the ground, as John fired three times in quick succession.

“Cassette!” Zed kicked the bumper of the car, and the car radio kicked on, blaring the opening sting of some old music.

Crying…!” the radio blared, top volume.

John dropped his gun to point at Zed or Brie, when he twisted.  He was tackled by a man with a mullet, a wispy mustache, a tight shirt, and short-shorts.

…cold tears!” the radio continued.

They hit the ground, and the gun went off, pressed against the attacker’s chin.  The bullet seemed to take the top of the man’s head off.  John put two more bullets in the man’s chest as he rose to his feet.  The car’s cassette player skipped.  Returning to the opening sting.

Verona put her hands to her ears, too late to matter, because they were ringing painfully.

Crying cold tears!” the cassette player was still audible.  The song playing over from the beginning.

The man with the mullet was gone, reappearing, resuming the attack.  The foggy air around the car headlights had taken on a sunset tint.

The goblins swarmed, attacking the car.  Static silhouettes met them, wrapping arms around them and then blurring in shape, like they were amoebas trying to swallow them up.

Doglick was ferocious, snarling and clawing like he was on a video being played at double speed.  Snatch raked one with her messed up hand, snaring its ‘arm’, with Gashwad following up by biting the arm and nearly tearing it off.

John fired a bullet, dispatching the mullet man, which prompted the car’s cassette player to skip, and the mullet man’s reappearance.  He couldn’t find a free second to aim at anything else.

The gunshots seemed to make all of the static figures flicker or fade a bit.

Verona drew a card from her pocket, a marker from the other, and pulled the cap from it with her teeth.

But Zed had grabbed the radio, and cranked up the volume.

A static figure manifested out of nowhere, bright, and loud with static.

Wartime, people everywhere scared, loss of life, and fear, panic-” the static man whispered at her.

The figure grabbed her wrist.

We’re cut off from everyone, we’re surrounded by darkness, it’s hopeless, and this message can’t get out,” it whispered.

She dropped the marker, reached into her pocket with care, and pulled out the thorn.  She jabbed the static figure.

It dimmed, weakening, and all the others dimmed too.  The static quieted, just a bit, the voices becoming less distinct.

A distress call, from anyone to everyone, it doesn’t matter when we’re all gone,” the figure whispered, quieter.

She was able to pull her hand free.  She kicked at it, which pushed her back more than it pushed it away, then shouted, “Card!”

She threw the card.

John and Avery both covered their eyes.  Zed and Brie didn’t.  The card flashed, lighting up the area.

It served to incapacitate the mullet man, giving John the opportunity to twist around and fire bullets into the hood of the car, apparently aiming at the cassette player from the outside.  The bullets bounced off the hood, hit the windshield, and sparked there too.

He aimed at Zed, who was already taking cover behind an open car door, radio tucked under one arm.

“No killing!” Avery called out.  “Incapacitate, then we try negotiating again!”

The mullet man tackled John again.

It was chaos, so much noise.

The flash hadn’t affected the static figures, but it had affected the goblins.  They were being overwhelmed with the static radio at full volume, swamped and swallowed.

Avery cut through them with the hockey stick, weakening them enough that the goblins could fight free.

“Cherry!” Avery called out, lowering her stick.

“Yaha!”

Once the goblin had grabbed the stick, Avery used it to fling her forward, into the open window.  Or at it.  She clipped the side, grabbed it, then jumped into the back seat.

Verona reached for her cloak, finished the circle to drench herself in darkness, and stepped around the light, holding the thorn, still.  There was a chance it could hit the car’s protection, or if she could stick it where this ‘Zed’ practitioner couldn’t see it, it could be a way of getting him to back off.

More of the static rose up in her way.

“Here!”  Toadswallow, beneath the car, tossed something Verona’s way.  “A loan!”

A gnarled and knobby stick.

Sure.

It was something she could use to swat at the static figures.  Zed and Brie were in the car, and it looked like their whole setup was a nigh-indestructible car exterior and a whole bunch of gizmos that produced Others.

John reloaded.  The mullet man came after him, and John shot him without looking.  The man reappeared, and John shot him again, picking up speed as he jogged, then ran toward the car.

The car squealed on the road, backing up.  It looked like Brie was trying to catch Cherrypop, who was rampaging around inside beneath the seats, and Zed was reversing, to keep some distance between them and the Dog of War John Stiles.

Except the car made it about a foot before stopping.  Tires squealed and the car fishtailed, fish-headed?  The back tire caught.

It was Butty, the pear-shaped goblin, lying down behind the tire.  His face contorted as the tire skidded against his side and hip, finding no traction against his flesh.  It did catch the frilly granny panties the goblin wore, and made them ride up, never quite making them tear.

Goblins are chaos.  They make a controlled situation messy.

Bluntmunch jumped onto the hood.  He began pounding.  Two of the other goblins soon followed, so that the car itself was their high ground against the massing static.

Verona backed away from more of the static, trying to find an angle to get through.  She wasn’t good at this.

At the car, John had caught up.  He got to the window, which was rolled up, and said something to his gun, touching his dog tags.

He pressed the gun to the window.

“Don’t kill them!” Avery warned.

The car headlights, the static, and the blaring noise of the cassette player all stuttered at once.  Many of the static figures disappeared.

An advantage?  Had someone figured out something to do?

The gun made a dull sound as John pulled the trigger.  He looked down at it, then cast it aside.

A trick on Zed’s part.

“Avery!”

Avery, still swinging her way through the newly emerging static figures on the far side of the street, perked up, looking at Verona, then ducked behind a tree.

“What?” Avery asked, behind Verona

“Thorn.  Get the car,” Verona said, passing her the thing.

That left only the issue of the static.  She backed away as the figures began to surround her.  She moved her thumb over the notecards she’d written diagrams on.

If the flash didn’t bother them… maybe the bang?

She threw a card, aiming to get it as far from her as possible.  The wind caught it, and it didn’t fly perfectly straight.

She threw herself sideways into the ditch.

The card exploded into a ball of flame.  Static figures flickered and paused.

Free of the interference of the static men, Avery had reached the car.  She pushed the thorn into the side, with some resistance.

The goblins who were pounding and scratching began to get some traction.  Gashwad tore away the rubber insulation around the window, and dug claws into the gap.

But Zed wasn’t idle.  In the background, flickering like a bad VHS, was a tall man, muscular, with a ruined face filled with splinters and bits of wood, until it looked like an explosion in progress.  He carried a serrated saw, like the kind two men would use in concert to bring down a giant tree.

Verona had some glamour, but glamour was a risk.  She could draw an image, but what did Zed care about?  What would make him pause?

The car?  It was already under attack.  Answers?  She wasn’t sure how to make them a thing.

Avery could step into the fray and swing her stick around, and be fast and cool and collected, in situations like this.

Verona glanced at her friend.  The stick-swinging was furious, angry.

Maybe not cool in the ‘calm’ sense.

Which was beside the point.  In the Hungry Choir encounter, Verona had kept her head down, questioned Brie, and made a few decisive actions.  Right now, it felt like she couldn’t think.  Every time she tried to get her bearings or string two thoughts together, the static figures would take steps toward her, whispering and babbling.

…war was lost a long time ago, and they’ve kept it from us because the oppressors are here and have been here all along and we know, we know they’re here and we know we’ve failed ourselves and…

The VHS flickering extended from the man with the saw.  The side of the road began to look like a cabin interior, with tools on the wall.

He reached up, grabbed one, and gave it to a static figure.  A giant, gently-curved spike.  The next one got a mallet that had been smashed through a skull, part of the skull still intact around the head.  It came away as the static figure gave it a shake.

Verona looked through the window at Brie, who stared back at her.

She stared and she tried to convey some emotion, some message.

The flickering man who was arming the static disappeared.  So did the growing area of the wooden walls and workshop.

She had hope.

Except the goblins also backed off, all in concert, and that felt… not goblin.

Something else.

John backed off, stepping off the side of the road, while reloading his gun.  Verona took his cue, and motioned for Avery to do the same.

Cars came down the dirt road.  Two cars, and a big truck that had tarp over its load in the back.

They slowed as they reached Zed’s car, then stopped, the lead car’s passenger side window lined up with passenger side window.

“Problem?” one called out.

“Getting by,” Zed answered.

“Ow!” Brie cried out.

“Everything okay there?” the driver asked.

“Something under the seat.  Ow!  Bugger!”

“Need a jump, or-”

“Parked for now.  Got stuck a bit ago,” Zed told him.

“If you’re sure.”

Zed nodded.

The procession of cars continued.

“It’s normally good manners to set up a barrier or connection blocker so that doesn’t happen,” Zed said, while rolling up his window.  It looked like a crank handle.  Some of the goblins emerged from under the car, climbing up the side.

“It would be good manners to listen when we say you’re trespassing,” Avery told him.

Verona remained silent.  She looked at Brie.

Brie said something to Zed, and Verona couldn’t hear it with most of the windows closed up.  The woman winced as she picked up her feet from the floor of the car.

Gifts.  What options did they have?  Verona thought of the still images, but she was stuck on what to do on short notice.  Another car?  Too complex.

Hot lead, no.  Ring was with Lucy.  She didn’t have any great spell cards.

“Moment one of you dings my car, I’m cranking the volume to max again,” Zed warned.  “Brie says she wants to talk, but I’m not sure what there is to talk about.”

Maybe…

“Are you a student at the Institute?” Verona asked.

“Might be.  What’s it to you?”

“So are we,” Verona told him.

“And students are forbidden from attacking and harming one another.  I see your angle.”

“I’m going to tell you now, we’ve made promises to protect this area.  If you intrude,” Verona told him, “then you do so knowing it provokes violence.”

“From you.”

“But it provokes violence.  That seems against the spirit of things, if not the letter.”

“Nah,” Zed replied.  “It’s against the letter.”

Verona swallowed.

“Guess we have our compromise,” Zed told them.  “I can’t enter-”

“You can’t dig, either,” Avery said.  “We’ve outlined the restrictions.  If you go looking, we have to stop you.”

Zed nodded.

“And if you go talking about Kennet, or sending others here-”

“Yeah, yeah, got it,” Zed said.  “You realize this only makes me more interested?”

Verona remained silent.

“You owe us one, Brie,” Avery said.  “I hate saying that, because it makes the good deed we did into something we’re using, but…”

“I owe Zed too,” Brie said.

“Just… don’t make this harder?” Avery asked.

Brie pursed her lips, then nodded.

John was stiff, gun in hand, barely visible at the very edge of the headlights.

“You know others are interested, right?” Zed asked.  “Eventually someone’s going to find the hole in your defenses and get the answers.  If they don’t, they’ll get frustrated enough to hire the Belangers to look into this.  There’re too many dangerous or uncontrolled things out there that need to be managed, or watched, or prevented.”

The Belangers were handled, but Verona didn’t want to give that tidbit away.  Handled for five years, at the very least.

“Get your goblins off my car?” Zed asked.  “I’ll leave.  At least for tonight, we can put this to rest.”

Verona stared at him.  He smiled.

“Down,” Avery told the goblins.

They hopped down.  Snatch dragged her hand down the window, producing a metal-on-glass sound, and then the car door.  Other goblins tried similar things to less effect.

Zed winced at that.

Verona jogged up, walked over to the car door with the thorn in it, and reclaimed the thing.  Then she backed off, letting the station wagon reverse and do a three-point turn, before heading down the dirt road.

“He intends to send the girl in again,” Toadswallow said.

“Maybe,” Verona said.

“He’ll arm her with tools, tricks, trinkets.  Things like what he used.  Ways to cloud the trail and keep her out of sight,” John said.

“What do we do if he does?” Avery asked.  “And don’t say shoot her.”

“Keep her, maybe,” Verona said.  “Prisoner.  Treat her well, but… maybe we make it so she can’t leave until we’re sure things are okay.  If she insists on coming in and looking for more answers.”

“I’ll keep an eye on the bed and breakfast,” John said.  “I’ll quietly arrest her if I see her.”

“It doesn’t feel like a good guy move,” Avery said.  “Kidnapping.”

“Except, y’know, the alternatives are actual bad guy moves,” Verona said.

Avery pulled off her mask and hat as a single motion.  Strands of hair were stuck to her face with sweat.  She looked like she was going to say something, then shook her head.

“I want Lucy with us if this happens again,” Verona said.  “That was more intense than I pictured.”

“It will happen again,” John said, as he put his gun away in the holster.  He drew in a deep breath, reached for his neck, and pulled off a dog tag, handing one to Avery to replace what she’d used.

“This, my dears, is the friggin’ opening salvo,” Sir Toadswallow said.

“If we can’t get ahead of it,” John intoned, in a voice both weary and dangerous, “It will be a daily occurrence, if not multiple times a day.  Until we lose.”

“Then we, the Others, will be the kidnapped ones,” Toadswallow told them.  “Or jobless and in violation of oaths, or dead.  And you’ll be the competition they want out of the way.”

“Most won’t call for their summonings and allies to hold back from killing as you did,” John warned.

Verona swallowed.  She pulled off her stuff, and distracted herself by putting it away.

“It’s late,” Avery said.  “And we should update Lucy.”

Verona looked up at the moon.  Her ears were still ringing from the earlier gunshots.

She zipped up her bag.

“I think you did terrible,” Snowdrop said, from the treeline.

“You did well enough, in a pinch,” Toadswallow said.  He pointed a clawed fingernail at the stick he’d passed Verona.  “You can keep that for a little while if you want.  Just in case.”

Verona checked the weight of the knobby stick in her hand.  She wanted to ask what it did, but frankly, she was way too tired.  Which said a lot.

Just in case.

The situation was bad enough now that all three of them needed to be properly armed.

“About the meeting earlier,” Avery said.  “The Choir, and the binding and stuff.  Did you talk?”

“We should wait for Lucy before getting into that,” Verona said.

“Yes.  We can discuss that tomorrow,” John said, setting a hand on Avery’s shoulder.  “For now, rest.  Recover.”

Verona didn’t consider herself a great reader of people.  But John didn’t seem to be any better a liar or schemer than her dad was, really.

But John seemed weary and a bit sad.  And maybe a part of that was that he knew Avery had spied on him, and he knew they were suspicious.  But a part of it, she was pretty sure, was that the conversation hadn’t gone in a way the three of them would be happy with.

Out on a Limb – 3.7

Lucy

Lucy kept her Sight on, watching a woman with fragments of metal gouging her in ten different places walk with glacial slowness through the parking lot across the street.

The music store was one of those places that kept going because it kept going.  Just enough people would come past Kennet, along the highway, see downtown and the big, faded music sign, and buy enough stuff to keep this place scraping by.  People who bought vinyls.  People who still had and used CDs.

Lucy was at one of the stations at the end of the aisle, where a metal stand had been erected with a panel that might have been a set of buzzers for an apartment building, for selecting songs from a catalogue.  The big, old-school headphones with crazy sound canceling were probably really gross, but she was putting up with them for now.

The woman shambled like a zombie, clearly hurting, and called out to someone on the sidewalk.  There was no response.  She looked concerned, mournful, and dark blue watercolor stained the air around her.

Lucy didn’t want to agree with Verona, and dismiss the world as a place where every adult was unhappy, but she’d made decisions for her awakening, bringing a knife, using a knife to declare herself.  That seemed to be a big thing that determined how her Sight had started working, right off the bat.  Looking for pain and seeing pain, like how Miss had described Nicolette’s omens working.

There was a lot out there.  Everyone had something they were dealing with.

The lyrics of the song matched the sentiment, but the tone didn’t.  It was peppy, upbeat.  It was the faintest cry.  In a sorry place.  In the faintest times, I will never forget why… I always liked you and I.

A car pulled into the parking lot.  Lucy watched it, and watched the driver.  A man with a dark watercolor blotch obscuring much of his face.

Verona was by the rack of old merchandise, which was mostly stuff like lighters and belt buckles, probably bootleg, with names of old rock bands on them.  She leaned into the window, peering, to try to see the parking lot from another angle.

Lucy shook her head at Verona as Verona looked back, quizzical.

Nope.

I just lost my head, I couldn’t stay.  When you find that you were lost in the fray.  I will hold my breath another day.

It was faintest cry, in a sorry place
In the faintest times, I will never forget why… I always liked you and I

You and I.

Lucy pressed buttons, trying combinations.  Some of the buttons had jammed a long time ago, with erosion from oil and fingerprints, probably, helping to crust them into that jammed position.  She experimented to remind herself which jammed buttons could transmit a signal if enough pressure was applied, then worked out which songs were playable.

The last time this thing had been updated was like, five years ago.

“Do you smoke?” the guy at the counter asked Verona, loud enough to be heard with the headphones on.

Verona’s reply wasn’t, but it looked like a ‘no’.

“Then leave the lighters alone.  Don’t waste the gas.”

Verona went neutral, set the lighter back on the little display thingy, and walked over to the clothes rack, where a bunch of t-shirts with band names on them were hanging on the ring.

Neutral was Verona’s ‘problematic’.  Lucy gave her friend a warning look, and mouthed, ‘be good’.

Verona sighed.

Lucy listened to two more songs, before checking the time.  Across the street, in the parking lot of the bed and breakfast, there was only the shambling woman and some agitated dude who’d left the property and come back three times in the time Lucy had been in the store.

Class had only gotten out an hour and a half ago.  And they’d taken a bit to get here.  So maybe three comings and goings in the last hour.

Nothing Other about them.  Just stains and swords, a bit more than most people had.

A wave of teenagers passed in front.  Lucy cocked her head to the side to try and see past them.  It would be very practitioner-y for a sudden intervention to block her view, like a tree branch or whatever blocking Miss’s face.

She wondered if she could learn to do that.  Getting the universe to provide that kind of help.

Nothing in the parking lot, but the door opened.

Lucy lowered the headphones.

He had a red mop of hair, he was tall, and he had a really intense cheekbone to cheek line and freckles, which felt like a weird combination, somehow.  He wore a v-neck tee and skinny jeans that made it clear he was really skinny but he wasn’t an athlete like his middle sister.  He had his arm around some girl with straight brown hair, who left him behind to go straight to the counter.

Rowan lazily walked up to the halfway point between the door and the counter, raising his hand in a wave.

“Hi,” Lucy said.

“Can I put these papers up in the window?” the girlfriend asked.

The man at the counter took some of the papers, looking at them.

“Laurie’s really into social issue stuff,” Rowan told Lucy, too quiet for Laurie to hear.  He widened his eyes a bit as he said it.

“Huh,” Lucy answered.  “Good for her.”

“It’s just a lot sometimes, y’know?”

“I like it when people are passionate about stuff,” Lucy answered.

“Like Avery and her hockey?”

“Yeah, sure.  Verona and her art.”

Lucy indicated Verona over by the clothes rack.

“Ah, she pointed you out from a distance when we picked her up once.  You should come over some time.”

“Uhhh,” Verona answered.

“Can’t go worse than your friend here getting Avery to spill ice water onto the floor.”

“Onto Sheridan,” Lucy clarified.

“Funny,” Rowan said, absently.  Laurie was returning. “Lucy and Verona.  Avery’s friends.”

“Hi.”

“Hi,” Lucy replied.

“Verdict?” Rowan asked.

“He said no,” Laurie answered, looking perturbed.  She glanced back at the guy, who was vaguely goblin-ish.  He had more hair sticking up the back of his shirt toward his neck than he had on top of his head, and when he was looking down at the papers strewn across one portion of the front counter, it looked a lot like the line of his chin meeting the flab of his neck was a second mouth.

“What’s the paper?” Lucy asked.

Laurie perked up, peeled away a page from the stack, and handed it over.  “Elder care, and trying to have a forum to discuss alternative options.”

Verona snorted.  “I’ve been thinking that if I got old and helpless, I’d want to do the thing where I get put on an ice floe and pushed out to sea.”

“If you do half the stuff you’ve talked about doing, you’re going to lead a really weird life,” Lucy told her friend.

“Like I’m not going to already?  Look at the last week and a half.”

“Point.”

“The ice floe thing isn’t that far off,” Laurie chimed in.  “We’re so dangerously close to a point in time when the boomer population is going to be in senior care, and we don’t have the staff for it, we don’t have the capacity, we don’t have the other resources.  Rather than a cold and lonely death, wouldn’t it be better to give more options to someone who’s old and in pain?  Let them pass, surrounded by family?”

“You’re going to have a steep uphill battle bringing that up in Kennet,” Rowan said.

“You think I don’t know?” Laurie asked.  “I grew up here.”

“I know, but-”

“I would rather have a harder conversation somewhere like here, where I’m changing one mind, than go somewhere like, I don’t know, Toronto?  And have a hundred people who already agree with me nodding their heads and giving me a thumbs up.”

“I like that mindset,” Lucy said.  “Cool.”

“I’m worried this ends in tears,” Rowan added.

“Only if you’re the one crying,” Laurie said, giving him a poke in the chest.  She was a fair bit shorter than him, so it was mostly her poking him at her eye level.

Feeling like this was heading for a spat, Lucy interrupted, “My mom does work with older people.  Do you mind if I take this?  I want to pick her brain about it.”

“Please do.”

“I think I’ve seen her around,” Rowan said.  “And I had a class with your brother, I think.  When the elevens and twelves had a combined class.”

“We’re eights and nines,” Verona said.

“Ah, yeaaahhh.  I remember that now.  Yeah, no, I remember Booker.  He was cool.  Really cool guy.”

‘Cool’.  “He’s great,” Lucy said.

“Great,” Rowan said, to his girlfriend.  To Lucy, he said, “If you’re going to influence Avery to do stuff like dumping water on Sheridan, do you think you can pass on that energy to her?  Get her to call me great?”

“No, I don’t know that I can,” Lucy replied.  “You gotta earn it.”

“I do.  Kind of.”

“You didn’t know she was in a combined grade,” Rowan’s girlfriend said, smiling.

“I did, I just forgot for a while.  He was cool, though.  How’s he doing?”

“In school.  Political science.”

“Damn, good for him.  Huh!  I’m not even sure I know what political science is.”

“I suspect it’s the science of politics,” Verona told Rowan.

Rowan made a face.  “I’m guessing you’re going to be a bad influence on Ave too, huh?”

“It’s likely I already have,” Verona replied.

Lucy looked past Rowan to the bed and breakfast.  Nobody new, no new cars, nothing.

Her Sight still active, she looked at Rowan and found him relatively pristine, except for a shadowing of watercolor at his sides, gripping his body.  Dark purple.

His girlfriend had a shadow all the way around her neck.  No corresponding darkness or marks on Rowan’s hands.

Nothing Other.  The rest of it wasn’t Lucy’s business.  She dismissed the Sight with a blink of the eyes.

“Poli sci, though, that’s cool.  I thought about applying, but I thought it was better to take a year off, save money, decide what I’m studying.”

“Makes sense, I guess,” Lucy told him.

“And Laurie’s graduating soon.  It’s not impossible we end up going to the same school.”

His girlfriend gave him a one-armed hug, smiling.

“What do you think?  Try the next few stores?” Rowan asked his girlfriend.

“Yeah.”

“How are you guys?  Want a ride back?  If you wait, hm, fifteen or twenty minutes, we’ll be headed that way.”

“We can go back on our own,” Lucy said.  “Thanks though.”

“Avery gets out of soccer soon, doesn’t she?”

“Should be.”

He nodded, and it looked like he was going to go.  “She’s okay, right?”

“Why do you sound unsure?” Verona asked.  Not a beat missed.

Verona could be the biggest pain sometimes, but there were times Lucy really admired her.

“Just wondering.  She seemed sorta down.”

“Isn’t that the sort of thing you should ask her?” Lucy asked.  “If you want that ‘great brother’ cred?  Booker would ask, I think.”

“You don’t have fifty other siblings, though,” Rowan said.  “I’d have seen them around.”

Lucy raised her eyebrows.

“I mean, I remember when I tore my ACL.  I had Sheridan, who was actually cute and sweet back then-”

Laurie swatted Rowan.

“-and little Avery, Grumble, that’s my grandfather, remember?  And mom and dad, and even bite size Declan, all giving me one hundred percent of their pity, their attention, cooing over me, and all I wanted was to be a grumpy preteen, and they wouldn’t let me.  Now Avery’s about that age, and she’s even more, like… off doing her own thing.”

“Is she?” Lucy asked.

“Isn’t she?  It’s just like… mom and dad are handling the school stuff and making sure she’s cool, and Grumble’s all buddy-buddy with her, and I ask her how her sports are doing because I’m giving her a ride half the time.  And Sheridan… keeps her in check? I guess?  Everyone needs a pain in the ass big sibling.  Splitting the load, I think?  Which has to be better than a fifty person pile-on.”

“So why ask?” Lucy pressed him, a little more aggressive, and even a bit annoyed.  “You seem like you’ve decided all this.  She’s not your responsibility?  If you’re that sure she’s okay, why bring it up?”

“I’m just curious, I dunno, it’s not like mom and dad will sit me down and give me the low-down on whatever’s going on.  I heard there was an app thing but I don’t know how she did, or if she’s into a boy or…”

Lucy realized she was shaking her head at him and had been since at least the ‘just curious’.

“There’s a real easy way to get the low-down on Avery,” Lucy said.  “Ask Avery.  She’s the expert on Avery.”

“I’ve got a bunch of other siblings, and if I was going to be fair to them I’d have to ask them, and that’s a whole hassle, and-”

He sounded like he was joking, but Lucy couldn’t help but think back to how he’d opened the conversation talking about Laurie’s thing.  Like maybe he was revealing some buried sentiments, and it really was that much of a hassle.

“You’re not asking if your other siblings are doing okay though, right?” Verona asked.

“I’m actually worried about all of them, if I’m honest, but that’s a whole thing, and I don’t want to keep Laurie.”

“If this really is the year where you’re working and getting sorted out before college, it might also be your last chance to be a big brother.  Maybe… get that handled?” Lucy asked, shrugging.

“Maybe,” he said.  He looked at Laurie.  “Want to head out?”

“Sure.”

“Good luck with your…” Lucy checked the paper.  “Symposium?”

“Thank you!  It’s stuff we should have been talking about twenty years ago, and you know, the next best time after twenty years ago is…”

“Nineteen years and three hundred and sixty-four days ago?” Verona asked.

“Today!” Laurie said.

Rowan stuck out his fist.  Lucy looked down at it, realized what he was trying to do, and gave him a fist-bump.  He seemed to hesitate at the last second, like he was going to switch to a handshake, and fucked it up.

He gave Verona a pat on the shoulder as he walked by.

Lucy narrowed her eyes at him, watching him leave, then watched him through the display window as he walked off, hugging Laurie.

“He’s got a long way to go before he’s a Booker,” Verona commented.

Thank you,” Lucy said.  “Poor Laurie.”

“Poor Avery,” Verona said, chuckling as she said it.

“What’s Laurie even doing, though?” Lucy asked.  She indicated the door, got a little nod from Verona, and they exited the store.  “Where’s the appeal?  Tall, sure, but…”

“I don’t get the appeal of tall.  It seems like a pain.  Always craning your neck to look up?  If you spent the rest of your life with someone like that, you could have a permanent crick in your neck.”

“Maybe you see it that way because you’re short?”

“Petite!  And I’m not ridiculously short.”

They walked away from the front door, traveling along the sidewalk, keeping an eye on what was commonly termed the ‘bed and breakfast’.  They’d been keeping an eye on the parking lot, and the walk-up to the rooms themselves.  Now they could see more of the rooms and the office building where people went in to actually pay for the rooms.  It was a bed and breakfast in name only, pretty much.  In reality, it was more of a motel, with more tea cozies, really fluffy, floral curtains.  Like, if a bed and breakfast was a person, that person had done some hard drugs and physically aged fifteen years from the hardships she’d been through.

Brie hadn’t showed.  They had other eyes on the motel further up the road.

There were short-term rental services through Bedsurf and whatever, but they tended to be expensive, and most people who did that were the ones with nice houses who went away on vacation for winter and put their places up for the holidays so people could come ski on some cheap, C-tier hills.  That wasn’t really a thing people did for summer.

Lucy pulled out her phone to check.  There weren’t any listings, open or closed.

There wasn’t an actual hotel, either.  Just the motel and the ‘Bon Journee Inn’, depressed crack addict of places to stay.

That agitated guy had made his trip back.

“Would she camp out, do you think?” Lucy asked, folding up the paper and sticking it in a back pocket.

“She didn’t look like the type to,” Verona said.

“Hm.”

Verona turned around, walking backwards for a second, and nearly tripped, looked up at the rooftops of the buildings-

Lucy looked too.  With Sight and without.

The ‘downtown’ area was a smattering of stores and fast food places.  The shopping core of Kennet.  A lot of it was pretty depressed.  The furniture and mattress store that was always going out of business.  The music store with its huge painted sign that was peeling.  The beer and OLCB stores, which did good business.  Most buildings were one floor, or two floors with apartments above them.  One of the apartments had an American confederate flag in the window, used as a curtain.

Odds were good the person who had hung it would be happy to know she was as bothered and bewildered by that as she was.  Assholes.

“Snowdrop!” Verona called out.  “Snowdrop!  Snowdrop!”

Snowdrop didn’t appear.

“Worth a try,” Lucy said.

“Goblins, goblins, goblins!” Verona tried.

“If only it was that easy.”

They walked to the corner.  Past the shorter buildings, Lucy could see the top edge of the cinema.  It too had seen better days, she knew.  A lot of the places at this end of ‘downtown’ felt like they remained because if they disappeared then Kennet would collapse, even if they weren’t that important to the day to day.  The music store, the theater, the motels.

They’d tried to revitalize or decorate core ‘downtown’ at one point, making it look endearingly rustic, with old-fashioned black lampposts with lightbulbs instead of gas lights inside.  The paint had peeled.

A half-block down the street was a rainbow Canadian flag, which gave her a bit of faith in humanity, and in Kennet.

A bottle went skidding across the sidewalk, into the street, as Snowdrop accidentally kicked it.  “Wah!”

“You came!” Verona cheered.

“I was wide awake!”

“Sorry!  Were you watching the motel?”

“I was!  Goblins were messing around, sleeping, like losers.  Just me on the job.”

“Any luck?” Lucy asked.

“Tons.”

“Right,” Lucy said, sighing.  “Thanks for coming.”

“It’s a one time thing,” Snowdrop mumbled, pushing her hood back and rubbing at her eye with the heel of her hand.  She had bedhead, and raked at it to try to get it in order.  Her shirt was bright red, with ‘Poss’d Off’ on it.

“I brought candy!” Verona said, pulling off her bag.  “Payment, for your hard work, and for looking after Avery.”

“This is lame,” Snowdrop mumbled.  “Having to help Avery, and being given stuff all the time, with expectations I gotta eat it, and Avery’s hugging and snuggling me all the time, and you rub my head and stuff-”

Lucy reached out to muss up Snowdrop’s hair some.  Snowdrop grunted.

“-Awful.  I can’t go on like this.”

Lucy switched to using her fingernails to comb through Snowdrop’s hair, fixing the bedhead.

“Argh, no.  Augh.”

This would all be easier if Brie did show up, but until she did, she remained a threat, a possible invader, possibly equipped with weird retro techno-magic, who knew just enough to really mess with them, or find out stuff she shouldn’t.

“I’m here, I’m-” Cherrypop huffed.  “Here!”

Snowdrop turned, pumped both fists in the air, almost hitting Lucy, who was right behind her, and shouted, “Aaaaaa!”

“Aaaaa!” Cherrypop returned the gesture and cry, despite being out of breath.  She looked like she might even pass out.  She gulped in air as soon as she was done, head jerking back.  “Aaa!”

Snowdrop picked the little goblin up, and flipped up her hood over her recently fixed-ish hair, before setting Cherrypop down on top.

Other goblins appeared, sticking to the alley.  Bluntmunch, and a new one, with proportions like a gorilla, but only about three feet high.  Female, muscular, with a ton of hooks and sharp piercings sticking out of one arm, until it was like a gauntlet, held together with bands of her own flesh.  Her one eye was very round, bright, peering through a curtain of matted hair.

“New goblin?”

“Trying to cover more of the bases,” Bluntmunch growled. “Got the whole perimeter, now we’ve got possible people inside.  Snatch is good.  Behaves.”

Snatch snorted.

“…For a goblin.”

“Are the others around?” Verona asked.

“Some.  Mostly the perimeter.”

Verona nodded.

“We’ve got to go attend a meeting,” Lucy said.  “Can we leave the bed and breakfast to you?  Keep an eye out for her?  Snowdrop?”

“Hecking nah, no.”

Verona handed over the candy.

“And get bent!  I hope the meeting goes terribly!” the sleepy Snowdrop called out.

Cherrypop cackled.

Lucy and Verona turned the corner and walked down the street, back south toward school and Edith’s house and everything else.

“Heya!  You look friendly!” Snowdrop called out.

Lucy looked back.  It was the agitated dude from the parking lot.  He walked past Snowdrop like he didn’t see her.  The goblins, Cherrypop included, were gone.

The dude was making a beeline right for Verona and Lucy.

Until an empty cigarette carton bounced off his head, thrown from a window.

He turned, his attention elsewhere, no longer following.

“Want to take a faster way back?” Lucy asked.  “I was thinking we could use glamour here.”

“You were, huh?  Animal forms?”

“Or the other thing.  My thing.”

“Hmmm, Lucy,” Verona said.  She put her hands on her hips.  “Do you think maybe you’re using it a little bit too much, and maybe you should take some time off and get more time in as a human?”

Lucy smiled.  “Do you ever want permission to be a cat again?”

Verona gasped, hands over her heart.  “You took that right to eleven.  That’s cruel.”

“I don’t get why you like it so much.  Being a bird made me super paranoid, and I picked a bluejay the last two times around.  Bluejays are dicks in the bird world.  They’re territorial or brave enough to repeatedly dive-bomb housecats and rottweilers.”

“You picked a bluejay because it would be braver?”

“Sure?  Yeah.”

Verona snorted, looking very amused.

“I felt so small and weak,” Lucy complained.

“Want to try being a horse?  Gallop our way back?”

“I don’t think we have nearly enough glamour.  Want to try being something less physical?”

“Are there really that many ‘want to trys’ in the practitioner world that I’m going to say no to?”

“Want to try the Forest Ribbon Trail?”

Verona laughed.  “Kinda?  But I don’t want that to be my thing.  Because it’s Avery’s thing.”

“Yeah.”

Verona nodded, with vigor.  “And I figure it’s sorta like the awakening diagram, you know?  Or any diagram.  Each of us brings something, right, and we should each put in roughly the same amount of effort, and contribute stuff that’s more us, and… yeah.”

She looked so animated, into things, in a way she really wasn’t when at school or at home.  Which was an unfortunately large proportion of her day.

“Yeah.  Makes sense.”

“It’d be too lopsided to have two Path-walkers or whatever.”

“Finders, I think Miss said.”

“What element are we going to become?” Verona asked.

Lucy looked up.  The sun was peeking through heavy cloud cover.  The light reached the ground, dappling it in some intense beams while other areas remained dark.  It was on the pleasantly warm side, maybe twenty degrees out.

“Light?” Lucy asked.

Verona laughed.  “What?”

“Part of it is looking for an existing thing that’s around that you can borrow and mimic and ‘ride’, right?  So you want to get from point A to point B, and you look for the most consistent thing that’s between you and there.  I got through the window by doing something like this with moonlight.  Align yourself to the beam, really simple.  Straight line.  Rain was the down, down, down.”

Verona nodded.  “It’s not really… I don’t know the word.  Connected?  Con… com?  There’s a g in the middle.  -Guous or something.”

“Neither is rain, exactly.  or smoke.  Or whatever.”

They headed down the street until they reached the point where there was a steep slope beside the road.  Car passed every ten or fifteen seconds  Way down the way, there were some people.

“Walk me through this one.  You hogged the materials.”

“Because it’s mine?”

“Ours.”

“But it was given to me.  I wanted to figure it out first.”

“Which you’ve done.  I think we should share everything and each have spellbooks and whatever of everything, so we each know everything.”

“I mean, yeah, but you’re crazy good at so much of this.  It’d suck if I spent the last week and a half learning to do this and then you pick it up in five seconds.”

“I guess we’re going to find out, huh?  How concerned are we about traps?”

“I love that you’re asking,” Lucy said.  “I really, really do.  I’m going to text Avery to get her ok.”

She pulled out her phone.

“Dodging the question?  Someone might say you’re overeager and irresponsible with the practice,” Verona said, hands on her hips.  “Like me, saying it just now.”

“Are you really that annoyed about me saying no yesterday?”

“Do you have a problem with the practice, Lucy?  Are you too into this?  Hogging glamour thingys-”

My glamour thingy.  That was given to me.  That I’m sharing with you shortly, unless Avery says no or whatever.”

She sent the text.

Avery replied.

Avery:
go for it. I’m on my way over. will prolly beat you there

“I think we’re clear,” Lucy said.  “And if there is a trap, the fact we’re heading to the meeting means it’d be…”

She gestured wildly.

Verona mimicked the gesture.  “I don’t know much sign language.”

“Complicated.  Undignified.  Inelegant.”

“Like Miss saying Avery should guess what Other she was.  And Avery guessed, and it showed she got Miss and she got the Path, she was listening, she was serious about this, and that maybe was why Miss went to sacrifice herself and save Avery.”

Lucy nodded.  “I like that, because this would feel like the opposite of that, if Maricica’s messing around screwed up an appointment between us and the local Others, and nothing came of it, and it just made her look like a butthole.”

“So maybe that means the traps are things that come about at more specific times?  Or when the stars align?”

“When it makes for a better story,” Lucy said.

Verona nodded, her eyes widening.  She smiled.

“That’s not a smiley thing, Ronnie,” Lucy said.  “That’s a terrifying thing.  Because we don’t want to be on the losing side in a Faerie story.”

“I love you, Luce.  I love your brain, I love your seriousness, I love that you’re doing this with me, I love that we’re about to become light-”

“If this works.”

“If it works.  So we gotta try it.  Together, best friends becoming light.  Show me, show me.”

“I will if you stop rambling.  Glamour.”

Lucy pulled out the little packet from her jeans pocket.  She wiped her hands dry of any light sweat on her jeans, dried them further on her crop top, and then opened it up.  She gave herself some, then gave Verona some.

“I’m really tired, after last night,” Verona said.  “The fight happened late, then I got home, and my dad cried at me for a while.  I lay in bed, and my thoughts were all over the place.”

“If you need anything… staying over, even if your dad said no, or I can ask my mom, or… I dunno.  Practice stuff?”

“Nah.  Just distract me.  Show me this.”

“Find the negative forces.  Draw the void between, in this case, the rays of light.  If you were becoming a cloud, you’d look for the dark spots in it.  And you position your body to line up with it… find a good spot, where it’s more, or where the eye is drawn, and center yourself there.  Glamour tends to reach forward, right?  It finishes what you start.  So if you draw the shadows, and leave the rest of yourself to become…”

“Light?”

“Yeah.”

Lucy showed Verona, copying the mottled shadows on the sloped ground, painting her bare arms, while she figured out the pattern of hand motions, then did parts of her body that she couldn’t see with her eyes, like her face, using the same hand motions.

“Could we help it along?  If I paint myself with white, along the ridges?”

“We want to meet the light, nothing in the way.”

“Makes a lot of sense.  No highlighting, then.”

“I’m not sure I one hundred percent get it,” Lucy confessed.  She had to admit, her heart sank when she saw how good Verona was at getting that pattern of mottled shadow on her skin.

They covered enough of themselves that the glamour bled out to cover the rest.  Crawling over clothes.  Lucy’s crop top and jeans.  Verona’s too-tight v-neck tee from yesteryear and denim shorts.  The shadows blurred the line between flesh and clothing, and between them and their surroundings.  Like really good camo paint.

“Keep yourself in the light, so the glamour knows what it’s copying…”

Verona nodded with enthusiasm.  She put out her own arm, letting the light catch and reflect, until it looked like it was passing through her arm to touch the ground.

“Then you find the motion, the wavelength, be patient if you have to… and step into it.”

Verona moved her arm left and right, the light catching a little more each time, as clouds rolled overhead and the sunlight shone through in beams, shafts, and curtains.

Verona made the leap before Lucy did.  The light caught, she blurred, and a brighter bit of shaft of light darted south.

Lucy was a bit more patient, giving it a few seconds.

She followed.  A leap forward, exhaling slowly, letting that light that shone through her shine through all of her.  Becoming that dappled, rolling light over Kennet.  Riding it.

Not being herself, for fleeting moments, being only environment, awareness, aesthetic.

Her Self prickled.

That fleeting, dashing awareness made her cognizant of Verona, lying on the ground.  She looped back around, shaking herself free of the light, and dropping two feet to the sidewalk.

“That sucked, that sucked, ow, this sucks, this-”

Lucy could feel it.  Pinpricks, like a really violent pins and needles feeling, running along her body.

“Aaa,” Verona protested.

Red marks ran down Verona’s skin.  Lucy could feel her skin responding in a similar way.  Maybe not as debilitating.  She wasn’t crying out in pain or distress.

Maybe that was practice, or something else.

She checked over Verona, making sure the red marks didn’t get too red, or open up and bleed.

The effect extended to Verona’s clothes.  Streaks of white, like a really fuzzy bleach stain, on both shorts and top.

Her own clothes had a similar effect.

“I guess that’s not a regular thing we can do,” Lucy said.

“Aaaaugh.  Ow!”

“On a scale of one to ten, how much does it hurt?” Lucy asked.  A thing she’d picked up from her mom, she remembered.  A nurse thing.

“Two, but it’s a lot of twos.”

“Okay, then stop being a baby.”

“Aaa.  I’m not usually a complainer, I hate people who complain, but ow ow ow ow.”

“The Faerie will be there.  We can ask them what went wrong.”

Verona laughed at the same time she was clearly in pain, taking Lucy’s helping hand to get to her feet.

“Maybe better for really short trips, like through a window, or around to behind an enemy,” Lucy said.

Verona mixed half-fake-sobbing with chuckles.

“I’m sorta glad you sucked at it more than I did,” Lucy said.  “You’re not the best at everything practice related.”

“I’m in pain, and you’re gloating!”

“Come on, come on.”

“Ow ow ow.  It’s like a patchy sunburn.”

They’d made it about three-quarters of the way.  Which was cool, and something to keep in mind.  It took time to prepare and do, it took glamour, but… maybe it was an escape route.  A way to deal when cornered.

It was nice, getting into a practice and getting a shoddy escape route out of it, rather than a thing that needed to be escaped from, in one sense or another.

Avery was waiting for them, standing on a chimney in full gear, where she had a vantage point to see most of the neighborhood.

“What happened to you?” Avery asked.

“Mishap,” Lucy answered.

“We became sunlight and we got singed,” Verona said.

“I feel left out, and also real glad I got left out.”

Their destination was a wide grassy area a little ways from the base of a ski hill.  A parking lot for overflow parking, not conveniently close to the hill itself or the main buildings, but not impossibly far either.  The area was framed with trees, that blocked off the view of the ass end of Kennet, and the sound of traffic, and other stuff.

Many of the Others of Kennet were gathered.  Toadswallow, Matthew, Edith, Charles, John, Maricica, Guilherme, and Alpeana, awake before sunset, in the shadows beneath a tree.

“Was there a problem downtown?” Charles asked.

“No,” Maricica said.  “They smell like Glamour and sunlight.  Did you use my glamour for something related to sun?”

“Ahhh,” Verona said.

“I’m a Faerie of the court below.  Rain, darkness, cold water…”

“Got it, got it.  Also, ow.”

“It will pass.  Try not to pay attention to it,” Maricica said.  “Or the glamour that still dusts you will take that attention and use it to make the harm more lasting.”

Verona straightened, wincing.

Lucy did her best to go still as well.

“So,” Lucy said.  “Meeting.  Some serious stuff.”

“This is neutral ground,” Matthew said.  “No Other of Kennet has any particular attachment to this place.  Helps make it more democratic.”

“And we don’t either.  Fair,” Lucy said.  “But do we really need neutral ground, like this is a battlefield?”

“Yesterday’s and today’s discussions were more of a battle than anything I can remember having in a while,” Matthew said.  “Neutral ground was good.”

He looked tired.  He was normally this guy who like, carried a huge darkness inside of him, but seemed to express a gentle warmth and inner strength, like he knew exactly who he was, his place in life, he’d found his true love, and that gave him a kind of protection from the ravages of the day to day.

And he didn’t look so much like that right now.

“We discussed a few points of order yesterday,” Edith said.  “Whether we’d teach you binding.  Whether we’d help you with the Choir.  You indicated you knew we’d met, electing Matthew and me as leaders.  You may also know we discussed you.”

Lucy remained still.  Verona and Avery flanked her, doing much the same.

“I’ll be frank,” Matthew said.  “Eleven of us made informal votes, to figure out where we stood, and decide a way forward.  Even Cherrypop and Charles.”

“I’m apparently on the same tier as the creature who eats walnuts shell and all,” Charles grumbled.

“Did the Choir vote?” Lucy asked.

“No.  They roam sometimes, and they’re gone now.  They can’t speak or indicate much either.”

“Okay.”

“Eleven of us voted on the subject of teaching you binding.  Three voted in favor of it.”

“Eight voted not to teach us.”

“You’ll learn in the summer.  The time between now and then will, ideally, let you bond with the local Others more.  Give us room to prepare, adjust for the possibility that the local practitioners could enslave us.”

“We could make deals,” Avery said.  “Say we won’t.”

“You could,” Matthew said.  “Will you?”

Avery didn’t respond.

“We promised to protect Kennet, not to harm you without due cause,” Lucy said.  “Isn’t that fair enough?”

“Not enough for eight of the local Others,” Matthew said.  Again, he looked so tired.  Weary.

“Can we know who those eight were?”

“There was some sentiment that it would promote hostility.”

“You know,” Avery said, “You talk about wanting us to bond with you, but… this isn’t the way.  Treating us like we’re hostile, when we’ve really done a lot here.”

“I’ll get to that in a second, if you’ll let me?” Matthew asked.

Avery huffed air out her nose.

This all felt so familiar.  Being stared down.  Being judged.  Dismissed.  Lucy glared at the Others.

Verona touched her arm, accidentally touching one of the light sunburns.  Lucy flinched, and in the doing, realized she was holding her breath, or breathing so shallowly she might as well be holding it.

She sighed, but the intensity of her glare didn’t fade.

“The second vote was about the Choir,” Matthew said.  “Seven voted yes.  Four voted no.”

Lucy drew in a deep breath.  That was good.

“It’s a problem,” Matthew said.  “And we can’t let you intervene.”

“Wait,” Verona protested.  “Wait wait wait wait wait.  What?”

“Seven voted yes,” Lucy echoed Matthew’s earlier statement.

“To intervene, we’d need unanimous consent.  Anything else would make the relationship between Others in Kennet too unstable.”

“You…” Lucy started.  Anger flared.  Disappointment.  “…jerks.  You know people are suffering.  You’ve already tolerated and entertained way too much from the Choir, I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that.”

“We have rules in place for a reason.  I don’t always agree with them.  I don’t like that the Choir is now bringing attention to Kennet-”

Maricica shifted position.

“-and I have to abide by the rules, I can’t and we can’t act against it.  It’s protecting Kennet in some ways.  It’s empowering Kennet.  You three are getting a single-digit percentage of power from each of the Others of Kennet and it makes you strong.  A single digit percentage of what the Choir is providing is a good share of your strength.”

“Did we ask for that?” Avery asked.  “Do you think we’d be glad, knowing our power is fueled by something that’s killed people and turned others into starving ghostly children for who knows how long?”

“No, and no,” Matthew said.  “But when push comes to shove, and if Kennet becomes a battleground, some feel we need that power.  Not all of us or even most of us agree on that, but…”

As he said that last bit, Edith reached out, taking his hand.

“And the last bit?” Lucy asked.

“We were wary, and we decided to be careful, witholding any judgment or action regarding you as practitioners.  Whether we cut you off from further teachings or power, we discussed rationing the glamour we provided, and maintaining a distant and professional relationship.  If it was necessary.  Depending how things went from there, there was the possibility we had to discuss, about how we’d handle you falling under Alexander Belanger’s influence, or playing fast and loose with the protection deal we made.”

“I don’t think that’s fair,” Avery said.

“It wasn’t fair or unfair.  We had to seriously discuss every avenue, even the worst case scenarios.  A major practitioner with a penchant for finding a weak point and destroying individuals and Others is now in the picture,” Matthew said.

“For what it’s worth,” Edith told them, “We’re extending collective trust to you.  That you fought for Kennet last night was something that put a lot of uneasy hearts and minds to rest.  We’re grateful.”

John spoke up.  He had a grim tone that was really hard to not think of as resentful, but it was kind of his voice.  “I’ve discussed the decision that was made, your asking for Zed and the ritual’s winner to be left alive.  I had some stern words about that, at the end.  I’ve been convinced that killing the practitioner or leaving them alive each have their issues.”

“This was easier when we could call Miss in by saying her name three times, and get her opinion on a subject,” Edith said.

“The good news is, little britches,” Toadswallow said, “We’re happy, we’re pleased.  We’ll teach you more if you want to learn.  Unanimous.”

“But not binding?” Lucy asked.  She was still stiff.  The unanimous approval hadn’t changed that a bit.  “Not the means to deal with the Choir?”

“No,” Matthew said.  “At the very least, five more weeks, until the school term ends and the summer term begins, and you can learn from Alexander.”

“How many lives is that?” Avery asked.

“Any is too many, but we made deals a long time ago.  I can’t speak for others, but I didn’t foresee something like the Choir taking root in Kennet, and I don’t know that any of us did.”

The three of them stood there, faced with seven Others.  The sun continued to shine down in its dappled, ever-shifting way, like light on the sand beneath the water, on a sunny day.  The wind was too light to move the grass.

“You had all of these discussions without us.”

“By their nature, we had to,” Edith said.

“Can I speak?  Can I address you all, with my own argument and statement?  And you can make your own decisions, after?”

“If you want.  If you want to propose something,” Matthew said.

Lucy paused.  She looked left, then right.  At Verona, at Avery.  “May I?  Do you want to confer in private?”

“I trust you,” Verona said.

“I think we’re on the same page about the big stuff,” Avery said.

Lucy gave them a grateful smile.

The smile fell away as she looked at the Others.

“I want to challenge the Choir’s right to receive these protections, then.”

“The right to the protections extends to every Other that settles down in Kennet,” Maricica said.  “It’s not a contract, verbal or written.  It’s implicit.  The idea was we could eject the Others who were a problem.  Or we’d have to leave if they were too big to eject, because they’d make us.”

“The Choir is both too hands off and too big to eject,” Matthew said.

“On the day we awoke, they took the meat.”

“They did,” Edith said.

“What did they give?”

“Nothing,” Maricica said.

“They gave no word, they gave no gesture, they came, they took, they left.  The deal we made with the Choir wasn’t made implicitly or otherwise.  They were just there.”

“Crashing our awakening party and stealing the food, so to speak,” Verona said.

It was nice to have some verbal backup.

“You made promises to us collectively,” Matthew said.

“With.  Conditions,” Lucy said.  “I was careful about that, you know?  Because I’ve been betrayed by someone I thought loved me.  And I don’t think all of you love us.”

“Och, yer arright, lassies,” Alpeana said, from the sidelines.

“I was careful,” Lucy said, her voice hard.  “Careful about leaving the door open for justice and whatever else was necessary.”

“We are still bound by implicit-”

“Are you going to stop us?” Lucy interrupted Matthew.  “If we pursue this?  Are you going to get in the way?  Are you going to revoke favor, power, lessons, or goodwill?”

“Are you going to pursue it?” Edith asked.

“Yes,” Avery said.

Lucy and Verona nodded.

“Some of the Others of Kennet might interfere,” Edith said.

Lucy pursed her lips.

“How would you interfere?” Matthew asked.  “The choir is strong.”

“It’s Yalda,” Lucy said, her voice firm.

There were a few surprised looks.  Matthew.  Edith.  Charles.

Resignation from John.

“You knew, didn’t you?” Lucy asked John.

“After Alexander brought up the timing of it,” John said.  “I realized.”

“That’s why you were agitated,” Avery said.

“What about before Alexander?” Verona asked.  “No verbal tricks.”

“Before…” John trailed off.  “I thought of her a lot, on nights the Choir sang.  My heart was heavy.  I thought it was because I was thinking of her, not because of anything heavier.  A part of me always knew, I think.”

“Did the whole of you always know?” Verona asked.

“No.  Because I didn’t let it,”

“Or most of you?  Did you do this on purpose?” Verona pressed.  “No verbal tricks.  C’mon.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose.  I didn’t know or let myself know.  Only deep down.  A nagging feeling and reminder.”

“We can call her out, right?” Lucy asked.  “She’s a weak point, one that we can isolate, surround, and potentially bind, without having to bind two hundred plus waifs.”

“Closer to a thousand,” Guilherme said.

Lucy frowned.

“Yes.  You could,” John said.  “You’ll have to be careful.  Of the curse, if it’s her.”

“Or… or someone here used whatever curse she left behind after her death as power or a central point to build the ritual around, right?” Lucy asked.  She set her eyes on Charles.

“I can’t practice,” Charles said.

“But you can use tools.  You can bring others in who can practice.  You can-”

“Charles didn’t handle the curse after,” Matthew said.

“Who did?”

“I did,” Matthew said.  “John bore it first.  The entirety of it was moved to Charles.  Then we contacted some people.”

“Who?”

“A jockey that my family warned me about- an Other that takes over bodies.  Like the Girl by Candlelight did with Edith, but hostile.  They prey on those who take Others into their bodies, or innocents with vulnerabilities.  It gave us a black straw doll to absorb the curse from Charles.  I handled that.  I buried it.”

“What became of that Other?” Avery asked.

“The jockey?  It stayed with its host too long.  Became too intermingled.  It died  It was a relief when it did, especially considering how Edith James is the kind of vessel it would have loved.  It was the kind of thing that we had to constantly keep in the backs of our minds.  I made triply sure it was dead and gone.”

“Is it still buried?” Lucy asked.  “No, actually, I want to ask each and every one of you.  Did you dig up the doll?”

“No,” Matthew said.

“No,” Edith said.  “But it doesn’t matter.  If someone did tap into it, there would be other ways to use it.  A ritual circle drawn around the burial site, siphoning power into a receptacle…”

“Did you interfere with the doll or its energies, after?” Verona asked.  “Come on.”

“Pony up those answers,” Lucy told the group.  “I need those nos again.”

“No,” Matthew said.

“No,” Edith said.  “I couldn’t do so with my power being restricted to fire, heat, and smoke, regardless.”

The rest of the group, including Alpeana, Maricica, Guilherme, Charles, and Toadswallow all confirmed ‘no’.

The Choir didn’t count.  Bluntmunch, Gashwad and Cherrypop could be asked later.

Lucy nodded.

Which still left the question who.  Or if there were other ways.

“We’ll need to know where the burial site was,” Lucy said.

“I can mark a map.”

“I have one,” Lucy said.  She shrugged out of her bag and put it down, then pulled it out.

Matthew marked a spot.

“You’ll see the darkness of it with the Sight, if it’s still there,” he told her.

She nodded.

“Is that it then?  Intent declared?” Edith asked.

“I think, given the options available… we have to discuss that if the Kennet Others won’t help… we might need to go elsewhere.”

“Alexander?” Matthew asked.

“Does it matter?” Lucy asked.  “You’ve promised noninvolvement.  You’ve said the local Others may interfere?  Does it make sense for us to give you that information?”

“Doesn’t earn goodwill,” Charles said.

“Do you deserve our goodwill!?” Lucy raised her voice.  Verona touched her arm and Lucy shrugged past it.  “You’re letting people suffer!

“I hope you’ll understand,” Matthew said.  “Our hands are partially tied.  We- or at least, I don’t want this.”

“I don’t think any of us do, except maybe the Faerie,” Edith said.

“No,” Maricica said.  “I don’t like this outcome.”

“Nor I,” the giant Faerie Guilherme rumbled.

“Thank you for your time.  And for letting us know where things stand,” Lucy said, her voice stiff.

“I hope we can continue to have a good relationship, this aside,” Matthew said.

“So do we,” Verona said.  “But it’s going to be a lot harder.”

“Yep,” Matthew said.  Weary with the burden of leadership.

The three of them left, leaving the Others behind.

“Oh!  Hey!  So, uneventful night.”

Avery bent down and swept up Snowdrop into a hug, Snowdrop’s feet dangling.

“Nothing important.  Sucked.  So sorry I’m useless.”

“What did you get?” Lucy asked.

“Well, the chick didn’t show up, but I only really looked there, at the place you said to watch,” Snowdrop squeaked, as Avery hugged her tight.

“Where was she?” Verona asked.

Not the town center, where you said the ritual happened.”

“Did you get her?” Lucy asked.

“All me, not the goblins.  She took a while to surrender.”

So the goblins have her?

“Do you think you can distract them?” Lucy asked.

Snowdrop was silent.

“The goblins.  So we can get her clear of Kennet.”

“I’m loyal to the goblins, not to you three losers.”

“Great,” Verona said.  She looked at Lucy and Avery.

All three of them were in agreement.

“We’ll try it their way.  A partial binding is better than nothing at all.”

[3.7 Spoilers] Confiscated Items

Out on a Limb – 3.8

Lucy (Again)

Last Thursday: Confiscated Items


The town center of Kennet was in one of the areas they tried to keep fixed up, in contrast to areas just three blocks away.  It was a nice stone older building with some copper roofing that had taken on a green patina, and a clocktower.  Unlike the night of the Hungry Choir, the clock was in working order.  The streetlamps in that old fashioned lantern style were free of cobwebs and had been cleared of peeling paint and painted, and the sidewalk closest to the town center was done in brick, all arranged in zigzags.

Lucy kind of hated it.  It felt like the mayor and other people at the top were spending money on their own front yards, except at work, rather than at home.  It did make some sense, with the tourism and the fact most tourists wouldn’t be going to the very north or south ends of town, but it was too much, when she’d just been a few blocks north and seen how sad some places were.

They walked around the building to the parking at the back.  A few strips of grass and  concrete surrounded the lot, followed by trees, which were backed by fence with panels hanging from it.  Keeping idiots from wandering onto the train tracks, and providing some sound cover from the trains themselves, probably.  Lucy had been warned about the tracks as a kid.

“There’s no way over or through,” Snowdrop said.

“They’re on the other side then?” Lucy asked.

“Which way is over?” Verona asked.

It was Avery who jogged forward.  She looked around, pulled her rope from her pocket, and wrapped it around her hand.

Lucy looked away, checking the coast was clear, while making it easier for Avery to make the leap.

“There’s one tree branch that’s weak, it’ll put you in the way of the train,” Snowdrop said.

Lucy looked. Avery was walking on the fence-top, holding onto the occasional tree branch.  The panel that was zip-tied to the fence provided enough breadth for Avery to set her foot down on.

“Found it,” Avery said.

“There’s a way through?” Lucy asked.

“Nah,” Snowdrop said.  She walked over and leaned against a panel, her expression sullen.

The panels had a fair bit of graffiti on them.  More permanent marker than actual paint.  A hole in one plastic panel had a large frog drawn around it, so the hole served as the frog’s butthole.  Tattoos or writing pointed to the butthole, indicating something obscene.

“They’re not so subtle, are they?” Lucy asked.  She pulled the panel back.  The fence on the other side was torn away from the post, giving space to crawl through.

“They’re all wise and crap,” Snowdrop said.

Lucy listened, then checked both ways before slipping through the fence, and crossing the tracks.  Snowdrop slipped through after her, running about twenty feet down the tracks to another spot in the fence, where she pushed aside another panel.

Lucy followed, pausing to pick up a strappy sandal.  Brie might need it, if everything went well.

Avery hopped down on the far side of the fence, jogging parallel to Lucy.  Verona followed after.

“We get Brie and run for it?” Avery asked.

“I guess so,” Lucy said.  “We have to be prepared for trouble.”

“Goblins definitely,” Verona said.  “John maybe?  When you scouted out his place the other day, did he teleport?”

“No,” Avery said.  “Jogged after, I’m pretty sure.  Caught up while I was fixing my diagram.  He was still pretty fast and good at tracking, though.”

Lucy nodded.  She took a second to think about the possibilities.  “I don’t think they can hurt us, according to the deals we made.  We can’t really harm them either.  They can get in our way or harass us and they can maybe hurt or capture Brie.  If we get her and they get her back, then that makes everything harder.”

“It’s like we’re playing a game and we can’t let them take possession of the ball,” Avery said.

“You are such a jock sometimes.” Lucy said.

“I don’t like the sound of ‘jock’.  Sporty, maybe.  And so?” Avery challenged her.  “Drawing on that kind of experience really helped me on the Forest Ribbon Trail.”

“Can’t argue with that one,” Verona jumped in, giving Lucy a look, “unless you want to be a jerk.”

“Not going to argue with it,” Lucy said.  “If it works, it works.  And I stand by what I said.”

“Sporty, not jock.  Jock makes me think jockstrap,” Avery said.  “Or smelly, or those fratty boys in the 80s movies, who act like creeps.  Jocks versus nerds.  Blah.”

“Sporty, fine,” Lucy said.  “Getting more on topic-”

“Nerds always seemed like the side to go with,” Verona said.  “But I tended to find the weirdos off on the sidelines most interesting.  Break the mold, go make dog noises or cover yourself in paint.  That’s cool.”

“It’s too bad we don’t have anyone like that.  We’re a merry band of friggin’ normies,” Snowdrop said.  “We’re such losers!”

Avery wrapped an arm around Snowdrop’s head and gave her a vigorous head-rub, ruining whatever of Lucy’s earlier work the girl’s hood and the goblins hadn’t already messed up.

“Getting back on topic,” Lucy insisted.  “We need a battle plan.  Also, I tended to feel sorry for those people in the movies.”

Verona gasped.  “I’m hurt!”

“Not in a way that looked down on them.  More in a way that like, it’d be cool if they found a kindred soul.  A friend group, a girlfriend or boyfriend.”

“This might redefine how I look at our friendship,” Verona said.  “Pity?  Ugh.”

“Solidarity.  Without changing who they are,” Lucy added.

“I hope not!” Verona returned.  “Was this what you were thinking when you approached me all those years ago?”

“I’m pretty sure I was thinking I liked your springy pencil-topper and if we worked together on the drawing thing I might get to use it,” Lucy told Verona.

“The vibrating wacky spaceman?” Verona asked.  “So you were using me.”

“Yeah.  I was a kid, and kids are pretty amoral.”

“The topic,” Avery chimed in.

“Sorry, we’re leaving you out,” Verona said.

“No, actually, the topic.  I want to do this right.  For Gabe and Reagan.”

Lucy nodded, her expression changing to something more serious.  “Plans and counterplans, then.”

“Goblins, maybe John, what about Faerie?” Avery asked.

“If we run into Faerie aren’t we kind of screwed?” Verona asked.

“We have the firecrackers and stuff,” Lucy said.  She slipped her bag off her shoulder, then reached inside.  She pulled out a stinkbomb made out of a tennis ball, and a set of firecrackers that had been tampered with.  She offered them out, and it was Verona who took the stinkbomb.  Avery who took the firecracker.

Lucy kept one of the modified firecrackers.  While she was at it, she pulled off her necklace, got her ring and the dog tag, and secured the tag in her pocket, where there was no chance it could get thrown down.  She put the ring on.

“That only buys us a bit of time,” Avery said.

“If it takes more than a bit of time, I think the Faerie win,” Verona answered.  She rubbed at her chin.  “Unless that’s the image they want us to have.”

“I think it’s probably true,” Lucy said.  “What about John?”

“I can take him,” Snowdrop said.

“What if we spread out, and if he comes after one of us, the others can throw down their dog tag and then we order him to handle the problem?” Verona asked.

“He said if we summoned him for the wrong reasons, he might not give us a replacement tag.  I think that’s a good way to not get a replacement.”

“But,” Verona said, holding up one finger.  She pointed that finger at Avery.  “Also a way to keep a certain player away from the ball?”

“Yeah,” Avery said.  “But it feels bad.  In a situation that already feels crummy.  We’re permanently giving up that help and security?  It feels like a… I don’t know.  Like we’re making this real and permanent.  Snowdrop’s friends with some of the goblins, and what happens for her after today?”

“Meh,” Snowdrop grunted out the word.

“It might be real and permanent anyway,” Lucy said.  “Do you not want to intervene?  Because we could have that conversation.”

“No.  I think we have to.  Tomorrow night is the next ritual night, isn’t it?”

Lucy nodded.  “I just wanted to leave that open, in case anyone’s having second thoughts.  I jumped into that, talking about Yalda and stuff at the meeting.”

Their destination was a building that intersected the fence, a little way down the tracks.  It might have been a spot for repair, or egress, or giving people access to the tracks for messier situations.

The goblins could be heard within, arguing.

“Brie is in there?”

“Nah, so get ready to move,” Snowdrop said.  “We’re gonna make a lot of noise and scare ’em off!  Maximize collateral damage!”

Avery put her hand over Snowdrop’s mouth, and pulled the kid into the thicker bit of trees alongside the fence.  Lucy and Verona followed.

“She means to be quiet,” Avery murmured.  “Be careful.”

Snowdrop, mouth still covered, did an eyebrow contortion in an effort to communicate her frustration at Avery.

“You said you’d distract them?” Lucy asked Snowdrop.

Avery released Snowdrop’s mouth.

Snowdrop nodded.  “Cherry’s hard, because she’s sensitive, and I can’t scream at her.  Toadswallow’s trying to ensure I’ll grow up nice and human.  They’re the tricky ones.  Gashy is easy, I just can’t fight him.  An’ I have ideas for Munchy.”

Don’t fight him,” Avery warned Snowdrop.

“Yeah?  That’s what I said,” Snowdrop replied, tugging her shirt down and adjusting her hoodie, before pulling the hoodie off and tying it around her waist.

Lucy rubbed her forehead, trying to process that last one.

“I won’t think any less of you if you aren’t up to this,” Avery told Snowdrop.

“Then I’m outta here,” Snowdrop said.

“Want something to help with the distraction?” Lucy asked.  “Firecrackers or a stinkbomb?”

“Firecrackers.  I like weird, loud noises.”

“Or my rope?” Avery asked.

“I’m meh on the rope,” Snowdrop said.  She smiled, showing off her missing teeth.

“We’re thinking about it wrong,” Verona said.  “Goblins gave us this stuff to deal with the Fae, right?  So… maybe we use Faerie stuff to deal with goblins.”

“Glamoured images?” Lucy asked.

Verona nodded.

“Good backup plan.  But what’s a goblin scared of?” Avery asked.

“Incoming train?” Lucy suggested.

“That might be a lot to draw up with the glamour I’ve got.” Verona said.

The arguing had paused inside.  There was a crash.

“I hope Brie is okay,” Avery murmured.  “I’m mad at her, kind of, for last night, and for letting Reagan die, but I hope she’s okay.”

“We have the broad strokes of a plan?” Lucy asked.

“Snowdrop goes in, does her scream-and-greet with Cherry, keeps Cherry distracted.  Make Toadswallow think there’s room for corrupting her?” Avery asked.

Snowdrop nodded.

“Then run.  Don’t fight Gashwad,” Avery said.

“Fighting him won’t really get his and everyone’s attention,” Snowdrop said.

“Don’t.  You’ll get hurt.”

“Yeah, and-”

“Don’t,” Avery said, a third time.

Snowdrop huffed.

“What if…” Lucy trailed off.  She had to dig in her bag some more.  She got more of the glamour.  “Put your hand out?”

Snowdrop did.

Lucy deposited a good bit in Snowdrop’s hand.

“Nettlewisp, nettlewisp, nettlewisp,” Lucy whispered.  She hesitated, trying to think.

“Our opossum is great, our opossum is strong,” Verona continued.

“Protect her from goblins who might do her wrong,” Avery whispered.

“If goblins try to hurt or grab, give them something prolonged,” Lucy said.

“Time enough to run, no need to be violent, but make it strong,” Verona added.

“Bewilder and daze, confuse and craze, fill their eyes and ears with…” Avery hesitated.

“Sweetness, rainbows and birdsong,” Lucy finished, as she drew the symbol into the dust.

Verona cackled.

Lucy closed her hands around Snowdrop’s, so the hand closed around the dust.  It shifted and squirmed between her fingers.

Snowdrop smiled, clasping her hands behind her back, and swaying a bit on the spot.

“If John comes for us, distract, we use the tag trick if we have to, but surrender if you have to.  If one of us gets caught, the rest can go ahead,” Lucy told the others.

“Are you sure?  We don’t double back?” Avery asked.

“We do what we gotta to get her to Zed, along with instructions on what to do with the Choir,” Lucy said.  “If we get caught… we worry about rescue later.  They need us out there, acting as practitioners, or some of the stuff that’s holding back people like Alexander will break down.  They can’t do that if we’re prisoners.”

“We raise hell if they insist on keeping us prisoner,” Verona said.

Lucy nodded.

Avery handed Snowdrop the black rope.  The girl took it in her hand that wasn’t holding dust.

“Firecracker the faerie if they come for us, and when it comes to glamour, keep your glamour tricks in mind,” Lucy said.  “Draw a quick barrier for Edith.  Matthew… I don’t even know.”

“If it’s Matthew,” Avery whispered, “I don’t think he can do a lot without letting the Doom out.  I think even Verona could outrun him.  They’d both get exhausted, but he can’t afford to get so exhausted he lets his guard down.”

“I can definitely outrun him if I’m not human,” Verona said.  “Permission granted to use any and all things Faerie in a pinch?”

Lucy nodded.  “Okay.  Be safe and be smart.  Because what I was talking about before… this feels like a moment a trap could come back to bite us, and it would be dramatic in a way Maricica could use.”

Verona nodded.

“As for Alpeana…” Lucy trailed off, wincing a bit in anticipation.

Avery answered, “I can’t see Alpeana coming after us.  Especially considering it’s still light out.”

Lucy looked up at the overcast sky.  Sun still peeked through.

“Right?” Avery asked.  “Or am I crazy?”

Lucy dropped her eyes from the sky, looking at the other two girls, and the little lost opossum spirit.  “If this takes a while, she might.  Remember she can travel between worlds, she can mess with spirits and echoes and stuff, and she can get in our way a lot, since she can kinda teleport.”

Avery nodded.

“If it comes down to us needing to make a run for it, and one of us needing to stop and get in their way while the others go ahead… Avery should be the one to run ahead,” Lucy said.  She locked eye contact with Avery.  “No arguing in the moment.  Take Brie and go.  If you absolutely have to, communicate the Yalda weakness, then let her run on ahead.”

Avery made a face.

“And then what?” Verona asked.  “All three of us lose or get caught and then we…?”

“Negotiate.  Renegotiate.  Do what we have to.  Again, they can’t keep us.  They have to let us operate, and they have to give us a bit of freedom, or it’s not really ‘Practitioners’ who are investigating the Carmine Beast, because we’re not doing so out of free will or anything.  It’s three human puppets doing the investigating.  That doesn’t work.”

“They could take two of us hostage.”

“And the third of us can go reach out to higher authorities,” Lucy said.  “Remember the Sable, Aurum, and Alabaster?  Remember how to get there?”

The other two girls nodded.  Snowdrop stared over at the little railside access shack.

“You’re so cool when you’re into the neat practice stuff,” Verona murmured.

“I’m into it, I’m just into it in a practical way.”

Masks on.

Hats on.

Coats on.

Bags in place.  Tools and weapons in hand.  Lucy used the ring and hot lead to draw out a pen to spear form.  Avery had her hockey stick.  Verona had the knobby wood club.

“Careful about using that around goblins,” Avery murmured.  “Same idea as using glamour on the faerie.”

Verona nodded with some vigor.

They had connection blocking stuff, so they felt safe to get in close to the little access shack.  It was a solidly built construction, with a door and a window in the front and, it seemed, a door and a window at the back.  A brief peek within told Lucy all that she needed to know about the place and what it was for.  Those with the key could enter the building, get any tools or whatever they needed, and enter onto the tracks, and vice-versa.  It looked like tools had been dragged away from one side, so there was only a workbench and some shelves, and Brie was inside, tied or cuffed to the workbench.

The three of them had to carefully climb the fence, to avoid making noise, get onto the roof, and use that to get to the other side.  Leaving Snowdrop by the door.

They made their way to the window, peeking in.

The process made Lucy’s hat diagram smoke, burning down like a fuse, but the same diagram made it so they were peeking inside when others’ heads were turned to look at something else, pulling back when those people turned to check the window.

“Hey, I can wait out here all day!” Snowdrop hollered.

Lucy peeked.

It looked like Bluntmunch and Gashwad were arguing over some of Brie’s things, which were strewn out across the floor, while Cherrypop sat on a shelf, apparently tasked with watching Brie.  The shelf served to cut the room in half, almost but not quite a wall, when someone could peer past the items on the shelf.  A sixth of the shack was marked out for what looked like a tiny bathroom, where the sink was almost in the lap of the person on the toilet.

Lucy peeked.  Cherrypop’s attention was mostly on the fight, and on Snowdrop’s arrival.  As Snowdrop came in the door, Cherry climbed through the shelf.

“Rhaaa!” Snowdrop shouted.

“Aaaaa!” Cherrypop returned.  She started to turn away-

“Rhaaa!”

“Aaa!”

“What’s with the scream-and-greet, by the way?” Verona whispered the question.

“It started with a debate over who’s more screamy,” Avery whispered back.  “Now it’s a thing.”

Verona headed toward the door, the little goblin key in hand, while Lucy leaned in close enough to the dusty window that her nose touched the wall, looking in through the corner.

There were a bunch of tools by the door.

Lucy snapped her finger a few times in quick succession, then held up her hand.

Verona joined Lucy then looked.

“What’s the problem?” Avery asked.

“Tools are set up, leaning against the door,” Lucy whispered.

Cherrypop’s ear twitched.  Lucy pulled back in the same moment Cherrypop looked her way.

Verona squirmed, pulling off her bag.  Then she got out a sheet of blank art paper.  She drew a freehand circle that was better than some circles Lucy could draw with a compass, then began elaborating.  An earth rune inside a diamond… Lucy recognized that.  The diamond imparted qualities of whatever it contained.  An earth quality, feeding into the circle around it.  Then a bunch of Earth runes that controlled the flow of what was going into that circle.  A triple-line, with earth quality insulated on the exterior and interior.

Then a ring around, blocking air.

“Why block air?” Avery whispered.

“Because I don’t know the symbol for sound, and air carries sound.  Best I can do.  Also…”

Verona added a bit.  A second diagram on the paper, a mercury sign, tied to a very lopsided air with a line pointing out.  There was a Saggitarius sign attached to that second diagram, with notation: ‘Out, not in’.

Lucy’s pen spear was dripping blue ink down its length.  She sat there, her back to the wall, waiting for the crash, the shout, the whatever, that would set off this whole situation.

Verona touched some glamour to the diagram, and the image began to move, parts of the diagram rotating on the paper, the corners of the paper fluttering, even as the part with the diagram remained flat.

She touched the paper to the window.

Glass near-silently cracked, where the ‘earth quality’ was being focused.

It took a moment.  The glass finished breaking in a neat circle, and the wind picked up, paper clinging to glass and pulling it out and away, into the air.

Avery caught it out of the air before it could crash to the ground.

“…Toadswallow will want some,” Bluntmunch growled.

“Toadswallow can shove the keyboard where it don’t shine, then bang it against something precious until gremlins come out his nose!” Gash growled.

“If there’s something you want,” Brie said, “We could give you more things.  Even more gremlin things.”

“Shaddup!” Gashwad barked.

“Yeah, shaddup!” Cherry echoed.

“You too!”

“What’s this?” Snowdrop asked, and there was a clatter.

“Don’t touch!  Don’t touch unless you know what you’re doing!”

“Aaaa!” Cherry screamed.

“Aaaah!” Snowdrop returned.  “I’m not an honorary member of the goblin team, so I don’t get anything, huh?”

“You are a member of the team, you dunce!” Cherrypop exclaimed.  “Augh!”

There was a clattering.

Quieter, Cherry said, “She’s dumber than I am and that’s saying somethin’.”

“I see,” Brie answered.

It sounded like Cherry was right under the window with the hole in it, by Brie, who was cuffed or tied to the workbench.

“I don’t suppose I could use the facilities?” Brie asked.

“Hunh?”

“I need to poop, Cherry.”

“Then poop and sit in it!” Cherrypop said, with enthusiasm.  She cackled.

“Don’t touch that!”  Bluntmunch raised his voice.  “You’ll set something off!”

“Ah!” Snowdrop was audible.  “I didn’t touch it!”

“Aaahhh!” Cherrypop jumped in, “You did!  I saw you nudge it with your toe!”

There was a noise as Cherrypop scampered.

Verona was rubbing glamour into her arms, turning into a mink, maybe.  She stopped as Avery grabbed her arm with enough force that it made some of the glamour cloud up and fly away.

Lucy looked.

Further down the way was Toadswallow.  He was on Snowdrop’s side of the fence, approaching the shack.

When he awoke, Lord Donald was standing by his feet,” Toadswallow sang, as he waddled his way along.  “Saying ‘how do you like my feather bed, and how do you like my shit?  How do you like my lady, with her massive tits?’

They had to pull back behind the cover of the building to avoid being seen by the fancy goblin.

Oh, I like your feather bed, and I like your shit.  I like your lady bae, with her massive tits.  ‘Then get up, get up,’ Lord Donald cried, ‘get up as quick as you can.  It’ll never be said in England that I fucked up a naked man.

“Toadswallow!  Hide the stuff!”

“Hide what!?” the commotion came from within.

“The stuff, the important stuff.  The keyboard.  Where’s the keyboard?”

“It’s sticky!”

Oh I can’t get up, I won’t get up, I can’t rise up for my life.  You’ve got a huge fucking gun, and I’ve not even a pocket knife.  ‘You lie dear boy for you’re clearly risen, and I’d guess it’s been so all night.  I may have a huge fucking gun, but that’s there’s no pocket knife…

Toadswallow got close.  The commotion settled almost immediately.  Too quiet and still for a shack full of goblins.

So the lad struck the very first blow and he made Lord Donald sore, but Lord Donald pulled the trigger, and the lad was dead before his -ahem- struck the flooooor!”

Toadswallow’s final line landed as he reached the door.  He’d seen Snowdrop, from the sudden censorship, Lucy imagined.

Lucy grabbed another paper from Verona.  She quickly inscribed a connection breaker diagram, then took the key, placing it in the center.

“Hey, Toadswallow?  They hid stuff,” Brie called out.  “I’ll tell you what if you do me three favors.”

“Three, hm?  Expensive.”

“It’s really cool stuff, I think.”

“Your word isn’t worth much, my dear.  You’re not awakened.  You’re just a hapless innocent who stuck her nose too deep into our unmentionables.  Now we need to figure out what we’re doing with you.”

“For right now, is there any chance we can figure out the washroom situation?  I’ve been tied up here for half an hour, I’m guessing.”

“Not even,” Toadswallow said.  “And you won your little contest, didn’t you?  Do you even need to worry about that sort of thing anymore?”

“Oh yeah,” Gashwad could be heard.  His voice was snarlier, of the four local goblins.

“Sneaky sneaky,” Cherrypop said.

Lucy folded up the paper around the key, drew a key on it, and then handed it to Avery, removing her own hat to press it against the wall, in some vain hope of getting more connection blocking.

Avery, cape wrapped around her, popped up, tossed the goblin key down at Brie, then ducked back down.

She really hoped it wasn’t rope that was tying Brie to the table.  Something with a lock.

“What are they hiding, Snowdroplet?” Toadswallow adopted a smarmy tone.  “Must I bribe you?  Gifts?  Fun things?  Treats?  Tricks?”

“Say nothing!” Gashwad barked.

“I won’t tell you.”

Goblins growled.

“I mean, I’ll tell you.”

Other goblins growled.  Toadswallow.  Cherry.

“I’ll give you things!  I won’t make you drink milk!” Cherry shouted.  There was a clatter.

“Grab me!” Snowdrop called out.

The nettlewisp explosion detonated within the little access building.  Pink fog, rainbow hues, giggling, and ear-piercing tweeting as birds sang in harmony.

The goblins screamed like they were being burned.

Inside, Brie rose to her feet.  She immediately headed into the thick of things.  Bending down to grab stuff.

“Come!  This way!” Lucy hissed.  “Remove the blockage at the door!”

“You!” Bluntmunch growled.

“Frick.  The-”

Avery used her hockey stick, slamming it into the door.  It crashed through, scattering two different pieces of the door and knocking the tools that had been stacked up against it across the room.  Something sprang, going off on the other side, and a screwdriver seemed to paradoxically come flying at Avery, through the broken door.  It caught her near the elbow.

“Get Brie,” Avery said.  “Go.”

Verona was close enough to support Avery and watch things.  Leaving Lucy to dive into the pink mist and rainbows, that smelled like cotton candy and a warm sunny day.

The goblins were writhing, hands over their eyes.

Lucy found Snowdrop and Brie.  She grabbed Brie’s arm, tugging.

“I need to get these things.  I made promises.”

“You’re not awakened, so you can lie and break promises,” Lucy growled the words.  “and this is the second time we’re saving your hide.  Give us some cooperation.”

Toadswallow kicked out, hitting Lucy’s shin.

“I have to.”

Brie was bigger, seven or so years older, and Lucy had no hope of making her move.  There was the spear… but that was counterintuitive.

She bent down, helping.  Aware they were swiftly burning through their headstart.

Getting the things the goblins had been portioning out.

“There’s a keyboard under the shelf.”

Lucy used her spear to strike the keyboard.  She grabbed it, and it was sticky.  She made a face.

“I think that’s it.  Notes on the shelf.”

Snowdrop grabbed the notes.

They headed out, onto the tracks, where Lucy and Avery were.  The screwdriver had been pulled out, and Avery had wrapped her arm in the end of her scarf.

“Where were you going to meet Zed this time?  Same place?”

“No, but-”

“North or south?” Lucy interrupted.  “Don’t answer, just run that way.”

“Goblins can hear us,” Verona said.

Brie began running north.

The mist was already fading.

Verona grabbed her spell cards, and some of the pieces of paper she’d been drawing on.  Art on the front, diagrams on the back.  She drew about ten lines on ten pieces of paper, then threw a bunch more into the air.

“Don’t hurt them,” Lucy said.  “We swore oaths.”

“They hurt each other more than this just by messing around and scrapping with each other,” Verona said.  “Is it really harm if they’re fine by tomorrow?”

“Might be.  Don’t give them any ammo they can use.”

“Letting them come at us without any problems is giving them ammo too,” Verona retorted.

Lucy couldn’t really debate that.

“How’s the arm?” Lucy asked.

“Hurts.  I’m glad it’s not hockey season, or this would be the biggest bummer.”

That’s your priority?  This is the sports-crazy thing again.”

Avery gave a one-note chuckle.

They were far enough away now.  “Stop for a few seconds.”

They did.  Lucy grabbed the sandal she’d collected and gave it to Brie, who put it on.

“Where did you plan to meet Zed?  Same place?” Lucy asked.

“No, but it’s close.  By the highway, there’s a rest stop.  What’s going on?”

Lucy answered, “We’re rescuing you.  We bring you to Zed, Zed owes us concessions and help.  If we get stopped but we can give you the chance to get to Zed… we need you to tell him stuff.”

“Like?”

“Like there’s a way to beat the Choir, potentially.  A weak point.  Tell him a black dog was killed, and passed on a curse.  There’s a good chance the black dog’s intelligence, personality, or some trace of it are driving the choir.  An intelligence at the core, that keeps hidden.”

“Okay?  Black dog.  Like, woof woof?”

Verona spoke up, “He’ll know or he should have the resources to look it up.  It didn’t seem like this was super specific knowledge.”

Lucy added, “Her name was Yalda.  A little girl who sang and brought bad stuff wherever she went, especially to anyone who hurt her.  And she’s tapped into power from the war in Afghanistan, it’s complicated, and it’s why the choir ritual is so stubborn.”

“I’ll pass that on, then.”

If we can’t go talk to Zed with you,” Lucy warned.  “If we bring you to Zed, you stay quiet.  You owe us at least that much.  Let us negotiate in good faith.”

“I thought the world would get simpler again, when I won.”

“It could’ve gone that way, if you’d kept your nose out of things,” Avery said.

“Can’t,” Brie said.  “I went looking for you guys to try to get answers or figure out a way forward.  I found Zed instead, or he found me.  I- you saved me, you did.  But Zed saved me and Zed made the world make sense again, gave me hope, cared.  More than that.  I tried to go back to my old life and I can’t plug back into it.  I can’t- he ended up becoming my whole world.”

Lucy looked at the woman with her Sight.

Brie’s white shirt and white pants were stained red with her own blood.  Her hair was matted on one side, her hand and both feet were mangled.  The ‘blades’ that pierced her were slivers of bone, teeth, and the occasional blade serrated enough it could be part of a beartooth trap.  Watercolor stains spread from each wound.  The keyboard she was carrying was so stained it was dripping the stuff, the individual keys standing out in the grime, like they glowed.

No sign of trickery.  No enchantment or anything.  It was-

“You love him,” Avery spoke up.

“I- yeah.”

The goblins had emerged from the shack.

They resumed running.  North.  Toward the highway.

The goblins reached the illustrations.  Cherrypop was fastest, running across one-

It detonated into a whirl of wind.  She was sent skidding across more papers.

Smoke, a gush of water.  Other papers flew through the air.  Gashwad got touched by one, and it flashed, a bright light that made Lucy’s eyes hurt, even though she was a good distance away.

“That’s about ten hours of drawing gone,” Verona huffed.

A violent farting noise behind them made their heads turn.

Toadswallow, one eye narrowed, the other eye socket wrapped around a scratched-up monocle, wearing a varsity sweater and tie with his belly-nails sticking through both, was holding something that looked like a balloon wrapped in skin.  He squeezed it, and a puckered hole at the end vibrated and jumped in every direction with the horrendous force of what it was expelling, fumes pouring out.  The papers were blown away.

At the fence, Bluntmunch climbed it, hopping over onto the far side, and began loping forward, on the right side, where there were no tracks of papers.

They were a good two hundred feet down the tracks, and Lucy could already smell the first traces of it on the wind.  It resembled the smell from when Barbie and Ran’s dog had eaten an entire cheesecake and butt-vomited it all over the back bedroom.  A smell so bad she couldn’t hear cheesecake without her head immediately going there.

There were bitter after-smells, too.  Smells that stung the nostrils.  In third grade the teacher’s elderly aunt would come in to help students who were struggling with math, sitting with them at the round table in the back corner.  She’d had more of the offensive old lady smells than every other old lady Lucy had ever met put together, and she’d had bad teeth.  Some black, soft and rounded off.  Her breath had brought Lucy to tears- and not just making her eyes water.  She’d sobbed in class and left that little table.

This was like the cheesecake mess chased with Mr. Clark’s Aunt’s breath.

Oh god.

Bluntmunch was fast.  Gashwad slipped through the fence on the other side, and he was moving kind of like Avery did, like every time Lucy looked away and looked back, he’d found ways to skip ahead.  Snarling from start to finish.

“Can any of these gadgets we gave up our headstart to get do anything?” Lucy asked.

“I’ve got a tape that makes it easier to keep working out.”

“Keep running?”

“Yeah.  But it’s indiscriminate.  It helps anyone who can hear, including them!”

“I don’t think they get tired like we do.  Use it!”

Brie took something from Snowdrop, and plugged it into a little tape player, the sticky keyboard tucked under one arm.  She hit the button, and music started immediately, playing from the speaker at a pretty good fidelity.

Toadswallow was speaking.  He wasn’t as fast as Bluntmunch or skipping ahead like Gash, but he was keeping pace with them.  The other two were catching up, and Toadswallow was spending his breath on…

On saying names.

“Stiles… John Stiles.  Come.” Toadswallow said.  “Matthew Moss, Matthew Moss, Matthew Moss.”

The Others of Kennet knew now.  That something was up.

“Guilherme, Guiherme-”

“You’re calling them?” Bluntmunch hollered.

“-Guilherme.  Maricica.  Maricica-”

“Don’t,” Bluntmunch struck the panel by the fence.  “Not her.  Not with the way the votes went.”

Toadswallow didn’t say her name a third time.

Now a Faerie were in play.

Probably on his way.

The music began playing.  It was intense, high energy, and every part of Lucy that she might’ve thought would’ve been a barrier to getting into music just utterly failed her.  It was like having cold water thrown over her and her heart and lungs and guts getting wet and chilly, somehow.

Gashwad had gotten ahead of them, and slipped through the fence at the same spot they’d come in.  He stepped onto the tracks.

Where was the other panel?  It was about this far down, wasn’t it?

“Go through.  We can try to deal with Blunt!” Lucy called out.

Avery, jogging ahead, ducked to the side, pushing at panels, until one moved.  She ducked through.  Brie followed, then Lucy, then Verona and Snowdrop.

Bluntmunch picked up speed, charging ahead, tearing past bushes and smaller trees.  Violence, rage, and intensity.

If it’s instinct, it’s not really them that’s acting against us, and they can actually hurt us.

Lucy whipped the spear through the air.  The blue ink swiped out at Bluntmunch’s face.  It splashed one eye and missed the other.  Unfortunately, he had one big eye and one squinty one, and it messed with the squinty one.

Avery stepped out from behind a tree to body-check him with her hockey stick.  He stumbled back a good ten feet, bumping into a tree, but he didn’t lose his footing.

He chuckled, then leaped forward.

Avery stepped past the same tree, and appeared further up the path.

“I can keep running, I’m tough, I’m made for this-” Snowdrop huffed.

Verona reached down and took the girl’s hand.

Snowdrop became a possum pup, clinging to Verona’s wrist.

Avery, ahead of them, was holding her stick awkwardly, hand pressed against her elbow wound.  It had hurt, going after Bluntmunch like that, with her elbow hurt.

Gashwad kept skipping ahead.  He was lying in wait now.

“How’s he moving like that!?” Lucy called out.

“There’s little paths and tunnels, if you’re tuned into the Warrens,” Avery said.  “The place goblins come from.  Snowdrop showed me some.  Gash- gash seems to know most of them!”

“If I can smash anything valuable, I can use this keyboard,” Brie huffed.

The music was making it easier.  That high intensity music that had drenched Lucy’s insides was making the breath come more easily, making her feel like if she was in gym class right now she’d be more into it than she’d ever been.

And… something darker.  Ominous.

Whatever.  If it helped, she could put aside the rest of it.  An indistinct woman’s voice was encouraging, clapping along with the music, keeping a pace.

Gashwad leaped down from the fence, into their way.  Lucy reached into her pocket, where she had the last of her glamour.

He threw something down into their way.  Grass blackened and died.  Then the blackness bubbled.

Like tar.

Avery was closer and was faster on the draw.  She had her own glamour, and she used it.  A fistful, a thumb-flick, in the gesture used for ‘lightening’.  Violent enough to lighten it all the way to a flash.

Black tar turned gray and stopped bubbling so fiercely.

“Lucy!  Verona!” Avery called out.  She used a tree and skipped ahead to the far side of the patch of blackness.  “Use-”

Avery’s eyes widened as she looked back.

Lucy turned, and saw Bluntmunch only a few paces behind her.

She used the fistful of glamour much as Avery had done.  A flash.  Right in Bluntmunch’s face.

It blinded him.  That much was clear.  She swung the spear again, trying to splash more ink-

And he grabbed it.  He pulled it away from her, and because she was a half-second too slow in relaxing her grip, the force he used to tear it away also pulled her off her feet.

She slapped a tree to try to push herself back and away and get out of his reach before he could actually grab her.  the edge of his meaty paw brushed against the top of her head as she ducked back, and scrambled away.

“Watch out for the tar!  I was going to say you should flash it too!”

The tar blocked her way.  Verona, still with glamour smeared over her from earlier, wrapped herself in her cloak, twisted, and became a bird for just long enough to cross it.  It looked like Brie had leaped across, stepped in the edge, and was undoing her sandal.

Lucy grabbed a tree branch, and turned it into a weapon.  A warhammer or something.  It was unwieldy, but she slammed the end into the middle of the tar patch, hoping to vault over.  Instead, the hammer hit the earth and just stuck up, handle first.

She used the head of the hammer as a leaping-off point to get to the other side.  The moment she made contact with the ground, Gashwad tackled her, tangling up in her legs.  She fell into a bush and a bunch of tree branches that had been shoved off to the side.

He clambered up her, pulling away a chain that he’d been using as a belt to keep his cargo shorts up.  They didn’t fall off, but they slumped down further on his gnarled body.  His bare torso seemed disproportionately long for his legs.

He had breath like Mrs. Clark’s Aunt had.

A hand gripped his hair from behind, pulling his head and body back.

Brie sank her teeth into his shoulder and neck.  Tore.  Spat, her expression contorting.

“Don-”

Brie bit again.  It was like she was tearing at cotton candy, for how easy it was to get her teeth in.

“Don’t hurt him!  He’s an ally!  Just-”

Brie pulled back.  Her eyes were wild.

“Different sides right now,” Lucy said.

Lucy shifted position, got her legs braced against Gashwad’s side, and propelled him back, so he landed in the middle of the tar, stuck.

Bluntmunch leaped onto the trees to the right of the tar, grabbing at branches.

It was Verona who followed up, throwing some more spell cards.  Pummeling him with flashes of fire, smoke, and expulsions of wind.

“I’m out,” Verona said.

“Yeah,” Lucy said, as she took Verona’s hand, getting to her feet.

Brie, just to the side, had her hand over her mouth.  Not quite covering the smear of blood there.  The intense music played around her, and hit Lucy right in the soul.

It was only Toadswallow, who was catching up, a cloud of nose-burning gas surrounding him, the gas bladder stuck to his hip, and…  no Cherrypop.  She was either being sneaky, or she’d run off to notify people.

Toadswallow had more gadgets and tricks.  That was his thing, maybe.  Bluntmunch hit things, Gashwad messed things up, Cherry was useless, and Toadswallow… he knew the tricks, he collected them.

He spiked a wooden box onto the train tracks.

Rats and mice spilled out.  Way too many for the box.

They ran.  Lucy could see the line of trees and the clocktower above the town center, off to the right.  The big gas station, just a bit ahead, and the train station, further up the tracks.

A way further ahead was the train station.

The gas seemed to spur the rats forward.  They chased, nipping and seizing at Lucy’s sneakers with their teeth and claws.  Which was way more horrifying than she might’ve guessed it would be if she’d been told this would happen in advance.  The added weight, the promise that if she fell, they could be all over her…

The tape Brie was playing was pumping her full of vigor and vim and intensity, and the traces of gas that were catching up and overwhelming her were choking her, making each breath harder.

Again, Bluntmunch was catching up.  Too big and mean to really give up.

Brie stopped the one tape.  The vim and vigor faded.  There was only the sour, choking smell that made each breath an effort.

“Why stop?”

“It’s not that long a track, and-”

Brie clicked the tape back in.

There was an opening sting.

Crying cold tears…” the tape played.

Bluntmunch chuckled.

A man with a bleached mullet, mustache, and tiny denim shorts hurled himself at the biggest goblin.

The track skipped, straining, the volume waning.

Lucy looked back.  The man with the mullet flickered, fritzing.  Each time he did, he lost a bit of ground, giving the goblin a chance to rise up, or get in position to punch, or a fritz made a punch not land.

But he kept up the fight for thirty seconds or a minute.

Time enough for them to get ahead, put more distance between themselves and the goblins.

The running was hard.  Lucy’s legs felt like they were stone, not flesh, and she had to consciously think of the mechanical movements of running, of ways to vary it up slightly so that she could use muscles that weren’t so tired.

They reached the station.  A single platform and a train stop that was perpetually under construction.  A mural was painted on a sign, welcoming travelers to Kennet.

Stairs led up onto the platform, and Lucy was tired enough she wasn’t sure she could manage those stairs.

Avery, good arm holding her stick, extended the stick down.  Lucy gripped it and accepted the help in climbing the stairs.

There were staff here, and as they backed up toward the middle of the platform… Toadswallow and Bluntmunch remained behind.  Toadswallow walked over to say something to Bluntmunch through the fence.

The big guy tore the fence with one meaty paw, and Toadswallow slipped through.

Both of them disappeared into a set of bushes that had collected a lot of wind-blown trash and papers.

“We have to keep going,” Avery said.

“How’s your arm?” Lucy asked.

“It’s okay, I think.  I know goblins are gross, but I don’t think they did anything special with the screwdriver.”

“Did you get your tetanus shots on time?”

“Yeah.  My parents are good about that sort of thing.”

Lucy nodded, huffing.

“We have to keep going, or they’ll get ahead of us.  There’s not any practical difference between Brie being stuck in the shack and us being on this platform with Goblins in the woods and stuff behind, and John and Matthew on the road out ahead.”

“Get Brie to Zed, yeah,” Lucy said.

“I wore the wrong shoes for running,” Verona mumbled.

Lucy looked.  The shoes had scraped the back of Verona’s heels raw.

“I think I heard Toadswallow calling out names,” Avery said.

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “Matthew, John, Gui…”

She didn’t say the full name, looking at Brie.

“I didn’t hear, back there,” Brie said.  “Gui?”

“They stopped before calling G’s, uh, sorta-roommate,” Lucy said.

The other girls nodded.

Lucy went on, “That means Matthew and John, and they’re racing up this way.  The goblins might be telling them where we were and where we’re headed…”

“They’ll be on our trail,” Avery said.

“We’re running out of tricks,” Verona said.  Snowdrop was clinging to her shoulder.

“We make do.  I think the sooner we go the better our chance,” Lucy said.

Verona made a face.

But they headed on, pulling off masks, hats, and scarves.  The connection breaking diagrams were gone, like they’d never been written, now.

“The truck.  If they get close, or if they have guns, the red button-”

Verona had notecards that Snowdrop had picked up.  “The jammer.”

“Yeah.”

“Good,” Verona said.  “It’s something, and we don’t have a lot of somethings for those two.”

They weren’t really in a state to run, so they half-jogged, half-speed walked, across the gravel lot that was at one end of town.

Past that gravel lot was the motel.  And at that motel-

Goblins.  Other goblins.  Snatch, and a weirdly smooth pink one that gave off the vibe that his entire body was like some baby’s bottom, and a snarly one that ran forward on all fours, not loping but running.

“Damn damn damn,” Avery said.

Verona and Lucy didn’t have the breath to join in on the cursing.

Brie had the keyboard.  She smashed it into the back window of a car.  Setting off a car alarm.  Gunk flowed from the keys on the keyboard to the glass, to the car interior.

Things clawed their way up through and past the gunk, out of the shadowy parts of the interior.  Skinny, long-fingered…

She smashed again.  The car alarm wailed.

“Wait!” Verona shouted.  “Are those goblins?”

“They’re gremlins, Zed told me.  It’s in the notes!”

“They look like goblins!” Verona shouted, between huffs for breath.

The little guys moved around the car like monkeys could move through trees.  Swinging down, sliding.  They were scrawnier than even Gashwad, with bigger heads, and lots of little weird bits, like a bike chain wound into, under, and out of skin, hooked up to a ticking gear wheel that made the chain move, and one with tech pushed under his shoulder, with various blinking lights shining through pallid skin.  One was naked and had decorated itself with the unfoldy bits of an umbrella in a way that left Lucy unsure if it had had male or female bits, before.

The ones that had been under the car emerged with bits of the car undercarriage held as weapons.

“Crap crap crap crap crap,” Avery said.  “We can’t leave it like that.  Go ahead, I’ll use the rope.”

“Get them!” Brie told the gremlins, indicating the goblins, who were moving through the gravel lot.

The gremlins charged, weapons ready.

More interference, more distractions… but it didn’t feel like enough.  Bluntmunch was there in the rear, swiftly catching up.  Others looked better at fighting.  The snarly one was fast, Snatch was brutal, each punch with her metal-decorated hand pretty much dispatching a gremlin.

“This way, I think,” Brie said.

“You think?”

There was a tunnel that let cars that were passing east-west go under the highway and access Kennet.  That was the way.  A single sidewalk on the far side of the street allowed passage through the same tunnel.

Bluntmunch picked up two of the gremlins that had overwhelmed his minions, then hollered in their faces.

He dropped them, and they scampered back.

He pointed, and they obeyed.

That was part of his deal.  Bossing goblins around.  Having that clout.

“Well, we gave them more troops,” Verona observed.

“Sorry.  Zed didn’t say anything about that.”

“Having any second thoughts about this whole thing?” Lucy asked.  “Because man, you shouldn’t have stuck your nose in this.”

“No second thoughts,” Brie said.

There were no cars coming.  They were free to cross to the sidewalk.  They entered the tunnel.

Cars passed by, and the goblins didn’t follow.

“What’s your story?  You seemed pretty okay with biting that goblin,” Lucy said.

“I had to help you.  I… the devouring song, the reward is you have no more obstacles when it comes to eating things.  It makes it all easy.  I thought I’d weaponize it.”

“That was your first time doing that, then?”

“I mean, aside from the night I won.”

“We lost a kinda-friend because of what you did,” Avery said.

“I’m sorry.  Really.  I- it was horrible.  It changed me.  I still dream about it.”

“How?  Why?” Lucy asked.  “How’d you win when you couldn’t walk?”

“Zed gave me tricks.  Roller blades, weapons.  I put my leg-stumps into the roller blades, used a bit of a prosthetic leg to do it with the one where my leg wasn’t long enough.  They let you bring in whatever you want on your eighth night.  But I think whatever you do, you leave a big part of yourself behind.  Zed gave me support after, let me forget the worst of it for moments.  Let me feel a bit like me again.  That’s why I owe him.  It’s why I have to finish this.”

“Why would you even do it in the first place?”

“I have- had pica.  I don’t even always consciously realize I’m doing it, when I eat things.  Thumbtacks, screws, pop can tabs- so many pop can tabs, and batteries.  You know that zone you get into, when you’re snacking, and you don’t even realize you’ve been eating until you reach in and you hit the bottom of the bag?  It was like that.  Treatment didn’t work, from age fourteen to nineteen.  And I poisoned myself, with metals in my body.  Long-term damage.  Then the ritual landed in my lap.”

“And you’re better?” Avery asked.

“No more organ damage, no more weirdness, pretty sure.  But better?”

Brie laughed.  A rueful chuckle.

“No.  Imagine cutting out your heart to fix heart disease.  And magic keeps you alive.  Your blood doesn’t pump, you don’t feel the fifty different things connected to your blood, but everything else keeps on going.  Like that.  But it’s eating.  Intake.  Fueling your body.  Everything is working great and… it feels wrong.  Zed said I could lead a normal life, act like I had the body I had before, and innocence could take over again.  Or I could dive into this.  I have to stop other people from suffering like I suffered.  Leave the door open for anyone who truly needs it, keep the gift I got as my reward going, so I don’t die.  But… there need to be more barriers to entry.  We have to be able to control who does the ritual, so stupid kids and others don’t get into it.”

The goblins still weren’t following.

“Let us negotiate with Zed,” Lucy told Brie.  “And we’ll see about working on that.”

Brie nodded.

More cars passed through the tunnel, briefly illuminating things.  Still no more signs of trouble.  The road was one-way, so there was no way for Matthew or John to follow.

They emerged into sunlight, and it was bright.

“This way.  Off to the side.”

They took a shortcut, stepping off the road.

Through trees, probably intended to block the noise of the highway for those scattered houses to the north.

The road here was dirt.  Flowers and tangled greenery and trees on either side.

And Guilherme sat at the side, his back to a tree.

“Big,” Brie whispered.

The three of them stepped back as Guilherme rose smoothly to his feet.  His long hair draped his face.

He bent at the waist and picked up a spear from the grass.

Lucy reached into her pocket, and pulled out the firecracker.  She’d taped a match to the side, and pulled it free-

Guilherme casually tossed the spear underhand.

The firecracker disappeared from Lucy’s hand, impaled.

“Nearly hit us, you git!” a goblin complained.

They were being followed by the goblins.  They’d crossed through a goblin tunnel or something.

“Guilherme-”

“Duty to Kennet compels me to stop you,” Guilherme said.  He moved his head and his hair slipped off his shoulder to frame his face more.  He looked down at them with deep green eyes.  Shirtless, muscular, wearing pants with a kind of kilt over them, belted in place three times over.  “But I’ll stop you my way.”

“What’s your way?” Verona asked, wary.

“A duel.  With the losers agreeing to concede when they recognize defeat.”

“I don’t suppose Zed is nearby?” Avery whispered.

Brie shook her head.  “City limits are a ten minute walk away, and he can’t come in.”

“A duel is kind of silly, isn’t it?” Lucy asked.  “You’re so much better…”

“We’ll make it fair,” Guilherme said.  He paced.  “One on one.  You pick your champion.  I’ll waive all deals and conditions about harm for this.  You can bleed me, if you’re good enough, and if your champion draws one droplet of blood out of me, I’ll surrender.”

“This is so stupid,” Toadswallow called out.  “Just grab ’em!”

Avery, Verona, Brie, and Lucy all backed off the road, into the shade of trees.

“You couldn’t get them your way.  Don’t tell me how to do things,” Guilherme said.

“It’s still an unfair fight,” Verona challenged him.

Guilherme walked behind a tree.  A boy, thirteen or so, shirtless, with the same belted kilt and dark pants tucked into boots emerged.  He wasn’t a mountain of muscle.  If anything, he was average.  Light brown skinned, with his hair long and eyes deep green.

He smiled, hands spread.

“So stupid,” Bluntmunch growled.

Lesser goblins yipped and jeered from the background.

“Pick your champion,” Boy-Guilherme said.  “Or I’ll pick for you and you won’t like my choice.  Lucille, Avery, Verona.”

“It’s Lucy, not Lucille.”

“You said Lucille was formal?” Guilherme asked.

Lucy nodded, frowning.

“This is a formal duel,” he said, smiling.

Lucy looked back.

Avery was hurt, a wound at one elbow.

Verona was… she was a trickster, not a fighter.  She liked her pocket of glamour and spell cards.  She had glamour but no spells, and glamour wouldn’t work on Guilherme.

“Me, then,” Lucy announced.  Process of elimination.  “You won’t hurt me too badly?”

“I’ll keep to my oaths,” the boy-Guilherme said.

She held the hot lead, painful against her upper palm, as it touched her ring.  She had another pen in her pocket.

She held it back, stepping a bit closer to him.

“Give him a show!” Verona called out.

“Make him bleed!” one of the goblins with a voice Lucy didn’t recognize called out.

Guilherme smiled.  He moved so confidently he almost strutted.  Like this, an arena, was what he was about.

“Watch the others,” he instructed the goblins, indicating Lucy’s friends and Brie.

“You watch your face!” a goblin called out.

Guilherme looked so confident.

And she hated herself for thinking like this, but he looked way too cute like this.  Crush material.  Damn it.  Lucy had some sympathy for Avery and how Avery had been tongue-tied around Maricica, now.

“Can you make this fairer?” she asked him.

“You tell me.  Make your suggestion,” he said.

“Give up the years of knowledge and training?  Put yourself on my level?”

“It’s too intrinsic to me to give up in entirety, but I can give up some.”

He relaxed a bit, hooking his thumbs into the top belt of the kilt he wore.  “Scratch me, bruise me, and you’ll break the glamour, and then I’ll be in violation of the ‘fairness’ of this duel.”

She pulled the pen from her pocket, touching it to the ring, and flicked it out to its full length, a four-foot spear, like crystal, with a brassy head and a channel of black running through its core.  The hot lead John had given them burned hotter against her palm.

The spear point swept near boy-Guilherme, who turned his body sideways, his shoulder bumping the shaft.

Quickly, he took three steps toward her.

She swung backwards, aiming not to get him with the point, but to hit him at least hard enough to leave a mark, or do something.

He shrugged, head ducking down, shoulder dipping low, and the shaft touched his one shoulder and swept over to the other, dropping down from the weight of the head.

She kicked out as he stepped closer, trying to keep some distance between them.

He brought his knee up, meeting her leg before it could get up to speed.  Then, stepping around, setting his foot down, he walked backwards into her, his shoulder bumping into hers.

She twisted, mouth open, biting-

And he walked forward, his hip bumping hers, his leg hooking around hers.

She landed on her rear end.

He laughed.

She huffed, heated, angry.

This was fundamentally unfair, whatever he said.

She could almost call it such, but… she worried there was a trap in that.  Especially because it was Faerie-given knowledge, used against a Faerie.

She tossed the spear into the air, and it became a pen.  She caught it, slapping it into place so it rested against the back of the hand with the ring and against the palm of the other hand.

Whipping it out, she had a shorter blade.  One she could swing a few times in short succession.

He backed away a few steps as the blade passed within millimeters of him each time.  He smiled.

She stepped forward, pushing her tired legs- and stepped on something.  A stone, a branch, a root.

He stepped in, touched the back of her head, and pushed her down.

Her arms went forward to catch herself before she could crash face-first into the dirt.  She felt him grab the back of her top, bunching up the cloth, and held her with both hands, arresting her fall.

It meant she landed without skinning her palms.

She reasserted her grip and thrust at his shins.  He stepped onto the blade.

This wasn’t working.  She heaved herself to her feet.  Something else.  Her bag.

She pulled out papers.  Probably homework.  The hot lead smouldered against one corner of the page as she flicked it out.  A large fan, with the letters of whatever had been printed on the paper as a serrated black edge.

Another tack.

“Guilherme, you promised a gift and you didn’t deliver-”

He stepped in close.  She stopped, swinging.  His wrist crossed hers and redirected the flow of her swing so her hand and fan went over his head.

“I pledge to give you lessons in combat and self defense,” Guilherme told her, calm.

“What?”

“As your gift.”

“No- I want you to stand down.”

“I’ve made my pledge.”

She could’ve spat.  The words and the movement and the way he fought flowed so well together.

Goblins jeered, mostly in her favor, even though they were on Guilherme’s side.

“Avery’s more the dashing warrior than I am.  I’m not sure what I am yet,” she said.  “I’m not sure the combat lessons will do me any good.”

Why was she saying this now?

“They won’t do you any wrong.  By pledging it-”

She used the fan a few more times, then used the little pen-rotation movement she’d practiced in class in fifth grade to turn fan to pen, then to spear again.  As he got far enough away.  She jabbed- three times.

For the first time since he’d hooked his thumbs into his belt, he lifted a hand, backhanding the spearpoint away.

He raised his hand, showing her the back of it.  A red mark, but no blood.

He smiled, like he was proud.  “By pledging it, we maintain a positive relationship.  It doesn’t need to be more than that.  I have no interest or need for traps.”

“Why are you here?  Why Kennet?  We quizzed you but I don’t get you.”

“Love,” he said.  “The greatest adventure of all.  Us Summer Fae do love our adventures, our battles, and our challenges.”

Her heart and head stammered a bit.  Fucking stupid traitor mind and body.

“I loved a man and I tested myself, loving him more deeply and more intensely than can be put into words.  I’d loved before, and they were my first time loving a woman, my first time loving a man, or dangerous loves, or monstrous loves.  There were fleeting loves and important loves.  This was my experiment with deep love, and was matched by him.  I used glamour to expand my heart to put more into it.  He did the same.  And then he died of old age.  I put myself into exile, to mourn.”

She jabbed, taking opportunity of his opening up to see if there was a weak point.  he backhanded the spear again, the point so close to his shoulder she could swear she’d felt the friction.

There was no point to this.  It was theater, he was so much better than her.

“The treasure Maricica wants?”

“A letter.  Written by the man I loved, to someone else.  I kept it because it was his.  It’s one moving piece in the midst of a thousand thousand that will see the courts change again.  From seasons to something else, though the Winter Court will remain what it is and always will be, the rest of us will adjust, and so will the games we play.  Your great-grandchildren, if any, could be dead of old age by the time those moving pieces start moving.  But Maricica wants it to be closer to the center of things.  It doesn’t matter to Kennet, except that the quietness of this place and the lack of practitioners makes it a good place to stop and think, and to keep away from the more obnoxious Fae who would pollute my mourning.”

“Less talk, more scrapping!” Toadswallow hollered.

The goblins in the background jeered.

“It’s fine,” Guilherme said.  He smiled.  “I might as well decide this.”

Lucy braced herself.

He came in, barehanded.  She used the spear and jabbed, poked, swept the point towards him- and he fended it off.

Twirly movement- she switched weapons.  The fan, more mid-range.  He feinted, moving like he was going to go one way, then taking a step to the side.

She made her weapon a dagger, a knife, gripped upside-down, and he caught her wrist before the blade could touch his collarbone.

She slammed her hand into the base of the dagger, to drive it home, and he stepped back, still holding her wrist.

It didn’t make contact.

“You believe in what you’re doing,” Boy-Guilherme told her.

“Lives are on the line.”

“Good,” he murmured.  “It’s good, that you believe that fiercely.  Miss picked good people to be our practitioners.”

She tried to get free, and he didn’t let her.  From that point, he didn’t let her go, didn’t give her any reprieve.  She moved, and he was there, not even letting her get her arm back in front of her without a hand at her bent elbow to limit her movements.  A light push at the shoulder.  A hand flat against her face, pushing her back.  The path had a slope to it, and she stumbled back, goblins scampering and scrambling to get out of the way.  She found her bearings, looked at Guilherme, and he was sliding down the same dirt path, down and past her, so he was behind her.  He swatted a goblin with a stick, because the goblin wasn’t moving out of her way, tossed the stick after the goblin, then pushed her before she could get her balance again.  She caught a branch to keep herself from tipping into the midst of jagged branches and bushes.

He caught her hand, like the other times he’d stopped her from falling too hard, and slipped the ring off her finger, catching the hot lead as well.

He held the sword ring by the point, hot lead sitting in the loop.

It had been nearly cold, anyway.

“Give that back,” she told him.

“Surrender.  It’s done.”

“Give.  It.  Back.”

“I will, when you surrender.  Trust me.”

“I don’t think I trust any of you,” she told him.  “You assholes.  People are dying out there.  We have to act.  We-”

She thought of Laurie, Avery’s brother’s girlfriend.  The activist.

“-I don’t want to live in a world where bad stuff happens and we don’t do anything about it.”

Guilherme didn’t budge.  His stare was level.

“You realize, if you don’t work with us on this, if you fight and stop us then-”

“Be careful what you say,” he told her.

“Then-”

“Careful,’ he interrupted.

“We might never forgive you.  This might never be okay again,” she told him.  Tempering her statement with the ‘mights’.

He nodded.

“I surrender.  Whatever.”

He reached out to hand her the ring and hot lead.

She took both, and the hot lead wasn’t even hot enough to burn, anymore.  She’d used it up.

She looked at her friends, expecting to see the disappointment, or frustration matching her own.

She stared for a few long seconds.

“Frig, poop, darn, damn!” Toadswallow cursed.

The goblins realized.  They gave chase.

Put on a show, Verona had said.

Lucy hadn’t even caught that one, which was probably good, because the Others hadn’t either.

A still image, drawn up in glamour, of Verona, Avery, and Brie, huddled in the foliage off to the side.

The goblins fled.  Guilherme didn’t chase.

“You’re not going?”

“They’re there already,” he said, smiling.  Then he winked.

No, Verona hadn’t fooled the Others.  They’d fooled the goblins.

Couldn’t deceive a Faerie like that.

Lucy caught up.  The deal was already underway.

“You’re okay?” Avery asked.  Like Lucy, Avery and Verona were wearing their masks again.

“My pride’s a bit stung.  The goblins?”

“I took measures,” Zed said. He stood, leaning against his car, which was already pristine again.

Brie had settled in, leaning against the car just beside him.  She’d cleaned the blood off her face.

“Can you use it?” Verona asked.

“I can,” Zed said.  “I’ll call in help.  Do you have a way of getting to Donnybrook, tomorrow night?”

The three of them exchanged glances, then shook their heads.

“Not easily,” Lucy said.

“Me and my acquaintances might try to bind it then.  We’ll give you recompense, in exchange for any power or benefit we derive from managing it.  Not that I have any plans like that.”

“What are your plans?” Lucy asked.  “Sorry if I’m asking something you already went over.”

“I want to curtail it, and when and if I can find a way to separate the stuff Brie needs from it, I’ll dismantle it.  Until then, we manage it, keep it small, keep it contained.  If the binding works.  I give it a seventy percent chance.  And if it doesn’t work, with the power I, my teacher, and our acquaintances all pull together… maybe at least you can rest easy, knowing you’re not in a position to stop it.”

“What deal did you make?” Lucy asked Verona.

“For the information on Yalda, the opportunities, our concessions, and for Brie… Zed’s backing off.  And he’s agreeing to play fair.  He went over the plan.  It’s not like, paid access to the Choir or anything.  A few other terms.  Hopefully the only people who sign up are people who’ve been given other options and who have their eyes wide open.”

“It’s big enough some people are already studying it and using it,” Zed said.  “We can’t stop that or what they do, but if we can bind the individual at the core, we should have the most say in how things go.”

Lucy nodded.

It wasn’t as good as stopping it altogether.  But…

“And we keep the junk Brie brought in with her,” Verona said.

Lucy rolled her eyes a bit.

The stuff was arranged on a cloth on the ground.  A tape player, two tapes, the red button, glasses, a keyboard, a credit card with something red on it, and a flat key with a loop at the end that a finger could go through.

“Thank you,” Brie said.

“You still owe us,” Lucy said.  “We really went… what’s the saying?  We went the extra mile for you?”

Brie nodded.

“You too, Zed,” Avery told the teenager.

Zed nodded.

“Let us know when you’ve handled or done whatever else with Yalda.” Lucy said.  “We have questions.”

“Zed’s going to call us and let us ask, when and if things get that far,” Verona said.

“If the ritual’s active, it’ll be another space-”

“My phone works anywhere,” Zed reassured.  He smiled. “Don’t worry.”

Lucy nodded.  She was thinking of their trip to the Ruins, and the late hour when they’d wrapped it up.

“Good luck tomorrow night,” Verona said.

“I hope I don’t need it,” Zed said.  “I should hit the road, if I’m going to be all the way down there tomorrow night.  I guess… I hope to talk to you tomorrow, with news of a successful binding.  And I’ll see you at school?”

The three of them nodded.

Zed opened the door for Brie, then walked around to the driver’s side.  The car started up, humming, and the music started playing.  Two figures appeared in the back seat, flickering.  Singing along.

The car revved, then pulled out of the rest stop, onto the road.

When the were gone, Lucy sat down on the spot, pulling off her hat and mask.  She exhaled.

“We should get home,” Avery said.

“I know, I know.  But… I’m wiped.  I guess we’re not going?  We’re not fighting the Choir?”

“Not unless you want to walk the Forest Ribbon Trail,” Avery said.

“Not it,” Verona said.

Lucy huffed out a laugh.

Verona took a sitting position, her back to Lucy’s.

With their vantage point on the hill, they could see Kennet, streetlamps and streetlights going on, illuminating the roads, which branched out before them.  Each branch with buildings off to either side, porch lights and interior lights illuminating them.

Today would change things.  Some would be angry, some would be like Guilherme.  On their side, even if not explicitly allowed to take sides.  If a Faerie could even be trusted at face value like that.

Which was why she was taking her time heading back.  Putting off her return to that.

Out on a Limb – 3.9

Avery

Avery stood back, staring up at a giant tree.  It was two-dimensional, taking up most of the one large wall with high ceilings.  Green leaves, red apples, a bent trunk that curved toward the left wall.

She’d never noticed it before.  How many times had she been inside this grocery store, and not noticed the tree?

The smell of the fruits and vegetables around her filled her nostrils.  Sharp smells, bitter ones, sweet ones, and those hints of citrus.  She could smell the broccoli as a distinct thing.  The faint skunky smell of the cauliflower.  The brussel sprouts.  The tomatoes were too much.  She’d been here maybe a hundred times before, and she wasn’t sure she’d ever thought about the smells.  The bakery, sure, but not this, not here.

Now it felt like the smells were so intense that there wasn’t a lot of air left in this big grocery store.

She drew in a deep breath, walking away from the broccoli and stuff, which meant walking closer to the tree.  It loomed before her.

“Avery.”

Avery turned.  She squinted one eye, almost but not quite wincing, as her mother reached for her, fixing her hair where a good sized lock had fallen free of her ponytail.

“Where are you headed, honey?” her mom asked, compassionate.  “Fruit salad?”

Avery looked at the great big decoration, with the ‘produce’ label painted on the wall beneath the biggest and lowest bough.  Below that label were the fridges, with some pre-prepared fruit salad.

“The deal is if you come grocery shopping and you’re helpful, you can pick something.  I’d be ecstatic if you wanted something healthy.”

“Um,” Avery said.  She blinked a few times as she tried to get centered.  She’d stepped out of the path of a woman and gotten lost in thought.  “It’s not unhealthy, but I was thinking… I’m not in a very meat-eating mood lately.  Can I grab something I can do myself or that dad can put on the barbecue?”

Her mother brushed her hair back again.  “I don’t want you to make your own meals.”

“I have to learn sometime, don’t I?”

“You do.  I’ll teach you more if you’re up for it.  The reason I don’t want you off making your own meals is that it already feels like you’re so far away these days.  I know your dad and I have our own part in that-”

Avery shook her head.

“-We do.  Your dad went back to work, and I’ve been dealing with my work relocating offices.  You’re making new friends and I’m so glad, ice water incident aside, but your dad and I used to know what was going on in your head.”

Kerry screeched, loud enough that heads on the far end of the produce aisle turned.

Her mom turned, walking toward Kerry.  She talked to Avery as she walked away, “We’ll get whatever you want if you want to stop eating meat.  You’ll need protein.”

“Okay.”

“It doesn’t have to be your pick.  Get a treat from the bakery or something.”

Avery smiled.

Kerry screeched again, from the next aisle over.  Declan said something complain-y.  His friends joined in.

The discussion.

“We’ll continue that discussion!” her mom called, as she hurried over to the other kids.  “Get the cart!?”

That discussion.  You don’t want to know what’s going on in my head, Avery thought.  I’m not sure I want to know what’s going on in my head, sometimes.

Her mom was waving her over.

Avery fixed her hair, realized how messy her ponytail must be, and pulled off the elastic.  She slipped her hand into her back pocket, which held some glamour, and fixed her hair as well as she could without a mirror, while trying to find her equilibrium again.

It was getting easier.  She was cheating, but it was easier.  She stood straighter.

Her fingers toyed with the elastic, winding it around and between them, while she caught up.  Mom, Kerry, Kerry’s friend Kinley, Declan, Declan two, and Declan three were all in the cereal aisle.  Kerry was trying to hold a big box of sugary cereal almost as large as she was.

“What happened to playing statues?” mom asked.

“Declan two pushed me!” Kerry complained.

“Because he’s a douche!” Kinley chimed in.

“Watch your language please,” Avery’s mother warned.

“My mom doesn’t care.  She says all the bad words.  And Declan two deserves every bad word.”

Kinley was Caroline’s little sister from Avery’s class.  Caroline was the ‘horse girl’, her family had a stable and made money on the side taking care of other people’s horses, apparently.  Caroline was a bit more down to earth.  Kinley was… not a hair out of place, fancy clothes, little leather boots, she owned two freaking ponies, and the only explanation Avery could think of for her personality was that Caroline had binge-watched ‘Fetch’ and ‘Know What, I Mean’ and all the other movies about awful teen girls, and an infant Kinley had taken them as something to aspire toward.

“Who deserves the bad words?  You two are the ones who suck!” Declan jeered.

“Hold up, big pause button, let’s play nice or there won’t be any treats,” mom said.

“You weren’t winning either,” Kinley said.  “But you always lose, don’t you?  Because you’re a losing loser.”

“You’re always using cheat codes for your games,” Kerry chimed in.

“Boooo,” Declan three joined in, taking the girls’ side against Declan one.

“No!  Not always.  Just sometimes.”

Avery was struck by the awareness that her siblings and their friends were really not that far off from being actual goblins.

“The next person who speaks is going to have to give me a very convincing argument for why I shouldn’t take you all out of this store, drive your friends home, apologize to their parents for the change in plan, and ground you.”

The kids fell silent, sullen.

“You have two options.  You can come with me and be silent, or you can go out to the front of the store and play statues.”

Statues was a game where they competed.  Whoever stayed still and quiet the longest won.  There was usually a bribe of an extra treat in it for them.  Winner picked the treat and divided it up into however many portions, then the losers picked the portion they wanted.

It had worked really well with Rowan and Sheridan, apparently.  Sorta with Avery, except she’d been too prone to wandering, then not all that well with Declan and Kerry just didn’t buy into it at all.

“It feels dumb,  Declan three was saying it was dumb,” Declan said, pouting.

“Then come with.  We’re almost done.”

The kids followed as a herd.  Kerry had to put back the box.  Mom pushed the cart and Avery followed behind the group, ensuring the kids kept moving.

“You were losing in an argument against seven year olds,” Avery told Declan.

“Don’t you start,” mom warned.

“For my treat, can we go to the video game store?  I want to get Monte.”

“Those are expensive, aren’t they?  Fifty bucks?”

“Seventy,” Declan said.

“That’s a lot of treats, especially considering it’s not something that can be shared with the rest of the family.  Maybe after you’ve been good for a few errands, and done some extra helping out around the house.”

“But I need it now.  My friends are over and we’ve all been wanting to play.”

“Yeah!” Declan three chimed in.

“Can we can we please?  We can come help out as a group later.”

“All three of you working together might be able to do one chore,” Kinley said.  “If you spend all day on it.”

“Oooh,” Kerry chimed in.

“Shut up,” Declan three told them.

Avery gave Kinley a once-over with her Sight.  Nothing funky.  If she hadn’t seen Kinley around for the last year, well before the Other stuff started, she might’ve thought Kinley was an Other.  But no, she was just a seven year old who was unusually good at the smack-talk, for a seven year old.  Trained on all the kid-coms that had every single character trading one-liners.

Another row of freezers cut the grocery store in half.  They passed through, and Avery got some random vegetarian stuff.  She was betting some of it was going to suck, but maybe there was something.

“We could make it a family thing, trying this stuff.”

Kerry and Declan protested loudly.

“I think that’d be a disaster,” Avery said.  “It’s okay.”

“You need protein.  What about yogurt?  Greek yogurt is pretty healthy.  Probiotic.”

“I don’t know what that means, but ok.  Peanut butter?”

“It was in the aisle with the breakfast stuff.  Want to go back?”

Avery nodded.  “Big tub?”

“Sure, if you think you’ll use it.  Look for sales.”

Avery headed over, jogging, and nearly bumped into someone rounding the corner.  She found the peanut butter, and tossed it between her hands, looking for other options and granola bars, when she saw Matthew at the end of the aisle.

Which was spooky, even as a fleeting glimpse.

She walked around the end of the aisle, back to the produce section with its massive decorative tree.

Matthew and Edith were shopping.

Her heart pounding, Avery walked down toward them.  She stopped where the row of apples, pears and bananas were between them.

“Hello,” Matthew said, on seeing her.  No smile.  “No bag?  No collection of tricks?”

“Only a couple,” she said.

There was a pause.  She wondered if it meant something, that the first thing he talked about was the weapons and tools she could deploy.  Or the lack thereof.

“Did you come here to talk to us?” Edith asked, as she bagged pears.

“My mom is shopping with me and some of the sibs.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Um.  I don’t know how okay things are now.  Or how not-okay.”

“How okay or not okay are you?” Matthew asked.

“I don’t know.  I’m… mad, a bit.  That you made it that hard.  Scared.  Hurt.  Worried.”

“Do you think the locals might feel the same?” Matthew asked.  “In varying amounts.”

“Who should we be watching out for?  How do we approach you all?”

“I don’t know,” Matthew said.  “And in some of the cases where I do know, if I named names I’d probably get on their bad sides.  As much as we’re mostly united in agreeing to follow the rules, abide by the votes, and protect Kennet, I- we’re not united in anger, or in hurt, or in being wary of you three.  I think the biggest change moving forward is that we are that divided, in the background.”

“The Kennet Others agree on only the important things,” Edith said.  “The rest… be careful.  Treat each Other or cluster of Others as a separate entity.”

“And you two?” Avery asked.  “Specifically?”

Matthew sighed.  He looked very tired.  “It’s hard.  I agree with the thrust of what you’ve done.  I even agree about the Choir, in general.  But the nuances, the specific deals made…”

Edith touched his arm.  “Does a part of you wish you were still a practitioner?”

“Maybe.”

Edith looked over at Avery, across the piles of fruits and veggies that separated them.  “Speaking for myself, I don’t want there to be any issues between us, Avery.  I don’t want to be on opposite sides, so if you need more lessons, teachings, help with specific Others, you can come to us for advice.  We can’t guarantee help, but we’ll try.”

“Gets tricky.  Some might resent us for helping her,” Matthew said.

“We brought them on board.  We owe them.”

He made a face.  Then he looked at Avery.  “Edith could be right.”

Could be?” Edith asked, arch.

Matthew continued, like Edith hadn’t said anything.  “Right that there might be underlying sentiment on my part.  It’s frustrating, being where I am, with a lot of awareness of both worlds.  You three have done fine.  You stood up for Kennet as its guardians.  Both problems are put off until the future and that’s…”

He trailed off, grimacing.

“…We’ll find a way.”

“I hope so,” Avery said.

“Us too,” Edith said.  “Tread slowly, tread carefully.  Treat the relationships with the Kennet Others as if they’re new.”

“I wanted to ask,” Avery said.  She moved her hand, and remembered she was holding the peanut butter, and that her mom was waiting for her.  “We need an address.”

“Who or what?” Matthew asked.

“The witness.”

“Louise Bayer,” Matthew said.  He pulled out his phone.  “I have it here.”

Avery got her own phone out.

“I expected you three to visit her sooner,” Edith said.

“We thought we wouldn’t know what to ask,” Avery said.

“21 Earl st. East,” Matthew said, looking at his phone.  “It’s up by Blue Gas.  It’s a hike.”

“That doesn’t bother me nearly as much anymore,” Avery said.

“No,” he said.  He gave her a small smile.  “I suppose it doesn’t.”

“What do we do when we talk to her?  How much does she know?”

Matthew frowned.  “Like the girl you freed from confinement yesterday evening, she’s not quite innocent, but she’s not awakened either.  The term is aware.  It’s a fragile state, and being the person or people that shatter that fragility and drive her into this world means that she’ll be vulnerable to Others, without the benefit of Innocence, and you’ll be karmically responsible for much of what happens to her as a result.”

“What does that mean?  What happens?”

Matthew answered, “The aware tend to run into Others and get entangled in Other things as they go through their daily lives.  If there’s a stray spirit in their neighborhood, or a goblin in the part of town they pass through, they’ll cross paths.  Because they’re more open, paths of least resistance, or because the dangerous Others can sense vulnerability.  There are ways to deal with it, but it requires a lot of attention.  Some families have Blackguards, the aware who are kept unawakened because it’s useful to have a liar.  Witch Hunters also count.”

“The easiest route is to avoid unbalancing them,” Edith said.  “Don’t disturb their tenuous middle-ground state.  Most innocents will find their own balance again, fill in the gaps, and concoct explanations.”

“I made Louise Bayer forget.  But while you’re talking to her, she’ll remember.  Go easy.  Don’t hit her with everything at once,” Matthew added.

Avery nodded.

“Be careful,” he told her.  “She’s a good person, she deserves the care.  And with the local Others.”

She put her phone away, then felt the weight of the double-size thing of peanut butter in her hand.  She tossed it between hands a few times, then said, “I should catch up with my family.”

She left them behind to resume their shopping, and jogged through the store until she saw the Declans pushing each other around.

It wasn’t that they were all named Declans, but dad had joked they were all so similar in their tastes, fashion, and stuff, that they could be Declan one, Declan two, Declan three, and Declan four.  Declan Four had been pushed out of the group after giving some change to a girl they all liked so she could buy something at the school book sale, so that made things a little simpler.  And sadder.  When they were at Declan two’s house, the names changed so they were whatever one, whatever two, whatever three, and so on.  She didn’t actually know Declan two’s name.

Because really, why not make keeping track of kids harder, in the chaos of the house and everything?

“Get lost?” her mom asked, as Avery caught up.  She was trying to keep the kids from wrestling with one another.  “I was worried.”

“I saw some people I knew.”

“You should eat them all!” Declan two jeered, pushing a box of frozen burritos into Declan three’s face.  Declan was grabbing three’s wrists so he couldn’t defend himself.

“If he gets spit on that box I have to buy it and it’s going to be your treat!” mom said.

Kerry crept up on Declan, reaching for his pants.  Probably to pull them down.  Avery put out a hand, one finger on Kerry’s forehead, and kept her from getting close enough to get a grip.

“It’s like herding cats.  Can we please get down this last aisle and pay for things? Declans, last warning!  And we’re buying that box now.”

“No!  I wanted the game!”

“You’re not getting a seventy dollar game as a reward for behaving when you didn’t behave.”

“What are we supposed to do while everyone’s at the house then?  We’ve played all the other games.”

“Go outside?” Avery asked.

“God,” mom said.  “I wish they would, and I wish you’d be a bit more of a couch potato so I at least knew where you were half the time.  If you want a game you need to behave, Declans.”

Kinley leaned in close to Kerry and whispered in her ear.  Her eyes moved up to Avery.

Kerry’s face screwed up in disgust.  “No.  Ew.”

“What did she say?” Avery asked.  It was unusual for Kerry to disagree with anything her preppy, fashionable, witty friend said.

Kinley grabbed Kerry’s wrist, and shook her head at Kerry.

“You’re crazy,” Kerry said, to her friend.  “She says you’re cool and she wished her sister was as cool as you are.  I think she dented her brain when Declan three pushed her earlier.”

“I didn’t push anyone!”

“Why’d you tell her?” Kinley protested.  “And I didn’t hit my head.”

Avery blinked a few times.

“She’s not good at anything except maybe sports, and she’s dopey and her friends are dopier,” Kerry said.

“Be nice to your sister,” mom said, absently.  She grabbed a few things.  Most things in the cart were large boxes.

They made their way to the cash, and there was only a short lineup.  Avery helped load up the belt.

A few aisles down, Avery saw Verona’s dad.  The cart was mostly cardboard boxes of frozen dinners and tv dinners.  Everything that wasn’t fit neatly in the little compartment for infants at the top of the cart.

He was animated, talking to someone in the same aisle.  It was a very different tone and appearance to the way he’d been in the house.

She wondered if he would even recognize her.

“Is that the person you were talking to?” mom asked, leaning in to pick up a quadruple-size thing of meat.

Avery shook her head.  “Verona’s dad.”

“Ahh.  We still haven’t met Verona.  Should I go say hi?  Invite him over?”

Avery opened her mouth and nothing came out.  She widened her eyes a bit, then shook her head, quick and tight.

“Why?” her mom asked, quieter.  “Is it because you’re worried about what he would think, with all the hustle and bustle, or is it about him?”

“Him, kinda.”

Her mom gave the man a serious look, then went back to managing the kids, and unloading the cart.

There was no more discussion on the subject of Verona’s dad until they were out in the parking lot.  They pushed the cart to the car, and the kids began unloading, Kerry and Kinley at the back seat, which was half-folded down, to pull the bags back and arrange them, while the Declans unloaded.

“What do I need to know about him?” mom asked.  “Verona’s dad.”

“He’s weird.  He doesn’t hit her or anything, that I know of.  But like… I can imagine her getting old enough and leaving and not ever talking to him again.”

“Why?  You’ve been over to his house?”

“It’s not like- there’s not anything I can really explain.  He makes her do a lot of chores and he complains at her and like… I don’t know.  He blames her for their divorce or something?  I really don’t get it.  But I went over once and it was super uncomfortable, and Verona didn’t want to stick around, so we went out and we kind of didn’t… that was the night we didn’t come home until it was super late.”

“You’re not-”

Avery was a little caught off guard by her mom’s evident frustration, which looked like more than she had experienced dealing with K&K and the three Declans.

She was more caught off guard when her mom pulled her into a hug.

“There are so many of the homeschool parents,” her mom said, still hugging her, “and they rubbed me the wrong way, because they controlled their kids’ every move.  I didn’t ever want to be that.  And right now I’m so close to going there and being one of those parents.  I want to know everything about what’s going on there, I want to give you rules and I want to confront that, I want you to be safe if it’s a dangerous situation-”

“It’s not dangerous, I don’t think.”

Her mom broke the hug, giving her a serious look.

“But it’s a lot for Verona.  She goes to stay at Lucy’s a bunch.  After seeing him that one night I’d be inviting her to do the same so it’s not too much for Lucy, but there’s not really any room.”

“Is this why you’re distracted lately?  Why you jumped from Grumble shouting?”

Avery considered.

“Part of it.”  A very small part of it.  Point zero zero one percent of it, maybe.

“I don’t want you going over there.”

“For projects and stuff, maybe?” Avery asked.

“I don’t want you going there.”

“But- she’s my friend.  It gets awkward if I’m not allowed.  And like… I don’t want to go there, especially if he’s there.  Can you trust me?  That I’ll be smart about it?”

“Done!” Declan announced.  “Can we go?”

“In a moment!” mom called out.  “Get in the car and get belted up.”

“We’re losing the weekend!  We had to come on this stupid errand-”

“A moment!”

“Mom!”  Kerry called out.  “Can I open my treat?”

“We’re about to eat lunch, so no.  Get in the car.  Give me a moment with Avery.”

“Can we have one piece each?”

“Get in the car!”

“Its okay,” Avery said.  “I’m trying to be a good friend to her.  I’m handling it.”

Her mom rubbed her shoulders, then dropped a hand to Avery’s elbow, where the bandage was.  “This wasn’t related to him?”

“No.  No!”

“Keep me updated.  Let me know what’s going on, or if anything changes, or if we need to call someone?”

Avery nodded.

“And invite Verona over.  So we can see how she’s doing ourselves?”

Avery made a face.  “She doesn’t like… people, I guess?  Or like, she likes specific people but she doesn’t like groups of people.  And we’re a groupy group of people.”

“Invite her over anyway.”

Avery nodded.  A concession.  “Can’t guarantee she’ll come.”

“We worry about you so much, Avery.  Your dad and I and your siblings adore you, we do.  And we want good things for you.  We failed you so badly, not noticing how lonely you’d gotten, until your teacher reached out to us, and right now, not to make our concerns your burdens, but… I have this feeling like you’re pulling away and somehow we’re failing you, maybe in a worse way.  I have discussions with your dad, about you, lying in bed at night.  Not just you, Declan has his ADHD diagnosis and Sheridan’s unmotivated but… you keep coming up, and it’s always a question mark.”

“I’m fed.  I’m clothed.  I’m loved,” Avery said.  “I think you’re doing okay now.”

“There’s so much more to it than that,” her mom said.

Avery shrugged.

“Don’t pull too far away, okay?  You might not believe it, but I’ve had friends with awful family situations, I’ve been there.  So has your dad.  Grumble has.  Rowan has.  If there’s something you’re confused about, you can bring it up.  You’re on your way to becoming an adult.  Talk to us as adults.”

Avery nodded.  “Okay.  If you’ll trust me to handle some stuff myself?”

Her mom kissed her on the forehead, then nodded.

Verona’s dad pushed a cart out to his car.  He saw her and waved, smiling.

She waved back, halfheartedly.  So did her mom.

“Come on,” her mom said.  “Or the kids will spontaneously combust in there.”

Avery smiled.  “Is that really an incentive to go?”

Her mom smiled, then walked around to the driver’s side.

Avery dusted her fingers with the glamour in her back pocket, then pressed it to her heart.  Being treated as more adult.  Communicating.  Navigating tough conversations.

If a year passed and Guilherme told her this was all in her head, and using the glamour like this didn’t actually do anything, she’d feel like it was worth it, if only because it forced her to keep looking for the little successes and good points.

That done, Avery climbed into the passenger seat, which one of the Declans was already kicking.  All the kids were piled in the back of the van.

“With all this talk of me not pulling away, I guess it’s a bad time to bring up the idea of me going to this summer thing Lucy and Verona are planning to do, huh?” Avery asked.

Her mom gave her a level ten mom look.

The problem with having the stuff like the air-rune sneakers and the black rope was that Avery was usually the first to arrive.  Verona had wanted to turn into an animal to get around faster, but Lucy wanted to conserve glamour.

There was a hot chocolate bar by the foot of the ski hills that was closed for every season except winter.  Avery sat on the corner of the flat roof, which some teenagers had managed to climb up to at some point.  There was an old telescope, a blanket that had been rained on and dried enough times to get moldy, and some bottles scattered around.

Someone had had a nice date here, she imagined.  Lying on the blanket, looking at stars, a few beers to warm up.  Raised up just enough that most of the city was out of view.  After hours, most of the streetlights shut off, so only downtown was really lit up, and it really helped the stars come out.

She imagined having a late night date like that with Ms. Hardy, lying side by side, talking about nothing and everything.  Being reassured, reassuring, saying inane things.  Ms. Hardy knew a little something about everything, she said, and so she could talk about the stars, or about Kennet, or about life, or being gay, or about friends and family, and Avery would listen.  And Avery could talk about the other world and secrets and magic.

It would be so nice to be held.  Even in the homeschooling, Avery would have social meet-ups with the other homeschooled kids, and kids her age last year had been starting to talk about kissing and sneaking looks at porn on their phones, and dating and who had a crush on who.

Even Olivia had.  Avery’s best friend for years had gotten so into it, and Avery had just rolled with it.  She’d labeled herself a late bloomer and at the same time she’d been super into her friendship with Olivia, fantasizing about being best friends for life, and being roommates, and sharing everything.  Avery had been so excited every time they got to meet up and she’d broken down into sobs when one of their weekends together was canceled.  So lame.

A bit of her wondered if that was why her friend had pulled away, joining the Swanson team.  If Avery had said something or done something and Olivia had figured it out before Avery had, and rejected her because of it.

Olivia leaving had left a big hole in her heart.  No more weekends to look forward to, no more companionship, no more confidante.  Nobody to push Avery outside of her routine and way of thinking.

It would be so nice to be held.  To have someone say ‘I get you’ and mean it, and to be able to hold that person.  Or to fumble through the stuff like kissing, or dating, or being able to think about nights together like star watching on a rooftop.  It would be terrifying, because it would be her one shot at it, maybe, but so nice at the same time.

And she’d walked the Forest Ribbon Trail.  She could do scary and exciting.  If she could get through that mostly intact, she could tackle dating, right?  Someone like Ms. Hardy.

Or Pam.  Except Pam was off limits now.  Because of the Faerie.

She tried to push the ideas out of her mind.  It hurt more than it warmed her heart.

Her cape kept people from looking at her, while freeing her to look at the people.  She watched a gnarly dude who might’ve been into rock, or just really unhygenic, with hair down past his shoulders and a thick black beard, black tee, and dark jeans, holding the hand of a little girl in a princess costume with antennae and faerie wings.

A woman Avery’s parent’s age was with a friend, laughing too loudly, acting too boisterous.

Avery felt her skin crawl.  The laugh and the unpredictability reminded her a bit of the Wolf.

It was very lonely up here.

She saw Snowdrop hop off the back of a truck as it rounded the corner, stumble, and tumble, stopping before she got to the sidewalk.

A car followed after, zooming straight toward the prone Snowdrop.  Avery’s hands went to her mouth in alarm, before dropping, reaching for the black rope and rising to her feet.  The car passed within two feet of the possum as it rounded the same corner.

Snowdrop picked herself up, stepped onto the sidewalk, and dusted herself off.  She looked up at Avery, standing on the corner of the rooftop, and flashed a smile of missing and uneven teeth.  She wore a different jacket, black, and a blank white tee.

Avery didn’t move as she watched Snowdrop run over, nearly tripping on a hump in the grass by the hot chocolate bar.  Snowdrop scrambled over a row of plastic trash cans, knocking them over with a loud series of bonks and clunks, then leaped to the ladder at the side of the building.

“You need to be careful,” Avery scolded the possum.

“I’m bad at climbing and stuff.”

“I mean about the truck,” Avery said, grabbing Snowdrop’s hand, lifting her onto the roof.  “You almost got hit!”

“It was just that one time.”

“That does not make me feel better about it!”

“The goblins don’t think it’s great either,” Snowdrop said.

“That’s- be safe, okay?”

Snowdrop shuffled her feet, then crossed over to Avery, hugging her.

Giving me what I asked for, universe?  Someone who knows me and can hug me?  Mayyyybe give me someone dateable?  Avery thought.

“How were things with the goblins?”

“Good.”

Avery’s heart sank.

“They’re leaving me alone.”

“What happened?  Did they hurt you?  Threaten you?”

“Yeah.  Tons of death threats and crap.”

“Did they say something?”

“Nah.  They’re pretty good about the name calling and stuff.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I blame you.  You’re a jerk, doing that.  Jerk-ass,” Snowdrop said.  She broke the hug.

“Was there anything else?”

“Nah.”

“Traps?  Pranks?  Tricks?  Did they harass you in other ways?”

“Everything but the pranks.  They’re trying to get me to let my guard down.”

They sat on the edge of the roof.  Snowdrop leaned over, her head resting against Avery’s arm, her legs kicking.

“I hope it settles down.”

“It won’t,” Snowdrop said.  “Cherrypop’s the worst of them.  She’s not my friend anymore.”

Avery nodded.

“You didn’t have to come, you know.”

“Really?  You should have said so, because I didn’t want to,” Snowdrop said.

Avery dug in her bag for a chocolate bar.  She broke it in half.

They finished the chocolate bar and shared a soda.  Avery pitched the balled-up wrapper and the bottle into the recycling bins at the side of the building, by the knocked-over trash cans.  The bottle clattered into the bin.

She leaned into Snowdrop so she could access her back pocket.

A bit of glamour.  She drew a bullseye on her hand, as a reward for making the shot.  I get down on myself for having bad aim, but I have my moments.

“Fifty percent, you suck,” Snowdrop criticized her.

Snowdrop got up from her seat, and walked over to the telescope and blanket.  She picked through the things, then carried the battered, weather-worn telescope over to the rooftop’s edge.  It was about two and a half feet long and chunky, and she used her hands and feet to hold it, feet at the end, while peering through the aperture.

Avery reached for and grabbed the back of Snowdrop’s jacket, to pull her back in case the weight she was holding out in front of her made her tip forward.  The back of the jacket had a red image stamped on it; a circle of possums arranged so each possum had its tail looped around the previous possum’s neck.  In the center was just ‘P.o.S.’

“See them?”

“No.”

Avery used her sight to help.  She could see the band that connected her to the other two, and she could follow it to them.

“Verona, Verona, Verona,” she said.

The band constricted.  Intensified.  Verona looked up and around until she found Avery.  She was wearing a black tee that had about ten holes in it.  Avery was entirely unsure if the holes were supposed to be there or if Verona was running out of wearable clothes.

“Lucy, Lucy, Lucy.”

The other band did the same.

Lucy raised her hand in a wave.  Avery returned it.  Lucy wore a hooded pink top with the Dassier waves going from shoulder to sleeve, hood down, and a black tennis skirt.  The top went well with her hair.

The connections between the two of them were stronger than the connections between them and her.  Which was fair, but also scary, and frustrating.

“My mom gave me a tentative okay on the magic school thing.  Still gotta work out the details and figure out a convincing cover story for what it is and why I’m going,” Avery told Snowdrop.

“I can’t help with that.  I’m illiterate and crap.”

“Hmm.  I’d be worried it’d be a mess.”

“Me?  Never.”  Snowdrop gave Avery a toothy grin.

“Yeah,” Avery said, smiling at her companion.  “Come on.”

They climbed down to the street level, and Avery fixed the position of the trash cans, before joining the other two.

“Guilherme is going to give me some lessons,” Lucy said.  “Maricica is… intense.”

I missed stuff.

“Intense how?”

“We went to go get stocked up on glamour and stuff, and without really saying anything or agreeing, we decided to keep our distance,” Lucy said.  “We didn’t ask.  Which might have been her ploy, but it still feels like the better option.”

“Keeping it simple,” Verona added.

“Snowdrop said the goblins were bullying her, pulling some pranks, I think?  Except Cherrypop, sorta.  And I bumped into Matthew and Edith.  They’re cool-ish?  They have opinions but they’re not going to come after us or get mad, from what I could tell?”

“We don’t know where John stands,” Lucy said.

“I’m guessing he feels very complicated about all this,” Verona stated.

“Good guess,” Avery said.

Man, how would she feel if she had to lose Snowdrop, and then later had that decision rubbed in her face?  And she’d only known Snowdrop for a little less than a week.

“Alpeana is cranky but she was too sleepy to get a good judgment on,” Verona said.  “She said she wants to avoid the ‘politics’ of this.  Which might mean avoiding us.”

Avery winced.

“Sucks,” Verona said, to put a word to Avery’s expression.

“It’s great!” Snowdrop said.  “Us alone against the world!”

“Well,” Lucy said.  She put her hands into the pockets of her skirt.  “I’m glad there’s an us, at least.”

“Agreed,” Verona said.

“Very much agreed,” Avery said.

“It feels weird and bad to be handing off the Hungry Choir to other people,” Lucy said, looking up at the moon.  It was only a sliver, up above, visible in the daytime.

“They can handle it in a way we can’t,” Verona said, “I hope, anyway.”

“I hope they all bite it.  Then we can handle it ourselves,” Snowdrop said.

Avery messed up the kid’s hair some.

“Should we go?  Last of the big interviews, I think,” Lucy said.

Avery and Verona nodded.

“Where?”

Avery turned, squinted, and pointed.  The road cut an S-ish shape down the mountainside.  A path with a lot of stairs led up, crossing the ‘S’ like the line of a dollar sign, going straight to the gas station.

They ascended.  The other two began to grunt and complain about the running around yesterday and how their legs were tired.  Even Avery felt it a bit, despite the regular running she did.

The stairs were concrete, with a rail covered in rust.  A bunch of candy wrappers, drink bottles, and coffee cups littered the grass and bushes to either side of the stairs.

They passed Blue Gas.  When Avery had traveled for hockey, the bright dot of blue against the mountainside was often the first sign that she was close to home.  Cars whizzed past, turning off the highway to head down to Lake Superior.  Cabins, other towns, some people worked at a water treatment plant.  Stuff.  It was busier on the road here than it had been in the grocery store.

It was another ten minutes of walking, until Kennet was something distant.  To a house that had been battered by winter, with a long dirt driveway and a garage set way back and away from the road.

Louise Bayer was maybe Ms. Hardy’s age, but she didn’t wear makeup or dress up.  She sat on the porch, cigarette in one corner of her mouth, book in her lap.  Dark hair, slightly-weather worn skin that had darkened a shade in the sun, and a demeanor that made Avery think that she could be a ranch owner or something.  Like she spent a lot of years working hard.  Even if she wasn’t muscular or anything.  Just… tired.

As she saw them coming, Louise set her book down.  She drew heavily on her cigarette, dropped it to her porch, and stubbed it out with the toe of her shoe.

“You them?” the woman asked.

Lucy nodded.

Avery switched on the Sight, to look for traps, or anything tricky.  What she saw, instead, was the unfurling of connections that had been folded up or hidden.  Bands stretching out from Louise to places in Kennet.

“I was told to expect you,” Louise said.  “I somehow forgot that, but I knew I should be looking out.”

“We’re here,” Verona said.

“Four girls.”

Avery looked down at Snowdrop, then nodded.

“Need anything?  Water?  I might have an ancient can of soda or two in my cabinet, from when I bribed neighbors to help me with some things around the place.”

“I brought my own water bottle,” Lucy said.

“I’m fine,” Verona answered.

“I’m okay,” Avery answered.

“Well,” Louise said.  “Want to sit outside?  I could invite you in, but I don’t know why you’d want to be out of the sun.”

“It’s okay out here,” Lucy said.

The woman retreated to her seat where the book was.

The four of them approached, settling at the stairs.

“We have questions, about that night,” Lucy said.

“Not sure what I could tell you that others couldn’t,” the woman answered.  “But I’ll try.”

“Can you walk us through it?” Verona asked.

“I don’t know what to say.  I heard the howling.  All over town.  And it was… it was the saddest thing.  I cried, hearing it.”

Lucy unzipped her bag.  She pulled out her investigation notebook.  Good.

“We didn’t hear anything,” Verona said.  “At least, I don’t think we did.”

“No,” Louise agreed.  “No, I don’t think most people did.”

“Was it quiet?” Lucy asked.  “Close by?”

“Far, and loud.  I thought the windows might break.  Except- I took it for a hallucination, not something real.”

“Where was it?” Avery asked.

“That part comes a bit later.  But…”

The woman pointed.

Base of the mountain here, way off to the south.

Avery could see Lucy penning something down.  She flipped back to check something- a brochure of town, and after she went back and forth twice more, Avery grabbed the brochure.

She made a mark, with her best guess.

The Others of Kennet didn’t.  The first many of them heard about the Carmine Beast was when the goblins came to notify them.

“Why didn’t they hear?” Avery asked, quiet.

“Because something stopped them?” Verona asked.

“Who could even do that?” Lucy asked.

“Faerie, probably.  Maybe the Choir.  Which is what I meant,” Verona said.  “What if it wasn’t here, and Louise saw into the spirit, or the ruins, or the warrens?  Or the Choir’s event.”

“That wasn’t in Kennet that night,” Lucy said.  “We might be getting ahead of ourselves.”

Lucy finished taking her notes.

“It was eerie,” Louise said.  “Disconcerting.  I cried tears of blood, but afterward, there wasn’t a drop to be found.”

“That’s-” Verona started.  But Avery touched Verona’s arm, stopping her.  “What?”

“Let her find her own explanations.  She should forget this after we talk to her, anyway.  It makes it easier if we don’t push or force things on her.”

“Or taint the testimony,” Lucy said.

“Fine,” Verona said.

“What happened next?  Howling first…”

“I stepped outside.  I was going to have a smoke.  I saw it.  Bleeding moon.  This… slender and beautiful wolf, or fox, or something between the two.  Long-legged.  Big as some of the mountains around here.”

“Moon’s important,” Lucy said.  “It was bleeding?”

Louise nodded.  “Big, full, the outline dripped blood, and it extended down to its head.  Ran down its body, but didn’t go anywhere.  Disappeared into the fur, I guessed.”

“Blood’s another thing we keep running into,” Verona murmured.

“I don’t,” Snowdrop said.  “Blood free, especially around the goblins.”

“You said full?” Verona asked.

Louise nodded.  “Lit up the town, the hills around.  Seemed bigger than usual.”

“I don’t think that’s right,” Verona said.

Lucy had to dig through her notes.  She found the bit about the choir, checking, and found the print-outs from the Devouring Song website.

Lucy tapped the page.  Last week of march.  Five weeks ago, the moon hadn’t been full.

“Wonder if that’s important, or how,” Avery murmured.

“Something about her?  Or telling us something?  Or was that a vector for attack?” Lucy asked.

Avery grabbed a spare bit of paper, then began taking her own notes.  Keeping track of the questions.

“Then?” Verona asked, while Lucy was busy taking notes too.

“It howled, and it hit me hard.  Made my old hurts feel like they were fresh.  I nearly passed out.  Came to, then against all reason, I got in my car, and I started driving.  Trying to get to it.  Her, you said?”

“Her,” Avery told the woman.

“Where was she, then?” Lucy asked.  “What direction was she going?”

Louise rose from her seat, walking up until she was close to them.  She pointed.

Moving along the mountainside.

“I caught up to it by Blue Gas.  Then I carried on on foot.  Until we got to the Kennet Arena.”

Avery showed the woman the brochure with the map, and the dotted line she’d drawn.

The woman nodded, confirming it was right.

“Can we- if it’s no imposition, could you show us?”

“I’m not doing anything.  I was asked to point you in the right directions.  This seems like a way to do it.”

It was weird, getting into a stranger’s car.  Weirder, when the car smelled like stale cigarette smoke and mustiness.

Avery sat in the back seat, Snowdrop between herself and Verona.

“I got a new lease on life that night.  I don’t know why and I haven’t prodded too hard to find out or question why,” Louise said.

“Who pushed for that, do you know?” Lucy asked.

“It was- the man, primarily.  Matthew something.  A woman, I couldn’t see her face.”

“Who else was there?”

“A woman, wearing a toque.  Her hair had been bleached but the roots showed.  Hip-heavy.  Ummm.  Children.  They’d gathered together at the Arena.  Before that, it was… small shadows.  Four of them, different sizes.  I didn’t get a clear look at them in the gloom.”

Louise sounded stressed, as she explained that last bit.

“Easy,” Avery murmured.

Lucy nodded.

Couldn’t push too hard.

“Hallucinations, from my medication.  I kept going back and forth on it.  Now I’m doing it again.  Wondering.”

“Yeah,” Avery said.

“Every detail is important.  If there are hallucinations or things you saw, we’ll try to sort out the truth from the fiction after,” Lucy said.

“Better you than me,” the woman said.  “I wasn’t expecting it to be children that came.”

“Teenagers,” Lucy clarified.

“A lot of people weren’t expecting us to be young,” Avery said.

Louise drove them down that S-shaped road.  She slowed down as they drew closer to Blue Gas.  A bunch of cars were gathered.  It was cheap gas for people pulling off of the big road, and it was one of the two big gas stations in Kennet, with an attached delivery spot and fast food place.  People could have parcels delivered and pick them up here, and if they did it was often a day or two faster.

Not that any of that was important to the Carmine Beast and what happened to her.

“Caught up to her here,” Louise said.  “She was padding along.  Sometimes she’d make noise.  Bunch of kids were outside, didn’t see her, even as big as she was.  The shadows were over there.”

She pointed to the stairwell where the four of them had come up.

“Can we get out?” Lucy asked.

“Whatever you want, but if you’re going all the way to the Arena… I’m better than I was, but I’d rather drive it, as much as possible.”

“That’s fine.  Just… want to take in the scene.”

“Take your time.”

They climbed out of the car.

Avery looked around with her sight.

Red handprints everywhere.

“Meaty bloody bits all under the road,” Verona said.  “Like it’s plastic wrap stretched flat over roadkill.  Stuff in the trees, where I’m guessing she brushed up against them.”

Avery looked.  Some of the leaves and branches were stained red with multiple handprints.

“Awful,” Snowdrop said.  “Roadkill isn’t my aesthetic.”

“Not funny,” Avery said.

“I agree,” Snowdrop said, before sticking out her tongue.  “Be right back.”

She ran over, and ducked around to the back of the gas station.

“Dumpster diving?” Lucy asked.

“I don’t even know,” Avery said.  “But I trust her.”

Lucy nodded.  Then she pointed.  “Stains, with my Sight.  I guess this is where some of that crimson is bleeding out from.”

They walked over to the little stairwell, looking down.

Avery could see the course the Beast had traveled, by the amount of redness.

From above, she could see areas of the city that were bloodier than others.

“Wah!” Snowdrop exclaimed, popping out of the bush.  Lucy jumped.  Verona was standing too far off to the side to really be surprised.

“Where’d you go?”

“Nowhere, no goblin tunnels or nothing.  Didn’t stick my head in any dark holes or weird spots.”

“And?”

“Way different from here.”

“Let’s move on,” Lucy said.

They got back in the car, resuming the drive.

“The four shadows went ahead.  Straight down to the restaurants at the edge of downtown there,” Louise pointed, as they navigated the ‘S’.  “There was a crash when they ran by a truck that was loading up at the back of the bistro.”

“The wolf-thing, how did it behave?” Lucy asked.

“It made noise. It limped.”

“Limped?”

“One leg was curled up.  It was moving slower than it had been.”

“Since when?” Lucy asked  “The beginning?”

Louise shook her head.

“Can you take us back?  So we can check?  From the last place you remember seeing her moving on all fours?”

It was a bit of a task, figuring out how to get turned around on the very straightforward road, with the periodic incoming traffic.  They backtracked.  Trees at either side of the road crowded in around them.

They got out again, and spread out.

By the edge of the road, following the Beast’s path, they found a spot where the stains were thicker.

They didn’t really say or agree what they were looking for, but they walked over the area, with each bit of the roadside getting at least two good looks by their group.  Snowdrop disappeared again.

There were no bullet casings.  No scraps of fur, discarded weapons, or anything of the sort.

“Nothing here,” Snowdrop said.

“Show us,” Lucy told her.

Snowdrop reached out.  Lucy took her hand.

Verona took Lucy’s hand, and Avery took Verona’s.

They were tugged along.  Into a darkness beneath a tree, framed by the roadside trash.

The ground was wet, smelled like the occupants of this hole had used it as a washroom and it had mixed with the mud, and the dirt smudged in around them.

“My nice top, too,” Lucy complained.

“I dressed for messier work,” Verona said.

“Great for you.”

Avery remained silent.  A lot of her stuff was grass-stained anyway.

The tunnel was claustrophobic.  Water dripped from above, even though it wasn’t raining before.

Snowdrop tugged them through the winding confines, where some of the tunnels were so narrow that Avery had to slide down feet first and pray she wouldn’t get stuck.

They seemed to follow the drips, which got more frequent.  Lucy flipped up her hood.

They emerged into darkness.  Into rain.

Three cars were crashed around them, two only lightly, the third demolished, wrapped around a tree.  The headlights flickered on and off, the radio stuttering.

Rain poured down around them as they emerged, exploring.  Echoes by the side of the road stood dully.

The bloodstained handprints were richer in the gloom, like a streak of tomato red against a dark blue background.  They were denser, and chunkier, and the blood ran thick enough it flowed like a small river.

“That blood that poured down from the moon landed here, huh?” Verona asked.  “Not in our world.”

Lucy looked around.  “This is where the attack happened.  The Ruins- this is the ruins, right?”

“Nah,” Snowdrop said.

“Louise didn’t say anything about her fighting back.  She just… marched along.  While being hurt this badly.”

“Straight to the Kennet Arena.  Crying out, but not to- not to the local Others, I guess,” Avery said.

“Crying out to people.  Going to probably the densest group of people,” Lucy said.

“Lonely, against the world,” Avery murmured.

“Huh?” Verona asked.

Avery walked around the edges of the gore-streaked street.  A ghost in a car, head out the window, tore down the road.  “Just- If it was one person or one thing going on, then why wouldn’t she call out to the locals?”

“You think it was more than one that was involved?” Lucy asked.

“Would make sense, wouldn’t it?  She seemed resigned to her fate, if she wasn’t fighting.  So… she didn’t trust the locals or something.  So maybe she reaches out, in hopes that a person will hear and challenge the local Others?”

The rain poured down around them.  Soaking them through.  Lucy held her bag over her head for shielding.

“Let’s keep going?”

“Do you want to go?” Avery asked.  “And pass back through?  I’ll be a little ways ahead.”

“You’re okay staying here?” Lucy asked.

“Sure.  If there’s any trouble, I can run.”

“Feels bad, leaving you in a strange world,” Verona said.

“I’ve got the rope.”

It took some convincing, but they agreed.  Lucy, Snowdrop, and Verona headed back.

Avery walked amid ghosts and spirits, in this strange, wet place.  Her hair was soaked through, her clothes sodden, but… it wasn’t the worst thing.

It didn’t take them long to appear further down the path.  So fast, in fact, that it felt like time was a bit fucky.  Avery caught up, checking the blood trail, looking for clues.  Lucy was wearing what might have been Louise’s yellow raincoat, now.

The bloodstains got bigger and bigger.

“Louise says the goblins stopped at the lit-up parts of downtown.”

“That’s unusual,” Snowdrop said.  “They love it when metal is charged up with water running through it, or hot, or whatever.  City centers and trash.”

“We can probably rule out the goblins,” Lucy said.  “The timeline doesn’t fit.  They were at the top of the hill when Louise was, they scattered after this.  They couldn’t or shouldn’t be able to get into the town center, and the time they started showing up at people’s places or caves or whatever…”

“No time to conduct a murder and dispose of the body,” Verona said.

“Probably,” Lucy said.  “Matthew handled Louise.  He doesn’t seem that smooth or canny, to jump straight to handling her, managing things… but he could surprise us.”

“Or he could tap into the Doom, maybe?” Verona asked.  “Draw on its craftiness and nastiness?”

“Maybe,” Lucy said.

Avery was quiet.  She looked at the blood.  The night they’d come to the ruins, they’d come to the Arena from the other side.  If they’d carried on past the Arena… they might have seen the trail.

There were a lot of figures in the rain as they got closer to the Arena.  Standing in or near the blood.  Echoes.  Shadows like omens.  A man with a white rose held to his chest, mop of hair wet and in his eyes.

Without the chase of the eyeball collector to distract them, it was easier to just absorb this all.  Melancholy.

They searched the scene.  Each area got at least two sets of eyes.

Verona bent down, whispering to a dark corner.  She reached into her pocket, opened a tin, and pulled out the hot lead.  John’s little bit of bullet with the elemental in it.

“Careful.  It might still be cool after all the power we drew out of it yesterday,” Lucy said.  “If you spend every last drop it might not recover.”

“Just a bit of power, to encourage, and pay for help,” Verona said.

The hot lead glowed, casting the faintest of red lights.

And a face, skinned, eyeless, boneless, mouth like rip in the muscle of the lower half, all wrapped in layers of plastic or gauzy curtains, was illuminated.

“Heya,” Verona said.

“That is freaky,” Avery said.

“It’s cool,” Verona said.  “Hey dude.  Any details we’re missing?”

The head twitched, twisted and turned.

Verona rose to her feet, moving in the direction it was facing.

There was an eave, or a bit of broken building.  The barrier blocked the rain and the slope kept it from getting too drenched.  Bloody handprints streaked within.

“The ruins is all the same, everywhere,” Snowdrop said.  “There’s no doors or openings or spots that are closer to our world or anything.  Just wet and broken everywhere.”

“This is a gap that’s closer to…” Avery asked.

“Not our world,” Snowdrop said.

There was blood in the dry spot, undiluted, clotted, and it hadn’t dried.

Fingers had raked through it.  Swiping at it.  And there was a pattern at the edges…

“Like brushstrokes,” Avery said.

“It’s hair.  It was hair,” Verona said, “or- fur.  Fur, right?”

“Think so,” Avery said.  She drew her eyebrows together.

“Collecting every last bit of the beast,” Lucy said.  “It’s necessary, right?  They’re supposed to take the fur, blood, bone, meat, whatever else, and they use it to dress themselves up as the next Carmine?  And that makes the spot really hard to take, apparently?”

“Yeah,” Avery said.

“The attack happened in the Ruins, from the Ruins,” Lucy said.  “It’s why nothing seemed too weird in reality.  The Beast was in multiple worlds at once.  Or partially in some worlds.  I don’t know.”

An echo screamed, ragged.  Just background noise, amid the hammering of the rain.

“I just had a weird thought,” Avery said.  “Maybe an important one.  Something from the Forest Ribbon Trail.  And the day we awakened.”

“Do tell,” Verona said.

“Or don’t,” Lucy said.  “Depending.  There’s a chance we’re being watched.  It might be good to do a nice big connection breaking diagram for privacy, for a serious talk.”

“Um, do you have the things from the awakening ritual?” Avery asked.

“Not the skull.  That’s on my shelf,” Verona said.

“Other stuff.”

“My bag’s in the car.”

“And the notes?” Avery asked.

“In my bag.”

“Can we go?”

Lucy nodded.

They made their way back through the tunnels, slipping between worlds.

Into the sunlight and dry air.  Water ran off Avery with a surprising quickness.  Like the Ruins-water knew it wasn’t supposed to be here.

Louise was by her car, smoking again.  She watched as they approached, Lucy getting her bag.

Snowdrop hopped up, sitting beside the woman.

“What’s your deal, kid?” Louise asked Snowdrop.

“I’m very boring, I do a lot of homework and chores, for a mom who loves me and definitely didn’t decide to stop feeding me when I was a baby.  I always tell the truth, and I’m very neat and tidy.”

“You homeless?”

“Nah.”

“Yes,” Avery said.  “She does okay, I think?”

“If you need a bed or a bite to eat, just ask,” Louise said.  “Anytime.”

“We’d have to be careful,” Avery said.  She was wary that Snowdrop hanging around Louise for any length of time would either break that fragility, or cause other problems.  What if Louise grew a conscience and reported the Snowdrop situation to child protection?

How would that even work, when most seemed unable to see or hear Snowdrop?

It was… beside the point.  It didn’t matter.

“Here,” Lucy said.

She had the knives, the ‘coin’.  Avery had the timepiece, but she didn’t need that.

Avery held a finger to her lips, as she had Lucy get out the investigation notes.  Going back to early pages.

“Remember this?” she asked Snowdrop.  “From the trail?”

She slid the coin across the page.

“Nah.”

“Yeah,” Avery said.

“Why?” Lucy asked.

The coin, tin, was old, stamped with HBC 100.  They’d covered some of this in their homework, a week ago.  Hudson’s Bay Compay.  Fur trading.

And the Carmine Beast had been killed, in part, for its fur.  To take its power and mantle.

The coin had reappeared on the trail.  She’d showed Snowdrop.

“I don’t know what this means.  If it’s complete, or if they made decisions when they signed on for the awakening ritual…” Avery trailed off.

She picked up the coin and set it down on the early investigation notes.

“…If they were telling us or if the universe was, right from the start.”

Edith James.  At the awakening ritual, her starting point had been the skull, and she’d exited by coin.

Maricica.  Started at thread, left by coin.

The Hungry Choir.  Started at skull, left by coin.

Avery slid the coin to each entry.  A coin direct from the fur trade.

“It’s a starting point, if we’re looking for sets of suspects,” Lucy murmured.  “Even if we don’t know what it means.”

“Edith but not Matthew?” Verona asked.

“There’d be a lot of questions.  The how.  How it came together.  What roles they had.  If anyone outside was involved,” Lucy said.  “Choir ritual is tonight.”

“Let’s hope it goes okay,” Avery said.

“For the participants, yeah,” Lucy agreed.  “And that we get our chance to ask some questions.”

[3.9 Spoilers] SunnyDay Logs

Out on a Limb – 3.z

Interlude

Last Thursday: SunnyDay Logs


Rain pattered against the windshield, and the wipers, set to go every few seconds, produced an audible squeak with each pass.

Zed was glad that Raymond was following behind in his own car.  He could glance back in the rear view mirror, and see his teacher in the gleaming black car, the driver shadowy and indistinct.  It meant that the car was just him and Brie.

Considering the length of the roadtrip, the choice of traveling companions was key.  She was wearing a red shirt and white pants, her raincoat draped over one knee, her bag at her feet.  The snacks they’d been eating sat on the dashboard.

“A song for your supper,” Brie sang.  She had a good singing voice.

“A morsel for your melody,” Zed answered.  “Do we have to?  I’ve said I memorized it.”

“We don’t have to,” Brie said.

The windshield wipers squeaked.

“I’m nervous,” she said.

“I don’t blame you,” he said.  “But you may be one of the safest people here, by the rules.”

“I’m nervous for your sake.  And for the other participants.  About a lot of things.”

“Yeah,” Zed said.

He’d been expecting a town to pop up, now that they were close.  They traveled down two-lane roads that crossed flat ground, barely a hill in sight.  Trees, roads, sometimes side roads that were just wet dirt, and the occasional barn.  It was so flat and boring it was hypnotic.

There’d barely been any cars on the road at all.  He’d seen more wildlife crossing the road than he’d seen fellow travelers.

They’d played through Zed’s tapes, and Brie had played some of her favorite music.  They’d turned music off and talked about themselves.  Family.  Struggling with the hands the universe had dealt them.  They’d gone over the song, more for Brie’s sake than for Zed’s.

A child ran out into the road.

Zed hit the brakes, steering hard.  The station wagon fishtailed, and he steered into it.

There was the lightest of thumps as the kid practically ran into the side of the car.  Zed controlled the continuing skid, staying on the road, and got gentler as they coasted forward.

Brie was gripping the armrest of the chair and the hand-grip above the door, feet firmly planted.

They were in control again.  Zed glanced back and saw that Raymond was doing fine.  The kid was nowhere to be seen.

“I guess we’re here,” Brie said.

“Yeah,” Zed answered.  His mouth was suddenly dry.  He took a drink of his Berried in Cream soda, eyes scanning the road for other errant children.

“This is it,” Brie said, checking her phone.

Zed slowed.

The only thing left of the town was an intersection.  The buildings, if there had even been that many, were gone.  A few stones were erected by the side of the road.  Like gravestones, but for a town.

Brie touched Zed’s arm.

At the far end of the road, a cluster of children blocked off parts of the intersection.  Going straight would mean plowing through the group.  Turning right would mean the same.

Zed took their cue and turned left.

There were other turns. Left.  Left.  Left.  Right.  Left.

With each turn, there were a few more buildings visible.

“Ah, so this is what we’re doing,” Zed murmured, trying to make sure he didn’t run over any of the phantom kids.

“What is?”

“It’s-” Zed turned again, passing onto a road with leafless trees lining either side of it.  “A cleanup job.”

“Who cleaned up what?”

“People like me or Ray or those three girls you met, cleaning up a mess left behind by something like them.  Those singing children.  Or goblins, or whatever.  Sometimes they spin a story.  Sometimes they rewrite the existing story.  Like how your family thought you’d never had feet, but couldn’t explain why you didn’t own a wheelchair.”

“And now that I’m whole again, they can’t remember my injuries.”

“These places can be havens for Others.  I’ve got a few places Ray makes me visit and check out.  Totally different stories than this kind of place, y’know, but people like me, we check them out, do sweeps.  Make sure no problems come up again.  I bet someone’s job is to come through here once every few months or something.”

“Any chance they’ll show up?”

“Pretty slim,” Zed said.

They passed beneath the trees.  Into the town center of an 1800s town.  Quaint wooden buildings, a church, a lot of it centered around a field central to the town, now overgrown to the point the grasses and weeds had overtaken part of the road.  There had been stalls or something that were now long fallen to pieces and blown into the road by the wind.  At one corner of the field, a massive tent had been turned into something spectral- the central mast that had held up the tent was still mostly upright, the fabric worn by weather and by time, now so stiff that it didn’t move in the wind.  Like it had calcified.

It wasn’t empty.  There were children here and there, who had found seats on tree branches and rooftops, or who just stood or sat by the road.  A bunch of cars had driven through the overgrown field, flattening the grass and weeds, and people had exited.  Fences, netting, and other things were being pulled together.

“Did you do this kind of prep before?” Zed asked.

Brie nodded.  “I’ll help out, if that’s okay.”

“Okay.  But I’ll need you to brief my guys.”

Brie nodded.

They pulled over to a stop, not that far from the participants who were preparing.  They didn’t get out of the car.

“Four,” Brie said.  She made a face.

“Four?”

“Four people here, doing prep.  That’s bad.  It means we’ve got at least four more newbies who might be getting dragged in, who might not have checked the websites or learned the particulars.”

“Alright,” Zed said.  “There can be more than eight participants?”

“I don’t think so.  But some of the people helping here might be friends or family of the participants.”

“Got it,” Zed said.

Brie climbed out of the car.  Zed checked himself in the mirror.  It was hard not to feel self-conscious sometimes.

People were reacting to Brie’s presence.  Zed popped his door open just to hear, while running his hand through his hair.

He grabbed a thing of licorice and climbed out.

“-the winner.  Why would you come back?” a man asked, animated.  “You got a friend into it?”

“A friend, yes, but he’s help, not a participant,” she said.  “They’re people who are looking into this.  Who-”

“Don’t say too much,” Zed said.

There were kids close enough to be in earshot.

“-they’re here to help,” she finished.  “I can help too.  Where do you want the fences?”

“Here, the field,” a very heavy man said.  He had a thick beard and a shaved head.

“How is it?” asked a kid, maybe fifteen, who was wearing a modified hockey mask, a cloth cover covering the bottom edge of the mask, nose, and mouth.  The flesh of his face had clearly been badly scarred, even from what was visible at the eyeholes and at the edges of the mask.  Some of the flesh at the top of his head was scarred.  “Is the reward really like they say it is?  Is it good?”

“It’s not good,” Brie said.  “I needed it, I think.  It’s necessary for me.  But… you lose as much as you get. Or more.”

The kid sagged a bit. “It’s not that strong?  It doesn’t fix everything?”

“It’s stronger than we were led to believe,” Brie said.  “It fixed everything.”

“Then I really don’t get it,” the kid said.

“Where do you want this part of the fence?  It looks like a connector piece.”

“It braces the corner,” the heavy man said.

Brie started to set it in place.  One of the silent other two began working with her, holding it while she connected the left side, then connecting the right side while she held it.

She’d described types like those two.  How the entire setup process was often silent, like people were getting into the habit of not being able to talk while the ritual was underway.  Or because the emotions were so heavy in the air.

Zed went to his car and began unloading.  They would have taken a faster way, but faster could be complicated.  Different devices and items had their own wavelengths.  Whatever method they used to travel could upset sensitivities.  That was the problem with ‘technomancy’.  The practice was sometimes said to be about patterns, but it was really about the human patterns, or the patterns and how they related to humans.  So while technology was very good at repetition and setting patterns into motion, the human component was often fleeting.

Ray was out of his car.  The driver was gone.  The man was tall, with a long head, and he wore crimson-tinted visor sunglasses that were all one piece, with just the notch cut out for the nose, even though it was late evening.  It was maybe the last wholly intact vestige of his ‘rad’ former self.  His long hair was slicked back close to his scalp, only really getting wavy and ‘free’ at the point where it was past his chin.  It was graying at the temples.  He had a full beard, a black turtleneck, and a black business coat, all styled to frame a very slim build.  His jeans were a modern, slim-fit style, and his shoes appeared to be laceless.

Zed looked over at Brie, who glanced back at him, smiling.

Zed had dipped into the darker aesthetic as well, like Ray had.  Black tee, black leather jacket, jeans, hair slicked back in a very different way than Ray had.  Some might have said it was a 50s style, but it was timeless, as far as Zed was concerned.  Ever since the tee and jeans had been put together, they’d looked good, and a leather jacket on anyone young and fit could not fail to be cool.

Brie liked the look, he was pretty sure.  And he liked it.

The children were everywhere.  They probably didn’t like anything, except the idea of eating them all alive.

“I don’t think we could have a worse arena than this,” Ray said.

“It’s not under our control,” Zed said.  “Yet.”

“It’s wet, it’s overgrown, and there isn’t an outlet in sight.”

“Did you bring the generator?” Zed asked.

“I did,” Ray said.

“Then we have two.  Those are our ‘outlets’ then.”

“If we waited then we could be better situated, no?”

“The deal was I’d try this tonight.  The people who gave me the information made it clear they wanted this under control.”

“You couldn’t have pushed harder for a slight delay?”

“I don’t know that it would matter.  It’s almost always ghost towns.”

“Or Kennet,” Raymond said.  “That place has electricity.”

“The ritual’s skipping Kennet and Nicolette thinks it’s going to keep doing it.  It could be months before it returns there, if it does.”

“Hmmm.”

“If you’re bothered, I won’t mind if you want to bring the others here and then leave.”

“How could I do something like that?” Ray asked.  He gave Zed a tight smile.  “You’re my favorite apprentice.”

“I’m touched.  Is this the moment where you tell me your other students are only students and family, and I’m your only true apprentice?”

“I’ve had four apprentices.  You’re the only one of the three remaining who isn’t exhausting to be around.”

“You’re so asocial.”

“I spent myself of most of my ‘social’ in my younger days.”

“Peace, love, beauty, honesty, and fun?  Flower power?”

“I’m not quite that old, Zed.”

Zed laughed.

“While we’re on the topic of love…” Raymond said, raising one eyebrow above the red sunglasses.  He turned his head slightly toward Brie.

The question was implied, not asked.

“I’ve gotten attached to her.”

“Too attached?  You’ve assumed responsibility for her.  She’s aware but not awakened.  Now, I haven’t seen much of her…”

Raymond trailed off.

He did that a lot.  Zed was used to it, but he knew it drove some people crazy, as they waited for the man to finish his thoughts.  He didn’t do that, though.  He expected anyone keeping up with him to finish his thoughts for him and prove they were paying attention.

“She’s good, Raymond.  She’s competent.”

“She’s anxious.  She hesitates first and acts second.”

Raymond had followed the station wagon in his BMW.  They’d stopped for meals here and there, and Raymond had gotten to know Brie a bit.  A lot of Zed’s focus had been on bridging the gap between Ray, who could be mistaken for a slab of ice, and Brie, who was sometimes driven by anxiety.

That bridging of the gap wasn’t something that would happen at three rest stops.  For the time being, finding ways to bring out the warmth in Raymond, with playful jokes and reminiscing, and finding common-ground subjects for Brie and Raymond to talk about, even if it was the Choir, would be enough.  The rest of the work could be done later.  If tonight wasn’t a disaster.

“She survived eight nights of the Devouring Song.  Yes, she got a few helping hands to pull her up from the depths, mine included, but… you don’t survive eight nights of that if you’re weak.”

“I’m getting my things from the car,” Raymond said, turning, his the bottom end of his coat lifting up with the wind and the swiftness of the turn.  “I’d like help setting up.”

“Okay,” Zed answered.  Internally, he was calculating.  Raymond aborting a conversation wasn’t unusual, especially in recent years.  But Zed had to puzzle out why, and in the here and now, he found himself reaching, going over the conversation.  What had triggered Raymond shutting down like that?

‘Helping hands to pull her up from the depths.’

Raymond was thinking of darker times.  When he’d reached down to pull his son Hector up.  His hand had been slapped away.  Raymond had never forgiven Hector for that, lending a kind of sadness to his earlier comment about favorite apprentices.  Hector, for his part, hadn’t forgiven Raymond, either.

Stubbornness ran in that family.

Zed unloaded.  The scratch-a-sketch, with bright yellow plastic around a gray screen.  Walkie talkies.  A music player he could clip to his belt.  Tapes.  Headphones.  Power glove.  A radio with voices in the static.  A polaroid camera with blood in the creases.

A lot of devices and ‘found’ items tended to be… problematic.  When an Other got into an item, it tended to be frustrated or angry, or else a predator lying in wait, or a conniving thing trying to use the device as a vector to hurt people.

These items, from the scratch-a-sketch to the polaroid camera, were ones Zed had tended to.  Curses removed, Others managed or pulled out, bound, and put back in again.  In cases where those Others had been ones who preyed on fear or negativity, the items unfortunately became things that couldn’t recharge or sustain themselves.

He’d given up some things he prized and cared about to get the information they were using tonight.  In the fighting, if he used some of these things, he would be spending resources.  There was a part of him that was analytical about it, looking at this in the sense of power and status.  That part of him saw it as a big gamble, hoping he would gain something that was greater than what he spent.

There were other parts of him that looked at it from different angles.  The good Samaritan, that wanted to stop something ugly from getting more people.  The researcher, who wanted to figure this whole thing out.  The…

Zed floundered for a way of putting the idea to words.

The son?  That felt like a slap in the face to Hector, and Zed had always liked Hector.

In any event, He wanted to do right by Raymond.  The guy was a mess, and there were times he was borderline abusive, but he was also the first person who had really backed Zed up when he needed it.  If tonight went badly, if Zed didn’t come out the other end okay… Raymond would lose it, probably.  It would probably even go the way it had with Hector.  A decline so slow that people who were in contact with Raymond on a near-daily basis, like Alexander, wouldn’t notice the incremental changes.  So subtle that the people who were distant, like his other two apprentices, wouldn’t be able to put it to words.

Before Hector, Rad Ray Sunshine had been bright, effusive, happy, unflappable.  But the parent had buried his child and buried a good-sized part of himself with him.

That almost-son, that scholar, that good Samaritan, that accountant, the boyfriend… they needed tonight to be a win.

He had to recognize that, weighing it.  Because there were other things in his car.  Things that hadn’t been as thoroughly cleaned as the first stuff he’d picked up.  Things that would hurt the user as well as whatever they were pointed at.  Things that would take from him or add in their own small percentage chances that this could all go south, in exchange for the clout they promised or the doors they opened.

Part of the deal he’d made with Raymond a few years back was that he’d see a therapist.  He was pulling on that therapy now, trying to recognize where he stood, and the nature of the decision he was making.  With all those different facets of him so eager to do well today, it would be easy to overdo it, and tap into stuff that would cost too much to use, in risk, or power, or Self.

He left that stuff in the car, and prayed he wouldn’t need it.

He almost reached back in to grab the toy gun.  Then he made himself stop.  The toy gun wasn’t technomancy, but he’d come across it while doing a job for a friend of Raymond’s, and hadn’t found a way to get rid of it.  It could hit a car and make the vehicle roll over several times, but it came with steep drawbacks.  As far as Zed had worked it out, pulling that trigger meant months of coincidentally finding oneself in gunfights, while also being something of a magnet for stray bullets and ricochets.  All six of the last people to use it had been shot a few weeks or months later.  Only two of the six had survived past the six month mark.

Zed was pretty sure he’d figured out the quirks in a way that would let him use the thing, but… pretty sure wasn’t totally sure.

He closed the trunk, then brushed dust off the car.  The enchantments he’d laid into the vehicle meant that the more pristine he kept it, the easier it was to keep it pristine.  Given time and power and attention, that could make it bulletproof.  It would be a while before it got to that point again.

He sorted out his stuff, pulled on the power glove, and fixed his jacket, unzipping it at the sleeve so he’d have access to the controls.

He used his Sight to scan the area.  The world drawn out in neon lasers with soft curves, all of them pulsing with intensity that raced from one end of each laser to the other.  He’d trained his Sight to see into things, so he could decipher how certain things were put together, and find wires inside walls.

Raymond had picked the most intact abandoned building to set up in.  The patter of rain was leaking in through a large hole in the roof, but the other three quarters of the old building were more or less dry.

Tubes mounted on stands were projecting lasers.  Ray nudged the stands to get the projected images to line up.  Points of light were created where lasers lined up, creating a three-dimensional diagram.

“Lasers?  You used to be cool, man.  You used to have style.”

“I’m still cool,” Raymond said.  “I have style.”

“Didn’t say you weren’t,” Zed answered.  “Still…”

“Still,” Raymond spoke absently.  He nudged one stand.  “These lasers are forty years old.  Some of those ‘retro’ devices you carry are half as old as these.”

Zed sniffed.

He could hear inarticulate singing, murmured.  He turned, and saw children in the doorway.  A little girl with pigtails and a pink dress.  A boy all dressed in black, with hair in that matte black that only came with bad dye, not natural colors.

They sang in unison, venturing into the room.  One reached for the laser projector.

“They’re interfering.”

“Slowing us down.  Keep them at bay?  I’ll rush it.”

Zed grabbed the pigtail girl’s wrist.  She pulled back.  The boy with the black clothing stepped in, mouth opening, showing off teeth that were broken, cracks running through them, gums bleeding.  He aimed for Zed’s thigh.

Zed gave the boy’s chin a tap with his knee, making those broken teeth clack together.  “Speed it up?”

“I am,” Raymond said.  The generator roared to life, jerking like something inside had moved.  A beast struggling against the confines of its cage.

One of the laser projectors flared, like a long, slow camera flash.  The one beside it did the same, picking up where it left off.

They went off in a circle, the flashes speeding up.  When the blinding light was there most of the time and the glimpses of the room were the thing that was momentary, there began to be imperceptible changes.  Shadows of furniture that wasn’t there, images of another room.  People.

Brie had said the kids were strong.  They didn’t seem any stronger than ordinary nine to twelve year olds.  Zed kept them from getting their mitts or teeth on anything as the room lit up.

The room interior was no longer the dusty, ruined old building from two hundred years ago.  It was a place in, presumably, Thunder Bay.  Someone’s apartment or loft.  The lights continued, but the people were here.  The image of that distant place began to wind down, but the cluster of people remained; silhouettes with only slices of their faces or bodies revealed by the way the light hit them.

The kids pulled away, running off.

One of the main roles of technology was that it made the world small.  Communciation, travel, culture, all were drawn in together, lines blurred.  The more one got into technomancy, the more they tended to touch on that reality.

There were ways to use practice to go places.  Trips into the Spirit World, emerging elsewhere in the world, if one’s spirit was strong enough to make the trip swift.  Trips through the Warrens, if one could hold their nose and endure the danger.  Shamans could commune with the spirits of places.  But each of those were- they could be capricious.  The spirit of a destination city could change as the culture of that city shifted.  A traveler could be waylaid while using another realm as a road to get somewhere.

Technomancy was reliable, but it had its own demands and difficulties.

“What’s the saying?” Zed asked.  “Fragile, weak, or fleeting, pick two?”

“That’s what I taught you.  Technomancy will be two of those three, but whichever it isn’t will be worth it.”

“Which is this one?”

“It’s fragile, it’s fleeting… but it’s damn effective.”

The lights stopped.  Zed could see spots against his vision.

“Zoe,” Chase said.

“It’s Zed now,” Zed told the guy, thumb and finger pressed against his eyelids, rubbing.  “It has been for a year and a half, you know that.  Don’t make me punch you.”

A hand touched his shoulder, and he felt a kiss at his cheek.  He mimed a kiss, then turned his head, kissing her other cheek while she kissed his.

“Hi Nicolette,” Zed said.

“You look great,” she said.  “Glove aside.”

“The power glove?  It’s dorky technomancer style, honey,” Zed told her.

“It’s been too long,” Eloise said.

“Yep.  Thanks for coming,” Zed said, blinking.

Everyone was here.  Jessica had deep brown skin, narrow eyes, thin lips, and upswept cheekbones.  Her raincoat was heavy duty, yellow, but rare in how much abuse it had taken.  The yellow was cracked, and the cracks were almost a style of their own, and the shoulders of the coat had been battered down to meet the shape of her narrow shoulders.

Ulysse’s hair was still damp from having walked without umbrella or coat in the rain.  His hair was blond, but thick and wavy enough that the locks seemed to end up pointing in nearly any direction, like curls, but in twists bigger and longer around than a finger.  When dry, it would maintain roughly the same shape.  The rest of him wasn’t decorated- he wore a tight-fitting sleeveless tee, jeans, and sandals.  He carried nothing, and had nothing in his pockets.  Not even an engagement ring at his finger.  He put out a hand, and Zed clasped it.

There had been a time years ago when Zed had had the biggest crush on Ulysse.  That had faded, weirdly enough, when Zed had left ‘Zoe’ and so many of the things he associated with Zoe behind.

Amine was with Ulysse.  They were Durocher’s apprentices, and a bystander couldn’t be blamed if they thought Amine had been given the task of carrying all the stuff.  Amine had long, dark brown hair, braided, and wore what seemed to be a winter coat with the lining removed for the summer heat.  There were a lot of inner pockets.  Many were stuffed with papers, to the point that some stuck out around the front edges of his coat.  He offered only a nod, and Zed returned the same.  They weren’t friends, exactly, but they helped each other out.

Eloise was the last in their immediate crew.  She wore the engagement ring.  Pretty, blonde, and creepy.  She had her familiar with her.  A black centipede as long as her arm, wound around her arm.  Its head was buried in a cluster of multi-layered fungus.  It lifted that head to peer at Zed with one eye the fungus didn’t touch.

“Hi, Eloise.  Hello Schartzmugel.”

“Hello, Zed,” Eloise curtsied, lifting up the corners of her floral print skirt.  She had a bag with her, slung over one shoulder.

Mr. Belanger had come, as had Ms. Durocher.  They were already over talking to Ray.  Mr. Belanger gave off the image, Zed felt, of a smarmy entrepreneur.  A smart, ultra-modern suit, light brown hair in a ponytail, chin shaved, nice shoes.  Nicolette and Chase picked up on bits and pieces from him, dressing business casual, even for the night of a hostile ritual on a Saturday evening.  Chase was rounded off in face and belly, forgettable.  Meanwhile, Nicolette had a lot of details about her person that demanded attention – a tumble of black hair down one side of her head an ornament hooked around her ear on the other side that bristled with flowers and feathers, bold horn-rimmed glasses, more feathers at one pocket, and the metallic caps of pens at another, the arms of each pen hooked over the pocket’s edge.

Ms. Durocher was of a height with Ray, but seemed taller because the height was in defiance of so much else about her appearance, and it was unusual in a woman.  She was underweight, with a smile that couldn’t help but seem insecure or uneven, and her bangs that didn’t fit with her relatively fine, thin hair, draping across her forehead in an uneven curtain.  She wore a black top with a red jacket, and a rather blocky necklace of fossils and glassy stones framed the divide between jacket and top, somehow picking up both the black and the red.  Her skirt came to calf length.

“Who’s on point, Ray?” Ms. Durocher asked.

“Zed is, if that’s alright, Zed?”

Zed nodded.  “I brought an acquaintance.  She’ll walk us through some of this.  I can walk you through the rest.”

They had to leave the building.  Zed checked the time.  They had lots, but this thing was tied into time, with its schedule, and it messed with time, according to the website.  It would not be the strangest thing if it pulled a fast one on them, just to catch them off guard.

He waved down Brie, then walked up to meet her partway, as she circled the field.  They met, stood together, and faced the group that had trailed behind.  Brie turned and put her hand up, to tell the others to hold back.

“I want to do this by the book,” Zed told them.  “Binding one-oh-one.  Identify what you’re binding.  You guys probably know the general details.  It’s a living ritual with a wide reach, operating on a schedule tied to the lunar phases.  It sucks up eight people at a time, drags them here if they don’t come here themselves, then makes them engage in a contest.  They sing while fighting a seemingly randomly selected ‘meal’, and every missed line or word gets punished.  It has to be unarmed, and it has to be completed before the song ends.  Eighth nights are different, but tonight isn’t an eighth night.  Up until now, we’ve been in the dark about where it came from and where it draws this power from.”

“You figured it out,” Nicolette said.

“Someone else did,” Zed said.  “They passed it on.  The queen at the center of this particular hive is a black dog.  It’s derived from an incarnation of famine or something, took the form of a young girl in the middle of the war in Afghanistan, and made its way here, through some ties to Canadian soldiers or bystanders.  She was killed, and the way Black Dogs work, they punish the people that kill them with curses.  Most of the time they come back again and again.  She was put down for good.  The curse was a big one, it was stored away, and it manifested as the Hungry Choir ritual.”

“We surmised this was manufactured,” Mr. Belanger said.

“That may be the case.  In any event, we need protection and security while we call her out and bind her.  She’s rooted to a huge power source, and that, to my understanding, makes her rough to deal with.”

“If her origin is Incarnation related,” Alexander said, “she’s going to have power like that.  Incarnation related others tend to have something inevitable about them.”

“We’ve worked out a way,” Zed said.  “We think.  If it doesn’t work, we eject, try again on the next night of the ritual.  The plan-”

There were children in the grass.  They stared at Zed with blank eyes.

“-I’ve talked to the key people about the plan.  But yes.  We’ve definitely accounted for the incarnation aspect.  We’re using it, and hopefully we can make this snake choke on its own tail.”

“Good,” Alexander said.  “I’ve nothing to add, then.”

“We’ll use her own rules against her.  In the meantime, Chase?  Once we call her out, can you make sure we can keep tabs on her?  If she takes a human form, she may run or hide.”

Chase nodded.

“Nicolette.  Foil her if she comes for us, if you can?  Keep us on task, and keep an eye on the immediate vicinity?”

“I’ll try.”

“You too, Eloise.  Deflect, distract.”

Eloise nodded.  Her centipede had become a tattoo, encircling one bicep, disappearing under her clothes, and forming a coil around her neck.  Less disconcerting, if only barely, for the civilians at the other end of that field.

“Amine, Ulysse?  Ms. Durocher, if it’s no problem?  Protect us?”

Three confirmations.

“Jessica-”

“What do you need?” she asked.

“Perimeter?  And warding our immediate vicinity?  Ray and I are doing some of it, but if you could keep outside interference at bay, and layer our defenses?  The closest realm to the Devouring Song is the Ruins, and that’s your specialty.”

“Sure.”

“Brie?” Zed asked.

“I can go over what to expect,” Brie said.  “Did everyone memorize the lyrics?  Even if we aren’t participating, I think it’s important as a just-in-case.  The- I know people who were almost pulled into the ritual.  It’s nasty like that.  I want any one of us to be prepared.”

Most people who attended Blue Heron were good at memorization.

“There’s going to be an animal or multiple animals on the battlefield.  They might not act like normal animals of their kind…”

Brie went over everything.  It took fifteen minutes.

Beyond the fifteen minute briefing, preparations took another half an hour.  Zed picked up the polaroid and took pictures.  As each image resolved, it showed shadows against the wall.  Some of the brickwork bled, but the rain quickly washed away that blood.  He turned on the radio and turned it up just enough that the voices in the static began to appear, but not so much it would alarm the participants.

The floodlights were erected, to illuminate their battlefield.  Everything that needed plugging in was plugged into generators.

He handed out the walkie-talkies.

“You guys were using these when you came to get me in the Ruins,” Jessica said.  She was drawing out a circle.  Essential things had already been gathered within.

“They work anywhere.”

She nodded.

“Hey,” Nicolette said, joining the conversation by sidling up to Zed, her shoulder touching his.  She seemed happy, in the midst of all of this.  Her best self.  She looked in the direction of Brie, who was dealing with the four participants.  “What’s up with you and her?  Are you a pair?”

Jessica snorted, then bailed from the conversation.

“…I don’t know.”

“Do you want to be?”

Zed nodded.

“That’s so cool.  I’m so glad for you.”

“Thank you,” Zed said.

“She seems nervous.”

“A lot of trauma, tied to this whole thing.”

“Yeah.  That’s understandable.”

Ms. Durocher was standing off to one side, talking to Ray and Mr. Belanger.  Her apprentices didn’t stray too far from her.  Jessica went to get more stuff for drawing lines on the ground in chalk.

The participants looked pretty weirded out by it all, but they were already aware.  They’d seen too much.  The kid who’d had his face eaten off.  The heavyset guy with the gnarly hand.  The two silent ones.

“You glossed over Kennet in the briefing.  It’s sorta central to the Devouring Song, isn’t it?” Nicolette asked.

Zed nodded, without answering.

“Or should I call it the Hungry Choir?” she asked.

That was their name for it.

“I’d love to have a conversation about that, but I can’t,” Nicolette said.

“Neither can I.”

Sworn to silence.

“I’m looking forward to summer school for once.”  Nicolette smiled as she said it.

“Me too,” Zed agreed.  “New crop of students.”

“Exactly.”

They were on the same page.  Similar oaths.  Similar awareness.

The rain started to come down harder.  There was a rumble of thunder off on the horizon.

“This is a kind of agony, waiting,” Nicolette said.

“It is,” Zed said.  “Sorry I’m not making good conversation.  I’m thinking.”

“Think away.  I’ll leave you be.  Chase probably wants to grumble at me.”

“Tell me if he does.  I’ve been wanting to punch him for years.”

“You’re not allowed, remember?”

Zed smiled.

After Nicolette left, Brie approached.

“Less than five minutes,” she said.

Zed nodded.

“Fuck.  I was hoping other participants would find their way into this hidden town.”

“Yeah.”

Nicolette was right.  The passage of time was agony.  It was like waiting for a war to start.  Or being in an airplane, knowing that you’d be parachuting out the moment you were over your target.  This would go from 0 to 100 in seconds.

Zed exhaled slowly.

“You don’t have to be the tough guy all the time.  You can say if you’re worried or scared,” Brie said.

Zed shook his head.  Water ran down his face.  He’d figured he would get wet anyway, and had shucked off his leather jacket.  Might as well get comfortable with it all now.

She gave him a rub on the arm.  Her hand was warm.

“Are we a couple?” he asked.

“I was going to ask if you and Nicolette were a thing.”

Zed snorted.

“No?”

“She’s one of my favorite people.  But we’d be like oil and water.”

“I’d like to be,” Brie said.  “A couple.  But I wouldn’t want to intrude, or assume.  I wondered if I was the damsel in distress of the month, and if you’d be moving on, or going back to an existing relationship.  The-”

He touched her chin, turning her face, then kissed her.  Her lips were warm too, in the rain.  He could taste the sweets she’d had in the car.

“Be safe,” she said, the moment the kiss was broken.

“You too.  You’ve got the licorice I gave you?”

She patted a pocket, and pulled one strand out, holding it in a fist like it was a knife.

Ray stood, starting to walk over.

Zed whistled, to get people’s attention.

“I’ll go organize them,” Brie said.

Zed nodded.  He bent down for his bag of stuff, and pulled out the scratch-a-sketch.

The practitioners joined him at one side of the field.  Brie and the participants formed a group of five at the end of the field closer to the collapsed circus tent.

Zed touched the scratch-a-sketch to the ground.  The diagram he’d pre-set into it began to spill out, in jagged black lines.  It unfolded, encircling them, reached the bounds of the diagram that Jessica had put down, then began to elaborate, strengthening.  It was important to do as they crossed the threshold, because what they wanted was to keep that threshold open.

The moon shuddered, then flickered.  The sky’s texture changed, the pattern of the rain coming down bleeding out to become the sky itself.

The sky turned totally black.  Starless, without rain or cloud.

The rain around them fell, hit the ground with a final splash, and ceased utterly.

There had been maybe fifty of the Devouring Song kids scattered around the clearing.

As the world around them changed, the sliver of moon getting more and more agitated, the number of kids increased.  Hundreds of children, in various clothes, ranging from the stylized to the old fashioned to the shabby.

“By the accords of Solomon!” Zed called out.  “By the order of man, I summon you to audience!  Obey or cede this territory!  Black Dog Yalda, come!”

Every single child present turned their heads.

Some of the children had been dragging someone over to the other group.  They stopped, letting go.  The person, scraped bloody, got to their feet and scrambled away.  Brie whistled, and they joined her group.

The children stared.

“I ask a second time!  Black Dog Yalda!  Casualty of war and child of Famine!  Come!”

There were others.  They were supposed to be bystanders, but there weren’t any near here.  Witnesses, men and women with no faces, only toothy maws with darkness instead of mouths and throats.  They rose to a standing position from within clusters of children.

“For the third time, with your worth and power at stake!  Black Dog Yalda!”

Ms. Durocher shifted her footing.  If this girl didn’t show up and the information about her identity was true, then Ms. Durocher would be the one who’d start hammering at the very substance of this ritual.  Yalda’s authority over this space and the ritual would be weakened and open to exploitation.

“Then-”

The crowd of children parted.

One child amid hundreds.  Black haired, with light brown skin, wearing a bright yellow T-shirt with a thunderbolt in sequins, a glossy black jacket, and a black knee-length skirt.  Her feet were bare, mud squishing between her toes as she walked across the field.  Her eyes shone and shuddered like the moon did as she opened them wide, before she partially closed them.

Step one in a by-the-books binding was identifying one’s foe.  Everything else flowed from that.  Their very nature could be countered, combated, surrounded.  Weaknesses could be exploited, and strengths could be taken out of the picture.

“Do you surrender and agree to be bound?  We can end this here,” Raymond asked.

The little girl’s expression twisted into something between disgust and rage.

Her lips moved.

Not an answer, but the beginnings of song.

Slowly, the children picked up the song, all joining together.  The ones who were closest were quieter and indistinct.  The ones who were further away were louder, but the distance stole away the exact words.

Five hundred high voices.

Children advanced, touching and pressing against the invisible wall that extended up from the circle that Jessica had drawn out.

Jessica held out a string with a wooden owl figurine on the end.  The string was fraying visibly.  She held up another, this one with a frog.  Same thing, but slower.  “Both wards are getting chewed up.  Outside barrier is going fast.  She’s bringing in help.”

“Durocher,” Ray said.

The thin, tall woman stepped forward. She put her hand out, but stopped short of crossing the barrier they’d erected when drawing the circle.

She began making noises, guttural, growling, each one something Zed could imagine would be painful to make, disjointed.  Her eyes opened wider, and she spoke that guttural, painful language with a violence that made spit fleck and froth at the corners of her mouth, the sounds coming faster and faster.

Ulysse bowed his head, knelt, and then stood, drawing a scepter out of the earth.  It glowed like it had been sitting in fire.

Ms. Durocher screamed, and it was as violent and raw a sound as everything else she’d strung together.  Zed heard the glass case of his music player at his hip cracking.

Something halfway across the field detonated. Two of the more ramshackle buildings  on either side of the field tumbled to the ground.

A fissure, with plumes of dust spreading skyward.  In the midst of it was something that defied easy classification.  It looked like a particularly ghastly tree that could be mistaken for a massive wild animal in the wrong light, but it moved.  Like how a crocodile could be mistaken for a log, or a mangy dog with matted fur could look like fungus was growing on it.  Animal, but no one animal in particular.  If it was just predator, it was a bit of everything that made every predator in existence special, from face shape to frame to the patterns that ran along it.  If it was just scavenger, it was everything from the face of a hyena to the flayed head of a vulture to something insect, all blended together- and that would be only the head.  The dust hid most of it.

When it unfolded, moved, and attacked, it did so with joints moving the wrong way, it rose up until it looked like it had reached its full height, then surged, shifting, in a way that suggested only one part of a greater whole had emerged, like the hand with a whole arm following.  A tongue that looked like it had been dragged through dirt until it was scabbed and raw reached out and dragged forty or so children into a fanged hole in its center.

It screamed, in that same language Ms. Durocher had spoken, and she leaned forward, eyes closed, fingernails digging into the skin of her throat and collarbone, a rictus grin on her face.  Amine supported her to keep her standing.

“Eloise!” Nicolette called out.  “Help!”

Children pressed against the barrier, some climbing over one another to climb higher, as if the invisible wall had an upper limit.  One of the witnesses with its fanged toothy mouth was pounding on the barrier.

Jessica’s barrier failed.  That was fine.  It was really only there to buy that extra time.  It was more worrying that the barrier beyond was going.

Zed’s scratch-a-sketch barrier was holding, at least.

He turned on his music player, then turned up the voices in the static.  The Black Dog Yalda was out there, but-

Zed looked at Chase, and Chase was looking the same direction as Eloise and Nicolette.

Behind them and off to the side.

The children parted, supported.  They moved in unison, like they were one singular entity, with a thousand sets of arms to lift, push, and help one of their number surge forward.

The black centipede ripped its way out of Eloise’s arm.  It swayed, like a snake charmer’s snake, and her arm moved with it.  Like she was tearing at something invisible.

The children stopped coordinating.  Hands grabbed at Yalda’s ankle, and she tumbled, disappearing into the jumble.

“I can’t- this is hard,” Eloise said.

“She’s strong.  We were warned about that,” Alexander said.  He touched Chase’s shoulder.  “Keep close tabs on her.”

Chase nodded.

Alexander joined his subtle power to Eloise’s.  She disturbed the connection between Yalda and her servants.  Alexander exuded shadows that flowed out, passing easily through the barrier, disappearing into and merging with the stark shadows that the children themselves cast, in the light of the floodlights.

When the children failed to coordinate, now, they were tearing each other apart.  One slipped in the mud that fifty shoes had churned up and drove another one’s face into a stone beneath the soil.

But none of the children died.  Even the ones that Ms. Durocher’s creation was clawing at were getting back up.

They were drowning, and the water they were drowning in was getting to be higher and higher a pressure.  The singing itself, hundreds of voices- more than hundreds, now.  A possible thousand, now that they were coming in from the edges of town.

“Schartzmugel’s spent,” Eloise said.  “I’m spent too.  I can’t-”

There was a sudden violence, like Alexander’s efforts were still in effect, but it was coordinated again, child hurting child in their efforts to move, but moving as a whole.

Yalda was thrust forward, into the barrier.  Her hands braced against the invisible wall.

Ulysse stepped into the way, glowing mace held out, ready to intercept the moment the barrier fell.  Amine pulled a paper out of his jacket.

Jessica was already drawing a backup diagram, big enough for one person.

“Let me,” Ray said.  “Please.”

“Let him,” Zed said, even though he didn’t know what Ray was asking for.  He only knew that he trusted Ray just about as much as he trusted anyone.

Flickering eyes like silver stared down at them from a mountain of scratched up, battered, bloody waifs, an obese man with a toothy mouth instead of a face and a scrawny woman with the same flanking her.

“The diagram,” Alexander said.

Which?

Zed looked around, then down.

The diagram under their feet shifted, as the pressure came in from outside.  Taking on a new shape.  Words that overlapped, flickering.

He’d seen something similar on the flyer.

The static from the radio was distorting, mimicking the singing.  The music from the music player with the cracked case from Durocher’s screams was slowed down, stretching out in an agonizing way, that kept time with the children’s singing.

“Don’t speak, only sing!  Play by the rules, we’ll find a way!” Zed called out.

The barrier twisted, then ceased to be theirs.  It had contorted, been overwhelmed, and taken over like an army might take over a base of operations.  It was hers now, and she passed through without effort.  She was there, close enough for Ulysse to swing at, until the children followed, surging forward with the press of bodies following.

They clawed, bit, scratched, and pulled.  Zed felt teeth sink into his leg, fingernails dragging against his throat and the side of his face.  He twisted, fighting to surface, looking back at Ray, who stood still, a glowing screen in his hands.  The quick barrier Jessica had drawn up protected him from the children, but it wasn’t going to hold.

Zed was dragged.  His things were dragged away from him, one by one.

Teeth bit into his arm, over and over again, tearing.

Slender hands gripped his wrist.  He pulled back, fought, panic surging, and they gripped him again.

The powerglove was wrested away from him.  He hadn’t even had a chance to use it here.

The children let him go.  Fingers pawed at his bleeding arm.

“Fuck me-” Chase said, a few feet away.  A moment later, he screamed.

Zed only caught his breath.  He found his bearings, and rolled over so he was looking up at the flickering moon.

Brie was there, standing over him, chewing on licorice.  She held his power glove.

He reached for it, and she pulled it away.

He flipped over, sat up, and then struggled to his feet.  She gave him a hand.

The children who’d pawed at his wounds were drawing lines, connecting them.

The eight participants.  The four he’d seen before, four more who were scraped up, bloody, and especially bewildered.

And around them, another ring of them.  Zed, Nicolette, Chase, Jessica, Amine, Ulysse, Eloise, Mr. Belanger, and Ms. Durocher.

Nicolette held a finger to her lips.  Zed nodded.

The movement of the moon kept a pretty good clock for them.  It was halfway across the night sky, the stuttering getting more violent, but less all over the place, like it was focusing in.

The bald man with the beard was staring at them, looking around.

Yeah, this was a change in pattern.

She’d sucked them in.  They were part of it.  They were under the Black Dog’s influence, pawns in her game.

Not at all according to plan.

“You should start,” Brie said, while chewing on the licorice.

Children hissed at her.

Her hand that held the licorice was shaking.

A song for your supper,” the bald man with the beard sang, his voice a deep baritone.

The children reached out, grabbing them, Zed growled as a kid bit into his shoulder.

“A morsel for a melody,” Zed sang.  Some of the others caught on.

The stakes had been raised.  Everyone had to sing every word now.

A ballad for your board.”

Ray was gone, which meant he’d managed to get away.  That was good.  A tool they could use.

“A chorus for your collation,”

They didn’t have a lot else.  Eloise was spent.  Ms. Durocher couldn’t speak.  Practice stuff had been torn away from them.  They’d taken Amine’s entire coat.

A tune for your tuck,” Zed sang.

Ulysse was still getting bit.  He was holding the weapon, and kids were trying to take it from him, only to burn their hands.  So they bit him instead.

Amine grabbed Ulysse’s wrist, shaking it.

Ulysse dismissed the weapon his god had given him.

“A refrain for your refreshment.”

They were in this now.

A piece for the potluck!” Zed sang.  Eloise got bit.  She’d missed a word.  ‘Your’ instead of ‘the’.

The children surrounded them.  Seventeen of them contained in a space that was only maybe ten paces across.

Brie pushed her way past kids, moving through the crowd.  Looking for someone or for something that she could use.  It was just them, just this.

A song for your supper,” they sang.  They drew out the words.

Stay on task,” a voice crackled through the walkie talkies.  “I’ve got a bead on you.  I’ll do what I can to move the pieces around the board.

If the tune is merry enough, will the dish be sweet?

Staying on task wasn’t the easiest thing in the world.  Zed winced, touching a bleeding wound.  They had to survive the night.

If the song is jolly enough, will the plate be neat?

This verse served their meal.  The ground was moving.

And if the ballad is lively enough, can we hope for meat?

Snakes.  They flowed over and around one another, silent, dark, coming out of holes and cracks in the earth, from Ms. Durocher’s earlier summoning.

The people closest to the center reached in, then pulled away.  The snakes were faster than their reaching hands, they were agitated, and the reaching hands were answered with lightning-fast bites.  Zed watched as one person strained, multiple teeth hooked into one hand, until only the middle finger and thumb could close.  He pulled against the mass of not just the five individual snakes, but the snakes over and around them that added to their cumulative weight.  The snake he was trying to grab slid through his fingers.

A song for our supper!” Zed sang.

One of the floodlights they’d erected on a stand in the circle they’d been huddled in was toppled.

Which cost them half of the light they had available.

“How shall we cut it, when we have no knife?”

The Black Dog was trying to kill them.  Tonight’s ritual was- it was vicious, hopeless.  Snakes, that might be venomous, in so great a quantity that they couldn’t even get them all.

Zed reached for Nicolette, pulling on her sleeve.  He did the same for Amine, who grabbed Ulysse.

“With our teeth,”

Zed looked to Chase, who was more than a little out of sorts with the snakes slithering around his feet.  He stepped on one and got bitten in answer.

And with our nails!

Nicolette had missed the ‘and’, and a child grabbed her, their whole weight gripping her arm as they sank their teeth into her side.  She twisted, and landed amid snakes.  Zed did what he could to haul her to her feet, but stepped on a snake.  Teeth sank into his leg.

Digging in,” Zed sang.

Nicolette, lying on the ground, tried to grab snakes and failed.  They weren’t moving like snakes did.

And singing out!

Zed looked to Alexander instead of Chase.

Alexander got Chase’s attention.

How glad we are to dine!

There was a way to challenge the ritual, and tonight, with the malice biasing the challenge, would be a great time to do that… except there was a rub.  A trick.  Rad Ray Sunshine had explained it at one of the rest stops.  It was easy for a ritual like this to jam some hidden trick or secret into things.  A magic word, a hidden verse, or a secret a way to make the animals behave.  Like… playing music.  Or something.  Not that Zed had his.

A song for my supper!

The man with the beard was bitten in the neck by a child with braces and gaudy blue eyeshadow.  He’d said ‘your’ instead of ‘my’.

The challenge didn’t work.  It was like trying to guess a combination, and the test of the fairness of this trial being proven by someone who knew the combination.

I’ll come to the table,” Zed sang, trying to think, and trying not to step on any snakes.

Which in itself could be challenged, but that got tricky.  They’d kind of come here cheating in the first place.  They’d invited the current circumstances, and there was a kind of karma in the Black Dog turning the tables on them.

Every night this moon.

Zed led the others away from the teeming morass of snakes.  Into the thick of the crowd where children refused to move out of the way.

And ne’er again find myself,” Zed sang.

Brie pushed forward.  Children grabbed her.

Picking up a spoon.

“I’m getting something to eat,” Brie said.

The hands released her.

They couldn’t get in between her and her prize.  The very being of the Devouring Song was tied into that.  She couldn’t be obstructed from eating.  Hurting her mid-meal did that, so the nibbling on the licorice from that king-size bag served to protect her.  Any lasting harm or death was similar, because she couldn’t be kept from future meals.

Nor a fork, nor a blade.

Brie forged the way.  Breaking up the children with Zed right behind her.  The others following.

They abandoned their meal of biting snakes and pushed forward into the tide.

Alexander cleared his throat.  Zed looked back, and saw Chase pointing.

Nor a plate, nor a cup.

His pointing finger moved.

Yalda was out there, in the crowd of children.  A needle in a haystack, and they were wading through brambles.  The children couldn’t grab them or hurt them, but they could get in the way.

Oh, I’ll have stayed…

Yalda wasn’t obstructed, and they were.  Brie could forge the way forward, but it was hard for her to do that and keep track of Chase, when Chase was hobbled, limping with an injured leg.

Full and supped.

Alexander lifted up the walkie talkie.  He cleared his throat, then he coughed.

“Yes,” Ray said, on the other end.  “Left and right?”

Alexander cleared his throat.

And sated since this tune!

Zed pushed forward, grabbing Brie’s hand.

They broke into a run.  Not moving as a fuller group now, but as a pair.  Others followed, best as they could, without the benefit of Brie forging the way.  The children, at least, were short enough they could see over their heads.

A song for my supper!

Witnesses were converging on the others.  Adult-size.  Some of the waifs weren’t children, but just sickly, skinny adults.

All of them gathering.

Left,” the walkie talkie buzzed.

Brie headed left.

I shall not miss a single beat!

Left!

They kept going, turning further left.

Or else I’ll offer tonight’s treat.

Chase was relaying the directions.  He didn’t have tools, he didn’t have the ability to speak, nothing to write with.  Just Sight and what he’d trained himself to do on a raw, personal level.

The others were now protecting Ray, pushing down children who piled up to be more of an obstruction, and pushing back the witnesses, who stumbled dumbly ahead.

I shall not miss a single word.

There was no instruction from Ray.

Which probably meant straight.

“Split up!  Left and straight!”

Or else I am the one who’s served.

Splitting up was dangerous.  Without Brie, Zed didn’t have the means to really charge forward.

But he gave Ray his trust.  He tugged on Brie’s arm, sending her left, then charged forward, taking the clearest path across the field.  Snakes bit as his legs, some not quite getting through his jeans, and becoming more dead weight.

He used his sight to peer past the crowd.  To look for the intensity, for anything that might be his target.

He saw a glimmer.  A brighter set of retro lasers.

And I’ll tell you that on these nights…

Yalda.

She’d stopped running.  Just past her was the fissure.

It wasn’t where it had been.  It had moved.

Now it flickered slightly, like bad video.

A bit of help from Ray.  A glitch.

That I shan’t fail to take a bite,” Zed sang.

Yalda turned on him.  Her flickering eyes met his.  She exuded hatred a child shouldn’t be capable of, breathing hard.

He could hear the others in the background, singing.

Zed let the next lyric pass.

Children around him, beside him, and behind him grabbed him, biting.  Teeth sank into his shoulder.

To sing it would be binding, in a dangerous way.

The little girl smiled.

Zed let another line pass, grimacing.  He fought to keep the bites to nonlethal areas, except he was taking so many that he was pretty sure blood loss was a concern.  Pain made it hard to think straight or keep the current circumstances straight.

Yalda walked through the morass of waifs, eyes closing enough the moonlight flicker wasn’t visible.  So she could disappear into the crowd.

Zed grabbed for her.  Waifs grabbed him.

He hooked fingers into the fabric of her jacket.

And it’ll be a mess,” Zed sang.  Kids released him.  He got a better grip.

She pulled free.  She was a third of his size and he was shaky and weak enough that she could beat him in a small contest of strength.

He hated being weak.

Oh, this shall be a mess,” Zed sang.

Brie pushed forward, licorice falling from her lips.  She grabbed Yalda.

The girl looked up at her.

Brie bit.

A song for your supper,” Zed sang.

Brie bit again, then again.

Yalda coudln’t fight her.  Because to do so would be to deny the prize winner her prize, which would be to deny the very fabric of the Choir.

A ditty for some din,” Zed sang.

The tenor of things had shifted.  There was less noise, and it felt like there had been a roar before, and now there was nothing.  But the only noise had been the singing, the movement of a thousand-plus people, and the shuffling of a tide of snakes.

A crooning for our chow.

Brie’s weight pressed the Black Dog down.  She kept eating.

“A helping…” Zed started.

He stopped.

The children didn’t attack.

He turned, wincing at the pain of a dozen deep-set bites, and there seemed to be less waifs than before.

He swayed a bit, then sat down hard.  The others were coming.

Brie, hunched over, continued eating, barely chewing.

Jessica reached them first.  Zed pointed at Brie, and Jessica began using blood from her own wounds to make lines on Brie’s skin.  A temporary thing.  She’d need something more lasting.

Nicolette dropped to her knees beside Zed.  She’d found one of their bags.  Medical stuff.  She handed him something to drink.

“Phone,” he said.

“But-”

“Have to.  Made a promise.”

Nicolette found someone else’s phone.  Maybe Amine’s.  But Amine wasn’t here to unlock it.

She got the walkie talkie, instead.  She held it up.  “Dial for us, Ray?”

“I’ll patch you through.  What number?”

Zed winced.  His head felt foggy.

Who even remembered phone numbers, nowadays?

But he’d prided himself on his memorization.  He’d managed the song, only missing lyrics that he’d meant to.

He gave them the number.

It rang three times before someone picked up.

“We’re here,” said the voice on the other end.  “What happened?”

“Too much to cover, and you don’t have much time.  Ask her.”

He set the walkie-talkie down, holding the transmit button.

There was a delay.  A shuffling of paper.

Brie continued, head turned away, like she didn’t want to be seen like this.

Zed wanted to touch her, to reassure.  He worried she’d flinch.

“We need privacy.  To ask these questions.”

“I didn’t promise it.”

“We need it.  We’ve sworn an oath to keep certain things concealed.  We literally can’t accept this information if it isn’t private, which means you can’t accept your end of the deal.”

Zed looked over at Brie.  “If the person currently restraining the Black Dog was to walk away, the Black Dog would be free.”

“That’s your problem to handle, not ours,” the voice on the other end said.  “Sorry, but figure it out.”

“I kind of like her,” Nicolette commented.

“Would everyone present except for Brie please give us some privacy?” Zed asked.  “Ray?  Can you handle this?”

“You need to be more mindful of the deals you’re making, Zed.”

“It seemed necessary to get this far.  We got her.  Let’s keep her.  Please.”

“I’ll mute everything.  Call my home phone when you’re done.”

“Thank you.”

Brie glanced over her shoulder at Zed.

It was just them, the Black Dog, and the walkie talkie.

“Brie will keep your confidence.  I’m sure of that,” Zed said.

“Will you swear it?”

“She needs to be awakened, to protect her,” Zed told them.  “I swear to guard her until such a time as we can awaken her, unless you release me from that.  I’ll keep her safe and silent on all matters relating to your conversation with the Black Dog until she can be awakened, and made to swear she won’t say anything on the subject.  I swear my own silence, until you release me.”

Nicolette had left behind the medical supplies.  Zed resumed bandaging himself up.

They took a while to deliberate.  The only sound was the rustling of a hand over the phone.

“Okay.”

“Then ask.”

“Yalda,” the voice on the walkie talkie said.

Yalda’s head turned to look at the thing.  Her eyes were dimmer.

“Are you the murder weapon, used by others to kill the Carmine Beast?”

The girl remained silent.

“Answer their questions, and we’ll strike a deal,” Zed told the Black Dog.  “We’re binding you, not destroying you.  Give them what they need, and we’ll relax the binding.  You’ll be able to continue the ritual, in a fashion.  You won’t have as much control, but the way it continues, there’ll be more practitioners engaged in it.  They’ll be the ones going for access.  You seem to hate us.  So… you get more chances at us.  Or we can bind you and put you away for a long time, until we figure out another way to deal with you.”

“Yes,” Yalda said.  “I killed the red wolf.”

“Who asked you to do it?” another of the girls asked.

“I learned no names.”

“Their face?”

“I saw no face.  They were masked.  Cloth over the head.”

“Male or female?”

“A man.  There was a woman as well.  Also masked.”

“Did the man move like he was older?  Did you sense anything from him?”

“I sensed nothing beyond the circle in the ground.  He moved like he was older, but he wasn’t old.”

“If I may?” Zed interjected.

“I don’t know, may you?” the angrier girl asked.  “Is this a loophole, where you can bring your own additions to the conversation to others?”

“Ooh, good thinking,” another girl said.

“No.  I’ll keep your confidence.  The masks they’re talking about, they’re not uncommon in some circles.  When you deal with a lot of hostile Others, you don’t want them coming after you.  It’s also a way to make it easier to evade a bounce-back, from a curse or a wayward summoning.  I thought your own masks might be something like that.”

Brie continued chewing.

“Does that help us?” one of the girls asked.  It was a lower volume, which might have been her asking her friends.

“Summoners often do it,” Zed told them.  “They fabricate or conjure up Others, and if someone uses enough force, they can try to send that Other to the origin point.  The person who brought that Other there or brought it into being.”

“That gives us a suspect, then.  Okay, so-”

Zed heard a gun slide cock.

It was one of the eight original ritual participants.  The kid with the mask.  He carried a gun.

He aimed it at Brie.

“We have an interruption.  Sorry,” Zed told the girls.

“Stop,” the boy with the mask said.  “Jeez.  Stop.”

Brie kept eating.  She had to.

“The ritual will continue.  It’ll be weaker,” Zed said.

“Why like this?”

“Because Brie cannot be denied her meal.  Because the girl with the silver eyes that’s at the source of the ritual would curse or hurt anyone that brings her down, probably, but she can’t hurt or curse Brie.  Because Brie is guaranteed to be free of any harm or suffering she might otherwise have as a consequene of eating.  So that curse has nowhere to go.  The ritual can’t end or die, because that would end the protections Brie gets and she’d die in short order.  It has to reconfigure, transform, in a way that keeps things intact.”

The gun wavered.  “This is insanity.”

Brie gulped down another bite.

“Stop, I said!”

“She can’t.  If she does, we all probably die,” Zed told the boy.

“You’re a monster,” the boy said.

The wavering of the gun stopped.  He’d found some kind of conviction.

“Don’t-” Zed told him.

The boy switched to a two-handed grip.  He shifted that grip, planting his feet, and his foot slid in the mud that had been kicked up by the creation of the big hole in the ground.  The gun dropped, and went off.  He’d shot himself in the foot.

He fell, the gun fell from his grip, and went off again, with no hand on the trigger.

It took the top of the boy’s head off, cracking the mask.

Brie looked away.  Shame seemed to define everything in her expression, posture, and overall body language.  Enough that it overwhelmed the impact of seeing a teenage boy die.

Zed looked and saw Mr. Belanger and Nicolette Belanger standing off to the side.  Nicolette looked away from the results of what she or her teacher had done, uncomfortable.  Mr. Belanger didn’t flinch, simply staring.

They were scary in their own way.  Handling the boy like that.

“What was that?” the girl asked over the walkie talkie.

“Ask your questions.  We’re approaching a point where you might not be able to ask more.”

“We have way more.  We can’t keep going?  Or revisit this?  Can you unbind her?”

“Something this strong and wild?  I don’t think so.  And I don’t think you get ‘way’ more questions.  You might only have one or two.”

There was a pause.

“Is she dying?”

“No.  She’s… translating to another form.  Something this powerful doesn’t ‘die’, in the conventional sense.”

“Okay.”

There was an exchange of words.

“Can you ask her- or if she can hear- Yalda, is there anything you want us to say to your friend?”

The girl turned to look at the walkie talkie.

“To John?”

“Tell him- I wish him well.  I hope he learns to sing.”

“He’s learning.  He’s still not great at it,” a softer voice said.

Yalda closed those silver eyes.

“He’s good.  He misses you,” one of the other girls said.

Yalda nodded.

“Keep talking about him,” Zed told them.

“He sings, his voice a little too high, while playing guitar, sitting on his back porch.  He remembers you fondly.  I think it hurt, to do what he did.”

“He’s found a kind of peace, as much as a Dog Tag can find peace.  He’s got friends.  Us included, we hope.”

“I brought him a video game.  I still need to ask how he liked it.”

“He’s a cool guy, even if he pulled a gun on us when we surprised him with a visit.”

Yalda nodded.  Her head stopped moving mid-nod.

“We can end the call here.  She’s nonresponsive.  I can get you more information about summoners later.  Or you’ll get it when you come to the school this summer,” Zed said.

“Can we ask- is this conversation still confidential?”

“I got what I wanted out of this.  I don’t really know or care all that much about the Carmine Beast business.  It’s one of those greater-balance things that self-resolves if you ignore it.”

“That’s not a yes or a no.”

“Yes.  I’ll keep it private.  So will Brie, after I get her to swear some minor oaths.”

Brie nodded.

“Can someone Forsworn use the practice, as a summoner?  Is there a way?”

“I- no.  Pretty much by definition.”

“Because we know someone unawakened can use stuff, like stumbling on cursed items, or signing up for the Hungry Choir ritual.”

“Oh, that’s different.  That’s um, the power and permission isn’t coming from the spirits or anything like that.”

The blood loss was giving Zed a gnarly headache.  He’d bandaged up as much as possible, but he was pretty sure he should go to a hospital.

“So… it’s possible?”

“It’s not using the practice.  But if you had the right tools… I guess.”

“Even making a Hungry Choir?”

“Something that specific and complex?  You’d need a lot of specific tools, and a lot of power.  More than your usual forsworn person might have access to.”

“Okay.  Alright.  That helps.”

“Alright?  Because I should be headed to a hospital.  This was… harder than expected.”

“Go.  Be safe.  Thanks.”

Zed turned off the walkie talkie.  He remained sitting in mud, feeling about ten times as overwhelmed as could remember feeling before.  It wasn’t that he hadn’t dealt with the monumental before.  But he was so diminished, bled out, weak, sore, and weary, that the degree of what he was feeling dwarfed him in a way he couldn’t articulate.

He stared off into space for a few minutes.

“You going to be okay?” Zed asked Brie.

She nodded.  She didn’t pause, because pausing was dangerous.

Zed made his way to his feet, and rejoined the others.

It took four and a half hours to get sorted out at the emergency room.  Eloise hadn’t been a huge help during the event, but in a situation like this, she was in her element, manipulating connections and smoothing things over.  It helped to ensure the hospital staff didn’t ask too many questions about the people with all the bite marks, blood loss, the various venoms running through them… it had only been a few poisonous snakes, and Jessica had been able to help with that.  The benefit of having a wide knowledge base.

Zed returned to the field, taking the weird route of multiple turns that should have taken him back to where he started.

Four and a half hours later, and Brie was still eating.  She crunched on bone.  The masked boy’s body had been taken away.  Ulysse set to using his god-given mace to break bones into easier to consume pieces.

“I worried you weren’t coming back,” Brie said.  She had thick black lines painted on her now.  To keep the source of the ritual bound within her body.  The body was diminished enough she could talk without risking its escape.  It wasn’t like it could hobble away, when there was scraps of meat on bone and little else.

“What? Why- no.  Of course I came back.”

She shrugged.

“You did well,” Ulysse said.  “If you awaken and come to the school, we’ll be glad to have you.”

“I’m monstrous.  I’m- I just ate a child.”

“You ate the monster,” Zed told her.

“I didn’t even hate eating it.  I’m not even disgusted.  The prize, it- it means those barriers are gone.  Is this the road I go down?”

“The road you go down is the road you choose,” Zed told her.

She took two handfuls of broken bone fragments from Ulysse, then ate them.  When Zed offered her a drink, she used it to wash the fragments down.

“A lot less people will suffer now.  You’ve beat it.  We beat it.”

He could still see the doubt in her eyes.

Others were leaving the car.  They’d stopped at various points, to search for and pick up things that had been torn away from them.  Nicolette held the music player and scratch-a-sketch, and made her way over, avoiding the muddy patches.

“You made good progress,” Nicolette said.  She looked at Zed.  “I’m trying to decide whether I should sleep, eat, or do something to distract myself.”

“Eating?” Zed asked.  “I don’t have much appetite.”

“What about you, Brie?” Nicolette asked.  “Want to go get a palate cleanser, after?”

“I could, but I think the fact I could would make me feel more wrong.

“You’re not wrong, Brie,” Nicolette said.  “You’re the hero of the night.  I don’t think there’s a single person here who doesn’t respect you for managing this.”

“Yeah,” Zed said.  “You should get mucho cred for this one.  Believe me.”

The doubt seemed to lift, at least a bit.

“I know I made promises while you weren’t free to talk,” he told her.  “I hope it’s okay.  Coming to the school with us.  Awakening.”

“Yeah,” Brie said.  She smiled, a little hesitant.

That she could smile meant that things were okay.  A little bit of power lost.  They’d find something for Brie to wear or even try a simple tattoo, if she was amenable, or tap into the power within her to drain it until it was more manageable.

This was a win.  Those parts of Zed that had been so worried about failure were satisfied.  It had almost gone wrong in the worst ways possible, but… they’d pulled through.  The people he’d trusted and counted on had proven worthy of that trust and counting.

He did have his worries, though.  The degree of intent behind the Carmine Beast event… the premeditation, the covering of tracks, and the creation of something like this, implied to be done well in advance for that specific purpose?

That was concerning, turning the Carmine Beast thing from bad luck into obvious foul play. On a large scale, bigger than even the scope of the ‘Choir’.

He’d sworn not to follow those concerns, but he hadn’t sworn not to investigate or look into it privately.

He was very interested, now, in the next moves of the three young practitioners.

Leaving a Mark – 4.1

Avery

Avery ducked beneath branches, pushing others aside.  She held one branch for Snowdrop, who reached for her wrist, clutched, gained a certain weight, and then crawled up Avery’s arm to her shoulder, in her small opossum form.

Wooden pieces of building were sunken into the surroundings, but the wood hadn’t gone soft.  Dirt overlapped the edges, or moss grew into the sides, until they were part of the landscape.  A burned out house with the burns covered up, or pieces of an old church that had collapsed in a storm, reclaimed by nature in a way that held them strong, the walls upright.

Avery ascended stairs, with white flowers on the rising slope to her right, and a brook noisily trickled in a dip to her left.

Snowdrop made a sneezing sound, which was an opossum pup’s version of a dog’s arf, or a kitten’s mew.  Avery looked where Snowdrop’s nose was pointing, and jumped, despite herself, at the sight of a young woman kneeling in the creek.

The woman was maybe around eighteen, wearing a white dress thinner than Avery’s t-shirt, and had flowers in dark hair braided loosely enough that there were evenly spaced gaps between the locks.  She was curvy, in a healthy way.

She held a pile of flowers in one hand, stems removed, and was placing them in the running water of the creek with what seemed like an abundance of care, even though the water babbled, rolled, and moved with such chaos that there was literally no way it could matter.

“Did she send you here to wait for me?” Avery asked.

The woman shook her head.  She took another few seconds to finish setting down all but two of the flowers, so the creek could carry them down the way, then stood.  The wet dress wasn’t transparent, but it still left nothing to the imagination.  Avery swallowed, then turned her attention to Snowdrop, to have an excuse to look away.

The woman grabbed a narrow tree, and began to ascend the slope to the path Avery was at.  Avery hesitated, then grabbed a tree herself.  She offered a hand, hauling the woman up.

The woman stood just a foot away from Avery, once she’d straightened.  She reached over, gave Snowdrop a stroke, and placed a flower behind Snowdrop’s ear.  The opossum chittered madly, like she was trying to talk.

Avery’s heart pounded as the woman put a flower behind her ear.  She was still holding one of Avery’s hands, and once the flower was in place, she pulled, heading up the path with Avery following.

They jogged through the woods, along a dirt path that periodically had floorboards in it.  The woman let go of her hand, hopping up to a tree branch with both hands overhead, and landed with what looked like an apple in each hand.

The most crazy-nice dreams that Avery had experienced weren’t anything half as nice as this.

The woman offered Avery one of the apples, biting into the other.

“No, but it seems nice of you to offer,” Avery said.  She could remember what they’d been told about Faerie, and not eating things while visiting the Faerie.  This wasn’t the Faerie, but maybe the same rules applied.

The woman offered it to Snowdrop.

“No,” Avery said, firmer.

Snowdrop sneezed at her.

The woman didn’t seem to take offense, smiled, and returned to leading the way up the path.  Up the thick forest trail along the side of the mountain.

The woman paused to pick some berries from the side of the trail, stem and all, before running ahead a few steps, as if to make up for the lost time.

“How do you know if they’re safe to eat?” Avery asked.  “Do you, um, do you talk?”

“I- yes,” the woman said.  “It’s been a long time since I had to.”

“How long?” Avery asked.

“Months?” the woman asked.  She turned, walking backwards, and pushed aside a branch by her head like she knew it was there.

“How long have you been here?” Avery asked.

“How old do you think I look?”

“Eighteen or so?”

“Then six years or so.”

The trail took a sharp turn toward the interior of the mountain itself, but as Avery ducked through some of the branches, she found herself in a space open to the late afternoon air.  The pieces of building that had been on the path here were omnipresent in this space, elaborate, stacked onto one another and glued together by moss and vegetation.  The flowers were everywhere, as were fruit trees, vegetables and ferns.

Ten people were present.  Young, old, male, female.  Two of the men wore the thin white fabric as kilts, one short, one knee-length.  An older man with long white hair wore it as a toga.  Two of the girls were topless, but one of them was, like, six, so it didn’t really count.  They lay down, sat on tree branches, and walked around the extensive space.  Some had wreaths of flowers in their hair.  Others laurels of leaves, like some old Roman thing.

“Who are they?”

“The most innocent.  People with nowhere else to go.  People who were hurt.  People who were sick, or struggling with some form of madness.  The cursed, the hunted, the unfortunate.”

“She collects them?  You?”

“When she can.  But the conditions have to be precise, so she can’t get many that way.  More often, we ask.  When we seek to escape it all for long enough, traveling for a day into uninhabited places, sometimes we end up at her feet.  Then you have to ask for help.  Sometimes you have to ask multiple times, depending.  Then you must abide by the rules to stay.”

“I think I’ve been conditioned to think there’s a horrible catch or something,” Avery said.

“No.  The only rules are to be kind, to be gentle, and to protect this space.  Some leave and come back.  Some stay for a while and then go.  Many stay.  Because the world hurt them enough, or because they have a relief here, from schizophrenia or addiction.  Sometimes when you ask for help you get it.  I think that’s what she represents.”

“I’d like an audience.”

“She knows.  She’s coming,” the woman with the wet dress said.  She ate some berries, and as the little girl held up a hand, she gave some to her.

Snowdrop clambered down Avery’s arm, hip, and then hopped down to the ground, taking her human form.

Avery felt conspicuous.  These guys were objectively the weird ones, wearing togas and simple dresses knotted at the shoulder.  Avery was wearing running shoes, track pants and a sleeveless jersey, her bag slung over one shoulder.  It felt artificial, here.

Snowdrop looked eleven or so.  Her hair was in a high ponytail, she had jeans with massive holes in the knees, and a black tee that was knotted at the side, to expose her stomach.  It hid part of the message, leaving only the ‘Pretty as’ and the illustration of an opossum with tire tracks through it and bright pink lipstick and blue eyeshadow.  Avery guessed it was ‘Pretty as Roadkill’.

Trying to beat the heat.  It was thirty-eight degrees out.  But here, at least, it was cool, a breeze moving through the space.

“I don’t want any fruit,” Snowdrop said, looking up at her.

“I can get you something after.”

“It’s terrible for me.  Bad.  Probably tastes awful.”

“After, Snow.”

“They don’t even look that juicy.”

“Snow.”

“I want to leave.”

Avery sighed.

There was a guy, maybe twenty-five, who might have been a newer arrival.  Everyone here looked healthy and relaxed.  He looked like he’d had a rough time, and he hadn’t fully worked out how to let his guard down.  A woman was twining the stems of leaves together to make a laurel, sitting so her front pressed against his back, her nose just a few inches from his ear as she worked.

The woman who had escorted them lay down on a horizontal post.

No fear, no pain.  Comfort.  No dealing with the scarier world out there.  Abundant food, pretty women, company.  Not being lonely.  It felt like a balm to the soul, a counterpoint to the scarier memories of the Trail, which felt weirdly vivid, in contrast to the other memories around it.

It was everything she’d thought she wanted and now that she was here…

Scary.  Scary?  Sad.  Weird?

Why was all of this so hard to figure out?  She was so glad for the people who needed and had this but she was bewildered and spooked by how much she didn’t want to fall into this.

“I’m thinking maybe I shouldn’t tell Verona about this place,” she told Snowdrop.

“I shouldn’t tell Louise either,” Snowdrop said.

“Is she treating you well?”

“I’m there pretty often, y’know.  But she’s awful.  Tells me I’m not anything like family, I’m horrible.  We have a deal, where I don’t nag her about the smoking and stuff, and she doesn’t make me drink my milk or eat her cooking.”

“Sounds like a good arrangement.”

“It’s awful ’cause I’m there or I’m with Cherry or I’m with you.  It’s so boring and stuff.”

Avery smiled.

The people in the glade looked up.  Avery did as well.

The wind had stopped.

She had long legs, taller than the trees or the mountain.  A two-toed hoof touched the clearest patch of ground, a narrow leg extending straight up to the Alabaster’s form, a great pale deer.

A second hoof touched down, but it was more diffuse.  Both hooves were becoming transparent, bright.

Until they were like shafts of light with a solid core where they overlapped.

The light grew more and more diffused, flaking away like flower petals and dust motes.  The solid core remained.  A woman with white hair, draped in white furs with light grey freckles, and a few decorative antlers worn so the the points turned toward herself or were buried in the furs.

Avery felt like she should bow.  She didn’t.

“Your being was gentler, the first time you came,” the Alabaster told her.

“That’s fair,” Avery answered.  She thought for a second.  “I don’t think I’ve become unkind.  I’ve tried to respect your space, here.”

“The others will be along shortly.”

The Alabaster sat on a bend of wood that would only serve as a chair to someone of her size, which was a bit bigger than human.  The way it bent to fit her form, with armrests that exactly fit her arms, it could only really fit her.  Anyone else would slip off or fall through the gap between armrest and seat.

Two of the people in white approached.  She gave one a fond smile as they began putting gathered white feathers in her hair.

The Sable Prince’s footsteps were unnaturally loud and heavy, as he made his approach.  They felt out of place in this sanctuary.  The eerie man in the black suit, black dress shirt with no tie or buttons, hair and beard black and barely tamed.

There was a rasping sound, as centipede leg and segments rasped against trees and wood.  There was a young teen, about Avery’s age, atop its head, wearing what could have been a silk bathrobe from the way it hung on him, in glittering gold.  His hair was straight, fine, and black, his eyes peering through the curtain, his thin-lipped smile wide on the one side.

“Thank you for your audience,” Avery addressed them.

“What have you discovered?” the Sable Prince asked.

“We have a set of prime suspects.  We have reason to believe the Carmine Beast was taken to pieces.  We found the likely where, in what we call the Ruins.  We think the pieces were kept for the purposes of gaining her power at a later point.  We were able to identify the force driving the Hungry Choir, which led to it being bound.  We helped root it out as the weapon that was directed at the Carmine Beast.”

“Was it able to identify the people who used it?” the Aurum Coil asked.

Avery shook her head.  “It gave us suggestions, but those suggestions mostly ruled out people we’d already more or less cleared.  What it did tell us was that it was created nine years ago.  Everything seems to point to it being created then, with the intention of being that weapon against the Carmine Beast.”

“Explain,” the Sable Prince asked.

“Uhhhh… I’m not sure I’m great at explaining things.  But the Choir talked about everyone they dealt with in terms of who was there when they were created.  They were set on a path, and there’s no sign they were contacted or redirected to the Carmine Beast.  It seemed innate, or instinctive.”

“There’s no signs in the wind that they intend to come after us three,” the Alabaster Doe said.

“No,” Avery agreed.  “We don’t see anyone using power on the same scale as the Hungry Choir, and nobody seems especially agitated that the Hungry Choir is bound and out of their control.  If they wanted to come after you three, they’d be more bothered they lost their big weapon.”

“Then our concern is primarily with what the upheaval in the Carmine’s seat does to the rest of us.”

“Maybe,” Avery said.  “We’re worried that when we get closer, they may make their move.  That’s part of the reason we wanted to reach out.  So you wouldn’t be surprised.”

“What is the rest of the reason?” the woman in the bleached furs asked.

“You guys are the… we’ve been calling you judges.  You make some of the decisions on the broader stuff.  Karma, deals, minor things about power, or which Others get to appear or start to appear.”

“Yes,” the man in the black suit said.

“We’re working to serve you, kind of.”

“In the same way that we’re working to serve you,” the boy in the glittery bathrobe said.  “Practitioners curtail the affairs of the Other and Others often make the final judgments on Practitioners.  Do you have a favor to ask?”

Can I ask a favor?”

The boy leaned forward, the centipede lowering its head, until he was almost on a level with Avery.  “You may.  Karma is our currency, when judging you, your notions of fairness, and how well you cleave to the roles you assume.  Would you spend yours?  Or make demands on how it is directed?”

“I’d like to say we’ve done a pretty good job in our role.”

“Reasonably well.”

“We’re Kennet’s practitioners, we’ve made that our job, pretty much.”

“And in doing so, you make the area harder to penetrate.  With every action, you belong more to it, and it belongs more to you.”

“We’re anticipating going to the school.  We’re thinking we need to learn some things to make some of our critical moves against the culprit.  But we’re putting ourselves under the power of others, teachers and stuff.  We’re kind of seriously worried.”

“This is the domain of man, more than it is ours.”

“Is there a way to guarantee that we could return to our posts, or protect ourselves?”

“There are few guarantees.  Even in the way you speak, you hedge, and even in things that are certain, you call them maybes.”

“A lot of things are possible,” Avery said.

The Aurum Coil nodded, cocking his head to one side.  The long hair slipped from his shoulder, as did the shoulder of the simple, glittery robe he wore.  “If you wanted to make your position more secure, you could swear oaths.  To return home safe and sound.  Your karma, that propensity for being right and just, would help it happen, in the wake of that oath.”

“But if we were wrong in making that oath, we’d be…”

“Ruinously wrong,” the Sable Prince told her.

“You’re carrying out a duty,” the Alabaster reassured.  “You’re acting on Oaths made in your awakening.  That helps secure your position.  Keep your eyes and ears open.”

Avery nodded.  “We also wanted to ask… we need to know who the Carmine Beast was.  You said she didn’t have many friends.  But the Alabaster has these people in white.  Did the Carmine…?”

“She took nobody in.  Others like her in other areas do, taking in killers, monsters, heroes and villains.”

“She tried to recruit a Faerie in our town, allegedly.  And a Dog of War, and a Goblin.”

“She did not try very hard,” the Sable Prince said.  “If she truly willed it, she could have made it happen.  It would cost her power and position, but those things would recover over time.  It was an effort for her to even broach the subject, because she was the type to weigh the options before her, and inevitably decide that she could do the job best if she did it herself.  It kept her busy, and it kept her work consistent.”

“What was she before?” Avery asked.

The Sable Prince and the Aurum Coil looked at the Alabaster.

“And why are you looking to her to answer?”

“The Carmine Beast predated us,” the Aurum said.  “But not the Alabaster Doe.”

“She was an Animus, a walking intent,” the Alabaster said.  “Much as your Dog of War is one.”

“I- I’m not familiar with that.”

“Forces between spirit and incarnation that exist for purpose.  Often malign, but not always.  Physical.  They are defined by the task they accomplish.  The Swordbearer animus exists to find the noble and heroic, equip them, and send them on their path.  The Dog of War exists to perpetuate the senselessness of war.  Muses inspire art.”

“What did she do?”

“Before she was the Carmine Beast, she reminded civilized men who had come here why their ancestors were so afraid of the deep night,” the Alabaster said.  “Henhouses emptied, livestock slaughtered.  Howling that shook hearts, and fangs that took the lives of people who were in the midst of discovering just how dark a forest can be without the torches, candles and lamps of a nearby city.”

“Was she evil?  I know we asked, but- before?”

“She wasn’t good or evil so much as she simply was.  Just as she was the Carmine Beast.  The role precedes all.”

“Is that the last of your questions?” the Aurum asked.

“Probably not,” Avery said.  “I have more, but I can’t put all of them to words.  We were asked to do this job, but the more we do it, the more it feels like they really don’t want us to actually succeed.”

“Who is ‘they’?” the Alabaster asked.

“That’s a good question.  I don’t know.  I don’t know if it’s the culprits being subtle or if it’s the others.  I know we have to be really careful because if we rush this, then Alexander Belanger may start interfering with Kennet.”

“You can secure your own positions.”

“Oaths and stuff?  With a higher chance of being forsworn.”

“Sometimes.  He secured his own position at the school with one such oath.”

“Ah,” Avery said.  “The… what’s the word?  Sounds like domain?”

“Demesne,” the Alabaster said.

Domain with a deh- instead of a doh.

“Familiars too?  And implements?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.  Okay.  That’s definitely a thing to think about.”

“Many wait until they are older.  At the very least, one should try to know themselves before they decide.”

Avery frowned.

She didn’t really know herself.  She’d thought she had, at least as someone sporty, someone who knew what she wanted out of life… wanted something not all that different from this, with the stability, security, the family, found or otherwise…

“Knowing yourself can be pretty tricky,” Avery said.

“Yes,” the Sable Prince said.

“I know you suck something awful,” Snowdrop murmured to Avery.

“Thanks, Snowdrop,” Avery said.

“If you’ve no more questions,” the Aurum Coil said, “don’t you have somewhere to be?”

Avery frowned.  She didn’t.  She’d specifically made the time to come out this far.

She glanced off in the direction of the way she’d come, where the path led out of this glade, this sanctuary the Alabaster had made.  A girl lounged by the door, eating blueberries she’d picked.

If she didn’t want that, then process of elimination gave her a few other directions to go.

She couldn’t think of much else to ask.

“No more questions.  Thank you for your time,” she said.

“Give John Stiles our best.”

“No other candidates?”

The Alabaster shook her head.  “None worth serious discussion.”

“We expect to force the decision about the Carmine seat at summer’s end,” the Sable Prince told her.  “Let the Kennet Others know, please.”

Avery nodded.  Then she departed, Snowdrop walking beside her.

John was the candidate for the next Carmine Beast.  The Hungry Choir was bound, and while Brie had that power, she’d sworn oaths to be silent and not to use that power to take the seat.

Which more or less took the Choir out of the running.

It was now between John and whoever had the furs of the Carmine Beast.

If they couldn’t figure something out, then John would be asked to apply for the seat.  He would probably cooperate.  The lesser candidates who didn’t have a shot would probably come after him, in hopes of crab-bucketing their way into the position, and whoever had the furs would step in to deliver the master-stroke.

It would be next to impossible to really argue against the woman or the guy who actually wore the fur of the Carmine Beast, and whatever else.  Then John would be obliterated.

And someone untrustworthy would get the power and the responsibility the role afforded.  Someone who thought nothing of using the Choir as a weapon, with hundreds of lives ruined in the wake of it.

Edith, Charles, Maricica, and the Choir.  One of the four had been removed.  Edith and Maricica remained as puzzles to be unraveled, and Charles was a big question mark.

Avery walked down the path until she reached an area not that far from where the woman had been setting flowers into the water.  It was flat enough.

“Huh?” Snowdrop asked.

“I’ve decided I want to get home tonight, instead of tomorrow.”

“If you’re taking the shortcut, you’re taking it alone, loser.”

“I’ll ask, first,” Avery said.

She set her bag down, which was a bit of a relief.  Then she got her phone out.

Avery:
done talking with white, black & gold.
I think I’ll hurry back

Verona:
problem?

Avery:
no.  but I decided I want to come
or I’m less sure I want to live the kind of life where I avoid all this
I’m not making sense

Lucy (A):
Come.  That’s good.  If you’re sure you’re okay with this.

Avery:
ouchie wa wa in exchange for access?
we all ok with that?

Lucy:
I don’t think we can use it.  I’m more concerned about how safe this is.  How unsafe.

Verona:
I like having more things to mess with but I dont mind.

Avery:
gonna see about heading over
I shouldn’t be long

She swiped over to her contact list.  Some basic ‘ok’ messages came through at the top of the phone as she searched.

Snowdrop dug in her bag, pulling out a bag of chips, and then a bag that clattered pretty violently.  A toy car fell out and tumbled down the slope.  The opossum girl went after it.

“Hello?”

“I’m an acquaintance of Zed,” Avery said.  “We had a deal where he wanted a tape, he gave me a ritual, but not the steps to complete-”

“Yes.  Yes.  I remember.  My hands are a little bit full with a god parasite.  Can I get back to you?  I’ll see who I can send.”

“Okay.  Thank you.”

“Set up.  Be ready.  I keep my sons and daughters busy.”

“Okay.”

Zed had given them everything Brie had had on her, when they’d released Brie back to him, as part of the deal where they gave him information on the Choir.  But there were things from among the stuff that Brie had had that he wanted back, and he’d asked.

They’d listed off a few things they’d be willing to trade for, and had probably given Zed a few too many ideas about who they were and what they wanted, in the process.

Avery wanted to walk the Paths, and Zed knew a city mage named Edward, who knew finders who walked the Paths, as well as delving into the Abyss.

In the dizzying series of trades and whatnot, the deal was that if Zed got the tape back, Avery could have more information on the Paths, including one trial-walk that proved they knew what they were talking about.

Avery opened the drawstring on the bag Snowdrop had opened, and began to pull out toy racecars, a toy racetrack, and simple, painted wooden blocks that had last been used by Kerry.

She connected the toy racetrack in a circle, then arranged the racecars, so they were in a circle of equal size, about two feet across, sitting upside-down in the dirt with tires pointed skyward.  She balanced the track over top of them, the bottom of the plastic track with its narrow lip resting on the tiny wheels.  She gave it an experimental spin.

Snowdrop returned, the fallen car in hand, and found a place for it.

Together, they built.  Square blocks balanced on the track.  They were fatter than the track was, which meant they had to sit at diagonals, which made balancing harder.

Triangles on top of some of the squares.

The phone call came in.

“Hello?” she answered.

“I’m sending my youngest.  They’re building the entrance now.  Enter, if they aren’t there when you arrive, they’ll be there shortly after, or I’ll take a break to ensure it works.”

“Okay.  Good luck with your parasite god.”

“God parasite, not parasite god.  But thank you.”

She hung up.

Her first time walking a Path since the Forest Ribbon Trail.

“We’re going to fuck this up,” Snowdrop said.

“I- I really do understand that you have to talk that way, but it’s really unnerving when you’re saying stuff so close to that anxious voice in my head,” Avery said.

Snowdrop reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze.

Together, they stepped over the carefully arranged blocks.  Snowdrop became an opossum, because there wasn’t much room.

Avery knelt, surrounded by the plastic track and the precariously perched houses.

It was hot out, the air heavy in her lungs, now that she wasn’t in the glade.  Her track pants had accumulated sweat in her day-long hike, and it made it feel abrasive at the knees, despite the material being meant not to do that.

“Hustle and bustle and hustle,” she began, and she gave the track an experimental push, expecting it all to fall over.  “And bustle and hustle and bustle and hustle-”

The track span, heavy with the blocks on it, barely moving in response to the push.  But it moved.

“-and bustle and hustle and bustle and hustle-” She pushed again.

It moved again.  It moved more.

“-and bustle and hustle and bustle and hustle-”

She span again.  It completed almost one full circuit.

“And bustle and hustle and bustle and hustle and bustle-”

She span again.  The blocks weren’t falling, like they were glued into place, and the track was moving easily.

“-and hustle and bustle and hustle-”

The track completed three revolutions.  Each push now got it to move faster.

She looked back, and the blocks painted in primary colors had risen higher behind her.  She looked forward, and they’d risen more.

“-and bustle and hustle and bustle-”

The cars below shifted, wheels screeching, and pressing against the connection parts of the track, adding traction.

It didn’t slow in its rotation, but a smoke with a plastic smell filled the air.

Snowdrop sneezed.

“-and hustle and bustle-”

Buildings shook, rattled, and tumbled, in the midst of the smoke.  Buildings, not building blocks.  Where one bit of a building fell, it found root somewhere behind.  There were multiple rows of buildings moving at different speeds.

“-and hustle and bustle-”

She reached for the track to keep it spinning, and found nothing.

She stood, smoke flowing around her, buildings moving.

She exhaled, clenched her fists and relaxed them.

While she was thinking about it, she pulled her mask on, and grabbed her cape.

The smoke cleared, and she stood on a flat rooftop.  Snowdrop hopped down.

The horizon had an intensity to it like it was sunset, but it was teal and seafoam.  Between her and the horizon, in every direction, were buildings.  They were arranged in a perfect grid, all uniform in height, but some were peaked and others were flat.  All were brightly colored.  Reds, blues, bright yellows, green.

She walked to the roof’s edge, looked down, and saw traffic, about ten floors below.  The cars were racing, kicking up exhaust and the smoke of tires.  They didn’t stop at intersections, but wove past one another.  All on one-way streets.  The gaps between buildings weren’t far.

There was a crash and a clatter, a plume of smoke, like something had collapsed.

It was a guy, fifteen or so, with a wispy mustache, goggles, and a bunch of gear.  He had a tank at his hip, a bag, some rope, some climbing stuff, and what looked like headphones.

It was the headphones that he pulled up away from his ears.  “Jude.”

“Avery.”

“That your familiar?”

“Boon companion, from the Forest Ribbon Trail.  Snowdrop.”

“I hope you get my friend here killed,” Snowdrop said, solemn.

“She doesn’t,” Avery said.  “She can’t help but say the opposite of what she means.”

“That’s not something I’ve seen before.  Companion off the Trail.  The liar thing is annoyingly common in some places.”

“I could tell you how, tell you about a detour, trade info for info,” she said.  “I want to keep walking the trail.  You guys are apparently the ones to ask.”

“I’ll tell my dad.  Speaking of, he didn’t give me much time.  School’s over and he’s really on my case about the non-school stuff.  I’m supposed to pay him back for losing this stupid paper airplane of his.”

“Sounds rough,” she said.

“Working all summer.  I’m going to spend more time on the Paths and in the Abyss than I do in reality.”

“The Abyss is like the Ruins, right?”

“Uhhh.”

“I’ve been to the Ruins.”

“Is being on land like being underwater?”

“Nnnnno?”

“Do you have ear protection?”

Avery shook her head.

“It’s going to get loud,” he said.  He pulled off his headphones, handing them to her.

“Are you going to be okay?” Avery asked.  “Is Snowdrop?”

“I’m super wimpy,” Snowdrop said, looking up at the kid.

“It’s loud, but it shouldn’t destroy my ears, or hers.  It’s good to have certain things.  Oxygen, protection for the eyes and ears.  Spare clothes you can pull on to cover every bit of your skin.”

She nodded.

“Over there,” he said.  He pointed.

She squinted.  Off in the distance, in the haze of the sunset, there was an archway, like the entryway onto a massive suspension bridge.

“This path is low-occupancy, low reward, at least boonwise.  But getting through it comes with a perk.  Slight drawback, too.  Well… two.  Three.”

Avery raised her eyebrows.

“Two of them aren’t really drawbacks, exactly.  More stuff to be cautious of.”

“What perk?”

“You’ll find you’re really good at racing through incoming traffic.  I’m talking driving on the wrong side of the road, driving through a red with cars in the way… running and biking too.”

“That sounds like the stupidest thing ever,” Snowdrop said.

“It sounds pretty cool… and niche,” Avery said.  “I have a hard time imagining myself using that.”

“It’s a niche path.  Drawback one is that you’ll be kind of annoyed when you’re not the one driving.”

“I’m thirteen.  I won’t be able to do my own driving for a while.”

Jude frowned.

“That could be a bigger drawback, when my parents have to drive me places a lot.”

“We could back off.  I can show you how to exit.”

Avery frowned.  “What are the other not-quite drawbacks?”

“This is a path that can get you from one place to another, but every time you do it, it gets harder.  I’ll have to follow you, or I’ll get in your way.”

Avery nodded.  A good thing to be aware of.

“And that perk?  It doesn’t make you perfect at driving into incoming traffic.  It makes you really good, but if you lean too heavily into it, you will end up smeared on the pavement eventually.”

Avery made a face behind her deer mask.

“You can back down.  I won’t think less of you,” he said.

“What you think of me isn’t really part of it.  Just…”

She had to dwell on it for a second.

Did this feel right?  Closing doors.

It felt more right than what she’d been assuming was what she really wanted.  That safe, comfortable, cuddly, and accepting environment.

She looked down at Snowdrop.

“Team Roadkill!” Snowdrop cheered.

“No.  Not that,” Avery said.  “How do we do this?”

“To start with, you promise that on successful delivery to the other side, you’ll hand over the tape.  I swear I’ll pass it on to Zed, to the best of my ability, to bring the deal to a close.”

“I promise, unless something unanticipated happens, I’ll hand over the tape.  If I can’t, I’ll make a good faith attempt to make things square.”

“Good, cool.  Then we need to go from house to house, ideally by a pattern.  We’ll be using the best pattern we’ve figured out.  I’ll shout out the instructions.  Blue house with a pointed roof first, then a red house, then any blue.  Do not, under any circumstances, touch a yellow house.  The third house is one we ride to the horizon.  It’s going to feel like we’re taking too long.  Don’t freak out, and don’t panic-jump.  If you start shouting at me you might miss the signal.  It’s spooky enough without distracting yourself.”

Avery nodded.

“The seven-eight bridge is one we haven’t figured out.  We’re trying to brute force it.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Every time we pass through, we try a new possibility, until we work out a way through Zoomtown.  Today we’ll do one I’m reasonably sure we know what will happen.  There’ll be an Other on house eight.  Minor.  They range from mind-screws to aggressive types that don’t really have much going for them in the flight department.  Stay safe, fend them off, I’ll shoot them when I’m close enough.”

“Okay,” Avery said.

“And don’t miss the jump to the destination.”

Avery nodded.

“Let me know when you’re ready to start.  Then blue house, pointed roof, pause, then red house.  I’ll tell you the next color or house when the time comes.”

“And if something happens to you?”

“Guess.  Fight like hell if you touch the wrong house.  Others and crap will pop up.  Don’t touch yellow houses.”

Avery nodded.

“There’s no other plan that works,” Snowdrop said.  “This is the only way.”

“You have an idea?” Avery asked.

“I’m not about to swear to keep any letters with instructions unopened.  That’s a fool’s game,” Snowdrop said.  “This is the only way.”

Avery looked over at Jude.

“That works too, I guess.”

“Please,” Avery said, laying a hand on Snowdrop’s shoulder.

Jude spent a minute scribbling on paper.

Avery whipped out her hockey stick to full size.  She wrapped her black rope around her hand, and drew up runes for her shoes.

Jude held out a piece of paper, folded into a square.

“I swear not to unfold this unless something happens to you or it’s a legitimate accident,” she said.  “If something happens to you, I’ll still try and get the tape to zed.”

He nodded.  He looked at the rope.  “What’s that?”

“Movement trick I picked up from the Forest Ribbon Trail.”

“Be careful with those.  These places might look like they’re made up of things like our world, like cities and forested trails, but they have their own rules.  There’s places where trying to fly will get you killed in about two seconds, or tear open the sky.”

Avery nodded.

“Go.  Just give your all and jump.”

Avery ran, then leaped.

There wasn’t as much gravity here, and the higher she went, the less there was.  She cleared the fifteen or twenty feet with ease.  Her feet slid on shingles, and she was glad she had the earlier practice.  Snowdrop landed beside her.

The house moved under her, making her slide a bit down the side.

“Go, go, go!”

The entire street of houses was now moving like it was on a treadmill.  Every second that passed, it picked up more speed, racing to the right.

“Go, Avery!”

She found her footing, and ran along the side of the roof.

“Wait, go!”

The next red ‘house’ with the flat roof zoomed toward her.  She and Snowdrop jumped at the same time.  She was very aware of how long a fall it was.

The house had a gravel bed at the top, and the entire street began moving forward, in the general direction of the destination.  She looked back, and saw that the gaps between the buildings were enough that they could just barely sweep past one another without colliding, even with the different speeds.

Jude jumped, and on his landing, the speed of the street picked up violently.  He had something like ice climbers used, hooking onto the roof to help give him traction.

Any blue.

She waited, then jumped.  She didn’t even need the air shoes, like this.

Even with the ear protection on, the crash almost made her lose her footing and land on her face.

The first street that had started moving was now reaching the end of the line.  It wasn’t infinite, and the buildings were slamming one by one into a body of water.  Each subsequent crash made the splash larger.

It was almost a mile away, but the first water droplets were now touching Avery’s skin.  The violent series of crashes and the expansion of the splash filled up one whole side of her peripheral vision, taking over the horizon.

Jude was on the row behind her, and moving faster.  He caught up, and landed on her roof.

It immediately doubled in speed.

They were racing toward the same horizon where the crash was happening.  The droplets became a drenching.  Flecks of wood bounced off of her.

Snowdrop whooped.

Jude shouted something.  She almost thought it was the signal, but he grabbed her, stopped her.

She pulled her ear protection away.  The roar of about a thousand houses crashing into water was enough to rattle her brain in her skull.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” Jude asked.

Avery looked at him, eyes wide.  She let the ear protection snap back into place over her ear.

Now?

“Gay!” she called out.  Probably too loud, considering.

He said something that might have been a swear.

She didn’t want to be the wimp here, and he wasn’t freaking out – at least, not about the trip.

But they were getting really close to the point where they would slam into… it looked like a hillside.  The first houses collided with it.  The shattered buildings mingled with the slow-roll explosion of the splash, like a tsunami suspended in time, waiting to happen.

Jude held out a hand, holding it up in a stop motion, not aimed at her.

She reminded herself again that he wasn’t freaked out.

About ten houses down, a house crashed into the rock.  A second later, ninth through sixth had.

Every single house that was waiting for them was yellow.

Fivefourthree-

“Now!” Jude shouted.

They leaped.

A piece of shattered roof flew through the air, slamming into a ‘house’ not far from the big rock.  Right beneath them.  Avery hooked it with the end of her hockey stick to help secure her landing.  She caught Snowdrop’s hand.

They raced away from the ongoing collapse, a metal beam from an annihilated building slammed through the yellow building right next to them.

Jude tapped her shoulder.

She moved the ear protection.

“Blue, blue, red!  Easy until house eight!  Go!  I catch up!”

Snowdrop became an opossum, and clung to her as she timed her leap.

Her landing was rough, and she was glad she’d worn the track pants.  Gravel dug into the side of her leg, even with the fabric in the way.  The heel of her wrist took a bit of a beating, but nothing worse than she’d suffered in soccer.

Now that she was into the swing of it, the first hard part done, she could experience the thrill.

Riding a row of buildings at about two hundred kilometers an hour.

She whooped.  Snowdrop sneezed.

Blue.  Sloped rooftop.  She threw herself forward so she’d land with the slope waiting for her, rather than land on the slope and keep going.  Her feet skidded, runes flaring hot against the sides of her feet, with dust exploding out from around shingles.  It made the landing softer.

Momentum still carried her, and since it couldn’t carry her left, with the slope to brace against, it became more forward momentum.

Snowdrop went human, grabbed a chimney, and grabbed her wrist.

“You’re the best!” Avery shouted.

“I don’t know about that!”

Red.  They made the jump.  Jude followed, coming from another set of buildings.  His landing was rougher, but he was dressed for it.  No skinned palms.

“House eight is supposed to be peaked red, for this run!”

Avery nodded.

They waited until peaked red showed up, then made the jump onto the pointed roof.

By the time Avery stopped skidding, a woman had emerged from a window set into the roof.

“You’ve killed me,” the woman said, eyes wide.  “You set them moving and now I’m going to crash into water and die.  What have you done!?”

“Ignore her!” Jude called out.

“Do you know how many thousands live in these buildings?  How many you’ve murdered?” the woman asked.

“Yes!” Snowdrop answered.

The woman seemed disconcerted by that.  She found her bearings.  “Senseless, you don’t think about what you’re doing.  You humans leave destruction in your wake.”

Avery hated this, as she backed away, stick held out, and avoided the woman who crawled across the roof.

It wasn’t that the woman was really getting to her, even though she kind of was.  But that unhinged tone, the strange atmosphere…

Ugh.

“Please!  Save me!  Don’t let me die!” the woman begged.  “Do one good thing in all of this senseless killing!”

“Jumping soon,” Jude said.  He had a gun out.  “Watch yourself!  Blue, now!”

They made the jump.  The speed they were moving and the impacts seemed disconnected.  Rough, but it felt more like dream logic than reality.

They kicked into movement, moving parallel to the prior house.

“I almost had you!” the woman on the house shouted, before laughing maniacally.  “You believed me for a second, hahahahaha!”

Avery backed away a bit more.  Snowdrop grabbed her hand.

The woman hopped over to another house, then hopped to the house adjacent to their own.  She bared her teeth, face stretching into something at the very limits of humanity, and then she jumped.

Jude shot, putting a bullet in the woman’s face.  It took most of the face and head off.

She hit the roof, went limp, then immediately started moving again, scrambling forward, mostly headless.

Jude aimed, but Avery was quicker, swatting the woman with the hockey stick.  Off the roof and down to the street below, where cars were somehow not all crashing and burning as the streets moved erratically.

He gave her the thumbs up, then tapped his ear.  She removed her ear protection, and winced.

About seventy-five percent of the buildings had gone splat against the horizon, and the noise was still working on reaching them.  A deafening rumble.

“Red, green, green, then goal.  Make sure you get the timing right, it’s deceptive!  If you’re not sure, go back to green, go forward to green, then try again!  Go ahead!”

She went, glad to get away from the woman, and the place she’d felt that uneasiness.

Red, green, green.  Easy enough.

The arch zoomed her way.

She waited, judged, and then leaped.

She landed, rolling with the landing, even with a backpack on, and lay there, arms spread, huffing.

Snowdrop went human, and mimed the posture, lying with her head resting on Avery’s wrist.

The crashing in the distance continued.

Her mind was so geared into the movement of the streets that it was hard to put down, like phantom images on the back of her eyelids.  She just caught her breath, and felt her brain sort out that information, putting it tidily into place.

The crashing went quiet.  She raised her head, looking for Jude, and saw him at the edge of the bridge, lowering his hands from his ears.

Watching the scenery.

She removed her ear protection.

“That was Zoomtown,” Jude said.  “I had a trinket to help you if you fell, I was so sure I’d get to use it and be the hero.”

“Sorry,” Avery said.  She sat up, pulled her bag around to her front, and dug for the casette, which she’d put in a protective case.  She handed it to him along with the folded up paper.

“You did about twice as well as I was expecting you to,” he said.  “There’s more to this than just getting to the end, though.  If you want to explore new paths, there’s some problem solving, you’ve got to work out the logic of how these places are put together… there’s that brute forcing I mentioned, but only when we have to, or when we have a pretty good idea of the outcomes.  For all that stuff, it’s good to have help.”

“Makes sense,” she said.

“I can recommend you to my dad.  If you want to do more of these.”

“I think I might stick to established paths for a while,” she said.  “The Forest Ribbon Trail was rough on me.  Doing this, with help-”

Snowdrop cleared her throat.

“With two people helping, I’m getting back on the bike, I guess?”

“Sure,” Jude said.

“But, uh… Do you think you could give me a better deal than your dad?”

“What do you mean?”

“I need the basics.  I want a few good, easy paths.  Each path we do makes the rest a bit easier, right?”

Jude nodded.

“I want basic Finder info, like I’d get if your family taught me, but without anything too complicated.  I can tell you about a side path off the Forest Ribbon Trail, and you can try convincing your dad you laid on the charm and convinced me, or something.  Maybe he won’t be so mad about the paper airplane.”

“I did charm you a bit, didn’t I?”

“I’m super gay, Jude.  So not like that.  But you were nice enough.”

“I’ll take it.  I could take that last bit and say it to my dad, but I dunno…”

“She really likes you in that romantic way,” Snowdrop said.

“Tell your dad my boon companion said that, maybe,” Avery said.

Snowdrop gave him a thumbs up.

“Okay, that works,” Jude said.  “Give me your phone number.  I’ll contact you, you can give me the info on the Trail.”

Avery recited her phone number.  Their phones didn’t work here, so he wrote it down on his hand.

Jude smiled.  “Come on.  This is your exit.  Mine is another two paths away.”

The exit was a ladder, leading down from the side of the bridge into the mist.

“It’s safe?”

“Yes.”

Avery grabbed a rung, then stared climbing down.  Snowdrop followed.

The bright blue-green horizon had turned to black.  The black, she’d thought, would become the night sky in Kennet.  It didn’t.  As it happened, the ladder took her into a storm drain.

The first thing she did was to text her friends to let them know she was okay.

She had to whack the drain cover with her hockey stick to remove it.

She got her bearings, figuring out where she was, and then walked home.

She was a block from home when she saw herself, wearing a short dress with red sequins all over it, standing at the corner.

“Oh, it’s a hand-me-down from Sheridan,” Avery said.  “I never liked wearing red while having red hair.  I thought it made my face look red, too.  But apparently not.”

“It looks so red,” Snowdrop said.

“I did some makeup.”

“You’re way better at it than me.  Were you going to go to the party as me?” Avery asked.

The other ‘Avery’ shook her head, then shook it more vigorously.  The glamour came away.  It was Lucy, and Lucy looked stellar in the red sequin dress with red sandals.

“I thought about it,” Lucy said.  “But I tried to imagine what I’d end up doing and I couldn’t imagine doing much of the stuff you’d do at a party without feeling like I was betraying you.”

Avery nodded.  “But you wanted to?”

“I was morbidly curious if people would look at me differently,” Lucy said.  “It would’ve been an experiment.  I’ll go as me.”

“And I’ll go as me.  But first I need to have a quick-fast shower and pick something to wear.”

“I’m just surprised.  You sounded so down on the idea before.”

Avery had hated the idea of attending, after weeks of lead-up, hearing about the games that were planned, the anticipation of boys talking about girls and girls talking about boys.  Ian and Noah were partnering up, and it really did feel like she was the odd one out.

So when they’d talked about trying to fit in a meeting with the judges, Avery had volunteered.  Lucy and Verona were covering for her for the forty-eight hour round trip, which was really only a thing now that school was done and report cards were out.

Avery had kind of wanted to get away from it all, and weirdly, it felt like she’d found her way back to ‘it all’, a little bit.

Walking in the forest without freaking out.  Dealing with a freaky person Lost.  Walking a Path.

Now a party.

“I had a few little wake-up calls,” Avery said.  “It was good for me.  The Zoomtown Path was…”

“Snoozefest,” Snowdrop said.

“…So fun,” Avery decided.  “And scary, but fun.”

“Scary for us too, you know.”

Avery smiled.  It felt awful to think it, but she really was glad that she wasn’t totally alone in being so spooked by the way things had gone with the Trail.

“Come on.  We need to figure out what you’re wearing.  And if you can’t do your makeup and hair, I want to try,” Lucy said.  “It’s got to be easier than my hair.”

Lucy’s hair was down to her shoulders, wavy and glossy.  She had hoop earrings in, which looked great against the dark hair.  Avery hadn’t even noticed the earrings when Lucy had worn her face.

“I was just going to run a comb through it.  And not do a ponytail.”

“Oh my god.  No, Avery,” Lucy said.

“Want to come, Snow?” Avery asked.

“Yeah, sorta,” Snowdrop said.  “Instead of hanging out with Cherry?”

“You miss your friend?” Lucy asked.

“Nah,” Snowdrop said.

“Go, then,” Avery said.  “Oh, wait, take the snacks we didn’t finish.”

“Terrible.  Making me be a mule for you.”

Avery gave Snowdrop the chips, the last of the milk, the protein bars, and the last half-sandwich.  The kid ran off.

“I won’t be at Louise’s or anything!” Snowdrop called out.

“The Louise thing is a minor issue,” Lucy murmured.

Avery raised an eyebrow.

“But that’s not for tonight.  We’ll talk about it after, and the judges and everything else, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Avery said, smiling.

“For now, you should hurry through your shower, I’ll dig through your stuff to find stuff for you to wear.  Verona’s going to meet us.”

“Did my family see ‘me’ leave the house in that dress?  Because if they did and you walk in wearing that dress, and I’m here, covered in debris, soaking wet, that’s going to raise a lot of questions.”

Lucy laughed.

“What are they going to think happened?  That you mugged me for my dress?”

Lucy laughed again.

“We’re still walking toward my house, and this isn’t answered.”

“We’ll glamour our way into your room.  Sheridan’s watching TV and Kerry’s at Kinley’s house.  The moon’s out, we can become moonlight,” Lucy said.  “Easy.”

“Just saying that like it’s the most normal thing in the world.  Easy, become moonlight, easy.”

“Says the girl who just traveled through racing car town or whatever it was.”

“Racing buildings.  The buildings moved.  It was crazy, and not easy, but…”

They kept chattering until they had to be quiet to sneak in, and then picked up right where they left off.

[4.1 Spoilers] BHI Information Packet

L♪Ell:
Uggggghhhhh.  I hate giving up info for no good reason.  & its due in 4 days

A Literal Cat:
He knows what he’s doing.

L♪Ell:
Which do we like?  Page one of class options?
Foundations – We got this.  I’d say we’re at least beginner.
Runes, Diagrams, Circles – we’re beginner, easy.

Stickemup:
yes & yes.  low interest

L♪Ell:
Putting that down.
Others, Types & Labels – I think we’re at least beginner.  I’m curious to see how they talk about Others  Maybe we could take that class if it doesn’t conflict with anything more interesting?

Stickemup:
Do we want to take all the same class?  Or split them up?

L♪Ell:
Depends.  This is really hard to plan and I don’t trust Alexander not to fuck us over when giving us the schedule.  I want to be in classes with you two unless there’s a few high priority classes at the same time.
Other option is we can use the stars to mark out stuff for 1on1 classes to cover anything we have to miss.  We could start by picking out the highest priority stuff.

A Literal Cat:
110% interest in everything except history.  0% in history.

Stickemup:
if we’re being goofy about it then realms, realms, abyss, ruins, wherever.
yes plz

L♪Ell:
We’re doing this for a reason, remember?

A Literal Cat:
Expanding our knowledge?

L♪Ell:
Solving a crime?  The Carmine Beast?

A Literal Cat:
They made it sound like we’d never get that done.
And we’re already doing so well!
We’re ahead of the game.
Let’s kick back.

L♪Ell:
No.

A Literal Cat:
And go to magic school!  Exciting!  Woo!
Not being at home!  Woo!

L♪Ell:
Priorities.
-_-

Stickemup:
we need to cover binding real bad

L♪Ell:
Yes.  Thank you.  Possible candidate for a big star and 1on1 lessons.

Stickemup:
I wish we got more stars
probably important is complex spirits because Edith

A Literal Cat:
Primary spirits because of ol C.B.?  Or is she one of the divine things?

L♪Ell:
There are a lot of spirit topics that could be important.  The translation thing.  Power.
Binding is a big one.  Those ones are good.  Should we start big and then narrow down?  What about page 2?

Stickemup:
immaterial
no
no
no

A Literal Cat:
Yes yes yes?
I’m interested in all of that.

Stickemup:
realms are interesting to me
what’s an Alcazar?

A Literal Cat:
a wooble search says it’s a kind of castle.

L♪Ell:
The big question is if its useful for what we’re doing.

A Literal Cat:
ZzzZzz.

Stickemup:
fairy stuff might be needed if maricica is a suspect

L♪Ell:
Tools stuff we can mostly skip.

A Literal Cat:
Or, other option!

L♪Ell:
No!
We can come back to the school another year.  We can do the random crap when we’ve handled the CB situation.

Stickemup:
visceral stuff we can skip
some stuff I’m curious about with goblins and realms
abyss seems cool

L♪Ell:
Yeah.  I like self defense but I’m not sure if thats because I’m expecting things to get messy when we name the culprit and try to bind them or if its cuz I want to learn it.
We can take those classes if theres nothing higher-priority going on at the same time.  Right Verona?  IF theres nothing higher priority.

A Literal Cat:
Orrrrrr

Stickemup:
not sure about anything on pg. 3
greater powers?  we don’t know what the carmine beast was

A Literal Cat:
Orrrrrrrrrrr
As an alternative to all that blather…

L♪Ell:
-_-

A Literal Cat:
…We tell Mr. Belanger to put his forms up his bumpipe and we’ll attend and pick the classes when the time comes.
Why give him information on us?  For his convenience?

L♪Ell:

Ok.  Not the bumpipe part, but ok.

Stickemup:
that makes me more anxious about going if we know he’ll be annoyed
but it’s not a bad idea

L♪Ell:
I love you sometimes, Ronnie.

A Literal Cat:
And now our Wendsday is freed up!

Stickemup:
+ our little timing issue gets easier
I might leave now to get there sooner

L♪Ell:
You still want to do this?  School ends tomorrow.  You’re missing the last day.

A Literal Cat:
And the end-of-school party.

Stickemup:
thinking about the party depresses me
a walk to the middle of nowhere to visit the judges sounds nice
I’ll have snow for company

L♪Ell:
We’ll cover you if you really want to do it.  I’ll say I went to Verona’s house for once, disguise myself as you.  If you really want to do it.

Stickemup:
thx
yes I want to

L♪Ell:
Be safe.  Keep us updated.  Call before & after you do any path stuff.

Stickemup:
ya
going to go get ready
logging off

A Literal Cat:
Love!!
Good wishes!!1!
Safe travel!!!one!1!

Stickemup:
< 3

Stickemup has signed out of the conversation

L♪Ell:
I am so worried about her.

A Literal Cat:
She’s doing what feels right for her.
All the times I’ve slapped my forehead anf elt stupidest were when I didn’t listen to that feeling in my stomach.

L♪Ell:
The moments I regret were when I went with my gut.  Paul mostly.  Sorta referencing this stuff to my therapist and getting her curious.

A Literal Cat:
Was it a her?
Therapist person?

L♪Ell:
New one.  Told my mom the old one wasn’t getting some of the most basic stuff about what led to Paul and stuff, so we changed.  It’s only once a week now.  She’s cool.  Some Booker feel to her.

A Literal Cat:
Cool.
Very cool.

L♪Ell:
Any plans tonight?  I’ll need help with the Avery glamour.  At least for the 1st time.

A Literal Cat:
Gotta talk to mom.
Oh boy.
Will update you after.
Then will come.

L♪Ell:
Good luck.

A Literal Cat:
Will call.

A Literal Cat has signed out of the conversation

L♪Ell:
I worry about you too you know.  So much.
Your last message was not sent.  Nobody else is in the conversation.

L♪Ell has signed out of the conversation

Leaving a Mark – 4.2

Verona

Last Thursday: BHI Information Packet


There was a problem that came with looking at yourself for too long, where the image seemed to distort, proportions got weird, and everything looked really off.

Verona fixed her hair, trying to shake the feeling that her head was twice as big as it should be, and then tugged on the dress she’d picked out.  It was the kind that fit like a glove, armpit to mid-thigh, and had three bands of colour; a band of lavender across the upper chest, white at the middle, and black at the bottom.  It kind of gathered wrinkles any time she moved, and it hugged her enough the underwear lines stood out.  She felt like she’d be tugging it down so it’d sit straight all the time.  No-go.

She leaned into the mirror and prodded at a red spot by her nose.  She made some faces.

“Verona?” her mother called out.  “How is it?”

“No,” she said.

“Can I see?”

Verona rolled her eyes, then pushed the curtain aside.

Her mom looked her over.  At her mom’s instruction, Verona turned in a circle.

Verona’s mom was only a handful of inches taller than her, making her about five feet or just under five feet, and if the lines in her face were airbrushed out, would be pretty easy to mistake as an older sister.  Her hair was long, black and a bit coarse, and done up in a half-bun, half-ponytail thing where the ponytail sorta stuck out the side of the bun.  Probably a result of the drive over, so she wouldn’t sit back against her hair or have it in the way while it was over her shoulder.  She was wearing a patterned top, mom jeans, a necklace that went around the neck a few times so it lay in a few different layers, strung with seashells, and a gauzy scarf with a pattern on it.  Her handbag, held with a hand at the strap and a hand at the side, was big enough that the summer suit jacket and what looked like maybe a raincoat all fit inside with room to spare.  It was probably expensive, with the leather, and golden zipper and big embossed brand name, but it had a color that was probably called mustard and would more accurately be termed baby diarrhea yellow.

She wasn’t trying to be mean, observing that stuff.  She really wasn’t.

“Turn again?”

Verona did.  She gave her mom a look, to make it as clear as possible that she wasn’t impressed.  “Why am I showing you if I don’t like it?”

“You could change your mind after a second opinion.  It suits you.  You’re really growing up, huh?”

“That’s what people usually do.”

“It looks good, but it’s up to you.”

“It’s too slinky for me.”

There were other people in the store, including some high school seniors who were picking out dresses.  Probably for the same reason Verona had decided to.  One of them looked over, looked Verona up and down, and asked, “Where’d you get that?”

“The clearance rack.  And I’m putting it back there.”

“Can I try it?”

The girl who was asking had dark blonde hair, was about six inches taller than Verona, and was about three cup sizes larger.

Verona had no idea how that would work, but nodded.

“I picked out other possibilities,” Verona’s mom said.  “Want to pick one to try on?”

There was a black dress that was ninety-five percent nice, but it had a kind of built-in corsage where the one strap met the dress.  Too froufy.  Another had the band that traveled along the line of the ribcage, so the rest of it puffed out below, making anyone who wore it look pregnant.

“I might go with a nicer top and then wear some of the stuff I bought online.”

“It’s an opportunity to update your style.”

I like my style, Verona thought.  I’m seriously considering locking it in as my style for the next few hundred years as I become Other.  Not aging, not having to worry about growing up.

“I have ideas,” she said, as a way of ending the conversation, stepping back into the changing booth and pulling the curtain shut behind her.  She changed back to her regular clothes, stepped into her sandals, and walked out, handing the dress to the older teen.

“What sort of events were you thinking of wearing this to?  Graduation?”

Verona made momentary eye contact with the friend of the teenager who had taken the dress.

The actual event was tonight, yep, and even though they were probably going to different cabins and stuff, the secrecy was paramount.

“That was earlier this afternoon.  It was a dumb thing where a bunch of kids wore t-shirts and sneakers, and others dressed up a lot.  A bunch of people didn’t even come, because why attend the whole school day when there’s nothing going on?”

“Amen,” the teenage girl in the changing room said, through the curtain.

“I would have liked to come.”

“It really wasn’t anything that fancy.”

Besides, it would have been awkward, when Verona had disguised herself as Avery.  Lucy’s mom and Avery’s dad had come to videotape it for her mom to see later.

If Verona’s mom had gone, then her dad would feel slighted, and that would mean weeks of Verona being cried at, snide comments, and whatever else.  Or he’d come because her mom was going, then be upset her mom was there too.

“Did you get your report card?”

“Today, yeah,” Verona said.  She picked through some options for dressy tops on the little rack at the back of the store.  Frilly, big fat logo, weird leather shoulder-sleeve bridge bits…

“How did you do?”

“Fine, I guess.”

“Can I get more details?”

“It’s ninth grade.  I don’t think it affects my chances to get into University.”

Puffy sleeves, no.  Ooh, a nice one.  Simple, lace at the top edge.  She picked it up and then let it drop immediately.  It was see-through enough that she could see her hand through the front and back layers.  Why was that a thing?  A really annoyingly common thing.

Ugh.

“Which classes did you take?  Last Christmas you mentioned that you were taking English, I think?”

“Last semester was English, French, History, and Chemistry.  This semester was Math, Gym, World Issues, and Biology.”

“And?”

“And I did great in English and pretty good in French.  I did okay in most other things except Chemistry, Math, and Biology.  And kind of phys ed.  But you can’t really fail phys ed so long as you don’t sit out in class.”

“Is it Mr. Bader?” the teenager who wasn’t in the dressing room asked.

“Yeah,” Verona said.

“He’s too chickenshit to call out any girl who says she needs to sit out, so I don’t think you could fail out if you sat out of every class.”

Verona’s mom cleared her throat.

Excusez mon français,” the teenager said, before giving Verona a wink.

“He teaches health, too, you’d think he’d know,” the girl who was changing said, before pushing the curtain open.  She struck a pose, hands over head.  The dress that had clung to Verona was… upper-thigh rather than lower-mid-thigh, and low cut enough for there to be cleavage where it had stretched across Verona’s collarbone, and there was zero issue of it gathering up in wrinkles.

“You look like Neapolitan ice cream,” the friend said.  “Except purple-ish, not strawberry.”

“I love Neapolitan ice cream.  How does it look at the back?”

The friend turned.

“Looks fine.”

“Thanks kid,” the teenager said, to Verona, before turning back to her friend.  “I said I’d be quick.”

“Not complaining.”

The girl gathered up her stuff and then they went to the cash, wearing the dress she’d grabbed from Verona.

“Do you still talk to Lucy?” her mom asked.

“Yeah.  Meeting her later.”

Verona went through more of the tops, on another rack.  Her mom held up some shirts she’d already looked at and dismissed, and she shook her head.

“It’s cute, and it’s simple, like you like.”

“It’s see-through.  The boys in my classes would like it, at least.”

“Hmm.”

“Yeah.”

Verona sorted through more, found another that was good.

Only available in a large or medium.  She held it out against her mom’s front.

“A little too dark for me, I think,” her mom said.

Verona hung it back up.

One with a weird saggy front pocket.  One in a sky blue that really wasn’t Verona’s style, a top with an oversized, useless medallion-button…

“Were you enjoying school, at least?”

“Does anyone?” Verona asked.  She was tense and she didn’t want to be.  “I find myself not really trusting anyone who says they love it.”

“Is that because of any bullying, or the teachers, or…?”

“It’s just school, mom.  It’s something I gotta do.  Then I wait for it to be over and then I can do other stuff.”

“I wish you could enjoy it.”

“So do I,” Verona answered.

She pulled out another top, then strode to the changing room.

Her mom didn’t answer, and it felt like the last reply was terse, so she ventured, “How’s work?”

“It’s good.  They’re launching a series of experimental programs province-wide.  It’s really interesting, even if my part of the job is boring.”

“What are you doing?”

“The federal government is launching a potential alternative social assistance program.  I’m crunching the numbers for Thunder Bay and some neighboring ridings.  Data, demographics, highlighting some variables by drawing on a coda of news articles.  But I don’t want to bore you.”

“Nah,” Verona said.  She finished putting on the top, and checked herself over.  It was black, but velvety in a way that made it appear more gray because of how it caught the light, and it had a shallow ‘m’ shape to the cut at the top, with a crest or fin of black lace at the upper left and upper right edges.  There were lacy arms bits for the shoulder that could hang off the shoulders, but Verona had them up because they hid her bra straps.  She poked again at the red pimple by her nose, made a face, then pushed the curtain aside.  “I really like it.”

“That’s a fair bit of cleavage for a thirteen year old.”

Cleavage?  Verona went to look in the mirror.  With the lace, the cut at the top traced a line that didn’t really show off that she had a chest at all.  The dip of the middle of the ‘m’ shape was barely lower than her armpits.

She worked through about five sarcastic responses in her head, and dismissed them.  She turned on her heel, looked her mom in the eye, and made a very unimpressed face.

“There are other options.”

“This isn’t cleavage.  There’s not really any cleave.  It’s a graze.  Graze-age?”

Her mom sighed.

“I’ll buy it myself if I have to.  I like it.”

“Don’t.  I’ll pay for it.  Do you want to get changed back?  Then we can go?  Or do you want to get more things?”

“Just this!  Thank you!” Verona said, before closing the curtain.

“Are you sure you don’t want anything else?  Wasn’t there a store you liked around here?  It had the African statues and pottery.”

“Global Sustainable.  I was there last week, getting notebooks for the summer.”

She had to hold back another sentence, and it bothered her that she had to hold it back.  You’d know more of this stuff if you were here more.

“Do you want to buy a treat?”

“No.  I’m going out after and I don’t want to be pudgy or full.  I should be getting back to my friends,” Verona said, pulling on the top she’d come in.  It was one of the ones that had come by mail, finally, just a week and a half ago.  She was glad she wasn’t out shopping in a shirt with holes in it, or a shirt a size too small for her.  Especially in a nicer store.

“You don’t need anything at all?”

Verona had to bite back more sarcasm.

She wasn’t sure why it was harder in an hour and a half spent with her mom than it had been for the last few months, but she really had to fight to avoid saying stuff that was untrue, sarcastic, or otherwise problematic.

She bit her tongue for a second, finished getting sorted, and then pushed the curtain aside again.

“I need a bunch of stuff, but I think I’m good enough on stuff money can buy,” Verona told her mom.

“Alright.”

Her mom paid, and Verona took the bag.

They left the store and walked over to the car.

“What do you need that’s not money?” her mom asked.

“I don’t know about need, but a boyfriend that would put up with my weirdness.”

“I don’t think you’re weird.  I think every thirteen year old girl thinks she’s weird, maybe.”

“Ummm.  I’m weirder than most, I’m pretty sure.  Anyway… other stuff I need, hmmm.  Money would be nice.  A longer summer.  A guarantee about teachers and stuff next fall.  The good teachers are fine but the bad teachers succkkkkk.

“Pretty normal stuff then,” her mom said.  She started up the car.  “Home?”

“Okay.  Please, thanks.”

They made their way out of the parking lot.

Verona’s mind roved over answers to the question about needs, and there were a whole bunch of things she wanted to say.

It wasn’t really the practice stuff.  That was… she didn’t want to say it.  It was hers, it was free and far away from parent bullshittery.  It was neat.  She did need stuff around that, mostly about ensuring Lucy could be free of the hassles of it, and about the background headaches, like the Others being suspicious and distant for the past few weeks.

When the Others weren’t distant because of their own stuff, like Alpeana, then it was Verona, Lucy, and Avery who were distant because they didn’t want to associate too closely with their suspects.

It would be so nice to put all of that to rest.

No, she wanted to say stuff about her mom and dad.  Like asking her mom about the leaving, or why she was living so far away, or if her mom had cheated and given dad an STD, like dad said.

If her mom had loved the guy she’d cheated with, before she’d kind of blown up all their lives.  Because so many things were so frigging miserable right now, following from that.  In a way that went beyond just family and holidays and having to weigh every little thing when it came to her parents potentially being in the same room, like for the graduation.

It made school worse, and it made her friendships worse.  Having most nights at home suck made the pressure of school that much worse, because there was less time to recuperate from the low-level stress of school.  Her friends pitied her.  They couldn’t come over, which made her feel like she was always mooching.

Five minutes passed.  They were mostly to Verona’s house.

On the holidays Verona went to Thunder Bay to visit with her mom, she’d come back and talk to Lucy and they’d be nonstop, hurrying to get caught up.

This was the opposite… it was always a lurch.  Like going to see her mom, the opening of the visit would be awkward and they’d feel like strangers in the same place.  There wasn’t that feeling of catching up, or even feeling familiar and knowing what to talk about.  It would pass, they’d find a rhythm, and then the feeling would return in the couple of days before Verona was due to leave.

Like a lot of things were unsaid.

“So I guess with your summer plans, I’ll wait until mid-late August and get in touch?  You said you’d be free at the end of summer?”

“I don’t know yet,” Verona said.  “There’s a lot potentially going on at the end of Summer.”

“Just let me know?”

Verona nodded.  “Are you heading back tonight?”

“That’s the plan.  I don’t mind taking the trip, you know.  I’m happy to see you.  Call anytime if you want.”

The trip was somewhere between two and a half and three hours.  Her mom had made the trip today, leaving after work, they’d been out for an hour and a half, and now she’d make the trip back.

Verona considered a few different statements and questions, each in the neighborhood of saying ‘I wish you lived closer’.

They pulled up, parked across the street from the house.

“The house looks good,” her mom commented.  “I did love that house.”

“I could use a break from dad.”

Verona hadn’t meant to say that out loud.

“Hopefully you get that break this summer,” her mom said.

“I mean… more than this summer,” Verona said.  “Dad’s kind of awful.”

“Verona, I’d- I’m trying really hard to be fair about this whole thing.  I don’t want to badmouth your father, or participate in badmouthing, because that would poison you against him.  Honestly, there’s not a lot I could say that would be badmouthing.”

“It’s more than that, though.  I haven’t even left for the summer thing yet and I’m already kinda dreading coming back.”

The car was parked, the engine humming, and her mom gripped the steering wheel.

Further down the street, Mr. Richmond left his house, went to the side, and dragged his trash can out to the curb.  He walked back down the driveway, and went back into his house.

Wallace was out with his friends, not far from his house.  He looked nice, dressed up a bit.  It looked like they were leaving already.  Wallace had his arm in a brace, Verona noted.  He’d had the same thing on for graduation.  A raglan long-sleeved shirt with white sleeves and a black body portion, with a pattern printed on the black in silver.

Verona looked at her mom.  Her mom met her eyes, then forced a sigh, like the sigh was a statement unto itself.  Or an answer.

“It’s really not great,” Verona said.  “He’s kind of intense, and Lucy isn’t even coming over because of it.  So I was thinking, like, I don’t want to leave my friends, or school, or anything like that, but how possible would it be for you to move closer?”

“It’s not really a consideration, Verona.”

“But if you moved closer and I moved in with you?”

“No.”

Verona wasn’t really sure how to place the feeling that came over her, hearing it like that.

Figured, she thought, but the tone of voice she was trying to conjure up for the voice in her head was pretty far from the casual style she’d wanted.

“Wallace sure grew up,” her mom said.

Stop saying that, like you’re surprised when stores change or people grow up, Verona thought.  That’s what normally happens when you’re not around.

“Thank you for dinner, and for the shopping.”  Verona popped open her door.

“Come here,” her mom said.

Verona dutifully leaned in closer.

Her mother planted a kiss on her forehead.

“Call me when you’re done with the summer program.”

Verona nodded, and gathered up the bags, then pushed the door open.

“Love you!” her mom called out, as Verona climbed out.

“Yeah.  You too,” Verona replied, giving her mom a tight smile, before closing the door.

Her mom remained parked as Verona crossed the street, backpack at her shoulder, shopping bags in hand.

Her dad opened the door as she got to it.  He raised a hand in a short wave at her mom as he let Verona in.

“I see your mother has a new car,” he said.  “She can’t pay your child support on time, but she can drive something sporty and blue, hmm?”

“It’s not new and it’s not hers.  The suspension in her old car buckled or something,” Verona said.  “She’s borrowing Grandma’s.”

“Hahaha,” her dad laughed.  “I wish I could say I was sorry about that, but I’ll be good.  I’ll be good.”

“I’m going to get ready,” Verona said.

“I don’t know how she can make that trip like she does.  Why doesn’t she live closer?”

“I don’t know,” Verona said, hurrying upstairs.

Her dad followed her up the stairs.  “It doesn’t look like you bought much.”

“I didn’t ask for much.  I didn’t even really want to go shopping, but she offered and we were out there anyway.”

“I’m glad she’s got the time and money to spare, like that.  I’d be able to do stuff like that for you if we had equal custody.”

“Uh huh,” Verona said.  She dropped the bags off in her room, then stepped into the bathroom.  She rinsed her face, then dried it.

“Is she dating?”

“I asked at dinner.  She said she’d let me know if she was with someone for more than eight months, and she’d give me plenty of advance warning before she introduced us.”

Her dad’s stuff sprawled across the counter, along with a bunch of tiny face hairs that had fallen free of the trimmer or razor, but a lot of her stuff was dropped off in a basket.  She went digging, and found some of her makeup.  She covered up the red spot on her face, and found two more at her hairline, using concealer.

“I’m glad she’s got the time, energy, and money to break into the dating world.”

Verona didn’t want to go crazy with the makeup, only to take the shine out of her face, and cover up any errant pimples.  She’d taken care of her eyebrows this morning in anticipation of the very underwhelming graduation thing.  She skipped the more complex steps with primer, foundation, more foundation, bronzer, and all of that, and made sure the concealer was evenly blended in before applying some eye makeup in steps.  Gel eye crayon in dark gray, then a light purple gel eye crayon, blended out a bit, followed by some purple eyeshadow.

Her dad leaned into the doorway, arms folded.  She tried to ignore him.

“Where did you learn how to do that?”

“It’s all online.”

“I guess your mom wouldn’t be in a position to teach you,” he said.

She drew in a breath, ready to say something to him, and before she could, he threw up his hands.

“I’ll be good, I’m being good.  Everything considered, I’m being really good here!” he said, as he walked away.

She finished her eyes, then fixed up her hair, combing it with more care than she usually did, before applying some product.

“Where are you off to?” he called out from his bedroom.

“A thing,” she said.

“I need more details than that!”

“It’s a group thing, with most people in class.  There’ll be older people there to help watch over things.  I’m expecting it to be a bit lame.”

Technically true, though the ones she was thinking about were only a few months older than her.

“Do you need a ride?” he called out.  The dark hallway was illuminated with the flickers from his TV set.

“Nah.  Going with Luce and Avery.”

“I don’t like how you get when you’ve been around them.”

She didn’t dignify that with an answer.

She applied some lip balm, to tint her lips and give them some shine.

Heading into her room, she grabbed the shirt, and brushed it free of the little bits of whatever that had been in the bag.

She pulled it on, then went through her laundry, picking out a black denim miniskirt.

She put on a belt with the miniskirt, to break up the black, then looked through the various accessories she’d bought along the way.  Lacey gloves, bangles, chokers, necklaces, and other stuff she’d thought would look good for the right occasion or mood.  Ninety percent of it was stuff she’d never ended up wearing.

On impulse, she began threading through some fine silver chain, working it through her belt loops, so it dangled a bit at the side and added some glitter to her belt-line.

She picked out a choker, and a silver medallion on a necklace, removed the leather thong, and threaded the top of the medallion through the choker, before putting it on.

“Verona,” her dad said.  “Since you think this thing will be lame, what if we went out for a daddy-daughter night?”

She rolled her eyes.  “No.”

“I was just- can I come in and talk to you face to face?”

She didn’t answer him, pretending not to have heard.

There was a knock at her door.

“No-”

But the door was already opening.

Incensed, she kicked the door, with all the force necessary to try to deal with a guy three times her size pushing it open.  It slammed closed, and pictures on the wall, inside her room and out, rattled.

“That hurt my wrist,” her dad said.

The door opened again.

“Get out!” she screamed.

“Verona-”

“Out!” she screamed, shriller.

“The neighbors-”

“Out!  Get out!  Out!”

When he backed off, she flung her door open with enough force that it hit her bookcase, making books and the various decorations and skulls and stuff fall over, shake, and knock violently.  Probably denting the wood of the bookshelf itself.  She followed him out into the hall.

“I was changing!  I said no!  You never listen to me!  I said out!  Leave!  Go into your room where you spend most nights anyway, and leave me alone so I can maybe actually enjoy my evening.”

He stared her down, glowering.

“You don’t ever really listen!  You don’t respect my space, you don’t show me real respect, you just barge in like a creep!”

“I had my back turned to your door, I wanted to make sure you heard me.  You weren’t replying.”

She glared at him, then reached over for one of the pictures mounted on the wall of the hallway, and pushed it from its hangar.  It clattered violently and made a cracking sound, but didn’t shatter.

She slammed the door behind her.

It opened a couple of seconds later.

Her dad stood on the other side, his back to her and the room.  “I have half a mind to ground you for that, and keep you from going anywhere tonight.”

“I dare you,” she said.  “Try it.  You’d regret it.”

“Or ban you from your summer camp,” he said.

She remained silent, staring him down.

“Turning around,” he said, his back still to her.  “Giving you fair warning.”

She remained where she was, glowering, as he turned around.

“Anything to say?” he asked.

“Don’t come into my room without knocking-‘

“I knocked.”

“And getting an okay,” she told him.

“I see you don’t care if you’re grounded,” he noted.

It wasn’t that she didn’t care.  But she’d figured out the rules of the household.  Her father didn’t care to put in the effort to enforce punishments, especially if she made it mildly difficult and annoying to do it, so ‘grounding’ meant nothing.

If he tried putting something in place, she was willing to bet it would at worst make her very late.

“I like your top,” he said, in an almost derisive tone.  “Have a good night.  Clean that up before you go.”

“Fuck you and knock before you enter my room,” she said to his back, as he walked away.

He closed the door to his own room with unnecessary firmness.

A sour mood chased her, backed by that feeling that she’d had since her mom’s simple, hard-to-refute ‘no’.  The rejection.

Sandals on, her legs were shaved of fuzz; something else she’d done this morning.  Her hair was nice enough, her makeup was done, and she liked her clothes.

She considered for a while before deciding to bring her bag.  It meant she had her practitioner stuff with her, in case of emergency, and she just felt better having more stuff with her.

To justify bringing it, she headed downstairs, leaving the picture frame on the ground.  In the kitchen, she dragged a stool over to the fridge, and accessed the cupboard above the fridge.  She grabbed a 1.75 liter bottle of rum.

Her bag was heavy at her back as she headed out.

She crossed the bridge, dallying until her phone rang.  Then she walked over to the address Lucy gave her.

Lucy wore a red dress covered in sequins.  It was slinky in a similar way to the one dress Verona had considered, but the heavy sequins on the front half blurred the lines and hid the wrinkles in a way the other dress hadn’t.  The back half didn’t seem to have any sequins.  Her hair was down and she had gold hoops in her ears.  A bit of gold lined her upper eyelid.

Avery wore a mint green button-up shirt, top few buttons undone, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows.  She also had black pants and shiny black loafers, which was a break in her usual style from running shoes, and her hair was combed over to one side.  She had some eyeliner on.

“You guys look fantastic.  I love the look, Avery.”

“I thought I’d try something bolder.”

“It works so well.  I know you know you look great, Luce.”

“You look great too, Ronnie,” Lucy told her.  “I didn’t know you could do smoky eyeshadow.”

“Everyday makeup seems like such a chore, but I’m all about the artsy side of it.”

They started walking over.  Verona’s strappy sandals extended up her calf, and weren’t the type of thing for a long walk, but it was what it was.

A truck passed by, with a bunch of seniors sitting in the back, like when they’d gone camping after their awakening.

Avery went over her experience with the Path, and the Alabaster, and her thoughts.  There was stuff they had to consider for the school, now.  Classes they might need to take into more consideration, like the Animus stuff.

“…your mom?” Lucy was asking.

“I asked if there was any way I could stay with her,” Verona said.

“Is that a possibility?” Avery asked.  “You moving?”

“No, not really,” Verona said.  “She said no.”

Lucy hugged her.

“I would’ve wanted her to move here, to be closer, anyway.  I don’t think that’s doable.”

“I’m sorry,” Lucy said.

“What’s our feeling?” Avery asked, “on if that happens?  I brought it up briefly during the awakening ritual, but…”

“I don’t think we should actively seek it out,” Lucy said.  “At the very least, we should try to wrap up the case.”

“It would be messy,” Avery said.  “Maintaining our duties, staying connected with the practitioner stuff…”

The conversation trailed off, and they had to shut up as they got to the base of the ski hill.  Too many students were gathered, ranging in age from thirteen to eighteen, for a discreet conversation.

“F.Y.I.,” a senior guy called out.  “Someone snitched, so parents are going to be swinging by.  If you can’t hide your drinks when the warning comes in, you’d sure as fuck better not have any!  Keep them outdoors so the cabins don’t smell like booze!”

There were some groans and sounds of protest.

“No smoking, vaping, or toking inside either!  We’ll be keeping an eye out, and we’ll thoroughly kick your asses if we catch you.  We’re the ones to be afraid of, not the parents!”

Verona raised her eyebrows.

“Campfires in designated areas only!” the guy’s companion shouted.

They were partway up the hill when they heard him repeat the message.  “F.Y.I.!”

“We have to be careful not to get drunk,” Lucy said.  “I don’t think the ‘we were drunk’ excuse would protect us from being Forsworn or Gainsaid.  I think that’s the term?”

“I think that’s only if someone calls you out on a minor lie,” Verona said.

“Whichever it is, we can’t afford it,” Avery said.  “It makes it too easy to lie.”

They were in agreement.

“Drugs too,” Lucy said.  “Booker was telling me there’s sketchy guys from the bad side of downtown who’ll lace joints with whatever, and they’ll pop up on nights like this.  I don’t know if he was trying to keep me on the straight and narrow or if he was telling the truth, but…”

“No plans for any of that,” Verona said.

“Same,” Avery said.

Bit of a bummer, to say such an absolute ‘no’ to new experiences, but the idea of being drunk felt so dull to Verona.

Maybe if she’d never gotten into the practice.  It was a way to escape, kind of?  A really crummy, awful way, but a way.

The cabin had a fire out front, and it looked like most people were gathered outside, due to a lack of space inside.  There were a lot of familiar faces, and Verona could make some guesses about major families, but not all that many were faces she could name.

With the talk of the Seniors having one cabin and the freshmen having another, Verona had imagined it would be segregated.  As it was, the lines seemed blurrier, and there were people gathered all over the hill.  Campfires, fires inside barrels, the lights of the cabin and what looked like a thousand torches on sticks dotted the hillside with points of orange.  Some of the torches were the fat citronella candles, lemon scented candles that would work with the smoke of campfires to keep mosquitoes, blackflies, and deerflies at bay.

There was music playing here and there, and Verona was glad they were spaced out enough that there wasn’t too much overlap where multiple pieces of music were competing.

It was kind of like the graduation thing, where two out of every three people were dressed up, and one out of three were dressed like it was an ordinary day.  A couple in that last third were dressed even more relaxed or slobby than they would for school.  An older teen with a wispy mustache with rumpled clothing who looked like he could stab someone without flinching.  A girl wearing a swimsuit top and sweatpants.

Verona saw George, shirt off, his arm around Hailey.  They walked by Sharon, Hailey giggling and saying something to Sharon in passing, though she couldn’t stop because George was taking the lead.

And Sharon looked really upset, in the wake of that little scene.  Like she’d cry.  Her friends flocked to her to console her.

Sharon liked George, it seemed.  That was going to be a whole thing.  The girls in their class had been pretty ruthless with the voting; only a few guys had gotten any votes at all, and it had mostly been George, Amadeus, Brayden and Xavier.  One second-choice vote for Logan, but Logan could have shared a common ancestor with Gashwad, as far as Verona was concerned.

Which meant there was a ton of competition for those guys, and it looked an awful lot like Hailey had made an early claim to George.

This would, even if the people were a hassle, the music vaguely annoying, and everything else, be dramatic enough to watch as an outsider.

She looked out for the boys she was more interested in, and saw Wallace around.  Hair so blond it was almost white, with that raglan top with the silver print on it, and skinny jeans.  He’d done good.  Guys had a low bar to meet, and he’d easily cleared it.

She had to look for a minute before she spotted Jeremy sitting by the fire with Justin, talking.  Noah and Ian were sitting on the next bench over.  It was nice to see they weren’t getting shit, even though they were sitting so close together it might as well have been PDA.

Jeremy had cleared the bar too.  He had a short-sleeved button up shirt with white buttons that stood out in the gloom, his hair styled.

“We watch each other’s backs, okay?” Lucy asked.  “Even with the minor stuff, like sniping comments and whatever.”

Verona and Avery nodded.

It felt like Lucy had said that more to Avery.

Verona couldn’t shake the feeling that she was the odd one out.  That those two had a bond, because they’d both wrestled with discrimination.  The way they were dressed, that they’d picked their outfits together, it felt like they were egging each other on with being bold and unabashedly them.

Verona could wish them the best and do her best to understand, but she wouldn’t ever really get it.  She felt like there was a gulf between them, and the things that she dealt with that were uncomfortable and nasty were things that pushed her further away from everyone, including her friends.  Her dad.  Her complicated feelings about her mom, who didn’t seem to have any real feelings toward her at all, in return.  Not when it counted, like when she’d asked to move in.

Some music came on, vaguely familiar, and kids across the hillside cheered.  Even Lucy clapped her hands.

Someone turned it up, and the music drowned out nearly everything.

Verona’s stolen bottle of rum had bought her and her friends access to the cabin.  She sat in the screened in porch, looking out at the drama unfolding.

Melissa was also in the screened in area, her ruined ankle still in the plastic boot, which she’d propped up on a storage box.  She held a beer but didn’t really drink it.  Her friends weren’t around.

“I like the music,” Jeremy said.  He sat across from Verona, and his legs were outstretched.  With how narrow the patio was, intended more for use as a mudroom than anything else, and with Verona’s one leg outstretched, their feet passed one another.  Verona could have flicked her foot to the right and tapped his shin, and vice versa.

“Are you talking to me?” Melissa asked.

“Talking to whoever,” Jeremy said.  He glanced at Verona.

“It’s okay,” Melissa said.  “I’ve heard it a lot.”

“Truth or dare?” Xavier asked, in the next room.

“Dare,” a girl answered.

“Finally!  We need a good dare.  Brainstorm sesh!”

“Mayo challenge!  Gulp a big spoonful!”

“Run around the cabin naked!”

“No,” someone said.  There were boos.

“I’ve got one!” Verona called out, leaning over to see through the door into the cabin.

“Let’s hear it!”

“Name the best dressed person in the room!” Verona called out.

“That’s a truth, and not even a good one!”

“It’s a two parter!”

There were murmurs.  Verona couldn’t see who got pointed to.

“Okay, and?” Xavier asked.

“And exchange outfits with them!  You have one minute!”

There was some debate, laughter, and noise from the other room.  Protests.

“In private!” Verona called out.

“Or punishment game!” someone called out.

“Sixty, fifty nine…” Xavier said.

Then Kyleigh and Amadeus made a mad scramble for the cabin’s washroom.  The door slammed.

Whoops.  Verona had not expected a boy-girl pairing.  Especially not an incendiary one.

“Who was it?” Jeremy asked.  He was beside the door but hadn’t twisted around enough to see.

“Ky and Amadeus.”

His eyebrows went up.

“Oh my god,” Melissa said.  “You don’t know the barrel of worms you just opened up.”

“I have some idea,” Verona said.  “In my defense, I didn’t intend it.”

Verona turned the other way to look outside into the gloom.  George and Hailey were off in the trees.  They’d smoked something and were now hanging out in the dark of the woods.  Sharon was upset enough and her friends upset enough on her behalf that Hailey might not have any friends in the Dancers when school started up enough in the fall.

There was other stuff, ranging from the wild to the tame.  Adam and Caroline were sitting on a bench by the fire, looking very cozy.  Andre was rolling on the ground, hollering, while his friends jeered.  He’d done something as a prank or to hurt himself, and it was apparently hilarious to those guys.

Someone’s older sister was getting on another group’s case about leaving beer bottles lying around.  Trying to wrangle cats, as far as Verona was concerned.

There were cheers as Amadeus exited the bathroom, wearing Kyleigh’s dress.  Kyleigh, behind him, stepped out from behind the shower curtain in the bathroom, and came through wearing his shirt and slacks.  They did a bow.

Verona clapped, and Jeremy joined her.

“Did they win?” Melissa asked.  She was at the end of the porch furthest from the door into the cabin.

“You could move inside,” Verona said.

“It’s like an oven in there, and noisy, and people keep walking into my leg.”

“I’m on your wavelength, Mel,” Verona said.  She was avoiding the ‘crowd’, for many of the same reasons.

“They won,” Jeremy clarified, for Melissa’s benefit.  He kept his head turned Melissa’s way, rather than look at Verona.

“Too bad,” Melissa muttered.  “Kyleigh can go suck a power drill.  While it’s turned on.”

“Woah,” Verona said.

“Fuck her.  She was the first one to stop talking to me.”

“Sucks,” Jeremy told Melissa.

“I would’ve liked to see what they came up with for the punishment game,” Melissa said.

“I’m morbidly curious,” Verona said.

“Me too,” Jeremy added.  He was avoiding looking at Verona, and as a consequence, he was looking past her and through the screened portion of the porch, or over at Melissa.

Weird, but she wasn’t about to make a big deal of it.  If he liked Melissa better, she’d cheer him on.

Being avoided kind of sucked though.  Especially after her mom had rejected her earlier.

Lucy stepped into the doorway.  “Keeping an eye on Avery?”

“Some.  She seems okay,” Verona said, twisting around to look behind her and out past the screen to the fires.  Avery was sitting by the fire, surrounded by boys.  She seemed to be in pretty good spirits.

“And-” Lucy started.  She glanced behind her, then approached Verona.

“What?  What’s wrong?” Verona asked.

Lucy bent down, then pressed on Verona’s knee, pushing it down flat to the ground, next to the other one.

“Uhh?”

“You’re flashing your underwear,” Lucy told her.

“Oh,” Verona said.  Denim skirts.  “Whoops.”

Lucy seemed more embarrassed about it than Verona felt.

Verona and Lucy looked at Jeremy at the same time.

He kept his head turned Melissa’s way.

“Were you perving on my friend?”

“No.  I was try- I was being a gentleman.”

“Were you?” Lucy asked.  “Really?”

“It’s fine,” Verona said.  “I trust him.”

Lucy gave Jeremy a look.  He was a bit flushed, as far as Verona could tell.

“Can you keep an eye out for Avery?” Lucy asked.  “She was pretty unsure about coming, and I don’t want her feeling lonely.”

“She’s talking about hockey with the boys, I think.  Why?”

“Booker’s rule.”

“What’s Booker’s rule?” Verona asked.

“Yeah,” Jeremy said, looking up at Lucy, who stood over him.

“My big brother said my rule for the party should be ‘yes’.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, I’ll participate.  Yes, I’ll take the risk.  No only for the sketchy drugs and overdrinking, and anything with boys that’s uncomfortable.  So I’m doing the spin the bottle thing in a bit.  I would’ve done truth or dare, but it was a smaller group.”

“Ooh.  It’s going to get even hotter in there,” Verona told Melissa.

“Fucking yay.”

“I’ll give you a hand if you want to come in,” Lucy told Melissa.

Melissa shook her head.

“It might be even more important that you say ‘yes’ when you can,” Lucy told Melissa.

“It might be super important you stop sticking your nose in my business,” Melissa replied.

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “Alright.”

A breeze swept through, and Verona closed her eyes.  “Good luck, Luce.”

“I’m not sure how luck comes into it.  I guess if there was a boy I was super interested in.”

Lucy wandered into the next room, like it was an absent thought.

Verona leaned to the left to get a glimpse of more of the room, then corrected.  She checked on Avery.

“Sorry.  For not saying anything,” Jeremy said.

“I really don’t care that much.  Not if it’s you.  I meant it when I said I trusted you,” Verona said, still watching Avery.  She bonked his shin with the side of her sandal a few times.  “You’ve been cool so far.”

“Gag me,” Melissa said.

The mood had changed around her friend.  She wondered what had happened.  Practice?  Reality?

“I found that cat again,” he said.  “I’ve tracked down her hiding places.”

Verona beamed.

“Cat?” Melissa asked.

“I’ll show you sometime,” he told Verona, before turning to Melissa.  “We found a stray.”

“Cats are the best, they’re so amazing,” Melissa said, in a tone like she was describing a dog dying at the end of a book in a class presentation she really didn’t want to give.

“I don’t know if we found it so much as you found it and I showed up randomly,” Verona said.

Avery was getting up from the bench.  She stretched and began walking over to the cabin.

The boys who were jeering over something were laughing again.  Another guy was lying on the ground.

“It’s so cool how you look after each other,” Jeremy said.  “I don’t think I get that with any of my friends.  We talk about video games and movies.  I found out Xavier’s parents are going through a separation and divorce thing a year after it started.”

“Kinda have to, sometimes,” Verona said.  “Looking after each other, rescuing each other.”

“Way to fucking rub it in,” Melissa said.

“Oh,” Verona said.  “Didn’t mean to.”

“Fuck off.”

Verona sighed.

Avery reached the door, and let herself in.

“Everything okay?” Verona asked.

Avery peeked into the cabin through the open door, and looked surprised.  People were cheering.

Verona leaned over to get a better look.

Lucy was leaning across the ring of people, kissing Wallace.  It looked like a pretty boring, chaste kiss.

She saw Verona looking as she broke the kiss.  She made a quick hand gesture, like a prayer.

Verona waved her off, and gave her a thumbs up.

Kind of a bummer, seeing it, when she’d voted for Wallace and they were neighbors, but Lucy was about a thousand times more important to her than the entirety of boydom was.

“You didn’t answer the question,” Verona said.  “Everything okay?”

“I just turned down a whole bunch of interested boys, I guess.”

“Really?”

“I thought it was cool we could talk hockey, but it seems like a lot of people think tonight is about finding a girlfriend for the summer.  Or a boyfriend for the summer.”

“Horny morons,” Melissa said.

Avery’s expression fell.  There was jeering and noise in the other room.

“No, no, save me!”

Logan, it sounded like.  Verona leaned over, then leaned over more, because Jeremy was also peeking through the door, his head blocking her view.

It looked like Logan had spun, and gotten Pam, or Pam had spun and gotten Logan.

“I got the joker!”

“I’m going to go,” Pam said.

“Don’t,” Lucy said, stern.  “The one who should go is Logan.”

“Why?  No.”

“You’re being an asshole and bringing down the mood.”

“Who’s bringing down the mood?  You’re the class bitch?”

“Who’s a bitch?” Lucy asked.  “You apparently don’t have the balls to kiss a girl the first time your turn comes up and you’re being shitty because of it.”

“I’d kiss any other girl.”

“She did better in the class ranking than you did, you douche.  You’re really not all that.”

“And both of us did better than you, so who’s all that, huh?  Shut up.”

Yeah.  You know why she did good?  She’s cool, and nice, and pretty, and sweet.  And you’re an ass.  I’m okay being class bitch if it means I can call you out.  So I’m going to ask… does any girl sitting here really want Logan in the circle, with how he’s acting?”

Come on, come on, Verona thought. She pressed her hands together.

Verona couldn’t clearly see or hear all of the responses, and a bunch were nonverbal.

But Logan stood up, and said, “Fuck off.”

And he stomped his way out of the cabin, past Jeremy, Avery, and Verona, and out the door, over toward the fire.  Toward the guys who were pulling stupid stunts.

“I hope he’s next,” Avery said.

“What are they even doing?” Verona asked.

“They’re playing Whack-ass.”

“Oh no,” Jeremy said.

“I don’t know what that is.  Spanking?”

“Nah.  You know that Freezy-Heat stuff that you put on sore muscles, that alternates between really cold and really hot?  Andre put it on his nipples, and on sensitive skin it apparently burns like actual fire, and feels like ice.  So the next guy has to one-up them by doing something more extreme.  Justin filled his hand with it and then slapped himself in the nards.  Now the next guy has to top it or they’re everyone else’s slave for the rest of the night,” Avery explained.

Avery looked back at the cabin, and her expression softened.

Verona looked.  Amadeus was kissing Pam.

Hopefully that made up for the shittiness from Logan.

“People are dumb,” Jeremy said.

“And cripples need to pee sometimes,” Melissa said.  “Can someone help me over?”

Jeremy got to his feet, then began helping Melissa, except Jeremy was kinda scrawny, and Melissa outweighed him.  Avery stepped forward at the same time Verona stood, and then Avery allowed Verona to go forward, because there wasn’t much room and Verona was closer.

Verona took one of Melissa’s arms, and Jeremy took the other.

“Watch my bag?” Verona asked Avery.

“Right.”

The kissing game continued as Jeremy and Verona helped Melissa get over to the cabin bathroom.  They got her to the toilet, then retreated, guarding the door.

The bottle got a few more spins.  Brooklynn kissed Brayden.  Byron kissed Pam.

Verona wanted to slap every parent upside the head for the unimaginative names.  Their class had a Brayden, Byron, Bryson, and a Bryan.  Brooklynn too, but that was borderline.

Mia spun and kissed Amadeus.

Verona could sense the change in the room’s temperature on that last one.  The most popular girl in class kissing one of the most popular boys.

Verona betted there were a lot of hearts silently creaking and breaking in agony.

Wallace gave the bottle a spin.

It pointed to Lucy.

“Are you cheating, Luce?” Verona asked, hands on her hips.

“How do you cheat at spin the bottle?” Lucy asked, affronted.

Wallace rose to hands and knees, or hand and knees, since his one arm was in a brace.

“Second kiss, double the kiss length,” Brooklynn said.

“I wasn’t aware that was a rule,” Lucy said.

“It is now.”

“Yeah?” Lucy asked Wallace.

“Yeah, if it means not having to hold this position for another minute.  I’ll mess up my other elbow if I’m not careful.”

Lucy put a hand on Wallace’s shoulder, and got him to sit back on his heels instead of straining forward, then knelt in front of him and kissed him.

There were cheers.

The bathroom door opened, and Avery and Verona went to Melissa.  They helped her hobble her way back toward the porch.

“You in, Avery?” Brayden asked, painfully hopeful.

“Uhhh… no, I don’t think.”

“You sure?” Brooklynn asked her.

“Don’t pressure her,” Mia said.  “Pressure’s a sure way to make this into a feel-bad thing.  It’s meant to be fun.”

“It’s cool,” Avery said.  “I’m sure.  I like girls.  Just told a bunch of guys at the campfire, so you’ll hear about it sooner or later.”

She looked so calm and cool about it.  Verona smiled, while simultaneously hoping this didn’t get bad.

“I knew it,” Brooklynn muttered.  “You’re the lesbian.”

“Don’t be shitty about it,” Lucy said.  “Who’s next spin?”

“If you wanted to join in,” Mia ventured, making a bit of a face.

“I only want to kiss girls who want to kiss.  It’d be selfish.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” Brayden said.

Lucy beat Mia to slapping him across the back of the head.

“I don’t want to do it for other people’s benefit either,” Avery said, as she resumed helping Melissa into the porch.  She muttered, “Made that mistake once.”

“Yeah,” Verona said.

“What does that mean?” Melissa asked.  “I’m confused.”

“None of your beeswax,” Verona said.  “You sure you want to sit alone on the porch at the party?”

“No, but where else am I going to go?”

“Anywhere else?” Avery asked, in a tone like she was trying to be light, cheery, and hopeful.

“No,” Melissa said.  She wormed her way out of their grip, grabbed the windowsill from the cabin window that looked out onto the porch, and hobbled her way back to her chair.  She collapsed into it, thunked her boot down with a wince, and reclaimed her beer.  “I’ll sit here.”

Verona had a pretty low tolerance for self pity, and Melissa had more than breached it.

She took her bag back from Avery.

“Man, I hope there’s some eligible girls in our summer thing,” Avery said.

“I really, really hope so too,” Verona said.  “You okay?  Want to bail?”

“I’m… not not okay,” Avery answered.  “Feeling brave, at least.  Glad I came.  I think if I came back to school in September and didn’t see what I’ve already seen happening tonight, I’d be lost.”

“I think it’ll still be confusing if we keep our eyes open all night,” Verona said.

Half the kids were sitting, on the wicker couch, on cushions pulled down from the couch, on armchairs, and on tables that had been dragged out of the way to clear the floor.  Others sat.

Jeremy had taken a wicker armchair.  As Verona approached, he made to get up.  She made him stay down, then sat on the chair’s arm, beside him, crossing one leg over the other, then undoing it and shifting position so she sat sideways, instead.  She didn’t know how other women did that so comfortably.  She leaned over.  “Don’t stand up too fast if you get one of the cute girls, or the chair might tip over.”

“I’ll be careful,” he said.

Brayden gave the bottle a spin.  He gave Caroline the lamest peck on the lips…

“Who are you hoping for?” Verona whispered to Jeremy.  “Mia?”

He was silent.

“Caroline?” she murmured.  “Pam?”

He didn’t answer, but after a second, he leaned over a fraction, his arm pressing into her leg.

Verona stood.

“Sorry, if-” he said.

“Come,” she said, taking his hand.

“What?” he asked.

“Come on,” she said.

Some people noticed.  Mia cooed.

Off in the distance, a bottle audibly broke.  Some people booed and jeered.  One of the people who was trying to keep the situation manageable, maybe Emerson, started shouting at them to clean it up.

In the porch, Melissa was staring out into the candlelit and firelit dark.  As Verona opened one of the storage containers on the porch to drop her bag inside, Melissa didn’t move a muscle.

She slipped out and down the stairs, pulling Jeremy after her.  They went around the side of the cabin, to where the driveway ended and a nook had formed where the truck, a shack, and the side of the cabin all met.

It was dark.

“You wanted to kiss me?  Just making sure?” Verona asked.

“I, uh… yeah.  Sorry if I made it weird.”

She shook her head, taking his hands in her own, and walking backwards into the corner.  There was a spiderweb there, but it didn’t really bother her.  She drew him closer, tugging, then stood up on her toes.

She paused, leaning into him, her lips a short distance from his.

“No strings attached, no hassle, just a nice moment, like at spin the bottle.  but without an audience,” she whispered.

He nodded.

He, she was glad, didn’t do that stupid peck thing that half the people were doing while playing spin the bottle.  He didn’t just pucker and consider the job done, but moved his lips.  It took her a second to get the angle right, especially because he was a bit taller and she was shorter, a second to get the rhythm right, because they were both trying to kiss the other and not always in sync.

And then they kind of worked it out, and it was nice.  His lips were cooler to the touch than she’d expected, but not in a crazy way.  It might have been due to a lower natural body temperature.  Or him being terrified.  She could feel his hands in hers, and the way they moved made her believe there was some agitation.  She could feel his heartbeat pound and hers wasn’t exactly still either.

This was nice.  Dark atmosphere, comfortable temperature, the distant, muffled music.  The landscape, if she looked past him.

She broke the kiss.

Nice.  She could stand to do that again.

“That was electric,” he whispered.

She blinked once or twice.  Was it?

“Again?” she asked him.

This time, instead of making her stand on tiptoes, he bent down.

She didn’t feel the electricity.  She could taste him and the toothpaste or gum he’d had recently.  She could smell him and she wasn’t sure if it was a spray, hair thing, or deodorant, but the smell of him was maybe her second favorite part of being this close to him.  Her entire body felt a bit warm.

If there was a no-frills, no-hassle way to just lie next to him all night every night to stretch out a moment like this, she’d be on top of it.  But that was a stupid, lost-in-the-moment kind of thinking.

No electricity, though.

Bummer.

He broke the kiss.

“French kiss?  I want to try it,” she said.

They tried it.  It… wasn’t nice.  It was weird in a kind of fun, lots-of-saliva way, but there was either something that they hadn’t figured out about how to do it, or it was way overhyped.  It wasn’t like the movies, either, where they had to open their jaws wide to get the area to work with.

“Not so electric,” Jeremy said.

Verona laughed.  “It wasn’t just me, then.”

He smiled.

His hands brushed at her shoulders, then down her arms.  She was a bit startled.

“Sorry.  I didn’t think.  Mosquitoes are gathering on you,” he told her.

“Ohh.  Thank you.  You don’t have to keep saying sorry, you know.  It’s okay.  You don’t have to be that much of a gentleman.”

He looked away, thinking back to the earlier moment.

She still held his hand.  She moved it to her stomach, then up a bit, to the bottom of her shirt, so it was just beneath the fabric.  “We can do other stuff.”

He took his hand away.  “That’s moving a little fast for me.”

“Bummer.  Okay.”

He whisked the sides of his hand along her shoulders, to get rid of the gathering bugs.  A little more chaste than before.  “What are you doing this summer?”

“No strings attached,” she said.

“I don’t know exactly what that means.”

He said that now?

“That it doesn’t lead to anything,” she told him.

“But… I think you’re neat.”

“Yeah, and I think you’re neat.  But… no boyfriend-girlfriend thing, at least for a while, I think.”

“Because of your parents?”

Yes, but not like he meant.

“I think I’d be a bad girlfriend, and it’d just end in hurt feelings.”

“‘Cause I think, like… the best way this could go,” Jeremy said, “is we start out as friends and stay friends.  That time a while back where we hung out with the cat?  That was nice.”

“Yeah.”

“So like… can’t we make every day like that?  Or most days?  Hanging out, doing nice things.  Sharing snacks?  Having fun, talking?  I like talking to you.”

“I like talking to you.  A lot of that sounds good.”

“Then why?”

“Because… my parents suck.  It’s not because they’d say no to me dating, but it’s like almost everyone else is starting from zero and I’m starting at minus fifty.  I can get super tired super fast of even being around people I like, like Lucy and Ave.  I get awful.  I see a movie where there’s romantic crap and I try to think about what I’d do, and if I’m not careful, my first instinct is to act like my dad would, or like my mom would.”

“I’m willing to figure it out with you.”

“I’m not,” she mumbled.  “I’m sorry.  I’d just stress that if I got tired and let my guard down, I’d turn into my dad or my mom and I don’t want to do that.  For me or for you.”

He sighed.

Again, he brushed at the flies.

“Thank you,” she mumbled.

“Want to go inside?”

“Could we do the no-strings thing?” she asked.  “No obligations, just messing around?  Electric, like you said?  Not-so-gentlemanly?  You can decide the pace?”

“I… I might lose my testosterone license for saying this-”

She shook her head.

“-but I think I like you too much.  I’d just spend the whole time hating not being able to do everything else.”

“Then let’s go inside,” she said.  Her leg twinged.  “I think deerflies or something’s getting me.”

“Cool,” he said.  “Still friends?”

“I’m going away for most of the summer, might drop in now and then.  So a bit of a break, probably, and then we can pick up as friends.  Sure,” Verona said.

“Alright,” he said.  He rounded the corner, then stopped.

Verona leaned around to see.  It was Avery, standing by.

“What’s up?” Verona asked.

“Watching out,” Avery said.  “Sounds like it’s all good.”

“It’s a bummer,” Verona said.  “But we’re cool right?”

“Yeah, exactly,” Jeremy told her.  “We’re cool.”

He went up the stairs and headed into the cabin.

Off in the distance, kids were hollering.  There was also a distant sound of an ATV, from up the hill.  The older teens.

Verona winced, hearing that.

With the way the Carmine Beast had died, trouble was on the rise.  If kids died in a stupid riding accident, there’d probably be a nasty ghost hanging around after.

With Jeremy inside, Verona stood by Avery.

“Sorry, if that was weird.  I just wanted to make sure you were okay, didn’t know if you drank,” Avery said.

“Nah,” Verona said.

“Birds of a feather, huh?” Avery said.

“Maybe.  A bit flipped around.  If Jeremy was a Jereminah, and wanted all the same things from you, you’d love that.”

“He’s a bit dorky for me, but… yeah.  And Jereminah?”

“You know what I mean.”

They headed up to the porch.

There were cheers.

Lucy had gotten Wallace again.  It sounded like it was the third time.

“In the closet!  Five minutes!” Brooklynn said.

“I think that’s a bit much,” Lucy said.

Verona and Avery hovered at the door, and Verona was pretty sure they were trying to mutually decide if Lucy needed rescuing.

Melissa had bailed, it seemed.  Verona hadn’t seen or heard her go.

With a bit of a bad feeling, Verona went to the storage thing, that served as a kind of end table for the patio furniture, with a lid that opened to store stuff inside.

Her bag was gone.

“Emergency,” she said, eyes wide.  “Probably emergency.  My bag’s gone.”

“Do we need Lucy?”

Verona nodded.

Avery ducked into the room, leaned in close to whisper something to Lucy, and the two of them came out to the porch.  The rest of the group booed and jeered.

“What happened?” Lucy asked.

“I stowed my bag for a second while I was hanging with Jeremy.  It’s gone.”

“How much practice stuff was in there?”

“A bunch.”

Leaving a Mark – 4.3

Lucy

Lucy turned on her Sight again, searching the porch area.  Nothing.

She looked back through the door and into the cabin, and saw the others.  Wallace, Amadeus, Mia, the donkeys, Jeremy, Brooklynn…

“Don’t run away, Lucy!” Brooklynn called out.  “You’re going to make Wallace feel bad!”

“Nah,” Wallace said.

Nah.  About five negative interpretations of that utterance ran through Lucy’s head, and she hated herself for every one of them.  The moment had been so nice.

“What’s going on?” Jeremy asked, from the other room.

Lucy held up a finger, getting them to wait.

“What was in the bag?” Avery leaned in to ask.

Verona shook her head.  She tried to put her hands in her pockets but the black denim miniskirt she was wearing didn’t have any, so she kind of flopped her arms instead.  She murmured her response, “Spell stuff, spellbook, cards, um, ugly stick, cold tears, the second cassette player we bought.  Some goblin tricks.  My wallet.  Printouts from the BHI stuff.”

“Oh no,” Lucy said.

“Yeah,” Verona said, her eyes widening.  “Frig, it’s awful.”

“We should follow the trail before it gets cold,” Avery said.

“Can you?” Lucy asked.

“Such a dumb move by me,” Verona said.  “What was I thinking?  All that stuff.”

“I can try,” Avery said.

“Lucy!” Mia called out.

“What?” Lucy called back, wheeling on the room.

“Chickening out?” Mia raised her voice.

“No.  There’s an emergency.  You guys can pick out a punishment game or whatever for me to do another time.  But my friend needs help.”

“Did she drink too much?” Wallace asked.

“No.  Nothing like that, don’t worry about it.  Have fun.”

“Frig and fuck,” Verona muttered.

Lucy steered her toward the door that led outside, and down the steep wooden steps to the front of the cabin.

“Give me a sec,” Avery said.  She looked around, then grabbed Verona by the shoulders, and moved her a foot to the left.  Then she pulled off a charm from her bracelet.

“Good call,” Lucy said.  She reached up to her neck, pulled the necklace with the various keys and things on it, and opened a locket.

“What’s this?” Verona asked.

“We did some prep.  I had to convince Avery to wear nicer shoes than the grass-stained running shoes, but she wanted to bring her shoes.”

Avery tossed the charm down.  As it bounced up, it rebounded into the shape of shoes.  She quickly pulled off the loafers and pulled them on, sockless.

Lucy did the same with her sneakers, but she’d used paper instead of charms, illustrating the sneakers in her own shitty style.

Verona blocked the view from the group at the nearest campfire.

“I can’t see a trail or a tether or anything,” Avery said.

“Did you see Melissa leave?” Lucy asked.

“Yeah.  Remember when George and Hailey poked their heads in to ask about that weird event?  Could that be a practice thing?” Avery asked.

“Weird event?” Verona asked.

“Not a practice thing,” Lucy clarified.  “That was them asking for booze and stuff because a bunch of kids are going to sneak off and get drunk and high, and they’ve got plans to avoid the parents tomorrow, apparently.  Mia is super unimpressed with Hailey right now, so she didn’t go.  One of the Brays and Pam did.”

“And Melissa left then?” Verona asked.

“Had to.  But any of those other guys could’ve checked around for something to take,” Avery said.  “I was keeping an ear out for Verona, to make sure everything was okay.”

“What’s going on?”

They turned.  Jeremy was at the screen door at the top of the stairs.  He hadn’t been there when they’d been getting their shoes out.

“It’s not-” Lucy started.

“My bag got taken.  It has stuff I might need for going away this summer.  And my wallet,” Verona said.

“Want help?”

“Please,” Verona said.

“What are you doing?” Lucy asked her.

“We can cover more bases like this,” Verona said.

She looked spooked.

Lucy felt a twinge of irritation, that Verona only seemed to care when it was her practice stuff that was threatened.

Jeremy came down the stairs two at a time.  There were guys who Lucy could say were weirdly put together, proportion wise, but they’d probably grow into it and fill out, and there were guys like Jeremy, who would probably always be a bit odd.  Like he was an awkward, gawky teenager with a bit of a slouch and an Adams apple that stuck out, and he’d be a knobby-jointed old man with a stoop, and the rest of his life would be a journey between the two.

He cleaned up okay, though.  Hair super short on the sides and back and swooping back with gel on top, button up top.

“So we need to ask around, about where Melissa, George, Pam, and Hailey went.  Assuming they didn’t split up,” Lucy said.

“Okay,” Jeremy said.

“How far could Melissa have gotten?” Verona asked.  “She’s on crutches.”

“I don’t know,” Lucy said, picking up the pace as she walked, her shoes in one hand.  She headed toward the campfire.  “Did anyone see where George, Hailey, Pam or Melissa went?”

“Who’s Pam?” a guy from another class asked.

“Anyone?” Lucy asked.

The people she knew would recognize them, like Andre, were shaking their heads.

“Do you know who they were hanging with or talking with?  I think they were going somewhere.”

Again, those people shook their heads.

She glanced back, then around.  Verona was wearing a nearly-black top with black skirt, so she was hard to pick out of the gloom, amid other pale faces and arms and legs.  Avery was easier to see.  It looked like Verona was talking to some of the people off to the side, while Avery was talking to some older kids who were hanging around to keep an eye on things.  A little ways away, Jeremy was talking to some of the other guys from class.

They reconvened.

“Nothing at the campfire,” Lucy said.

“Some of the older kids said a girl with crutches and a plastic boot on her foot got on one of the ATVs,” Avery said.  “They’re getting rides partway up the hill.”

“Let’s head up that way, then,” Lucy said.

Lucy kept her Sight on, because the ugly stick that Verona had gotten from Toadswallow and later gotten to keep was festooned with blades, and other stuff was stained to Lucy’s sight.  She held her nicer shoes in one hand and the beaded chain with the dog tag, ring, and some other stuff wrapped around the other hand, as a just-in-case.

They didn’t have the hot lead, which meant drawing her weapon with the ring would cost her.

With the Sight on, she could see the drama, the watercolor stain spreading out into the air and sometimes turning fluorescent, glowing brightly or reflecting the flames.  The darkness was deeper, and faces white.  She could see the blades impaling people.

Two guys and three girls were sitting on the side of the hill, barely any illumination around them, and the stain that spread around them was colorful, taking on vague shapes like faces.  The blades that had been digging into them before were now pulling away, drifting like they were underwater and swords could float.  They looked up at the night sky, and because they were on the hillside that wasn’t directly facing Kennet, there wasn’t a lot of light pollution to block off the view of the stars.  Even the milky way was visible high above.  Lucy had to turn off her Sight to see it, before she turned it back on.

“Talking to spirits,” Verona murmured, pointing at the same group.  Her eyes glowed purple, which radiated out into her eyeshadow.

Lucy was alarmed, hearing that.  Jeremy was with them.  She looked at Verona.

“High out of their minds, it looks like,” Verona said, like she was clarifying.

Changing into better shoes had cost them maybe a minute, but the fact that Lucy and Avery could walk doubletime was really helping.  Verona was slower, wincing.

“Do you want to split up?” Lucy asked.

“No.  I don’t want this to be a thing at all,” Verona said.  “Damn it.”

“This stuff’s important then?” Jeremy asked.

Super important,” Verona said.

“We’ll find it.  People aren’t that awful.”

There were more people on the hillside.  A boy and girl were sitting, making out so aggressively that Lucy looked away.  Was that what she and Wallace would have ended up doing?  They’d got each other on three occasions across five different spins.  She’d had to check to see if Verona or Avery was messing with her.

Just luck, it seemed like.

“Did you see George Mason?” Avery asked.  Lucy turned her head to see.  A boy from the other eighth grade class.  He shook his head.

“Hailey McKay?  Pam O’Neill?  Or Melissa Oakham, with the foot cast?”

“Nah, I’ve been at the other cabin.  My big sister pre-gamed and she was the first one to puke tonight.  I’m going to go see if the other cabins have paper towels.  Or like, anything.”

“Good luck!” Avery called out.

The guy waved back in response, without turning around to look back at her.

A group of the juniors who’d come here instead of doing the same beachside thing that they’d done last year were trying to sing to music being played from their phones.  They’d all put on the same piece of music, because they didn’t have something that could blare it out, and now they sang along, with a vibe like it was a competition to know the lyrics or something.

One of the guys pushed a girl who might have been his sister or cousin or something, jokingly.

There was distant music that was too hard to make out, only the bass and percussion sounds reaching them, and there was this music, closer, where it was too close, too sharp, the one music player that was out of sync with the others too noticeable.  The surroundings had a haze of smoke from the campfires and cigarettes, a smell of the woodsmoke, tobacco and weed.  Visually, there was light from the candles and makeshift torches, the watercolor bleeding, and the blades here and there.  Lucy tried to unfocus her eyes so she could see the glimmers of the newest blades.

It wasn’t just the present.  Lucy wasn’t sure if the half of a beer she’d had was affecting her or if she’d gotten caught up in the moment, but the feeling of being in that circle of people, the anticipation, moment to moment, the act of kissing… she’d kissed maybe the cutest boy in class.  Amadeus.  And that was… terrifying.  It was great.

She’d kissed Wallace twice and the first time had been a peck, breaking the ice.  The second time had been a real kiss, she’d taken Booker’s advice and gone for it, fully aware that if she messed up and slobbered or mashed his nose with her nose or missed his lips or whatever, some of the key people in her class were watching and judging.

They hadn’t.  They’d cheered and she had no idea how to parse that.  Because it felt so good in the moment, and it felt hollow at the same time.  Nobody had voted for her in the class ranking.  Neither of the boys she’d kissed.

“Hey Ronnie?” Lucy asked.

“Feeling like an ass,” Verona said.  “I’m kicking myself so hard.”

“Are you and Jeremy pairing up?  As a thing?”

Avery gave her the smallest of head-shakes.

Ah, crud.

“Uhh,” Jeremy said.

“No,” Verona said.  “Friends?”

“Friends, for sure,” Jeremy said.  He smiled, but it looked a little sad.  “I still need to show you the hiding spots for the kitten.”

“Verona mentioned the kitty,” Avery said.

“Are you a cat person or dog person?” Jeremy asked her.

“Dog, but… I don’t think you can hang around Verona for long without getting a bit of cat person in you.”

“Ha.”

“George?” Lucy asked some guys that were coming down the sloped path, heading the other way.  “George Mason?”

They pointed up the path.

“Was he on the ATV?  Did you see Melissa?”

“He was on the ATV.  His cousin was driving.”

“And Melissa?”

“Don’t know her!” the guy said, continuing past them and down the slope.

“We’re in the right direction, at least,” Avery said.

“Assuming it was them,” Lucy said.

“If it wasn’t, I don’t know what we’ll do,” Verona said.

“We’ll manage,” Jeremy said.  “It’ll be fine!”

“I wanted to ask,” Avery said.  “What’s the deal with Wallace’s arm?  He said his other was fragile too or something?”

“He lost the genetic lottery,” Jeremy said.  “I don’t mean that in a mean way.  He’s had to have surgery on the one elbow twice, because there’s something in how it’s put together that makes it dislocate really easy.  Same problem with his shoulder, but that’s easier to fix.  But he’s popped it in and out so many times it’s even easier to dislocate, so he’s gotta get surgery sometime in the next few years, to try to lock it in.”

“Shitty,” Avery said.

“He’s got other stuff too, right?” Verona asked.  “A nerve thing?”

“Yeah.  His mom’s got a thing that has her in a wheelchair half the time, and it looks like he’s probably going to get it.  A nervous system thing.  Passes out, gets seizures, cramps like a charlie horse except they don’t stop for hours.”

“He’s a cool guy, lives at the end of my street,” Verona said.  “It’s obvious they’re a really nice family, he loves his mom, and they do this volunteer stuff, and travel for marathons.  Wish it didn’t suck so much for him.”

Lucy looked back the way they came, searching past the trees and trying to see the light of the cabin.

“Damn,” Avery said.  “I’m out of the loop on a bunch of stuff.  I don’t know like, what everyone knows already, because you’ve been in the same classes for years, and what people don’t know, and what people have agreed not to mention or talk about.”

“I think you could ask some guys in our class and they wouldn’t have the beginnings of a clue,” Jeremy said.  “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

There were two ‘freshman’ cabins, and then the big two-hundred-plus senior cabin further up the hill, near the peak.  The cabin further down the hill apparently had milder stuff going on, and Mia had reserved it for her inner circle until people were reasonably sure the parents were clear and the bulk of the kids had gone home, after which point…

Well, Booker had said there were only a few things to do in Kennet.  Party and do drugs, or both.

The second cabin was denser, with more kids, more campfires, and more bottles, unattended and otherwise.  Most of the kids were from the other classes and Catholic school.

“Did you see George Mason around?  Would’ve been recent,” Lucy asked the first person she saw who wasn’t in a conversation.

“Why are you asking?”

“Someone might’ve accidentally grabbed a bag,” Jeremy said.

“What’s in the bag?” the guy asked.

“Does it matter?” Lucy asked.

“Is it drugs?  Booze?”

“No, I’m pretty sure it isn’t.”

“Is it a computer?  Expensive?”

“No, it’s-”

Jeremy touched her arm.

She broke away from the conversation.

“Was it a nice bag?” the guy called after her.  “Did they forget their bag?”

Being annoying.

Verona and Avery had already split off.

Music throbbed, and someone had hung Christmas lights out across the porch railing, so it gave some dull illumination to the area around them.

“George Mason?” Lucy asked a girl.  Off to the side, Jeremy asked, “Hailey McKay?  Seen them?”

“Uhhh, George went inside.”

Lucy started ducking through the crowd.  She turned and called out to Jeremy, “Tell Ronnie and Ave!”

The place was so packed it was ridiculous.  Ten people on a set of stairs that led up to the door, where there were maybe ten stairs.  Leaning against the cabin, against the railing.  A multitude of lemon-scented candles were set in these tin containers that were supposed to protect against fire, with snowflake and maple leaf patterns cut into the tin, so the lights came out in slices and patterns, flickering orange.  The Christmas lights provided multicolored illumination, and the lights from inside the cabin were bright and artificial.

Her arms and shoulders brushed against people, who made zero effort to get out of her way.  Conversation and music drowned out the sound of another ATV on the hill, and she paused only long enough to check it wasn’t any of the people they were looking for.  It looked like a trio of girls and none of them really looked like Melissa.  She was sixty percent sure.

There was one source of music playing outside, near the foot of the porch, where a bunch of people were, and inside there was… madness.  People drinking more than the one allowed beer.  There were three couches arranged so they all faced this big fireplace, which was thankfully off, because it was sweltering inside, and it looked like anyone who got a seat on the couch was obligated to have someone in their lap.  Two pairs were brazenly making out and people weren’t even noticing or mentioning it.

It was hard to breathe.  It smelled like sweat and perfume, hair product and body sprays.  Someone had puked, apparently, and she could smell that too.

It was more mellow than she had expected from a crazy party, but by the looks of it, mostly people were drinking and maybe smoking pot.  The worst part of it was people trying to talk loud enough to be heard, the smells, and the crowdedness.

She saw Xavier and got his attention.

“Have you seen George? Or Hailey?  Or Pam or Melissa?”

“Pam’s outside!” Xavier raised his voice.  “George is…”

He craned his head, to try to see past people, then pointed at a closed door.

“Bathroom?”

Xavier nodded.

“What about Hailey and Melissa?”

“Fight!” he raised his voice to be heard.

“What?”

“They had a fight!  They came on a thingy, and then they fought and George left instead of getting into it!”

“ATV?”

“That’s it.  Yeah!”

“Where were they?”

Xavier pointed, arm waving in the general direction of outside.

She hoped the others had that base covered.

The bathroom door opened.  Lucy abandoned her conversation with Xavier with a stated “thank you” she wasn’t sure he heard.  She had to move around people who had zero spatial awareness.

George looked right past her, scanning the crowd, even as she tried to get his attention.  It looked like he’d soaked his t-shirt, and slung it over his shoulder.  Had he spilled something on it?  He’d run wet hands through his hair, so it slicked back, and his body was beaded with bits of moisture.  Someone had signed his chest in permanent marker or something, and it had smudged.

She stepped into his way, deliberately, until he locked eyes with her.

“What?”

“Did you guys take a bag from the cabin?  Striped, white and black?  Leather straps?”

He smiled, laughing a bit to himself, like something was funny.  “I don’t know.”

“Seriously,” she said.

“I really don’t know!  I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Can you think for a second and recall?  Did Melissa stop to grab a bag?  Did anyone pick anything up?”

“Lucy,” he told her, and he leaned close.  His eyes were puffy.  “I don’t know.  Mia was being shitty and refusing to give us any of the beer and stuff she got as payment-”

“I remember.”

“-and Hailey’s been getting shit on all night because she’s not in- what’s it called?  Goose stepping?  Going along with everything else from the other Dancers.  And Hailey’s been cool tonight.”

Lucy frowned, looking around.

There was some kind of commotion.

Crap.  Crap.

The way the crowd moved, everyone trying to get a better view, they formed a wall of bodies at the two walls with windows and doors leading out.  Others moved out onto the porch, which extended along those same two walls, forming an L-shape at the one end of the cabin.

Lucy could see Avery on the porch, looking out and down, and she moved through people.

This was feeling more and more like a fire.  A bad situation that had so much potential to spread, get worse, compound itself, and spread from there.

Lucy had to step onto a couch and climb over it to get past one part of the crowd.  She then forcibly pushed people out of her way, to access the end of the porch that Avery was trying to get to.

She pushed the door open, getting dirty looks from the people she was pushing into with the door, in the process.

She didn’t even have to get to the railing to get an idea of what people were reacting to.

Music played.

How could you break my hearttttttt!?”

Lucy grit her teeth.

“You’ve got my atteeeeenshun!”

She made her way to the railing, and could see Avery climbing over.

On the ground below the one end of the porch, a man was dancing.  Their classmates and the people from St. Victors, aged thirteen to fifteen, were keeping a serious distance from this stranger that had showed up.

I’m cryyyyyying… cryyyyying cold tears…

He had a mullet, a pornstache, a day-glo tank top and denim short shorts, socks with a stripe across the top, and old fashioned sneakers with neon laces.  He was square jawed, muscular, and, to her sight, flickering at the edges.  Hearing his namesake lyrics, he turned his face skyward, beaded with sweat, eyes closed, and rubbed his hands down his body.  A tear ran down his cheek.

Hailey and some other girl from St. Victor’s was backed into a corner, nowhere to go that wasn’t walking into thick foliage, people, or the base of the cabin, and they looked transfixed, caught between laughing and being horrified.  They laughed harder at the tear.

“Who the hell are you, man?  Why are you so good at this?  Is this a prank?” Hailey asked.

I’ve got enough troubles… I’ve heard enough lieeeees…

Hailey and her friends shrieked as the man abruptly turned her way, fixing his gaze on her, his hands thrust down and to the sides, arms straight.

Verona was on the ground, approaching a bit closer than the rest of the crowd.  Avery made the jump from the porch railing to the ground, landing with a scuffle.

“Turn off the music!” Verona told Hailey.

“This is great, though!”

“You took something that doesn’t belong to you!” Lucy shouted down.

“Do you know this guy?” Hailey asked.  “Whose bag was this?  Which one of you listens to this crap?”

All I can do is be braaaaaave…”

“Give it back!” Avery shouted.

“Fuck you!” Hailey raised her voice.

The Cold Tears guy turned, his attention fully on Avery.

“Who says its yours?  Answer my question!”

All I can do is be stroooooong…

The Cold Tears guy flexed his muscles, pressed his chest out as he stood on tiptoes, and clenched his fists.  He didn’t take his eyes off Avery, his head turning as she moved to the side on the narrow path that connected cabins.

Whoever was playing the music got to dictate the enemy.  Apparently shouting ‘fuck you’ at someone was enough.

With all this weakness, you’ve given meeeeeee…”

He dragged fingernails down his cheek and neck, down to his collar, and then ripped his shirt off, one handed.  People shrieked at the suddenness of it, some laughed.  He had blond chest hair in a singular tuft between his pectorals.

“Is he an actual stripper?” Hailey laughed.  “Who brought this guy?”

Lucy turned, looking around.  There weren’t many eyes on her.

A bunch of people used a plate as an ashtray, and it lay in the window.  Lucy grabbed it and moved aside, so she was too far to the right for people looking out the window to see.

I’m cryyyying… crying cold tearrrrrs!”

Lucy picked out the butts and joints.  She scratched out a rune, parting the cigarette ash.  Two air signs, a fire sign, each encircled, all connected.  She used the rim of the plate as a guide, to create the outer circle.

She cupped both hands over it, covering it, checking nobody was watching.  Every set of eyes was on the spectacle below.

I’m bleeeeedingYour love cut me deep!

People shrieked, and there was enough of a sudden commotion that Lucy almost dropped the plate with the rune.

“In the service of Kennet,” Lucy whispered.  “We draw on your power.”

I’m troubled awake, I’m tormented in sleeeeep!”

There were more shouts.  People were scrambling to get away.

The little bits of cigarette in the ash began to glow and smoulder.  To be safe, she drew insulating marks and underlined fire triangles around the outer perimeter.  To keep the heat from escaping.  The diagram dimmed while she was working on it.

Trust was as important as anything else.  She had to trust this would work.  Besides, she couldn’t hang back while there was something happening below.  Not with her friends involved.

She pushed the plate under a patio couch, then ducked under the railing.  The space to land at the very end of the porch was narrow, with only a narrow, person-width gap between the base of the cabin and foliage.

Someone saw the smoke from the rune, and people made noise.  The spectacle at the front was forgotten as people started to fight to get away.

Lucy made the jump, easing herself down as much as she could before dropping the ten or so feet.  She landed awkwardly, bumped into a heavy branch of pine needles, and felt it scrape at her skin and hair.  Her dress audibly ripped.

If she had pine sap in her hair, she was going to take it out on someone.  And the dress- it was borrowed.

She checked for the rip, butt first, then the sides.  She found the rip at the side, by her hip, about two inches long, where the sequined front half met the plain red back half.

She scowled, got her footing, and marched forward, shoes in one hand, necklace in the other.  She wished she could draw a weapon in this circumstance.

She made a beeline for Hailey, who was backing away.

“Hailey!” Lucy shouted.

Hailey looked at her.  She’d been nicely made up at the start of the night, which was less than an hour ago, maybe a bit earlier for the core group that had arranged this whole thing, but she was sweaty, her hair a bit of a mess, and her makeup affected by the heat, bugs, and the way she’d touched her face, making eyeliner and mascara smudge just a bit, around red eyes.

Lucy’s glower was maybe the last straw for Hailey, who had been straddling humor and fear with the appearance of the Cold Tears guy.  Hailey ran for it, pushing against students who were also heading away from the cabin.

Lucy ran after.

“Leave me alone!” Hailey shouted.

“I’m a lover… and a fighterrrr!

“Lucy!” Verona shouted.

Lucy turned, and saw the mullet dude coming for her.  More people screamed.

With one bloody-knuckled hand, he lunged.

“Kennetothers!” Lucy choked out the word, flicking out her hand with the keys, dog tag, and ring, sliding the ring onto her finger.

She met the lunging hand with a key, drawn out to a shape like a serrated knife.  She cut fingers, palm, all the way down to the heel of his hand.  At the same time, something was pulled out of her.  The strength she’d been using to brace herself and stop her momentum fell out of her like she was a bucket without a bottom, and she swayed.

His other hand reached out and caught the side of her face, fingers gripping her hoop earring.  She felt her earlobe stretch.

She dropped her shoes, and grabbed the wrist of that hand with the hand she’d just freed.  She knew she could stab, but she worried she would pass out if she tried.  It took ignoring every instinct she had, but she let the chain with the key and dog tags fall from her hand, dangling.  She couldn’t throw down the tags or anything because the chain was threaded through the ring, and the tags were connected.

He pulled, and she used every bit of her strength and focus to fight to keep her left arm rigid, hand at her wrist, so that when he lifted her up, he lifted all of her up, instead of tearing her earring out.

She gripped his wrist with her other hand, chain dangling, and then drew her legs back, and forward, knee to midsection.  “Don’t hurt girls, you asshole!”

It didn’t affect him nearly as much as she’d wanted it to.

This was scary.  It was scary in the same way John in that abandoned house had been scary.  A person as a force of nature, angry and violent and detached from humanity enough that he was willing to hurt her.  Smoke rolled out around her.

She didn’t want to be scared.  She didn’t want to be weak.  She had to be ready.

She thumbed the ring off her finger, to be safe, then whipped the chain, dog tag, keys, and ring included, at his face.  She did it again, then a third time, in rapid succession.  Nicks and cuts bled, and she might have gotten him in the eye.

He gripped her wrist.

Verona appeared at her side, grabbing his arm, tugging, and accomplishing nothing.

He strode forward, pushing Lucy through branches and slamming her into a tree trunk, hard.  The breath went out of her, so easily, leaving her gasping.

“No!” Verona shrieked, scrabbling for more of a grip.  When pulling on his arm didn’t work, she used it as a grip to climb up and get a grip on his mullet, pulling down with both hands.

Lucy kicked, feeling ineffectual, trying to keep lessons in mind.  She winced, seeing his face pulled down more at her level, and smashed the heel of her hand at his nose.  She hit his upper lip instead, three times, before he let her slide down the trunk, broken off branches scraping at the backs of her legs, dress, and her back.  She hit him one last time, while his face was close enough, and sputtered the words, without air to make them, “Lonely ass loser.

He punched her.  It felt like she imagined getting hit by a baseball bat would feel.  Straight to the stomach.

“Avery!” Verona shouted, sounding frantic.  “Here!  Help!”

In Lucy’s Sight, the stain at the side of Avery’s face was bright red.  She ran forward out of the smoke, holding a branch that was maybe way too impractical to use as a weapon.

She held it like a lance, and drove it into the back of his leg.  She hit the back of his thigh, and seemed to scrape down until she hit the bend of his knee, where it couldn’t go any further down.  Her feet picked up off the ground momentarily, as the branch stopped moving.

His knee went down, meeting the dirt, and Verona scratched, fingers like claws, as she fought to get a grip on that mullet again, tugging.

Lucy twisted, her stomach a massive knot of pain that made it feel like her top half wouldn’t coordinate with her bottom half, and then drove her elbow into his neck, that Verona had bent down into her way.

It wasn’t really that effective.  Too small a movement, maybe.  She was too weak, sapped of strength by the ring.

She backed away a few steps, hand going to her stomach.

Avery picked up the branch with both hands, from the middle, and clubbed the guy on the back of the head just as he was starting to rise again.  His face hit the dirt.

Lucy stumbled forward into an awkward leap, driving her heel into the base of his neck, just as he rose.  “And go fellate yourself every night instead of crying about it!”

She felt her heel meet flesh, felt the impact as his face met dirt, and her foot simultaneously passed through and touched the ground.

He was gone.

“Ow,” she whispered, hand going back to her stomach.  Her back and the backs of her leg hurt too, and her earlobe was throbbing in a way that made her really worry it had torn and that earrings might be ruined for her forever.

Avery had a cut under one eye, and it looked like it was already starting to bruise.  Verona had skinned knees and palms.

Lucy’s eyes stung with the smoke from the cabin.  She used the Sight, and saw silhouettes like black stains against the smoke, throwing water on the couch that was over the couch.  She saw the rune get affected.

“We need to get the stuff,” Verona said.  “So maybe there’s a way we can go-”

Hailey screamed, down the path.  People shouted.

We need to get the stuff, so you can go to the magic school without issue? Lucy wondered.

Was this how far they’d sunk?  How bad things had gotten?

They jogged down the path.  The song was still playing, starting over from the beginning.  Hailey made scared sounds, and the man, beshirted again, uninjured, was stalking through the woods, pushing past branches.  Following the music.

“Rebound,” Verona whispered.

Lucy nodded.

They’d defeated the summon that had been sent after them, and they’d done it soundly enough that when he’d recurred, he’d started going after the person who’d sent him after them.  Hailey.

“Stop!” Lucy shouted after him.

“It’s not ours,” Verona said.

They pushed past branches and deeper into the woods, away from the slope.  Past one of the supporting structures of the ski lift, and through bushes.  Branches and weeds scraped at Lucy’s legs.  Poison ivy too, maybe.

Hailey had finally collapsed, tripping on something in the dark and giving up instead of getting to her feet.  The music player was muffled slightly as she curled up around it.  He walked up to her, and she shrieked.

“He’s going to kill her,” Avery said.

“Call for help?” Verona asked.  “Or does that make the situation worse?”

Lucy pulled the dog tag from her chain.  She threw it down as she advanced toward Hailey and the Cold Tears guy.

Can’t make this situation that much worse.

“No guns,” she said, as she hopped over a bit of bushes.  Her Sight helped identify stains where the tree branches could scratch and the especially brambly bushes and weeds were.

“No guns,” John murmured, behind her.

The Cold Tears guy heard Lucy’s approach.  He picked up Hailey with one hand, then grabbed a branch, tearing it from a tree as he turned on Lucy.

John was nearly silent as he moved through the greenery.  He closed the distance, then stabbed the guy in the back with a combat knife.  The stabbing was quicker and more violent, the point of the knife not moving much further away than the fabric of Mr. Cold Tears’s top before sinking in again.

The guy disappeared, dropping Hailey.  Lucy rushed forward to stop her fall from being too rough.  The music skipped, and he resumed, flickering violently, the color washed out.  Almost spent.

But he tackled John, and drove John back, pushing him to the ground, keeping him from stabbing again.

Verona jumped forward, onto the back of Mr. Cold Tears.  Her eyes were wide and violet in the gloom.

“The tape player,” Lucy told Hailey.

“I was trying to turn it off, when he came back for me.  I wanted to hide and I couldn’t with the music playing-” Hailey sounded like she was begging more than anything.  “It was caught on my sleeve.”

Hailey was wearing a dress with a gauzy sleeve portion.  She held up her hand, empty, showing the fabric was torn.

The music played around them.  Lucy tried to search, but Hailey was clinging to her and trying to use her as cover from the ongoing scrap.  If she could even make out what was happening.

Cold Tears guy reared back, and Verona fell from her perch on his back.  A rune, triangular, glowed red, and smoked.  Scratched into his bare back with fingernails.  It visibly blistered in seconds.

John used the opportunity to slam the combat knife into Mr. Cold Tears’ eye socket.  He pulled it free in the same moment he rose to his feet.

The music skipped.  The silhouette of Mr. Cold Tears appeared, a few feet from Lucy.  Hailey hugged her, cringing.

Avery, ducking through the greenery, broke away from the Verona, and slid down a bit of the sloped ground.  She felt through the leaves and dead branches and came up with the cassette.

Clicking it off.

“Go!” Lucy shouted.  “Run!”

Hailey looked, saw the silhouette of John Stiles, and twisted away, letting go of Lucy and running downhill.  Not quite in the direction of civilization, but she wouldn’t go far before reaching a slope.  From there, she’d be able to find her way.

“What happened?” John asked.

“Someone stole our magic stuff,” Lucy said.

“Mine.  I messed up,” Verona said.  “We need it back.  Melissa Oakham has my bag, they said.  She went uphill.”

“A classmate,” Avery clarified, supporting Lucy as Lucy stepped over a tricky bit where a lot of fallen branches had made a kind of space without many places to put her feet.

“What does she know?”

“The guy that gave George, Hailey, Pam, and Melissa a lift said Hailey went looking for bottles and whatever in the backpack they stole.  They found the cassette player, and Hailey started fiddling with it.  Melissa kept going through the bag, and when she wouldn’t show Hailey what she found, they fought.  Melissa hobbled off on crutches with the bag.”

John extended a hand, reaching over a log.  Lucy hesitated, her heart still pounding, her body hurting, especially at the stomach.

She took his hand.  He gave her a helping hand in stepping over the log.  Then he did the same for Avery.

Verona went on, “She wouldn’t have gone all that far, but if she found something, maybe she didn’t go where there’s people.”

“Go,” John said.  “Call the others.  Do you have what you need to call the goblins?”

“No,” Avery said.

“I will.  Call Guilherme.”

“Not Maricica?”

“You can if you want, but she’s better with other problems,” John said.  “I’ll assume you don’t want this girl removed from the picture?”

Removed.

“No,” Lucy said.

“I’m so tempted,” Verona said.  “Fuck her.”

“Verona!” Lucy raised her voice.

“But what I really want is my stuff back.  I want everything to get as normal as possible, so we can get back on track.”

“Okay.  We’ll have to figure out how to handle her.  I’ll call Matthew as well.  Throw down the tags when you have her.  I’ll have reinforcements.”

“We’re going that extreme?” Avery asked.  “A small army of Others?”

“Yes.  Go and find her.  We’ll deal with her when you do.”

This was so messed up.

They reached the path again, Lucy grabbing a tree to pull herself up onto the path’s edge.  Her legs felt raw, weaker and scraped up, even if not all of the scrapes were bleeding.  She’d left her other shoes behind.

“Guilherme,” Lucy called out.  “Guilherme.  Guilherme.”

Avery pushed her hair back away from her face.  By the lights set along the path, Lucy could see that the cut by her eye had a line of blood reaching down to her lip, where the blood had smudged.  It looked like she’d have a black eye.

“This was supposed to be a nice night,” Avery said.  “Glad I came, if it’s only to bash a guy with a stick before he can bash either of you.”

“I’m so sorry,” Verona said.

“Let’s just handle this,” Lucy said.  “Eyes open.”

Avery’s eyes flashed, the mist sweeping over them, in a way that made the outline and darkness of the irises stand out in even dimly lit gloom.  Verona’s eyes turned purple.

Avery pointed.  Lucy nodded.

They took the side path.  Away from the candlelit path.  Verona was maybe the least hurt, and she could see best in the dark, so she led the way.

Lucy stared at her friend’s back for a while, silent.

“I think this is my fault,” Verona said.  “Not just because I brought the bag and didn’t watch it.”

“What did you do?” Lucy asked.

Verona turned a wide eyed look to Lucy, like she’d been stung.  Wary, alarmed.

“Just tell us,” Lucy said.

“I might’ve lied to my mom.  Tanked my karma, tanked the connection breaking stuff I laid on my bag.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “It was bound to happen sooner or later, with one of us.  Let’s get it handled.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“Okay, that’s good,” Lucy said.  “Come on.  Pick up the pace.”

Verona winced, and nodded.

“I can see the trail.  We’re close,” Avery said.

Lucy nodded.  She pressed a hand to her stomach.  Every step hurt.  A lot of stuff that wasn’t her body hurt too.  Her heart.  Her hopes.

The path led to another of the towers that held the ski lifts aloft.  The area around it had been cleared and kept clear, and the moonlight shone down.

Melissa sat with her leg stuck out straight in front of her, Verona’s cat mask on her own head.  The hat sat on the ground, ten feet away.

To Lucy’s sight, the black cat mask was white, the white rim around the eye sockets like smudged blood.  The stain at Melissa’s foot was black in a way that made the gloom around it seem pale, threads reaching up and into her body, where the threads of stain transfixed her heart, the slashes that extended out like blades unto themselves.

“What is this?” Melissa asked, holding out a fistful of paper, covered in diagrams.  Verona flinched.

Lucy didn’t let her expression change as she saw that flinch, but if she’d reacted to it, she imagined she’d have flinched much more dramatically than Verona.

Where were their priorities?  What was this mess?

It sucked so much.  It sucked that Melissa had gotten stuck in this.

Melissa groped for and picked up the ugly stick.  A knobby bit of wood about as long as her forearm.  “What’s this?”

“Watch where you swing that,” Verona murmured.

“Why?  Is it like a magic wand?” Melissa asked.  “What is all this?  What-”

“We’re friendly, right, Mel?” Avery asked.  “We talk.  We’ve stayed in touch.”

Melissa shrugged with one shoulder, papers crumpled in one hand, the ugly stick held in the other.

They were supposed to call John, but, as if by mutual agreement, none of them did.

“Aren’t we?” Avery asked.  “I’d be bummed out if you said we weren’t.”

“We talk but it’s not like we’ve been over to each other’s houses or anything,” Melissa stated.  “We’re teammates.  We were teammates.”

Melissa had changed, in the past four or five weeks.  Not really eating right, or eating the way she had when she’d been doing dancing, gymnastics, and soccer, but as someone who was almost entirely sedentary now.  Doing nothing except periodic hobbling, with crutches.

She’d put on a surprising amount of weight.  She’d stopped taking care of her hair.  She hadn’t even dressed up for tonight.

“Or…” Melissa said, looking down at the ground.  “Not even that?  The way my life went to such total shit, so fast… and then this?  Did you curse me or something?”

“No,” Verona said.

“One of the pages glowed as I pulled it out for a better look.”

Verona nodded.

Something’s up.  Just tell me, why me?  Why is it me that loses everything?”

“It’s not fair,” Avery said.

“It’s- it’s so much worse than not fair!” Melissa raised her voice.  “I lost everything.  And I try to tell people that, or I hint at it, and even my parents, who see the way my old friends are around me… they don’t get it.  Everything I loved doing I don’t get to do anymore.  My old friends pity me and they act like it’s a favor to even talk to me.  They leave me behind.  My dad never cared about my sports so how could he get what it means to lose the only things I looked forward to?  My mom used to be so proud of me and now all she talks about is her hopes my foot gets better, while my doctors say I’ll probably never be fully functional again.  My foot was attached only by a flap of skin.  No bones, no muscles, no tendons.  Skin!”

“We-” Verona started.

“No!  No no no no, don’t you dare talk, no.  Don’t.  Because there were only a few people who would even talk to me and be cool with me.  Jeremy was one, and he was sitting with me, keeping me company, when you sat down, flashed your panties at him, and then after a few minutes, dragged him off to do who knows what.”

“The skirt thing was a total accident.  And the rest of it didn’t work out.  We decided to be friends.”

“I don’t believe you!”

“Melissa,” Lucy cut in, taking a step forward.

Melissa swung the club around, pointing it at Lucy.  Lucy stopped where she was.

If Melissa threw that- or if they got close and she started swinging…

It was goblin-enchanted.  None of the damage it did would heal right.  A smashed nose would be forever twisted.  A bashed cheekbone would be indented.  Lost teeth would resist replacement.  It had other effects for things that weren’t human, but it also had limited charge.  A few strikes would waste it.

“I know you think it’s patronizing, but I’ve reached out a few times.  I’ve tried to include you.”

“Did you try to include me in this?” Melissa asked, crumpling up the papers more.  Verona winced again.

“Careful,” Verona said.

“Careful why?”

“Because if you touch the wrong parts together, you get something messier than just light,” Verona said.

“Don’t tell her too much,” Avery murmured.

Verona nodded.

“You can’t keep slapping away people’s hands and then be surprised when they stop reaching out,” Lucy said.

“Fuck you!  You’re not reaching out for my benefit, you’re reaching out for yours!”

“I’m going to be really blunt,” Lucy said.  “There’s a few ways this can go.  We’ve got help coming.  If you cooperate and work with us, this can be tidied up.  Things can be fixed, or at least improved.”

“Those two did go out of our way to try to fix things for you,” Avery said.  “I don’t know why it didn’t work, but we can keep looking into it.”

“But if you make this messy, you hurt yourself.  Can you stop being angry?  Please see that I’ve been trying to help and that I mean well?”

“I still don’t believe that you’re helping me to actually help me.  You’re trying to fix this situation for yourselves!  Fuck you!”

Melissa threw the papers, scattering them into the wind.

“Shit!” Verona shouted.

Lucy stepped back, stumbling, her stomach hurting, and Verona tugged on her arm, which made it hurt worse.

The papers caught on the wind, curved in the air, and the first of them hit the ground.

Nothing.  A good three quarters of the papers hit the dirt.

“Fuck you!  Fuck whatever this is!” Melissa shouted.

“Mel-” Lucy started.

A paper scraped the dirt, diagram first.

And maybe it was the dirt smudge completing the symbol, but it burst into violent flame, rolling out.  Avery scrambled back.  Verona and Lucy fell.

Melissa, eyes wide in stark terror, grabbed her crutches, then began hobbling away, bag over one shoulder, ugly stick gripped with the same hand that held the handle of the crutch.

Lucy climbed to her feet.  Avery was already circling around, giving chase.

Verona winced as she rose to her feet.

She’d been in between Lucy and the fire.

“Are you hurt?” Lucy asked.

“Not really.  Singed.  But…”

Verona cast a forlorn look in the direction of the fleeing girl and the bag of magic.

“Yeah.  You up for running?”

Verona shook her head.

“Okay.”

“I wish I had glamour, or-”

“Dog tag?”

“In my bag.”

“Okay.  Stay.  I’m going.  If you see the Others, point them in the right direction.”

Verona nodded.

Lucy left her friend behind.

Avery gave a wide berth to the other papers that the wind periodically picked up and flipped over, which meant ducking into trees and emerging out the other side.  Lucy was at the opposite end of the wide clearing, taking a similar route.

Once they were on track, though, they were clear to run.  Melissa only hobbled, making her way up a set of concrete stairs inset into the slope leading up. She was able to use the railing to make more progress than she had with the crutches.

On the opposite end of the hill was a road.  The top third of Melissa’s head was illuminated by headlights.

“Heyy!” she shouted.  “Help!”

“Stop!” Avery called out.

Melissa stopped, leaned hard into the railing, and reached into the bag.

She scattered more papers.  A whole notebook was tossed down onto the stairs.

But there were pages there with diagrams on them.  Lucy and Avery paused.

“Hey!” Melissa shouted again, continuing to hobble up the stairs.

A page sparked, then flared, going off in a flash.  Lucy shielded her eyes.

As the light faded, she used her Sight to scan the surroundings, judging the slopes-

And saw Guilherme, stained a deep green-blue, approaching from the shadows.  He was in his boy form, shirtless, his only real clothing like a kilt worn over leather pants, and he had a weapon.  A long spear.

“Guil.  Please don’t-”

He lunged for Lucy.

She leaned into the attack, reaching out, the back of her hand catching the shaft of the spear and not pushing it away as much as she pushed herself to the side.

She landed on her knees.

“Not today,” she said.  “Save the training for moments that aren’t a crisis, please.”

“A crisis is the best time to learn,” he said.

Avery was scrambling up the path.

“Call John!” Lucy called out.

Melissa was at the top of the stairs, pushing through trees to get to the street where there was some traffic.

Guilherme approached Lucy, dropping down to a crouch behind her, as she knelt.  “Remember the lesson about dueling?” he asked.

She nodded.

He reached out, and she put a hand beneath his.

The glamour poured down.  She let it fall through her fingers in a thin stream.  A twist of her hand, and she caught the stream, now a thin blade.

She wiped at the gravel in front of her, no doubt set down here to make the base of the ski lift firmer.

She drew out the faerie rune.  It was like a letter E mixed with a zodiac sign, with a few circles drawn here and there.  Each line was florid, extending out in curves and curls.  The Duelist.

“Don’t run.  We aren’t done yet,” Lucy murmured.  “You stole from us, Melissa, and that must be addressed.”

“You must give it something,” Guilherme reminded her.  “The challenge must be something she would agree to, even if she can’t hear it right now.”

“If you hold out for five minutes, I’ll take on a share of your pain,” Lucy said.

“Hmm.  Not the way I would do it,” Guilherme said.

“Is it wrong?  Dangerous?”

“No and yes, but that’s not why.  She would agree to that only because she has to.”

Lucy nodded.

She stabbed the spike of glamour into the diagram.

It was like a pale curtain swept out, all around them.

A bubble.  A wall.

Lucy waited, watching, and pulled the spike free when she was comfortable with the boundary.  She held it, because she had to.  Part of the condition of the duelist’s arena was that she only got to use one hand.  The rest had to hold onto the arena.  Anything else was a forfeit.

Zed had mentioned the need to erect barriers and keep civilians out of things.  Lucy, Verona, and Avery had brought it up with Guilherme.  He’d explained a way to do it.  More of a Faerie way.

Melissa continued forward, through the trees, and into civilization, shouting.

She emerged from the bushes behind Lucy.  She looked around in alarm, and she looked at boy-Guilherme, with his very green eyes.

She turned around, then hobbled away.

Lucy straightened, stretched, and waited.

Melissa emerged again.

There was no leaving.  Any attempt to would bring her back here.

“I’ll reiterate your options,” Lucy said.

John was there, at the far side.  Avery followed him.

And the goblins, with their eyes glowing in the dark.  Few pairs of those eyes were matched in size.  Bluntmunch was absent, doing a job, but Toadswallow and Gash were there, along with Cherry, Doglick, Butty, and Snatch.

Those other goblins were permanent additions now.  They needed too much help with protecting the perimeter.

Melissa made a scared sound.  She held out the ugly stick, moving between targets.

“In less than five minutes, the thing that’s trapping you here will go away, and if it does, you’ll feel better.  I’ll take on some of your pain.  And maybe that gets you to where you can recover enough to start sports again.”

“Thing is,” Lucy said.  “I’m going to do a lot of really horrible things in the meantime, to try to get you to cry uncle and surrender.  If you hold out anyway, I’ll suffer some of that hurt.  But I’m going to feel awful for hitting you and stuff, and you… obviously you’re going to feel awful too.”

Melissa shook her head.

“And I can’t say what happens with… all of them.  If they let you walk away.”

A goblin snickered.  John shifted his footing.

“Or you can back down.  Give our stuff back.  Cooperate.”

“What is all this?”

Lucy remained silent.

The ugly stick dropped to the ground.

“I’m not strong enough to last five seconds of someone trying to hurt me.  Let alone five minutes.”

“Do you surrender?” Lucy asked.

“I don’t have any other choice.  I lose, I guess.  Like I keep losing.”  Melissa made a very awkward descent to the ground, using a crutch to help herself there.

Then she sat there, head hung.

The subtle light of the arena’s boundaries faded.

“We should take her to see Nicolette,” Avery said, from the far end of the fading arena.

“This isn’t on me,” Nicolette said.  She was wearing a nice hair ornament with a bunch of white feathers, but her hairstyle was simpler, only brushed straight, and she wore a college jacket over a tee.

“Not wholly, but you pledged better than this,” Lucy challenged her.

Nicolette looked past them to the truck.  Matthew stood by the door, and Melissa sat within, head bowed, not even really paying attention to what was happening out here.

“My hands were partially tied.  You wanted me to make restitution.  I did.  Can I talk to her?”

Avery looked over at Matthew, nodding.

He popped the truck door open.  Melissa startled.  She leaned forward, peering past the front seat and out the door.

“Did your family come into money lately?” Nicolette asked.

“Uh, yeah.  My dad got a promotion and a bunch of money.”

“And did you get any special medical help?  Someone reaching out, someone reporting a nice breakthrough or experimental treatment?”

“Um.  We’re going to Toronto around the time my boot comes off, to talk to a specialist.”

Nicolette motioned for the door to close.  Matthew slammed it, almost in Melissa’s face.

“I couldn’t do much more because I can’t set foot in or directly interfere with Kennet.  I pulled strings from the outside.  Giving her family that much money cost me.”

“Her life is still in shambles.  Because your omens destroyed her ankle,” Lucy said.

“Then… I’ll keep at it.  But I can see shadows of omens, and I don’t think she’s fighting for her own sake.  I can’t really give her better if she doesn’t reach out and take it.”

“Can you try?” Lucy asked.

“Okay,” Nicolette said.  “But past a certain point, I’ll have to argue I’ve discharged my duties.”

Lucy nodded.

“You three look like you had a rough night.”

“It wasn’t quite what we hoped for.”

“Do you want a ride to the school?” Nicolette asked.

“Are you offering?”

“Maybe.”

“I think we’re okay,” Avery said.

“Okay,” Nicolette said.  “Is there anything else, then?”

“You got off the Forest Ribbon Trail okay?”

“That?  Yeah.  Those guys you’ve been talking to, about the Paths?  Zed mentioned that.  They came in for the rescue.  Alexander covered the cost.”

“And the Hungry Choir thing?” Verona asked.

“They’re safely bound.  The binding was tattooed on.  That’s pretty hard to break through, especially with everything else.  You can talk to Brie again in three days, get the particulars from her at school.”

Verona nodded.

“If it’s cool, it’s kinda late, and I’ve got to drive back.  I’ve got an appointment for the morning, with Alexander.  Can we continue this conversation at school?”

“Alright,” Lucy said.

“Good luck.”

“Thanks.”

Nicolette got back into her car.  She started it up, then pulled away.

“It’s good you’re taking a break from everything,” Matthew said.  “Going away.”

Lucy turned.

“What do you mean?” Avery asked him.

“You guessed this was bad karma.  I don’t think that helped, but it looks like the blood of the Carmine Beast was really what greased the slope here.”

“Small relief,” Lucy said, glancing at Verona.  Verona looked down.  “The spin the bottle game?”

“That might be karma.  Might just be actual randomness.”

Lucy stood a little straighter, touching her bruised stomach, and looked off in the direction Nicolette had gone.

“If it really was things getting bloodier because of the Beast, it probably is good we’re going away.  Are things going to be okay if we’re not there to claim to be your practitioners?” Avery asked.

“We should manage,” Matthew said.  “When we talked about bringing in people, and Miss said she had thirteen year olds in mind, a lot of the discussion was about how we’d handle the investigation, keeping you on track, and, if I’m honest…”

He spread his hands.

“…We expected more of this.  Disruption.  Having to clean up messes.  Some of the local Others may be more comfortable, rather than less, because this happened.”

“You want us to be screw-ups,” Verona said.

“We want you to need to cooperate with us, for best results.  But Miss has a scarily good eye.  And when you didn’t need us as much, with keen talent for practice, aggressive outreach to other practitioners, and a knack for investigation…”

“We’re out of your control?” Lucy asked.

“I would say you’re getting your own control.  And to some, even myself to a small degree, that feels like you’re sliding into a position where you have control over us.  Or you were.”

“All it takes is one mistake to ruin a whole lot, huh?” Verona asked.

“This?  Tonight?  Entirely within expectations.  Don’t get too down about it.  We can let there be a story in the news about a strange man,” Matthew said. “And we can encourage a culture of silence, where your peers at the party won’t want to share too many details because they might get in trouble.”

Verona nodded, but it was subdued.

“So that girl,” Matthew said.

“Can you take her memories?”

“I tried.  She’s holding onto them.  Louise Bayer wanted her memories of things gone.  Melissa Oakham is clinging to all of this, in hopes there’s salvation or distraction here.  I can see into that darkness she’s in right now, crystal clear.”

“Then are we responsible for her?”

“Less than you’d be if you gave her the material yourself.  She invited bad karma, and she owns the consequences, especially if she continues down this path.  If it’s okay with you three, Edith and I are going to talk to Charles.  See if he agrees to take some of her pain.  Can you trust us to handle this?  It might take longer than it takes you three to leave for school.”

The three of them exchanged looks, then nodded.

“If the Carmine Beast had happened at a different time,” Avery said.  “Or if it took longer for practitioners to notice she was gone?  Could Melissa have been chosen?”

“Not with the order of events,” Verona said.

“Perhaps,” Matthew said. “I think Miss was looking for rare talent.  Maybe that girl has it, maybe she doesn’t.  But I do think the boy who handed you your shoes, before we left?”

He gestured at Lucy.

“Jeremy?” Lucy asked.

“Miss noted him, as one of five or six considerations, to replace you three if you couldn’t see this through.”

“If we freaking died, you mean,” Lucy said.

“Or whatever else.”

“Geez,” Avery said.  “Wow, you actually went there.”

Matthew nodded, somber.  He looked less willing to smile than he had back when Miss had been in charge.  “Be careful, from here on out, about bringing him close to this.  He’d fall into it with ease.”

Verona nodded.

“Do you want to drive back?” Matthew asked.

They did.

In the end, they settled so that Avery would sit with Melissa in the back seat.

Lucy sat in the open back of the truck, like they had on that first weekend.  Getting in was rough, with the bruising at her middle.

Verona climbed in.

Matthew started up the truck.  They rolled out.

The first five or ten minutes were… not quiet.  With the speed they traveled and no real runes to block the wind, it was noisy-ish.

But they didn’t talk.  Lucy and Verona sat within a few feet of one another, and they barely looked at each other.

“Are you mad?” Verona asked, the wind almost drowning her out.

“No.”

“Disappointed?”

“A bit.  But aren’t you?”

“But you’re disappointed in me, aren’t you?” Verona asked.  “I messed up.  I didn’t keep track.”

“Can we not talk about this?  We’ve got your magic school in a few days, there’s prep, healing, I guess, where we’ve got to recover and not look like we were dragged there, so we can look good in front of teachers and students who may be our opposition…”

“I mean, if you really don’t want to talk, then…” Verona started, trailing off.

A car zipped past, traveling the other direction at a reckless speed.  The wind that blew in the wake of it made Lucy’s hair touch the sides of her face.  She scrunched up her nose and tried to fix it.

“I am sorry.”

“I’m glad, and I’m- do you want forgiveness, or something else?  What do you want out of this conversation, Verona?”

“I want you to say what you’re feeling because you look mad and I can’t take it.”

“I always look mad, don’t I?  I have a resting bitch face.”

“No,” Verona said.  “Not always.”

“If you want me to say what I’m feeling, then I’m really worried that if I get started, I’m going to keep going until I hurt you and… I’m too tired to go there, and I don’t want to hurt you.  I can deal, Verona.”

“I don’t want you to deal, I want you to be happy and good.  Talk, vent.  Hurt me if it means getting it off your chest.  Please.”

Lucy bit her lip, swallowed, and almost chewed on the- not on the words, but on that part of her mouth that was supposed to initiate the word, and make them start spilling forth.

“I don’t know why I’m surprised.  I don’t know- I wanted a nice night, you know?”

“I did too.”

“No, but… for you a nice night is you getting to be a cat, or futz around with practice.  I worry, I really worry, that this whole thing was maybe some tiny subconscious bit of you that wanted this to happen.  Wanted practice and distraction and whatever else.”

Verona’s expression was blank.  Her eyes lacked the purple that had dominated them most of the night.

“I’m worried that if you start apologizing, and if I press you to tell me what you’re sorry for, or if I bring up stuff like priorities… you’re going to give me the wrong answers, and I’m not going to be okay with them, Ronnie.  I can’t remember exactly but it was like every freaking time you brought up the situation tonight, you were more scared for the collection and your chance to go fully equipped to your Blue Heron School than you were about everything else.”

“No,” Verona said.

“It was about your items, your items, and getting everything okay, and it was about-”

“It wasn’t,” Verona said, with some emotion.

Lucy stopped.

“This was why I wanted to ask,” Verona said.  “Because it seemed like we were on such different pages, and if we’re on the same page, then you really were mad, maybe unforgivably mad.”

Lucy shifted her position, because the way her armpit pressed against side wall of the truck, it was cutting off circulation.

“I wanted to get the stuff back and get back to normal because I wanted you to be able to go back to that cabin where you were with Wallace and Mia and the others, and kiss a boy and make other friends because that’s what I really wanted out of tonight,” Verona said.

Her eyes were wet with moisture.

“Because… when you were there, when I got glimpses of your face, there were times you didn’t have that normal look on your face, where you were wary and careful, and you looked like the Lucy I was friends with before Paul left your family and devastated your mom.  You were relaxed.”

Lucy blinked a few times.  Verona rubbed tears away from her eyes.

“You were the best you when you were defending Pam.  And being brave, and I took that away from you, by messing up.”

“Mess-ups happen.  Especially with the Carmine blood and stuff staining Kennet, like Matthew said.”

“I’ve been trying so hard,” Verona said, wiping away more tears.  “Ever since you got on us after the Faerie thing.  And I tried to pick up the slack in some ways, and I wasn’t good at that, but I interviewed the goblins and I did the spell drawings, and I’ve been doing the surveillance of our suspects as much as I could…”

“I thought you wanted more chances to be a cat and stuff.”

“Duhh!” Verona retorted.  “No freaking duhh, yeah, that’s great, but also I wanted to not make you have to be the one who takes charge and manages us two.  I’ve been trying to be more focused on the investigation, and keeping tabs on things, and keeping track.  I’m not good at the direct stuff, so like… the thing where we don’t tell Alexander our personal info, and stuff.”

“It’s good, Ronnie.”

“I don’t want to be a burden.”  Verona tried to sit up, where the motion of the truck and the relative lack of friction beneath them made it easy to slump down or lie down, and Lucy glanced at her friend’s feet.

Verona’s sandals were strappy, and it looked like the edges of the straps had rubbed Verona’s feet raw, to the point there was blood.

All that running around.

Trying to fix things.

“You’re not.”

“My dad only seems to care if I’m around because it makes him less lonely, and I can do chores for him and make his life easier.”

“Yeah.”

“And the Kennet Others are stiff and weird around us because they’re spooked and it’s only going to get worse after we go to school.  Alpeana hasn’t been around much at all and John is really dark since Yalda got…”

“Yeah.”

“And Jeremy wasn’t down for a relationship on my terms and I told myself I wouldn’t get down about that but with everything else-”

“It sucks.”

“And now I’m here and I might be ruining us, because I’m being more of a baby than ever when I want to be the one making you feel better, after you didn’t get your night with people like Mia and Wallace.”

“I got my fill.  I don’t think you’re ruining us.”

“Crying like this makes me feel like I’m my dad, and I hate that more than anything.”

“I think it’s pretty different.  Because it’s pretty obvious you’re coming from a place of caring.  I don’t think he does.  Not really.  And it’s okay if you want to have a bad day and lean on me, okay, Ronnie?”

“But I’m always-”

Lucy scooted over, and pulled on Verona until Verona succumbed to the hug.

“And I’m going to have a bad day sooner or later, okay?  And maybe it’ll take some doing to get to where you can get me to lean on you.  But try.  Make me.  It’ll probably be worth a thousand times of you leaning on me, hard as it is.”

Verona nodded, head against Lucy’s shoulder.

“We’re good, Ronnie.  You don’t need my forgiveness for tonight because I’m not mad.  I’m kinda glad we got a nice big reminder of how badly a little screwup can ruin a whole lot, if anything.”

Verona nodded.

“And we’re going to magic school and it’s going to be crazy.  And I’ll have your back and I know you’ll have mine, in your own way.  And we’ll have Avery’s back and she’ll have ours.  And we’ll get into wild stuff.  We’ll hopefully figure out what we need to know about the investigation.  And fuck yeah, we’ll scare people with how on top of stuff we are.”

Verona nodded.

“Okay?”

Verona nodded.

“All vented out?”

“You got hurt tonight, because of me.”

“I’ll mend.  No permanent harm, I’m pretty sure.”

They drove for another minute.  Lucy gave her friend a squeeze.

“I see Kennet,” Lucy said looking over, while Verona’s head was buried in her shoulder.  “Now’s the time, if you want to say anything, and still have time to dry your eyes after.  Any confessions, anything from you to me.”

Lucy checked the back window wasn’t open, and that this was private.  Avery and Melissa were talking too much to listen in.

Lucy gripped the side of the truck for stability, to keep both her and Verona from sliding, as they turned onto a ramp.

“My mom doesn’t want me,” Verona said, her voice small.

Lucy gave her friend the tightest hug she could, but she didn’t know what to say to that.

“You’re the most important person in the world to me,” Verona said.  “I don’t mean to order it like this. Like it’s because everyone else doesn’t-”

“I know.”

“Because even if I had a cool dad and a mom who wanted me, and Jeremy and a great relationship with all the Others, and friends, and whatever else, you’d be the most important to me.”

Lucy hugged her friend tight.

“Same.”

[4.3 Spoilers] Packing Up

Avery’s Clothes: T-shirts and jerseys with nature & surfer designs, track pants, jeans, shorts, warm jacket with hood, tankini, nice shirt from the party, socks & stuff.  Deer mask, cloak & hat.

Lucy’s Clothes:  Blouses, branded athletic tops, sweatshirt dress with Vikare logo.  Red jeans, Quire stretch pants, black jeans, two skirts.  Red raincoat, socks & stuff, bag with mask, hat, cloak.

Verona’s Clothes: Old clothes & new clothes from online shopping, socks & stuff both matched & mismatched, stockings, skirt, overalls dress, mask, cloak, hat.

Hygiene (misspelled) stuff, Tooth & Hair:
Avery:Toothbrush, hairbrush, biggestfoot hairspray, pitstop sports deodorant
Verona: Shaky cat electric toothbrush, Stealth antiperspirant, makeup stuff.
Lucy: Metal reinforced huge hair & makeup case.
Also depicted: rusty fork

Other essentials, Money:
$40 contributed by Avery & Verona both.  $60 contributed by Lucy.
Also depicted: 68 cents.

School Supplies:
Avery: Hard pencilcase & paper
Verona: pencilcase with everything in it, paper.
Lucy: Fountain pen & paper
Also depicted: broken pencil.

Practice stuff:

Glamour – Guilherme & Maricica (fine yellow & coarser dark green dust, respectively)

Weapons
Avery – Hockey stick bracelet charm
Verona – Ugly Stick
Lucy – Enchanted knife & weapon ring
Also depicted – rusty fork

Dog Tags
All three girls have theirs.
Also depicted: random, nonmagic dog tag from a mundane dog.

Keys & Lockpicks:
Avery – Enter Key
Verona – Ratfink Key
Lucy – Computer Bug
Also depicted – rusty fork

Trickery & Stuff:
Avery – Sunset Specs
Verona – Quill Pen & Jammer
Lucy – Thorn in the flesh, anti-glamour measures
Not depicted – rusty fork

Leaving a Mark – 4.4

Avery

Last Thursday: Packing Up


It was weird, being home and exercising and not having Kerry climbing all over her, or Sheridan butting into her space.  She stretched.

Avery had grabbed some cassettes from the old music store downtown, when she and Lucy had gone up that way to check on Snowdrop and the goblins.  Five dollars for any five cassettes.  It gave her something to do with the tape player, since she’d traded away the Ouchie Wa Wa tape for the Paths contact and escort, and the Crying Cold Tears tape had worn out at the end of school party three days ago.  They didn’t have any tapes left over from what they’d gotten from Zed.

She shifted to a different stretch, one knee on the floor, the other foot down, adopting a lunging movement while focusing on her awareness of her body.  The voices from elsewhere in the house were muted.

Declan was off to camp, Rowan was doing a thing with his girlfriend and some friends, kind of like the end of year party, but they were gone for a week.  Mom was away at work again.  Kerry was home, but there wasn’t that feeling like she’d been pushed into Avery’s space by a lack of elbow room.  It wasn’t that their place was small, but more that everyone was so different, and everything they liked doing required a room, or a good portion of a room.  Sheridan was… she was supposed to be doing laundry, but who knew how long she’d be at that?

She shifted stretches.

She was taking a break from soccer, because keeping that up while staying at the Blue Heron Institute for any length of time would be crazy.  She’d considered trying, but between having to explain to her parents what she was doing back in town, and having to figure out a Path she could walk six times a week, it didn’t make sense.

Sucked.

The end of school and the start of summer shuffled everything around.  Last year, she’d gone on this trip to the states with a bunch of the homeschool kids, then she’d gone camping with Olivia to catch up.  The days had felt three times as long, and they’d spent the nights talking in hushed whispers until Olivia’s parents had told them to shut up.  There had probably been nights they only slept three hours because they were talking so much, and they’d barely noticed it the following days, powering through with junk food from the big red tin.  She hadn’t been around to notice the house emptying as her siblings got busy elsewhere.

She wanted to stay in shape, and stretching alone wouldn’t do it.  Maybe she’d take up running, if the school didn’t have practical lessons that involved running from a horde of goblins, child-snatching Faerie, or whatever.  She wasn’t ruling anything out.

She shifted her footing, so the foot on the leg she was kneeling with had toes braced against the floor.  She rose into a standing position as smoothly as possible.

She stood, back arched, arms overhead with palms pressed together.

The stairs creaked.  Couldn’t be mom.  Couldn’t be Grumble.  Dad or Sheridan.

Either one would be barging in, soon.  She broke from her position to go to the dresser, where toys lay on the corner closest to the bunk bed she shared with Kerry, and a bunch of clothes and minor jewelry stuff cluttered the other half.  She didn’t really have a space on there, but she’d prepared a bandage, a bit larger than usual, and laid it in the middle, paper still on.  On the white side that was supposed to sit against the wound, she’d drawn a connection break sign, surrounded by tiny lettering that read ‘mask the wound’.

She stuck it in place, over the scratch from when the Cold Tears guy had elbowed her and somehow cut her in the process.

She got a bit of glamour from her makeup kit, and used her thumb to smudge it at a bit of sweat she was wiping away, at the side of her neck.  Her eyes opened wide, her Sight sweeping out, and filled the room with mist and handprints – predominantly hers, Sheridan’s, and Kerry’s, in their respective sizes.  She could see herself in the mirror, and in the midst of the haze, she could see the shadow of the deer’s head shape, and the immature antlers with two ribbons tied to the one.  In the midst of the haze, around and in front of her own face.  Her eyes were misty, but the pupils and the dark ring around the irises remained crisp, and the area around her eyes was white, like it was on her mask.

The glamour on the side of her neck was a slash of thumbprint in gold leaf.  It faded into skin.  A golden checkmark, to reward herself for exercising and focusing on herself.

Guilherme had told Avery that she needed to identify the person she wanted to become, develop a clear mental picture, and then close the gap between herself and that person. To identify the wins and see the mistakes as opportunities to grow.  It was stupid, on a level, but it kind of worked.

Sheridan let herself into their room.

“Done with the laundry?” Avery asked.  She put another bandage over her wrist, same idea.

“Meh.”

Sheridan’s bed creaked as she collapsed back onto it.  She held a tablet, and within seconds, had the the opening of some television show playing, with violin to start.  Lying back, reaching over head, Sheridan pulled the curtain partially closed, making the room mostly dark.

She lay there, big enough around the middle that her belly could hold her tablet up at a viewing angle.  Zombie mode on a Sunday morning.

Avery made sure she had everything, including her makeup stuff, annoyed by the lack of light, but not really wanting to fight Sheridan over it.

“Can I grab one or two pieces of jewelry?” Avery asked, indicating the little jewelry tree that Sheridan had put out of Kerry’s reach, by the dresser.  It was wire, a foot tall, and was painted over to look like wood, with necklaces, earrings, and other things hanging from branches.

“A loan, not a gift?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you give me something for it?”

Avery moved the tree into a position where she could better view the contents.  “What do you want?  Money?”

“I won’t ever say no to money,” Sheridan said.  “But meh.  I don’t care that much.”

“I can take it then?” Avery asked.  She picked out a broad copper bangle, it had been hammered into shape, and had a mottled texture from the multiple hammer blows.

“Let’s say… you can take it, free, but if you lose any of it, you pay me triple what it’s worth?”

“What’s it worth?”

“Thirty bucks?”

Avery whistled, but then she nodded.  “Sure.  Deal.  I’m thinking you’re a bit of a mercenary, like this.”

“You know, dad’s been trying to figure out how to talk to you since the party on Friday night.”

“Hm?”  Avery touched the bandage at her cheek, her back still to Sheridan.  The people in her grade had kept things under wraps, she was pretty sure.  There had been some mentions of some guy on drugs crashing the party, but the cops hadn’t investigated, and the smoke from Lucy’s rune had masked what they’d done.  Brooklynn hadn’t seen the guy disappear, or she’d mentally conflated him and John Stiles as one person.  She’d talked about it on social media, playing it up for drama, but it didn’t seem like anything important had stuck, for her.

“You know his coworkers have kids who go to the school, right?”

“Right, Chicken Wings?”

“That’s the guy.”

Avery had met some of her dads’ coworker’s kids as part of her socialization around and after homeschool.  None were in her grade.  Chicken Wings dealt weed and some other minor stuff, but he wouldn’t be talking about that, or making himself complicit in getting younger kids drunk and high.

Sheridan hadn’t followed up.

“Why?  What’s this about?” Avery asked.  She turned around.

Sheridan put her tablet down, the show still playing, and craned her head as she looked toward the door.  Dad was downstairs and Kerry was who knew where.

“Well, this is secondhand knowledge, or sixth-hand knowledge, but Chicken Wings heard from some guys who were at the campfire, that you were telling some other guys stuff.  Chicken Wings’ dad told dad.”

“Oh.”

“The other story I heard was that it’s someone badmouthing you because they’re pissed you didn’t want to date them.  I didn’t hear that bit from dad.  I had to ask this girl I did a project with, who was there that night.  Kay Black?”

Kay Black was probably related to Brayden.

“Badmouthing?” Avery asked, trying to sound casual.

“Trying to, anyway.  I overheard dad talking to mom about it on the phone.  I don’t think he knows what to believe.”

“What are they saying?” Avery asked.  She put the bangle on, then sorted out her bag, removing a bit of one of Kerry’s necklaces she’d strung together, where the necklace’s string had caught in the velcro.  She put her larger gym bag close to the door.

“That you’re a lesbian.”

Avery looked back at Sheridan, eyebrows raised, expression otherwise neutral.

“Dad got really upset with Chicken Wings’ dad over that,” Sheridan said.  Her expression was hard to read.

“Huh.”

“I don’t know the specifics,” Sheridan said.

Avery got notebooks where she’d taken a box knife to the pages that she’d used for school, the empty pages left over, some other notebooks and a sheaf of paper, and a hard pencil case.

She had another notebook where she’d stored clippings and images.  Stuff like art of movie characters, one anime character she’d seen in an online music video, with pink hair, and some fashion items and models in fashion that she liked.  Her ‘inspiration me’ booklet.  Images that she could keep in mind as she reinforced her self-image with glamour.  Putting it together had helped her figure some stuff out.  Not just about the look or attitude she wanted to convey, but also how there were types of girl she liked, and that didn’t line up with the type of girl she wanted to be.

What would that ideal her do?

Why was her dad upset?  He’d seemed mostly cool about stuff.  Sometimes people felt differently when it was their kid, right?

“Is it a problem?” Avery asked, looking Sheridan square-on.

Sheridan let the tablet flop down to rest against her chest.  Her expression was dispassionate, half-lidded.  “I can’t read dad’s mind.”

“I can deal with dad later.  I mean is it a problem with you, that I’m into girls?”

There were pounding footsteps, small and fast.

Kerry burst through the door.

“Dad’s wondering when you want to go,” Kerry said, not even missing a step as she made a beeline straight for the jewelry tree that Avery had moved.  Avery put the thing back out of Kerry’s reach.

“Just about ready, I think,” Avery said.  She put her inspiration book in her bag.

“No,” Sheridan said.

Avery turned.

“No what?” Kerry asked, craning her head to see the jewelry.

Sheridan ignored her.  “Y’know, I always thought it’d be Declan.  Isn’t it a younger sibling thing?  Hormones in the womb or whatever, getting mixed up as you have more kids?”

“What are you talking about?” Kerry asked.

“I really don’t know, Sheridan,” Avery said.  The ‘no’ had been an answer to her earlier question.

“What are you talking about what are you talking about?” Kerry piped up.  She grabbed the strap of Avery’s bag, and Avery pulled away, annoyed.

“I guess I can’t be a jerk to you anymore, huh?”

“Huh?” Avery asked, squinting.  “What?  How does that make sense?”

“I dunno.  I’d feel like an ass, knowing you’re dealing with crap.”

“Ass,” Kerry echoed.  “You have the big ass, Sheridan.  Kinley said so.”

“And you have a soaked head and a mouth filled with soap,” Sheridan said.

“What?” Kerry asked.  “No I don’t.”

Sheridan put the tablet to one side of her bed with enough force it clipped the wall, then lunged to a standing position.  Kerry froze for a second, then bolted, just barely avoiding Sheridan’s hand.

Sheridan closed the door, then leaned back against it, huffing out a breath.

“Treat me the same,” Avery had to raise her voice a bit to be heard over the sound of Kerry drumming her fists on the door and shouting.

“I’d milk it for all it’s worth.  Get every advantage you can, and tell the haters to fuck off,” Sheridan said.

“Well, I’m not-” Avery stopped before finishing.  She felt like the way she’d been about to say ‘I’m not you’ would have felt mean somehow.  “Treat me the same.”

Sheridan rolled her eyes.  “What are you going to do about dad?”

“I don’t know.”

Kerry kept banging on the door.

“Grumble’s really into shitty politics, you know,” Sheridan told her.  “Be careful.”

“I know.  I-”

“Avery!” her dad called up from downstairs.

“-yeah,” Avery finished, because she couldn’t remember what she’d been intending to say.  Not that there was a great answer to the issue of Grumble.

She opened the door, picking up her big gym bag, then got her backpack too.  Kerry hurried into the room, seizing the bag, adding to the weight Avery had to manage.

“Get off!”

Kerry reacted by grabbing on harder, dragging her weight down even more, making moving impossible.

“Avery!” her dad shouted.

“Get off!” Avery warned.  Then she grabbed Kerry’s wrist, which Kerry reacted to by clutching the bag even more, hooking her fingers into the open zipper pocket.  “Sheridan, you want to do the soap thing?”

Kerry let go, her eyes going wide.  Avery continued to hold her wrist, and resisted, refusing to let her sister get away until Sheridan had gotten up again and swooped her up in her arms.

Kerry screamed, top of her lungs, a singular, seemingly unending sound.  Sheridan walked across the hall to the bathroom, carrying her six year old sister like a battering ram.  Kerry flailed.

“Don’t actually put the soap in her-”

Kerry’s flailing led to her smacking her head against the edge of the sink.

The screams changed tenor and timbre, becoming a sound of actual pain and horror.

“What on Earth-?”

Avery’s dad came up the stairs.  Sheridan put Kerry down, and Kerry slumped down, lying on the bathroom mat.

“Is she okay?” Avery asked.

“My hand took more of the impact than her head.  It hurts like heck, but she’ll live.”

Kerry screamed harder.

Avery watched her dad, studying him, and saw the glance he gave her, the smallest change in his expression.  It was hard to not read a thousand things into that.

It was only every interaction with this family for the next fifty years that was on the line, right?  Only.

Avery felt a pit in her stomach, and hoped above all that her dad had been upset for other reasons, like the coworker was being a dick about it, or something.

“I’ll give you a ride in a second.  Get your shoes on?”

“I can get another ride if you’re busy,” Avery said.

Kerry shrieked.  Sheridan frowned down at the kid.

“There’s no blood,” dad said.

Avery headed downstairs, bringing her bags with.  Kerry was obviously playing it up now, being upset for the sake of being upset.

Now she had to figure out how to get out of here without her dad asking questions.

She set her bags down, checked her phone, and then looked into the living room, where Grumble sat, watching television.  Normally he’d watch the morning news, watch again at noon over lunch, and then watch the six o’clock news just before dinner.  Sometimes he sat outside with the radio going.

Avery had never paid much attention to politics.  She didn’t get it, most of the time.  But she was starting to.

She approached her grandfather, and sat down on the couch, across the room from him.  He sat in his armchair.  Frowning at the screen.

“Don’t you get bored of watching that?” she asked.

Grumble said something unintelligible.

“It’s always unpleasant and awful.”

“Got’na know whats go’on’n in the world tuday,” he mumbled.

“People shouting at each other.  Being hateful and intolerant.  Lying constantly.  Companies being awful.”

“S’me’em’re arright,” Grumble said.

“I’m heading off to a summer thing.  Going to be gone most of the summer.”

She dropped her running shoes, and began lacing up.

He muted the TV and pawed at the lever with a stiff hand twice before it went down, letting him swivel the chair.  Most of the time he kept it locked so Kerry wouldn’t push him around.  He turned to face her.

“Stay safe, stay healthy, be patient with… that?” Avery told him, indicating upstairs.

Sheridan snapped at a screaming Kerry.  The floor creaked as her dad or Sheridan walked.

“Worse when I was’re age,” Grumble said.

“Worse?”

“Six’ve us, five boys,” he told her.  He looked around.  “House’s big as this room.”

“I’m not sure I believe that,” Avery said, smiling.

“S’true.  M’brother hung me up by my o’eralls, on t’hook on t’back of door.  Y’ve ‘ot it made, hmm?”

“Does this remind you of your childhood?”

He moved his arm, struggling to coordinate, and then moved his fingers.  Index finger and thumb held a short distance from one another.  A little.

“Y’ll be missed, Ave my girl,” he said.

“I’ll miss you too, Grumble.”

Saying that felt weird, when she sat so far away from him.  How long had she been doing that?

He beckoned her closer, with a movement of the hand.  She got up, crossed the distance, and hugged him.  His body was condensed, hard, and stiff.  She hated that she thought of the Wolf, as he patted her back with a hand.

She ended the hug, then went back to tend to her stuff, making triply sure she was ready.

He swiveled back to face the TV.

The man on the television was talking about how Canada depended on oil, economy-wise, and the reporters were getting agitated, shouting him down.  Bringing up climate change.

“Let’m talk!” Grumble addressed the television.

“Grumble?  What would you say if I asked you not to watch that stuff so much?” Avery asked.  “As a favor?”

“What else’m I g’na do?” he mumbled.

“Take up bird watching?  Or read?  Or watch movies?  You could start a blog.  Grumble’s grumblings.”

He made a side-to-side head motion.  His hand followed suit with a stiff so-so.

This had kind of become a good share of what he did during his waking hours, since the stroke and since grandma had passed.

It sucked, and she’d talked to Lucy before about how it sucked.  Lucy felt like the world was against her, and Avery felt like that wasn’t exactly it.  There were a whole lot of crummy people, but the worst she’d dealt with was people being dumb.  As word got out about her coming out, she was betting she would run into the bad people, lots of dumb people… but that didn’t bother her.  She had backup.

She was pretty sure that if Lucy got a wish, she would’ve wanted to fix everything out there.  Or just to make it better.

If Avery got a wish, she wanted her family to be okay with it.  She wanted her Grumble, and her mom and dad, and in an ideal world, she wanted her siblings to not be a pain in the ass.

She got some business-card sized bits of paper out of the front flap of her bag, and drew a connection sign of two interlocking diamonds, leaving gaps here and there.  Then she drew a Celtic ‘family’ trinity knot, so it wove into it.

She’d had to draw a bunch, as part of her prep to go away for summer.  Some of the extra Blue Heron materials were stashed in her room and her stuff, marked with the symbol, with more intricate symbols that Matthew and Edith had helped with.

It was subtle, and it would hopefully last the summer, keeping her family from asking too many questions about where she was going.  Matthew had lent some power, blackness like ink, and they’d used them for the big runes, like the one on poster-size paper under her mattress, which also protected some of the notes she wasn’t bringing with.

This one was smaller, and it didn’t have the branching arms that warded off attention.  She named her dad on the borders of the paper.  She wanted attention.

She drew two, in thin pencil lines.  She slipped one into the back space of her grandfather’s chair.  She held onto the others.

“Avery!” her dad said.

Right, while she held it, she would pull that attention.

“I’m ready,” she said.

Her dad came down the stairs.  Sheridan and a teary-eyed Kerry followed him.

“Time to go?” her dad asked.  “You okay, dad?”

Grumble mumbled a response.

She badly wanted to ask her dad stuff.  To not have this hanging over her head the entire time she was gone.

She looked at Sheridan, then walked over and hugged her sister.

“Ew, get off me.  I’ve already got one sticky-handed little sister grabbing me all the time.”

“Nyeh, nyeh,” Kerry made sounds while sticking her hands into Sheridan’s hip and stomach.

“Call me if you find out more?” Avery asked, glancing in the general direction of her dad, who couldn’t see her face.  “Please?”

“What’s this?” her dad asked.

“Sister stuff,” Sheridan told him.  To Avery, she said, “What’ll you give me?”

Really?

“Nyeh,” Kerry said, jabbing Sheridan.

“So annoying.  No, not really.”

Avery nodded, then she gave Kerry a hug.  While she hugged her little sister, she slipped the other connections paper into Kerry’s back pocket.

“I can get another ride if it’s easier,” Avery told her dad.

“It’s fine, I think.  Dad, you’ll be okay? And Sheridan, can you watch-?”

Kerry ran back in the direction of the kitchen.

“Okay, Sheridan,” her dad said, walking swiftly after.  “She’s doing art stuff in the dining room, and there’s glitter, and glue, and we laid newspaper down-”

“This sounds like a lot of work for that little nightmare,” Sheridan said.  “Am I getting babysitting money?”

“No, you’re giving me fifteen minutes of your time in exchange for- Kerry, please put a lid back on the glitter before you knock it over-”

“It’s really a lot easier,” Avery raised her voice to address her dad.  “Less complicated!  Me getting another ride!”

“I wanted to drive you over and see you off.  Dad, could you turn the television down?”

“Same vol’me as l’ways,” Grumble complained, his voice gruff.

“You’re missing so much, being away,” Sheridan said.  “I guess I should help dad with those two.

“Avery!” her dad called out.

“What?” Avery asked, exasperated.

“Could you?  Get that other ride?  My hands are full.”

“Absolutely,” she said.

The graphite would wear out.  At best, if they found either paper, the runes would be worn out, the papers blank.

Avery got her phone out, and sent a text, before picking up her bags.

“Hey, Sher?” Avery asked.

Sheridan was almost out of view, rounding the corner to go check on Grumble and Kerry.  “Huh?”

“Thanks for being a reasonably cool sister.”

“Don’t you put that on me.  I don’t want it.  It comes with responsibilities and stuff.”

“Right.”

“And Ave?”

“What?”

“You take anything more than the wrist thingy?”

“Just this.”

“Ninety bucks if you lose it.”

Avery rolled her eyes.

But it kind of meant a lot, at the same time.  She worked her way past the front door while hefting the bag, and then headed down the street.

Matthew parked a little ways from her street.  Verona and Lucy were situated in the back with Snowdrop.  Matthew sat in the front, alone, some instrumental music seeping out past open windows.  Avery ran over, and vaulted over the side, with the assistance of a step on the bumper.

“We were just talking about opossum boys,” Verona said.

“Opossum boys?”

“If our girl’s going to find an opossum lad out in the wild, and think, oh man, that’s a fine specimen.”

“I’m all about that opossum boy,” Snowdrop said.

“Opossum girls?” Avery asked.

“Them too.”

“Do you know what you’ll look for, when and if you ever want a mate?” Verona asked.

“Nah.  I’ve got no instincts.”

“I’m morbidly curious now,” Lucy said.

“I’ll tell you what I’m probably not going to do.  I’m not going to follow in my ma’s footsteps and find the nearest available loudmouth boy that clicks his tongue all the freaking time, I’m not going to become a young mom and pair up with some dude for life, only to secretly have a bunch of kids by other men.  I’m definitely not going to end up having kids twice a year, every year.”

“Oh, woah, what is going on with opossums?” Verona asked.

“We’re a class act,” Snowdrop said, smiling and showing off her missing teeth.  “And I gotta be classier.  Not going to die before I’m twenty-one like my ma did, no ma’am.”

“You being a class act may or may not be true, but you’re not going to die before you’re twenty-one, if I can help it,” Avery said.

“Nah,” Snowdrop mumbled, shifting position so she sat beside Avery.  Avery put an arm around Snowdrop’s shoulders.

The truck took them out of Kennet.  Out to the Blue Heron Institute.

The trip took them north, away from civilization, and down well-maintained but empty roads.

They knew they were close when they saw Zed’s station wagon, with the wood paneled sides.  Avery had no idea if he was escorting them or if he’d just happened to arrive as they did.

The road wound through hills that were dense with vegetation.

“Still a ways to go,” Snowdrop said, looking around.

“Yeah,” Avery said.  The warm summer air combined with the steady wind of being in the open rear of the pickup truck was just about perfect.  Being in the woods was… it was more perfect, and she was glad that the Forest Ribbon Trail hadn’t totally ruined that, at the very least.

She’d have to reconsider her stance on that if she was out in the woods at night at any point.

The school was not especially fancy.  There was a main building, that had a central spire, and had large, blue-tinted windows.  It looked sort of churchlike, but the church parts had been replaced or reworked.  Two two-story buildings flanked it, made of stone like the central building was, with peaked roofs with blue shingles.  The way they were laid out with a zig-zagging orientation to the rooftops reminded her of a crown or tiara.

There were other buildings, arranged around it.  They were more boxy, with stone at the lower halves and wood at the mid and upper halves, set up in a crescent shape, so the front doors all faced a central area.  Past the buildings, Avery could see an open field, another field that had a bunch of stuff set up in it, with brown and black patches in the grass and sandbags piled in the distance, and off to the side of one of the main school buildings was a row of picnic tables with a kind of canopy tent erected over them.  There were trees, there was a view off one side of the hill that looked out over rivers and more trees.

A bunch of cars were parked toward the center of the area.  Students had already gotten out, and family members were socializing, instead of dropping their kids off and bailing, like Avery remembered people doing at the homeschool event last summer.

Matthew parked the truck about as far away as he could, while still being on the school grounds.  Ahead of them, Zed parked, then climbed out.  He immediately headed through the crowd, to where Brie was talking to a tall but mousy blonde woman with a nervous smile.

A lot of the kids were fifteen, sixteen, or older.  Closer to Zed’s age.

Matthew got out of the truck, and helped lift their bags down.

“Not comfortable getting closer?” Lucy asked.

“No,” Matthew said.  “Sorry.”

“We appreciate the ride,” Avery said.  “Simplifies things a lot.”

“You weren’t necessary.  I could’ve given directions,” Snowdrop said.

Matthew’s eyes were dark as he surveyed the school and the crowd of a hundred people, that included kids and parents.

To him, these people were enemies.  Threats to his way of life.  Here, they studied how to hunt him.  They organized against him.

Avery wondered if he felt like she felt when watching some of the people on the news her Grumble paid so much attention to.  People who hated her, or who organized the world into those who were worth more or less and then spread and taught that view.

“I can’t believe we’re here,” Verona whispered.

“Be careful,” Matthew said.  “Think twice before trusting.  Be safe.”

“All I’m gonna say is I’m unarmed,” Snowdrop said, slyly, while taking a rusty, thin fork and sliding it into the sleeve of her hoodie.

“Uh huh,” Lucy said.  “Maybe become a regular opossum, so you’re harder to recognize?  I think you’ll be safe from any trouble, but to be safe…”

“Also, last thing I’m going to say, so we’re all on the same page?  I’m also not an arsonist,” Snowdrop whispered, hand cupped.

“Yeah.  Go small possum.”

“I’m a model student,” Snowdrop said.  “Well groomed, well polite, well behaved…”

“Small.  Now.”

Snowdrop shifted to her regular opossum form.  Avery picked her up, and set her on a shoulder.  Snowdrop made a tiny sneezing sound.

Seeing this, with the mix of people, all of whom seemed more together than she was… breaking into this strange new environment, it was very familiar.

Another two cars pulled up.  Matthew ducked back into his truck.

“Thanks again,” Lucy told him.

He glanced back at the larger group.

“We might be swinging by, to talk or to handle stuff,” Lucy said.

“Call before you do,” he told her.

“So you can hold us at gunpoint until you arbitrarily decide if we’re trustworthy?” she asked.

“Because we’re using protection to keep practitioners away.  Spirits, goblins, some wards, some elemental stuff, and glamour, to twist things subtly for anyone using the Sight to look out for other things.  There are other countermeasures I can’t and won’t tell you.  Nothing that you’d think was especially immoral… but if you were compelled to tell them everything…”

“You think they would?” Avery asked.

“I absolutely think they would,” he said.

The cars that had been coming up the road passed them by.  Matthew started up his truck.

Kids peered out the windows, staring at them and at Matthew.  Some of them had the traces of the Sight coloring their eyes, making them look like stormy waters.

“Don’t put anything past them,” Matthew warned.

Avery nodded, alongside her friends.

Matthew pulled back onto the road, then drove away.

Some ominous freaking words to leave them with.

“Bye and good luck to you too,” Verona said.

A ten year old girl ran over to hug a boy of about the same age.  Behind her was a guy that was six feet tall, hunched over, with an expression like stone.  He wore a black trenchcoat that was very weirdly fit around his body, buttoned up from ground to neck, the bottom of the coat grazing the ground and hiding his feet.  He also had baseball cap that seemed to small for him, set askew.  His eyes were entirely white, except for the narrow pupils, which didn’t rove or move to look around at anything.  He followed behind her, the movements of his legs not visible, his head not bobbing with any steps.  Like he was floating.

Just… out in the open, like that.

Some middle aged dad had a huge-ass sword strapped to his hip and upper body, and the blade looked longer than his leg, to the point it would be dragging in the dirt if it wasn’t for the straps.  His teenage son had a gun at each hip.

Parents mingled.  Kids found friends.  Avery, Lucy, and Verona walked around the edge of the crowd, circling around to the front, and looking at the buildings and the bits of practice.

“Hey!” Zed called out.  He waved.

Avery raised a hand in a wave.

He brought Brie with him as he navigated the crowd to reach them.

“You made it!” he greeted them with a smile.

“Yep.”

“I thought that might be you three driving behind me.  Couldn’t get a good look.  The inside of the truck cab was dark.  Spooky stuff, haha.” Zed’s laugh was easy.  He was wearing a sleeveless tee and jeans, a big belt buckle, and he had a wispy mustache.  His hair was parted and slicked back, shiny like some oil had been used.

Like they hadn’t had a fight where they’d flung monsters at each other.

Which was a thought that made Avery feel better, not worse.  She wanted to live in a world where enemies could become friends.

“We meet again,” Brie said.  “In better circumstances than the last few times, I hope.”

“I hope so,” Lucy said.

Brie’s arms were tattooed heavily.  Avery recognized the marks that had been on her arms, and on the others.  Eight phases of the moon, with the full moon at the wrists.  Fine chains spiderwebbed out, connecting to the moons and to other chains, in a complex network that might have been hiding a diagram in it.  A hint of tattoo at the collar of her simple white dress suggested the tattoos extended across her body.

Crazy.

“Okay, so… do you want a tour?  Do you want to see anyone or anything specific?  Do you want names?” Zed asked.  “They’ll take your photo shortly, and then they’ll distribute files so people know who’s who.  You’re three of the seven freshmen.”

“I was told it was eleven,” Brie said.

“Eleven this year, but only seven of the eleven are showing up this summer,” Zed said.  “You three, then Jorja, Dom, and…”

He snapped his fingers a few times, trying to remember.

“Talia,” Brie supplied.  “And me.”

“Yes.  Thank you.  And Brie, of course.”

“Jorja’s the third sibling to come.  Her older brothers are already here.”

Zed pointed them out.  The girl was ten, with hair about as straight and black as hair got, to the point it looked like it was wet, with the way it lay against her scalp.  She was pale, and her clothes slightly mismatched for age, size, and type.  She was the one who had run over to greet the boy, with the large, gliding Other following behind, always moving slowly and not catching up to her until she stood still for a little while, which was rare.

To Avery’s sight, there were black handprints all over her, with the finger of one handprint hooked into her eye and pulling her eyelid down.  Black veins webbed out from the handprints.

“Callers.  That’s caller with an a, not an o.  Slang for them is Druid or Draoidhe, but I’m not sure how PC that is,” Zed confided.  “Most druids tap into the big, old nature spirits.  her family taps into more urban things.  The black gutter, the glass prison, the chemical lightning.  Each kid picks one of these big, unrestrained lord spirits in the same general category, and then sort of taps into it for big, unrestrained, nasty practice.”

“Spirits of drugs?” Avery asked.

“Yeah,” Zed said.  “My gentle verdict?  Avoid.”

“Avoid Jorja and her brothers.  Got it,” Lucy said.  “Are the other newbies as young as her?”

“Yeah, kinda?  Dom and Talia are ten and eleven, I think.”

“We’re old for freshmen, then.”

“It’s really not that structured,” Zed reassured.  “You get freshmen and seniors in the same class sometimes, and sometimes people who’ve been coming here for four years sit in on a beginner class, looking for new insights from a different teacher.  Try not to ask too many questions if you’re in an advanced class, that’s all.”

“You’ve been coming here a while?” Avery asked.

“Three years.  Dom is from a family of historians.  They study patterns in history, to see if any accidental rituals emerge.”

“Accidental rituals?” Verona asked.

“I don’t know how much to explain, because I don’t know how much you know, and I’m not the best teacher.  Uh, when non-practitioners do stuff, they can still create rituals.  We call them accidental or emergent rituals.  If you find a big enough or ancient enough one, you can tweak it or harness it.  City layouts forming diagrams that influence economy?  Big money, potentially.  Patterns in, I dunno, wars followed by baby booms?  That could potentially be a whole generation that’s special.  They came here to deal with Ray, the guy I’m apprenticing under, so I’ve got the scoop there.”

“Is that common?” Avery asked.  “People coming here for one teacher?”

“Abso-hella-lutely,” Zed said, smiling.  “Most of the time, Mr. Belanger, Mrs. Durocher, or Ray will reach out to people with associated interests.  Jorja’s family is really interested in learning from Mrs. Durocher, who is maybe in the top ten in the world when it comes to dealing with powers so big that humans really have no business meddling in them.  She taps into primeval spirits, things so old they predate human language, or even the pre-human conception of animals having categories.  Beasts arguably older and more raw than any gods.  No form or boundaries.”

He pointed to the woman Avery had been thinking of as tall-but-mousy.  The woman covered her mouth while she laughed.

“I’ve been staying here, and she’s helping me with the Choir I’m holding inside me.  We’re trying to figure out what I’ll be.  If I can loosen the chains a bit and let the Choir out like a small, localized storm around me, or if-”

“If you’ll be a Host?” Lucy asked.  “Keeping it caged within?  Dealing with the power another way?”

“Yeah.”

“I’d be really interested in hearing what you end up doing, either way,” Lucy said.

Lucy was thinking of Matthew.  Maybe of ways to deal with Matthew.  Maybe of ways to help him.

Avery met Verona’s eyes.  Verona smiled, wide.

Yeah.  Avery liked this direction of things.  For very different reasons, she guessed, than Verona did.

Zed went back to what he was saying before, “The other families are ones that have been here for a long time.  They’re here because the Institute is close and it’s a good way to expand their knowledge.”

“I think we’re getting sidetracked,” Brie said.  “I can’t remember what we were originally talking about.”

“Yeah, that’s… there’s so much out there, you three,” Zed said.  “More than you could learn in four years of being here full time.  I could keep answering follow-up questions, but we’d be here until the fall semester.  Or until I start admitting how much I don’t know and you lose all respect for me.”

“Probably not all respect,” Verona said.

“Mostly I want to know who to trust and potentially befriend,” Lucy said.

“That’s…” Zed trailed off, looking over the crowd.

A long twenty or thirty seconds passed.

“You’ll have to get to know the teachers,” Brie broke the silence.  “Mrs. Durocher, Mr. Belanger, and Mr. Sunshine.  Most things revolve around them, or involve them a bit.  Trust, though?  You’re safe here, because the school rules prohibit harm.”

“There are ways around that kind of prohibition,” Lucy said.  “Like if you act on instinct, that may not be willful enough.  Or… stuff.”

Brie looked at Zed.

“That’s more or less true.  The school contract is pretty thorough, though,” Zed said.

“News to me,” Brie said, quiet.

“You’re safe.  If and when you’re not, you’d better believe I’m going to do what I can to protect you,” Zed told her.

“Thank you.”

“Do you three want to meet the teachers?”

“Not especially?” Lucy answered.  “We’ve already met Alexander.”

“Come on.”

Zed led them around the group.  Mrs. Durocher was talking to the parents of Jorja and her two brothers, who had the same handprints with black veins.  Alexander was addressing some older students.

A man with longer, wavy hair he’d partially straightened, with red sunglasses, was sitting on the stairs, talking to a younger girl with a stuffed elephant that was moving its head around.

They approached, waiting for a break in the conversation.  Zed deftly stepped in to get Mrs. Durocher’s attention.

“I’ve brought you three of your freshmen,” Zed told her.

She looked down at them, and her eyes disappeared, receding into her head and leaving a darkness that was somehow as vast as the whole clearing they were in, but incapable of reaching beyond the boundaries of her eye sockets.  The feeling that hit Avery as she saw it was like being at the last milestone of the Forest Ribbon Trail again.  She backed up a step, and Snowdrop hissed.

“If you’ll excuse me, Electra?” Mrs. Durocher asked.

“I’ll get Ulysse settled.”

Ms. Durocher nodded.  Then she turned her vast, empty eyes to the three of them again.  Avery resisted moving back a second time.

“Lovely,” Mrs. Durocher said.  “We have so many this year.  This spirit isn’t a familiar, is it?”

“A boon companion,” Avery said.  “I was under the impression they were similar.  At least based on what little I’ve heard of familiars.”

“They are.  In old, old days, they preceded familiar relationships.  Bonds forged not with a ritual, but a journey of necessity,” Mrs. Durocher said.  Her nostrils flared, and the wind chose that moment to subtly change direction.  Avery was left wondering if they were connected. “Lovely to see.  I have a familiar, but he spends a lot of time away.  His teeth have been at the throat of something old for three years, I think.”

“I… that’s sad,” Avery said.  Then she reconsidered.  “No offense intended.”

“He’s made for it.  Through a connection to me, En gets a taste at life at the same time he’s fulfilling his bloodlust, and through a connection to him, I have a way of keeping tabs on that particular project, even when I can’t be there.  I can feel his teeth in scale and fur as we stand here speaking.  That’s not to say I wouldn’t have loved to experiment with something like a soul companion, but you only get one, don’t you?”

“I guess?” Avery answered, feeling very on the spot.

“Does having a soul companion block having a familiar?” Verona asked.

“No, my dear,” Mrs. Durocher asked. “But some familiars are takers, or tyrants.  Even little, long-term connections can get ruined, without care.  It wouldn’t be kind to any soul companions I gathered.”

“Drat,” Verona muttered.

“Are you saying Drat because you thought I’d accidentally blocked myself from getting Alpy?” Avery asked.

Verona smirked.

“This again,” Lucy said.

“Such interesting questions.  I get the impression you’ll be charming students.  That lost spirit of yours, she’s the one who burned down the student library, is she?  Gave our Nicolette a scare?”

She didn’t sound angry at that, and Zed looked agitated- but for reasons that had nothing to do with any immediate danger.  He reached into a jacket pocket and pulled out the clunkiest cell phone Avery had ever seen.  It looked more like a hard plastic brick than anything.

“Uhh, yeah.  It was a crazy night, apparently,” Avery said.

“Hopefully the scales are even after your negotiation with Nicolette.  Speaking of libraries, is that our Nina Lecerf bumping around in that device of yours?” Mrs. Durocher asked Zed.

“She wants out.  If I may?”

Mrs. Durocher nodded.

Zed put the phone down, dialed a number, and stood back.

Avery stumbled a bit as paper slipped free of her bag and pocket.  Blank pages, some napkins, and stuff from other students found courses in a growing wind and found a common destination by traveling those courses.  They slapped against the air and found a three-dimensional human figure in the air.

Then, as if by a million colored pens drawing at once, features appeared on that form.  She stepped forward, dusting herself off.  Her hair was in a bun, she had a slight smile, and oversized glasses.  Her clothes looked like those of an old fashioned student, but they were hard to pin down from any movies Avery had seen of the olden days.

“Good evening, Mrs. Durocher,” the woman said.  She beamed at Avery and the others.

“Our library burned.  We moved the damaged books to a back room.”

“I know!  I heard,” the woman said.

Alexander approached.  He smiled at the woman.  “Would you be interested in doing us a favor, Nina?  Restoring what you can, and binding new books to replace the ones you can’t?”

The woman held both hands over her heart, and there was a faint paper sound, as if she had papers inside the breast of that suitcoat that was so fitted it could be a corset.  “May I?”

“Please.”

“Go, Nina.  You have thirty minutes.  I’ll set up something longer-term in a bit,” Zed said.

Nina curtseyed, then hurried into the school.

“She’s an Animus,” Zed said.  “A librarian in this case.  A conservator and collector of knowledge.  Her entire existence as an Other was and is books.  Visiting old bookstores, antique stores, auctions… sitting in libraries every night, making her own books or painstakingly copying tomes getting too old to be readable.”

“And she’s a prisoner of yours?” Lucy asked.

“A-” Zed seemed taken aback.

Well, that’s our reputation gone in record time, Avery thought.

“How did you bind her, or get her?” Avery asked, trying to phrase it more politely.

“She’s bound, right?” Verona asked.  “You had to let her out, and you only did it for a short time.  Then she’s stuck again?”

“It was a mutual deal,” Zed said.  “I offered her access to a trove of material online, and to help her figure it out and adapt her.  After ten years, she can decide to abort or renew.”

“As a thingy of knowledge and whatever, is she even capable of saying no and ending the contract?” Lucy asked.  “Or does she have to take the option where she’s bound for longer?”

“I find this line of questioning fascinating,” Alexander said.  “I’m so glad you three decided to attend.  When we didn’t get the paperwork, I wondered, and ended up doing some augury to judge if you would.  Every question you ask is a hint at where you come from.  Perhaps we’ll puzzle you out by the end of the summer semester, and reward you for giving us that knowledge and trust with a trove of knowledge.”

“Alexander,” Mrs. Durocher said.  “You do know where they come from?  I’m not the only one who’s put it together?”

“Given our history and the way these things have gone the last twenty times, I might suggest that I have two thirds of the story, and you have one third, but your third gets straight to the heart of the matter.”

“They’re wild practitioners.”

“Hm.”

“What’s that?” Zed asked.

“Practitioners of old ways, Zed.  Patron Others and practitioners who are tied to them.  The way things were done before Solomon, when they were formalized.  Which leads to questions about who and what spearheaded the organization of this little triad of practitioners.”

“I have some notes on that,” Alexander said.  “We’ll have wine and discuss all of our students tonight, I think.  Ray?”

“If we must,” the man who had to be Raymond Sunshine said, sighing heavily.  He was holding a laser between his hands for a kid to play with.  The kid looked too young to be attending the school.  Closer to Kerry’s age.  A bunch of other kids of similar age were hanging back, like they were too afraid to approach the scary old guy in black, with the long hair and crimson sunglasses.  Even if the lasers were neat.

“Not so cool to know we’re getting analyzed,” Lucy said.

“No ill-will is intended,” Alexander told them.  “Whatever you may think or know about me, I want you to know that I am also passionate about what we do here, and I do enjoy teaching.  I wouldn’t make this school my life if I didn’t.  I want to teach you more and to do that I need to know you.”

Lucy glowered more, but she held her tongue.

Alexander smiled.  “Knowing that you’re wild practitioners with multiple patrons helps me to make sense of you.  It tells me you’re probably strong, with a wide base of power.  It means I can expect you to be… interesting students.”

“Unruly and interesting,” Mrs. Durocher amended.

“I’d believe unruly,” Alexander said.  “Not filling out the paperwork.”

“Is that going to be a thing?” Avery asked.  “A problem?”

He laughed, and shook his head.  “It means we’re a little more off guard, a little less prepared to help you.  But I look forward to getting to know you and I’m reasonably certain I’ll know what I need to know by the time the semester ends and that we’ll impart a fine education in most things practice related.”

Letting you know what you want to know is our tuition, Avery thought.  Giving you that, basically.

But we get our own payment.  We get to find out stuff that we need to know about dealing with the murderers of the Carmine Beast.

“It looks like everyone’s present,” Alexander told Ray.

“They are,” Ray said, adjusting his sunglasses.  He shook off the light show, then straightened, standing by Alexander.  Unsmiling, even a bit grim, he gave the kid he’d been playing with a small wave.

“I look forward to talking more, you three,” Alexander said.  “I should address the students.  The parents will get antsy if we keep them too long.”

“He does love this part,” Mrs. Durocher said.  She followed  Alexander as he walked over to the stairs.  He stood so the double set of doors that led into the school framed him.  Ray stood a few stairs down and to his right, and Mrs. Durocher stood a few stairs down and to his left.

Some parents kissed children, and the older children made faces.  Others retreated back to cars.  But the general and natural setup seemed to be a circular clearing, more or less ringed by houses, except for where the road led into things, at the twelve o’clock position, opposite the school at the six.  The students gathered around Alexander, and the parents moved back but remained where they could watch.

“I think we learned more cool things in the last ten minutes than we got in lessons with two of our teachers in the last five weeks,” Verona said.  She looked on top of the world.

“Our usual teachers are… fairly tight lipped,” Avery murmured.  Lucy nodded, and Snowdrop followed suit, shaking her head.

“A lot of secretive murmuring between you three,” Brie said.

“That’s us,” Lucy said.  “Hopefully it stays us for the rest of this summer program.”

She looked back at Zed, and then stopped.

He wasn’t smiling.  And he looked serious.

“Just so you know, Nina does have a choice,” Zed said.  “And she chose to be bound.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  She didn’t flinch or anything.  “That’s good.”

“But while we’re on the subject, you do know that those goblins and that gunman are probably massively dangerous Others who either hurt people or are going to hurt people somewhere down the road, if practitioners like us don’t intervene, right?”

Lucy didn’t respond.

Avery kept her mouth shut too.  And she wasn’t sure what to think, because… Zed might be right.  But was admitting that much the first step in a long and problematic education, that proved the Kennet Others right, about them going to this school?

The crowd had quieted, and people had said their goodbyes.  Alexander seemed to bask in the moment, magnanimous and patient, framed on either side with the sapphire-tinted windows and his fellow teachers.

Maybe fifty, sixty students were present.  How many families?  How many of them were powerful?  With rituals carved out from street layouts and cycles of war and births, or from ‘lord spirits’ or crazy old god things?  And some of those people in those families would be visiting and helping to teach, imparting knowledge, networking, stuff.

How did you even deal if confronted with something as organized and versatile as all of this?

This is what the Others that awakened us are so scared of.

“Welcome,” Alexander addressed the crowd, starting his speech. To Avery’s sight, his eyes were like bright mirrors.  “Welcome, new students and old…”

Leaving a Mark – 4.5

Verona

Alexander Belanger addressed the crowd.

“Thank you for coming.  I know it’s a long trip for some, and a dangerous trip for others.  The Blue Heron Institute holds a special place in my heart and that wouldn’t be possible without your attendance.  Returning students and visitors will recognize my colleagues, Mrs. Durocher, supplicant of the cascus wilds, and Mr. Raymond Sunshine, creator of the Atheneum Arrangement, the Black Box, and Gold Garden.”

Verona badly wanted to ask Zed what those things were, but he looked perturbed after Lucy’s comment, and she felt like talking in the middle of the speech would make things worse, not better.

“Raymond has been serving as a guest teacher for a year while pursuing other projects, but is returning this summer and fall, at the very least.  We’re glad to have him.  On the topic of guest teachers, I would like to extent my gratitude to Mr. Bristow, Electra Miraz, the Ports, the Crowes, Mr. Musser, and Ms. Lair, for agreeing to come this summer, and to anyone and everyone else who decides they can find the time.  To others too numerous to name, I would extend thanks for the loaning of books for the student library.”

Verona looked past Avery and into the crowd, until she saw Nicolette, along with a few other guys.  If Verona’s only exposure to this school was that group, she might have assumed there was a school uniform.  White shirts, black pants, nice shoes.  Some of the guys wore suit jackets.  The one standing closer to Nicolette had a bit of a belly, and held the collar of a suit jacket with the rest of it draped over his shoulder.

“Years ago, there was something on the horizon that clouded my Sight.  It recurred as an image.  A teenage boy dressed as a king, sitting in a chair with water running over him, repeating the same nonsense phrases over and over again.  If I gutted a bird and pulled out its entrails for a simple fortune telling, I could find papers in the guts, with the phrases on it.  It was… obnoxious.  I traveled from Toronto to Winnipeg, met with other Practitioners who had run into the same problem, some of your parents, as a matter of fact.  A company that managed and experimented with server architecture had rented out three floors of its building to a startup and had unwittingly played host to a group of technomancers trying to get users to engage with rituals they’d programmed.  They abandoned their work, killed by Witch Hunters or run off by Others, and their work was deleted.  As Raymond Sunshine would be sure to tell you, however, deleted does not mean gone.  Just as you can pull something out of your trash bin on your desktop, their work was still there, gradually taking form, reaching out into the rest of the servers in the building until it could become a small god.  After that, it started expanding out, until it was interfering with my Sight.”

How cool was this?  Verona almost bounced on the spot.

“I wonder if the ten year olds are following this,” Lucy murmured.

“It had taken over the building and the running of the company that managed the servers.  Within was a world of its own that would take a month to cross.  I went to deal with it, and ran into someone else who was doing the same.  A young lady who would be best described as being very interested in the most vast and uncontrolled parts of conventional practice,”  He indicated Mrs. Durocher.  “She had already contacted a colleague of hers from a previous errand, a man who was just then achieving notoriety for his first practitioner-facing website.”  He indicated Raymond Sunshine.

Verona looked back, then around.

She couldn’t shake the feeling that even the sourest faces among the adults and kids seemed to change a bit when it came to Raymond.  Softening, or focusing more.

Mrs. Durocher seemed to scare the pants off of people.  With those dark eyes with chewed up meaty things swimming in them, she scared Verona a bit.

But they seemed to respect Raymond.

“Together with Mr. Bristow and Mr. Musser, we annihilated the god, shared out its power, and we drank together that night.  For Mr. Sunshine, Mrs. Durocher, and myself, it sparked a close friendship that has lasted ever since.  One of the things I hold most important about that experience was the epiphany I had, during that night of conversation and light drinks.  It wasn’t the power that I was happiest with -and I was as power hungry as they come- but the moments I had been with other practitioners and felt purpose and felt like we were all better for those deals.  Better informed, and we all know having the right information makes us strong.  Dealing with other practitioners makes us safer, better equipped, stronger, and more capable of covering our weaknesses.  That epiphany would eventually lead to us starting the Blue Heron Institute alongside Mr. Bristow, Mr. Musser, and others.  We named it after one of the faces the god in the machine had worn.”

He made a quarter-turn, so he could better indicate the school.

“Being a practitioner means pursuing patterns and being mindful of power.  But these things together are traps.  Patterns mean we often get more out of specializing in a field than we do by diversifying.  Power… there’s only so much to go around, so we tend to covet and protect it.  Here, we’re changing those preconceptions.  Having a specialty does not mean we can’t learn about other things, too.  What you learn, the connections you make, and the way we all elevate one another is critical.  I think it may be one of the most important things we do here.  Keep that in mind, remain receptive, remain open, and be courageous, whether that’s with your bonds between one another or in your studies.”

Verona glanced over at Lucy, and saw Lucy looking at her.

“We’re welcoming seven new practitioners.  Tymon and Talos’s younger sister Jorja joins us, already an adept caller of a greater Urban spirit.  She should be recognizable or even familiar to those of you who attended guest lectures with their mother.  Dom, as anyone familiar with the Driscoll family knows, is a beginner city mage and historian, and we’re excited to see if he takes after his big sister and parents.  I’m also very pleased that a long-time colleague of mine finally has a child old enough to send to classes here.  Talia Graubard is a beginner Dollmaker.”

Verona could use that to identify Talia, who had brown hair with blonde highlights framing her face, standing beside a doll that was the same height and proportions as her.  She had her hands on the shoulders of an even younger girl, who hugged a stuffed elephant.

“Brie Callie is a friend of Zed, who many of you know is the fourth apprentice to Raymond Sunshine.  Brie played a pivotal role in handling the Devouring Song, a problem that has plagued our area for some time, and spent the last few weeks here with us, working with Mrs. Durocher, and we’re happy to have her.  Lastly, we have three new practitioners joining us, a trio of wild practitioners, Avery Kelly, Lucy Ellingson, and Verona Hayward.  Mrs. Durocher surmises they draw on some of the pre-Solomon ways of practicing.  It will be very interesting to see what they’re capable of and how they take to the classes.  We already know they played a key role in figuring out how to deal with the Devouring Song.”

Avery stood a little taller, while Lucy turned her head to search the crowd out of one corner of her eye.  Verona did them one better, and turned to face the crowd, a slight smile on her face.

“Now, down to the nitty-gritty.  Rooms have been assigned.  Talk to us before you change them.  If you’re new and unsure about how to arrange your room, consult an older student you trust.  The staff is available to meet any of your needs for food and drink, but we would ask that you please not test the staff by requesting… what was it?  The gas station food.”

“Bonky Donks,” Raymond Sunshine said, dry and unimpressed.

“Bonky Donks or anything in that department.  They struggle with the plastic wrappers and the various preservatives,” Alexander said.  “We were mystified why things were so chaotic and messy, these last few weeks.”

Some of the kids were chuckling at that.

“Make any requests for the food, drink, or any common supplies as clearly as you can by way of slips of paper delivered to the dropbox by the kitchen, or placed in the pocket of your door, ring the bell, and then wait at least two minutes.  In this case, the metaphorical watched pot won’t boil, so give them the room to work.  Also, by the request of some parents, the staff will track what you request and notify your parents, so indulge in your treats responsibly.”

There were some groans.

“How does that work when our parents don’t know?” Avery murmured.

“I think they don’t send anything,” Lucy whispered back, “since we didn’t give them that information.”

“My dad would be so confused,” Verona whispered.

“As stated in the pamphlets we gave out, you are not to acknowledge the staff in any way.  Remain silent and neutral in all things relating to them.  Dinners will be served outdoors or indoors, as the weather and mood allows.  When indoors, you’re free to take your meals to your rooms or use the big room adjacent to the kitchen.  There are also irregular trips off the campus, for when you want something in the way of fast food or snacks, but we ask you to please let us know before you go, and spare us having to use practice to find you, or send things after you to bring you back in a timely manner.  Mr. Sunshine?”

Raymond spoke.  He was expressionless, his eyes hidden by the sunglasses he wore.  Verona liked him.  “Classes start tomorrow morning.  I’ll be leading a beginner class in practice starting at nine.  Alexander will be teaching the morning’s intermediate review class in Immaterial fundamentals, to let the students who weren’t present for the spring catch up.”

Oh no.

Both of those sounded necessary.

“In the afternoon, Mrs. Durocher will be teaching a class about old languages and older Others, and both Alexander and I will be keeping ourselves available, to address any student concerns for the first day.  Mrs. Graubard will be available throughout the day and evening to discuss enchantment and puppets, and she’s suggested she’s comfortable matching to beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels, as the situation requires.”

Learning enchantment from the Dollmaker it was.  Except dead languages sounded like it was probably the kind of thing foundational to being a top class practitioner.  Ugh.

Mrs. Durocher spoke, “Two dinners will be served this evening, to better suit your collective convenience and preference.  Hopefully, this keeps the dining areas from being too crowded, while still allowing those parents who wish to stay a bit longer to take some time before departing.  For an early dinner, at six o’clock, we’ve planned a pan-roasted duck with beets and watercrest, served with wedge herb potatoes, salads, and a timely Rioja Tempranillo for the adults.  The second meal offered is a Neapolitan pizza, cooked in a wood fired oven, with tomato sauce and cheeses made on the premises, served at seven thirty.”

“Please enjoy yourselves, and to our students, please enjoy the coming semester.  Do let us know if there’s anything you need or have any interest in.  Thank you.”

There was some applause.

Some of the people present immediately went to the front, to go talk to the three main teachers.  Some of the younger kids, like Talia and Dom, went the opposite direction, over to parents.

“Are you okay with me as a guide?” Zed asked.

“Guide?” Lucy asked.

“For a short tour, and to help you get settled.  There’s a few quirks.”

Lucy looked at Avery and Verona.

“I think that’s fine?”

“I’ll introduce you to people when we meet them,” Zed said.  “Come on, let’s drop off your bags and get you into your rooms.  Can I carry anything?”

“I’m fine,” Lucy said, as she picked up her luggage case.

“All good,” Avery said.  She hadn’t taken the gym bag strap off her shoulder, and it sat diagonally across her chest.  Probably taking it off and handing it over would be more hassle than it was worth.

“Here,” Verona said, nudging her heaviest bag with her toe.  “Thank you.”

Zed picked it up.  “In through the front doors, then.”

He led the way, Brie at his side, and they followed.  They walked up the stairs, past the three teachers.  Verona gave them a tight smile as she walked by.  Mrs. Durocher smiled back, Alexander smiled with a pleased glimmer in his eyes, but he mostly seemed to do that because he was in his element and very much enjoying himself, and Ray’s expression was like stone.

“I expected Ray to be more sunshiney,” Avery said, as they got inside and the door closed behind them.

“He was, once.  Did the website stuff that made him ‘famous’ here as a side project.  They became the main projects.  There’s some other stuff, too, heavy life stuff.”

“I like his aesthetic,” Verona said.  Black long-sleeved shirt, black pants, red sunglasses.

“Haha.  Glad it works for you.  While we’re on that topic, I should mention, gently, that there are metaphorical and literal eyes and ears all over the place here, so if you have a tough class or a guest lecturer isn’t your favorite, you might want to get off campus before you vent about it.”

“Creepy,” Lucy said.

There were two sets of double doors at the front of the building, maybe to keep the draft out, and they used bristly brushes to scrape residual dirt and mud off their shoes and stuff before they walked inside.

The central room was impressive.  The ceiling was crazy high and arching, and the room deep, clearly built off an old church.  Bookshelves sectioned off parts of the room, but it looked like they could easily move.

“Central classroom.  Mornings and afternoons on days they’re teaching, there’s almost always a class going on here.  Sometimes two.  Other times, there’ll be classes outside in that main area, at the tables, or traveling elsewhere.  It can get stuffy in here.  If you’re ever doing a ritual after hours, there’s a wide open space back there for big diagrams.”

They nodded.  Verona walked to the center of the room, to get a better look at the layout and particulars.  The windows were blue but didn’t cast a blue light.  Instead, it was like it made the traces of dust and pollen in the air blue instead of brown-yellow.

“Left wing is where you’ll find Alexander’s home and study, which doubles as a principal’s office.  Mrs. Durocher and Ray have quarters there.  Think of them as the vice principals.  If you have a problem, honestly, just go to whoever you get along with best.  After you get to know them, you can start picking and choosing who to talk to based on what you want to happen.  Alexander, for example, will always prioritize the school.  Ray is probably the most compassionate and considerate of the three, but it can be hard to tell that’s the case, and to really get him to understand requires being able to speak his language.”

“Like, geek?” Lucy asked.  “I don’t mean that in a bad way, but all I know about him is he likes tech.”

“Not like that.  Um, it’s hard to explain.”

Brie stepped in, “If your feelings are hurt or you’re scared or lost or angry, I think he’s most likely to help.  But if you can’t articulate it, if you get emotional and that gets in the way of communicating, he’ll get frustrated with you really fast.”

“Something like that,” Zed said.

“Is that something that happens a lot?” Lucy asked.  “People getting that upset or angry?”

“It’s school.  We deal with messy stuff.  If one of us wants to jump in with both feet, they’ll warn us but they’ll rarely give a firm ‘no’.  So sometimes a student gets in too deep.  Just a few weeks ago, there was an issue with an Alcazar… I won’t name names.”

“Alcazar?” Verona interrupted.

“Uhh, a big ritual, turning an object or person or Other into a place you can actually wander around, explore.  A diagnostic tool, a way to handle cursed items, or cursed people, or just to figure out an item you don’t know the function of.  It can be exceptionally dangerous, obviously.  The guest teacher had every student open up an Alcazar with an item that was uniformly pleasant and safe.  One of the girls did it with a thing she received as a gift from a boy she liked, who wasn’t in that class to tell her no.  It had such pleasant associations for her, it had to be that way through and through, right?”

“What happened?” Verona breathed.

“The item was present when the boy dealt with some bad stuff.  His last girlfriend hurting the pet rabbit he got her for Easter.  A time one of his first practices got out of control and hurt innocents.  His father beat him after that.  This girl got a front row seat to all of that, freaked out, lost her footing, and became parts of the scene.  The rabbit, the father, others.  The lecturer and some older students had to go in after her, along with the boy, who was there to help them navigate.  There was a lot of fallout.”

“Should we be talking about this?” Brie asked.

“It’s going to come up.  Telling them now lets them avoid stepping on toes.  Sharing information and communicating is rarely the wrong way to go.”

“Ah, yeah.  I should’ve expected you to say that,” Brie said.

“The boy and the girl both had a hard time dealing with that.  The girl flipped out in front of Ray, at one point, and he just walked away from the conversation, texted me to say to go handle it.”

“Oh.  Wow,” Avery said.

“That was what I was thinking about, before,” Brie said.

“It’s complicated.  He’s complicated,” Zed said.  “Where was I?  The tour.”

“My head’s still spinning from that last story,” Lucy said, before adding, “metaphorically.”

“Some student quarters are down that hall.  Like mine and Brie’s.”

“Are you sharing a room?” Avery asked.

Zed’s smile gave the answer away before he said, “Yes.  We’re not the only ones doing that.  Eloise and Ulysse are engaged, and just got permission from their parents and Alexander.”

“I’ve got a room in that direction as well,” a female voice said, behind them.

Nicolette had just entered through the door.  She had a hair ornament with branches and a white leather spiderweb-type arrangement at one side of her head, and white, horn-rimmed glasses.  The guy followed behind her, and Verona couldn’t help but think of her dad.  Tall, the belly that pushed out against a white dress shirt, like her dad wore for work… even the way he held himself.  Like her dad might’ve been when he was ten years younger, maybe.

“Thanks for your cooperation the other night,” Lucy said.

“No.  I took it on as my responsibility.  It’s only fair.  I cannot believe you brought her.

Nicolette pointed at Snowdrop with a painted fingernail.

Snowdrop raised a paw in a wave.

“We decided it was more complicated to leave her behind.”

“I’m just admiring the ovaries on you three.  Alexander was probably tickled,” Nicolette said.  “Giving them their tour?”

“In a fashion,” Zed told her.  He accepted the kiss on each cheek from Nicolette, which looked casual enough it might be a standard greeting.  “We haven’t left the main room yet.”

“Your room is toward the end of the hall,” Nicolette said.  “Alexander has a sense of humor.”

“Uhh, why?  You’re making me nervous,” Avery said.

“Come on,” Nicolette told them.

“She’s stealing your job as tour guide, Zee,” the guy said.

“It’s ‘Zee’ now, Chase?”

“I’m American, it’s how we say it.  Stop bitching,” Chase answered, shrugging as he walked off, down the left hallway.

Zed drew in a deep breath, then sighed.

“I know,” Nicolette said.  She made a face, like she was in pain.  “At least it’s not…”

“Deadnaming me anymore, yeah.  He’s still such a dick,” Zed said.

“Yeah,” Brie said.

“He’s leaving after having his duck and wine, so bear with him for a little while,” Nicolette said.  “Come on, terrible trio.  Unless you want to tell me to go, if you don’t trust me.”

“It’s fine for a tour, at least,” Lucy said, wary.

They walked down the hall.

Avery ventured, “Are there any other students in the school who are, um…”

“Trans?” Zed asked.

“Or gay or bi or pan or anything?” Avery asked.

“My friend Jessica,” Zed said.  “She has a girlfriend.  She spends about half her time here, and half her time at the reserve, staying with her.  Before, I was going to suggest people you could trust or befriend.  And I got stuck.  Jessica can be trusted, if you need to talk to someone you haven’t…”

He trailed off.

“Been in a fight with?” Lucy asked.

“You can say it, I can’t,” Zed said, glancing at Nicolette.

Verona noted the art on the walls, the art pieces on pedestals, and the mounted animals on the walls.  The hallway had rooms off to either side, some with doors open, so she could see the student quarters.  Many of the rooms were barren of any furniture.  Just big, old wooden doors with brass fixtures that had paper pamphlets and things inside them, then rooms that were half stone and half wood plank for the walls.

“So this Jessica, she can be trusted, but she can’t be befriended?” Avery asked.

“Jessica has a lot on her plate.  I wouldn’t want to tell you you can be her friend, only for her to brush you off.  I’d be lying in that case.”

“She lost a cousin and the way she’s going looking for them, the loss stays fresh.  When she’s not here, she’s searching in some pretty rough places, or recuperating emotionally, taking a weekend or a week with her girlfriend,” Zed said.

Note to self, Verona thought.  Zed’s a guy who is pretty open about other people’s info.  Not someone to confide in.

“Nicolette could be a friend, because I see similarities,” Zed told them, “but I get the impression you’ve interacted before and I don’t know if you can trust her.”

Nicolette made a lips-zipped gesture.

“She messed with a major ritual I was doing and stranded me in a bad spot,” Avery said.  “There was lead-up to that, but…”

Nicolette cleared her throat.

“And follow up,” Avery said.  “Was that what you wanted to hint at?”

“Works,” Nicolette said.

“You’re quiet,” Brie told Verona.

“I’m mostly taking things in and listening.  There’s time to be annoying with questions later.”

“It’s okay if you want to ask them now.”

“If you get Verona started you might get stuck answering follow up questions until the summer ends, like Zed suggested,” Lucy said.

Verona stuck her tongue out at her friend.  “Zed called Chase a dick.”

“Yeah,” Zed said.  “Because he’s a dick.”

“We talked about something very similar before.  Say if one of us called our little brother a penis.  Is that a lie?  Is calling Chase a dick a lie?”

“Have you interacted with goblins?” Zed asked.

“You know we have,” Lucy told him.

“If I knew, I couldn’t say or hint at it,” Zed told them.

“He and Brie swore to silence about Kennet,” Verona clarified.

“Point is,” Zed told them.  “Kitchen’s here, by the way.  More on that later-”

He tapped a door with a paper on the front.

“-The point is, language is ambiguous.  Lots of words can mean different things and different words can take on new meanings as language evolves.  What the spirits tend to look for is consistency.  A goblin that swears every other word means something specific and it’s not a literal interpretation of those swears, a lot of the time.  And if you’re someone that calls people fuckers or dicks or whatever…”

“It’s okay?” Avery asked.

“Yeah.  It’s called the rule of discourse.  We make our own rules.”

They’d stopped outside a door, but the conversation continued.

“If you got called out on your little brother not actually being a dick the first time and every time thereafter, it might be a problem,” Nicolette said.  “But once it’s established, you’re clear.  There are some edge cases where a practitioner will always speak in verse, to meet certain requirements for a career, or make a daily habit of singing before doing so before a crowd, so they can establish their rule of discourse.”

“Then Snowdrop’s way of talking?” Avery asked.

“Is a rule, yes,” Zed said.  “Your room-”

“Wait,” Verona said.

“Follow up question number one incoming?” Lucy asked.

“It’s for your sake, you penis,” Verona told her friend.  “Can I ask about the deadname thing?”

“What about it?” Zed asked.  Maybe a little guarded.

“We keep running into Others that call my friend Lucille, because she used it while awakening.”

“Ah,” Lucy said.

“And you changed your name?  How do you do that?” Verona asked.

“There’s a few ways,” Zed said.  “Trade it, rewrite the fabric of your being, steal a body that comes with a name, I even looked at redoing the awakening ritual, to re-introduce myself to the spirits.  The problem is that spirits hew to traditions, and they lag behind the times.”

“They don’t look favorably on divorce if you’re not careful,” Nicolette said.

“Yeah, the divorce thing.  So you can imagine how other stuff can be an uphill battle.  I discussed it with Ray, he worried I could lose half my power as a practitioner, for at least a few decades, before the spirits got used to it or I’d lived out most of my life with the new name.  We guessed I could accelerate that if I had the affirmation of people like Nicolette, Ray, Jessica, now Brie.  Mrs. Durocher, maybe Alexander…”

So we don’t trust Alexander, hmm? Verona thought.

“…But I decided on the easier road.  At least for now.  Changing my official documentation, with the school, drivers license, and everything else.  Get a proverbial ninety-nine percent of my life right and then tackle the practice side of it.  Calling myself Zed works if you read it as the first letter of my old name.  If I did the practice first, the implicit idea might be that I want the practice to handle the tweaks to the rest of my life, which would be part of the reason for the power hit.”

“There you go,” Verona told Lucy.

“Sorry it’s been a tough road there,” Lucy said, the vaguely angry-wary expression giving way to something apologetic.  “And for my friend maybe pushing on a sore spot.”

“I don’t mind,” Zed told her.  “If it helps anyone else, that’s good.”

“It’s a lot of work, to fix a recurring annoyance,” Lucy said.

“Yeah.  But hey, if you end up looking into it, and you find out anything?” Zed asked.

“I could pass it on, if we’re on good terms and it’s possible, sure.”

“It’s the scariest thing about the practice I’ve run into,” Brie said.  “That you can be locked into one bad decision you make.”

“There’s way scarier things about the practice,” Nicolette said, sounding amused.

“Like being turned into a bunny someone’s killing, in some weird dream loop?” Avery asked.

“Oh honey,” Nicolette said.  “If you were stuck in a scene like that for a thousand years, it wouldn’t come close to some of the stuff out there.”

Avery opened her mouth, then closed it.

“Your room,” Nicolette said, smiling as she turned the knob.

The door opened on its own, after she let go of the handle.  Because of its weight, not because of any practice, Verona was pretty sure.  Snowdrop clambered down Avery’s arm, then went human, unlaced shoes slapping against lacquered wooden floorboards.

“This isn’t the room I set on fire,” Snowdrop said.

“Oh hey.  The little nightmare of an opossum,” Nicolette said.  “Hi.”

“Bye,” Snowdrop said, before stepping into the room.

“Different t-shirt, huh?” Nicolette asked.

“Just about every time,” Avery answered.

“‘Snot pockets’?”

“Marsupials have pouches.  With mucus.”

“Huh.  I guess that’s better than it being dry?”

With her friends in the way, Verona couldn’t quite see.  She jabbed Avery.

Avery laughed.  Verona realized she was intentionally blocking the way.  She jabbed Avery again, aiming to tickle her a bit too, as revenge.

“It’s… spartan,” Lucy said.  “Were we supposed to bring our furniture?”

The walls were stone, up to about Verona’s shoulder.  The upper portion of the room was fancier wood paneling, lacquered.  It looked new-ish.

No bed, no desk, no dresser.  A bare room with a single lightbulb.

“This is the worst room I’ll have slept in,” Snowdrop said.

“Here,” Zed told them.  He grabbed the papers from the brass fixture on the door.  “Instructions.  After what comes next, the staff will furnish the room.  For now, just remember not to react or do anything once they do it, when you see the state of the room, after.”

“Why does this feel ominous?” Lucy asked.

“Room map, here, put your bags down,” Zed told them, putting a piece of paper on top of the stack.  He set Verona’s bag down in the middle of the room.  The piece of paper, when he held it at their level, was a blueprint that showed the room, adjacent rooms, and the hallway.  It was overlaid by a faint grid.  “You’ll want to decide on furniture.  Don’t feel beholden to it.  You can change it up.  How many beds?  Three?  Four?”

“Bunk beds?” Lucy suggested.

“Please no,” Avery said.  “Regular beds?”

“Doesn’t leave a lot of room,” Nicolette commented, from the hallway.

“I want a desk to work at,” Verona said.

“Two beds?” Lucy asked.  “I’ve crashed with Verona enough times.  She falls asleep fast and doesn’t flop around, so it doesn’t bother me.  Maybe a hammock for Snowdrop.”

“That’s cruel and unusual.  Terrible,” Snowdrop told Lucy.  “You’re awful.”

“Or she can sleep by me,” Avery said.  “Possum or human form.”

“That’s just as terrible,” Snowdrop said.

“Two beds.  Draw them on the paper.”

They did.

“Dressers?  Mini-dressers?” Verona asked.  She looked around, visualizing.  “Foot of the bed?  For stowing our stuff.”

“Sure,” Lucy said.

“And a bedside table.  Shared?  Under the window, stretching between the beds?”

“You seem to have this visualized already.  Avery?  Any input?”

“I’m used to sharing with my sisters.  If I have shelf space and a flat surface all of my own that I can put stuff on, it’s better than my reality at home.”

“Shelves,” Verona scribbled, marking it out, drawing out labels.  “Desk in the corner, chairs.  Should we make it so two people can sit at the desk?  We’ll assume if all four of us are in the room, someone will be in or on the bed?  And Snowdrop won’t have a lot to do at the desk?”

“I’ll have the most to do at the desk.”

“Works,” Lucy said.  “What do we do in the meantime?”

“For right now, if you’re happy with that, put your bags in the corners you want to claim as your own.  We’ve got a bit before the first option for dinner.  I can introduce you to others around then.”

“Others as in Others or others as in-”

“Students,” Zed corrected.

Verona finished sketching out the room.  Rectangles blocked out with ‘bed’ written in the middle, with more rectangles drawn out and labeled bedside table, mini-dresser, desk, shelves, one small hammock, one mark on the wall labeled ‘painting with a fox, cat, and deer’, and loose ovals labeled as heavy curtains.  She handed it back to Zed.

Zed set the papers down in the middle of the room.  “Again, don’t make a fuss over it, when they get around to it.  Let’s move on.  Do you want a snack?  We could swing by the kitchen, order it, and pick it up on our way back.”

“We ate on the road but…” Lucy looked at Avery.

“I’m fine.”

“Verona?”

“I-” Verona started. Then Lucy said it at the same time Verona did: “-don’t eat much.”

“Figured,” Lucy added.

“Efficient metabolism, maybe,” Verona said.

Zed pointed the way, and they continued the tour.

“Maybe you’ll hit a growth spurt and be tall like your dad,” Avery suggested.

Gross.  Please no.”

“Library,” Zed said.  It was right next door which was woohoo.  “Nina?”

The woman he’d summoned appeared at the doorway, not by teleporting or anything, but by being quick.  She held a finger to her lips.

“I need to resummon you. It won’t take long,” he said, whispering.  To the rest of them, he said,  “You guys can look over what’s available, then we’ll circle the grounds, meet some students, then see if food’s ready.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Lucy said.

“I’m-” Verona stood on her tiptoes to see past the intervening bodies.  “I’m going to run back and grab a notebook, so I can track book titles and stuff, if that’s okay?  I won’t be in the way of the… what are they called?”

“Brownies.  Or staff.  There’s a kitchen crew and a grounds crew.  Be careful with the grounds crew.  Be afraid of the kitchen crew.”

“W-why?” Avery asked.

“I’ll explain later.  For now, avoid the kitchen and be especially careful with the rules there.”

“Getting my book,” Verona said, before heading back to the room.

“Nina,” Zed said behind her.  “If you’ll oblige…?”

Verona picked up the pace, so she could minimize what she missed.  Some other kids further down the long hallway were heading into their rooms, it looked like.  Slightly older.

She opened the door, then stopped.

Two beds, each identical.  The left one had a small hammock fixed to the left wall and the back wall, so it rested at a diagonal.  Only big enough for Snowdrop’s possum body, but Verona figured she’d drawn it roughly that small anyway, so she couldn’t complain.  There was a bedside table, a desk in the corner with room for someone to sit at the end and for someone to sit at the long side, with a fair bit of room for each.  Heavy black curtains were tied back with leather thongs, allowing the sunlight in.

Their bags had been unpacked, it looked like.  Her art supplies were on a shelf an overhead reach from the shelf, their practice stuff like the scribe’s pen in the hollow between the top of the bedside table and the drawers.  Clothes- she checked.  Clothes in the dresser, folded and sorted.

It smelled like sawdust, but there wasn’t a trace of any.   It also smelled faintly of drying paint, but nothing looked even tacky, let alone wet.  The window was open, she noted, which helped the smells to dissipate.

She walked into the room, doing her best to contain excitement and glee.  Her expression remained dead, and she guessed that her ability to do that was something her father had given her.

The painting above the desk was a hunting scene, with men on horseback at a clearing that took up half the painting, the lead man holding a horn.  The rest had rifles and pistols.  Some twenty barking hunting dogs were giving chase, woodland creatures fleeing en masse.  Including a fox and a deer.

It took some searching to find the cat.  One of the dogs had the cat in its jaws.

She had to climb onto a chair and kneel on the desk with one knee to grab the framed painting.  She lifted it down, then made her awkward way back to the ground.

She set the painting down in the hallway, leaning against the wall with the painted side hidden.  She got her notebook and a pen, and then scribbled out a note.  ‘Replace with something more pleasant, with a fox, cat, and deer in it’.

She fixed it onto the back of the painting, using the head of one of the nails in the frame.

She kind of liked the hunting picture, morbidly enough, but she had the sense it would bother her friends.

Verona hurried back.  She arrived just in time to see Nina get summoned again.  Her notebook tugged at her hand as it sought to join that little reappearance, but there was no harm done, nor to the books around the library, not even to the books that were burnt or singed, gathered in a box that rested on a chair.

“…animus that we know doesn’t need to eat either,” Avery was saying.

“The gunman?”

“No comment.”

“Pretty usual.  Nina gets her sustenance by reading.  She gets resources for pursuing her aim that way too.  Money to buy train fare to get to the next big city, to visit the various bookstores and yard sales there.”

“I’ve not had much luck at the yard sales,” Nina said.  “Some graphic novels.  But that’s the province of another sort of Animus.  A snack and curiosity for me, nothing of particular interest.”

She picked up a burned book, and then held out her hand.  A loose piece of paper flew up to the waiting hand.  She laid it over the page and held it there with one hand.  On the loose piece of paper, she penned out typeface.

“How does someone become an Animus?” Verona asked.

“You don’t, as far as I know.  Or if you do, you lose so much ‘you’ that you’re essentially someone or something else altogether,” Zed answered.  “They tend to emerge from paths that are carved out by humanity.  Enough people have gone looking for books or tried to track down information that the path was worn out, and spirits were able to consolidate into something solid.  Sometimes the path is carved out by many, other times it’s carved out deep.  ‘Many’ gives you a Nina.  Deep can give you… I don’t know…”

“A pugilist, who wanders, looking to take down the undefeated,” Nicolette supplied.  “Or a nemesis, to answer and match the investigator or rising star that’s doing well.”

“Would have to be a rising star in an underground band scene or something,” Zed said.  “They don’t have backgrounds and can’t spring up in contexts where people would be free to dig into who they are.”

“I was spitballing, but yeah.  The nemesis is only a theory, anyway.”

“I feel so lost in all of this, even after weeks,” Brie said.

“I love it,” Verona said.

“You would,” Lucy said.  Then she turned around.  Her expression softened.  “I’m glad you’re happy.”

“So happy.  Every night’s going to be like a slumber party.  I’m so freaking into this.”

“Shh,” Nina whispered, holding a finger to her lips.  She indicated the books.

Sorry,” Verona whispered back, meaning it.  She whispered to Zed and Nicolette, Can I take out a book?”

“They’re free to take, so long as you bring them back,” Zed whispered.

Verona headed for the shelves, only for Lucy and Avery to stop her.

“What?  No, please.”

“You can stop here on the way back.  We’re going for a walk, then to dinner.  Do you want to carry the books all that way?”

Yes.”

“There’s no rush.”

“Someone might get to them first.  What if there’s something really interesting and others keep taking it out, and I don’t get the chance?”

“I don’t think that’ll happen,” Lucy whispered.

“I can stay here while you guys go.”

“You can but I won’t let you,” Lucy told her.

Lucy and Avery each took one of Verona’s arms, dragging her out of the library.  Snowdrop hooked an arm around Verona’s thigh to help, except she didn’t really do much lifting.

“Why?  I don’t like this,” Verona protested.

“You might gainsay Zed by being the first person to become a Librarian,” Lucy said.

Avery laughed.

Nina, a bit down the hall, shushed them from the other room.

“It’s really only gainsaying if you tell a lie and someone calls you out on it,” Nicolette said.  “They get a bit of the power the other person lost, for doing the spirit’s share of the judgment.”

“But she might gainsay Zed, if she said the thing after,” Lucy clarified.  “I’m keeping you from gainsaying me, saying that?”

“I wasn’t trying to, but yes.”

Verona mock-cried as they took her further from the library.

“Don’t be such a wet tube,” Avery told her.

Verona laughed.  She took the opportunity to straighten and resume walking normally.  “That’s an Alpy thing, you sneak.”

“I’ve been waiting for an excuse to use it.  My friends wouldn’t get it.

“Showers and the big set of washrooms,” Zed notified them, indicating one room they passed.

They exited out the side door at the far end of the right hallway.  They were just at the foot of the long row of tables beneath the canopy.

“This bit of the tour is going to be more scenic than anything special, but if other students start talking about spots like the bridge or the dead rock, you’ll know what they mean.”

“Dead rock?” Avery asked, as they got out to the hallway.

“Covered with white lichen.  It’s a star-watching spot.  People will sneak out.  If I wasn’t ninety-five percent positive Alexander already knew and was too busy to listen in, I wouldn’t be saying this.”

“As boy-girl pairs?” Verona asked, waggling her eyebrows.

“No comment.”

“I thought you were all about freedom of information,” Lucy told him.

Yes,” Brie whispered.  “People go there for some alone time.  It can be hard to find sometimes, especially with Alexander keeping an eye on everything on campus.”

“It gets zany,” Zed said.  “It’s way more relaxed in some ways than a regular school, but also some students are married or slated to be married, with instructions given to Mr. Belanger with the expectation he’ll keep any dalliances from interfering with that.  At the very least, figure out who you’re with, before you go to the bridge for a midnight swim or whatever.  It could make or break the difference between strict detention and punishment and being sent back to your rooms with a laugh.”

“Zany,” Avery echoed.

“I think,” Nicolette said, before pausing.  “The more restrictive a setting is, the more people dive into the freedom they do get.”

“Restrictive?” Verona asked.  “Here?”

“Only a few hours of classes a day,” Lucy said.  “Lots of options, even for dinners, snacks, ditching classes…”

“It’s restrictive in its own way,” Nicolette said.  “I’m not trying to scare you off, but I do want you to be prepared.  Some classes are snoozefests.  Others are scary.  But most are hard, and they test you.  The Forest Ribbon Trail… I got a taste of the end of it.  What it was doing.  I got dropped off next to you, and then I had to wait for friends of a friend of a man like Alexander to pull me out.  But it’s a test, you know that, right?”

“Yeah,” Avery said.  “Figured that out while I was partway.”

“Good,” Nicolette said.  “Other practices will hit at different weak points, or ask different things of you.”

“I told them about the Alcazar incident,” Zed said.

“If you’re willing to say we’re more or less square, I’m happy to have you here,” Nicolette said.  They were walking down a path of flat stones at the forest’s edge, along the field behind the Institute.  Side paths led into the woods.  “So many people here are maneuvering for position, in the big picture.  It’s exhausting.  Others, they’re kids who couldn’t name three television shows your average twelve year old watches, or who grew up in households where willing human beings were ritually sacrificed several times a year.  There’s a dad who teaches here who raises bogeymen and sends them out on killing sprees to keep them sharp, and the kids consider it their normal.  Alexander paints a rosy picture, but-”

“Nico,” Zed said.

“They should know.”

“Alexander has ears,” Zed murmured.

Nicolette reached up to her ear, pushing her straight black hair back and out of the way, and gripped her earlobe, so the stud earring protruded.  “He’s not listening.  It’s just us.”

“If you’re sure.”

“Watch your backs.  That goes for you too, Brie.”

“I picked up on most of it already,” Brie answered.  “Zed was telling me enough times, watch out for him, watch what you say to her, don’t do any class practices with this person, skip this class…”

Nicolette nodded.

“…You pick up on it,” Brie said.

“That’s a bummer,” Verona said.

“They announce the next day’s classes and guest lecturers each night, beforehand.  I’ll point out some people,” Zed told them.  “Tell you what to avoid.”

“Thank you,” Lucy said.  “I kind of figured it might be like that.  It’s why I asked about who I could trust.”

“We were told not to trust anyone at face value,” Avery said.  She glanced at Zed.

“Including me?” Zed asked.  “Fair.”

“I think I have a sense of you,” Lucy said.  She glanced at Verona, then Avery.  “I think we do.”

“I think you do too,” Zed told them.  “I’m a fairly open book.  By principle.”

“So if you say we can trust someone, I’m inclined to believe you.”

“Some you can trust, some you can call friends,” Zed told them.  “Rarely both.”

“We’ve got each other,” Verona said.  She clapped a hand on Avery’s shoulder.

“Then you’re luckier than most,” he told them.  He looked off to the side.  “Dead rock’s down that path.  If there’s something in the middle of the path, go somewhere else.”

“Be careful,” Nicolette said.

“About the thing in the path?” Avery asked.

“About the people you seek freedom with.  The stuff Zed was talking about, with people running off to enjoy peak freedom… it’s not always boys and girls.  It can be making trouble for the nearby towns, or dealing with Others, or experimenting with practices.  The tougher things get at the school, sometimes worse because of what their practitioner dad or mom or families are laying on them in the way of expectations, the more out there and intense people can get.  And if someone’s clinging to you or seeking refuge in you when they finally sink beneath the metaphorical waters, they can drag you with them.”

“Like the Alcazar?” Brie asked.

“Or worse,” Zed told her.

“I probably shouldn’t follow you much further,” Nicolette said.  “I need to prepare for tomorrow morning, and if last year was any indication, I’ll be asked to field the last-hour student requests around lights out, too.”

“Good luck,” Zed told her.

“I’ll try to catch you at dinner,” Nicolette told him.  “If I’m not there, then pity me.”

“How could I pity you if I pity you all the time?” he asked.

“Can you really say that when you have the wispy mustache thing going on?” Nicolette asked, walking backwards.  “I love you, you’re a gorgeous man, and Brie is lucky to have you, but that thing…”

“I wanted to see if I could grow it out.”

“I’m pretty sure you can’t, and I’m an Augur, so you can consider that prophecy.  Give it a few years before trying.  Don’t be that teenager.”

“Alexander’s evil may have rubbed off on you,” Zed told her.

Nicolette smiled, fixed her hair ornament, and strode away, walking along flat stones inset into the grass.

They rest of them kept walking down the path, away from the school.

“I like it,” Brie told Zed.

“You’re biased.  You like me,” Zed said, putting his arms around Brie’s waist.

Out of mutual agreement to not be third wheels, the three of them continued down the path, a little slower than before.  Letting those two catch up.

“That’s a few people telling us to be careful,” Avery said.  “We did sort of promise ourselves that we would listen, the next times people told us that sort of thing.  Like with the Faerie, and the Trail, and stuff.”

“We still haven’t one hundred percent verified any of Maricica’s traps,” Verona said.

“Something to put on the checklist,” Lucy said.  She looked serious.  “Remember why we’re here.”

Verona nodded.

The fun and giddiness was gone.  She was as serious as Lucy looked.

Verona lay in the bed, arms wrapped around the pillow, her head bent forward to rest on it, giggling madly.  Lucy lay with her back to Verona’s.  She smelled like her hair product, which was all wrapped up.

“I can’t believe you chose the pizza slices with whole garlic cloves on them. I think I can smell it in your sweat.”

Verona giggled more.  Just across the room, Avery was in bed, lying with her feet by Snowdrop’s head, smiling.  Snowdrop lay, fast asleep, looking perilously close to falling out of bed.  Her arm dangled, holding her fork.

“And you sleep with books in your bed?”

“I moved them!”

Verona pushed on the books to make sure they didn’t fall from their perch at the end of the bedside table.  Forged Hearts, A book on the creation of enchanted objects, with a woman pulling a key out of her chest set into the spine like a shallow sculpture.  Quasi.  A book on Others who had a flirtatious relationship with being human, and humans who walked the line of being Other.

She hoped Lucy wouldn’t read too much into that.

“You okay over there, Avery?” Lucy asked.  She twisted around to look.

“Happy.  I like the painting.  Did you ask for that?”

“I did,” Verona said.  She could only barely see it in the gloom, with the curtains mostly drawn and no light sources besides their charging phones.  It was a scene with the point of view inside of a barn, a cat prowling through shadow.  A fox was sleeping in a sunray, and a deer lay-knelt in the grass, watching the cat.

“Your garlic breath is making my eyes sting,” Lucy protested.  “We might have to leave a note for the staff, go for a walk, and let them redo the furniture in here.  Separate beds.”

“I really like it, though,” Verona said.  “It reminds me of when we were kids, before you updated your room for middle school.  We’d sleep back to back like this.”

“I remember.”

“Awww,” Avery commented.  “So cute.”

“I like this.  This is perfect.  If school gets tough, but I have this waiting for me, I think I can deal.”

“It’s really bad, Ronnie.”

“Do you want me to go brush my teeth?”

“You didn’t?”

“…I’m going to go brush my teeth.”

Verona slipped out of bed, fixing the sheets so cold air wouldn’t leak in.  It wasn’t cold out, but the temperature had dipped into the low teens.

She put on slippers, grabbed her toiletry bag, then padded her way over to the bathroom.  Her cat toothbrush had eyes that jittered and moved as she hit the on switch.

She scrubbed teeth and tongue, then wiped down with a wet paper towel and donned deodorant in hopes of cutting back on the garlic sweat thing.

Out in the hall, a kid was crying.  She peeked.  Already, someone older was consoling them.

Far from home, in an eerie place.

Verona returned, slipping into the room.  It looked like Avery had drifted off.

Verona considered herself practiced in moving without making too much noise.  She crossed the room, careful to step where the bed and furniture already pressed floorboards down, to reduce creaking, and slipped into the bed.

“Hey,” Lucy murmured.

“Avery’s sleeping,” Verona whispered.

“Okay,” Lucy replied, quieter.

“What’s up?” Verona asked, her back pressed to Lucy’s.

“Feeling the weight of the whole summer ahead of us.  It’ll be the longest I’ve been away from my mom.”

Verona reached down, fumbled, and held Lucy’s hand, fingers interlocking.

“Can I tell you that you’re fifty percent less offensive, now that you’ve practiced basic hygiene?”

Verona lifted up their interlocked hands, then let them drop to punch Lucy in the leg.  It hurt a bit, with the way their fingers squeezed together.

“Ow.”  Lucy pulled her hand away.

“Sorry.”

“I’m glad we didn’t change the furniture around.”

“Yeah.”

They lay like that, Verona curled up around her pillow, able to feel and hear Lucy’s breathing, hear the sound of Snowdrop snoring.  She couldn’t quite sleep.  Her mind was too active.

Trying to anticipate, plan, figuring out what to expect, and replaying every conversation of the day.  She’d let Lucy down the other night, at the party.  After the party, breaking down.  She’d let Avery down, too.

Time passed and the thoughts got more circular.

She reached for the bedside table, past the books, and got her phone, pulling it free from the charger.

Ten thirty.  It felt like three in the morning.

She had a text from her dad.

Dad:
I might need you to come home sooner than later.

They’d set out wards to keep him from dwelling on where she was.  But not to keep him or Jas or Avery’s parents from periodically making contact.

There were so many possibilities about what her dad was talking about and they only added to the whirl of thoughts in her mind.  That they did spooked her, because she was free here.  There were traps, things to watch out for, and pressures, probably, but she was free.  He wasn’t supposed to be able to get at her here.

He wasn’t supposed to be able to get to her here.  But he was.  She was already considering the scenarios where she could hate herself for not replying.  Her mom being in an accident.  Her dad having a heart attack.  Something happening to Jas, and him being someone trying to get in touch, while the diagrams they’d drawn out had their influence.

She opened an image program.

“Bright,” Lucy muttered, sleepily.

Verona adjusted, covering up the phone with a sheet, working in the little cave she’d made.

She drew the diagram, saved it, then sent it to her dad.  A connection blocker.

There was no reply.

It helped with the circular thoughts on the one level.  It sent others in the recesses of her mind into a frenzy.  She stared across the room at a sleeping Avery.

That thing Nicolette had said, but drowning, dragging someone else down with her.

To do that to Lucy or Avery was the scariest thing she could imagine.

And it would be so, so easy.  She’d already done it twice.  And the way the curse had worked, and the way the Faerie fighting technique worked, threes seemed to matter.  What happened if there was a third time?

Unable to sleep, she focused her mind on anticipating the coming day.

[4.5 Spoilers] Bedtime Reading

Forged Hearts, Tess Hager

PSBN: 7340927009515
On Loan to BHI by:
L. Graubard
Level: Intermediate
Schools:
Enchantment, Sympathetic Practices

Chapter One, Introduction

I was raised by crafty people, in every sense of the word.  Craftsmanship, cunning, and the ‘craft’ of witchcraft.  My mother was traded to a Gnarling as a slave to make things for sale, in a wayside realm where Others hid, somewhere between the Faerie and Earth.  She created toys and trinkets, enchanting them, and the Other would curse them, before selling them to the unwitting.  The curses would do their work, upending lives and casting people to long torments, collect the misery, and make their way back to the Gnarling’s hands.

My father was a teenage practitioner, nothing too fancy, and would travel to and fro, buying and selling on each trip.  He came across my mother, whittling and painting, and offered her help, to reduce her workload and give her time enough to talk with him.  She accepted, and thus they met through the making of things.

There is more to that tale.  She accepted his help, but he wasn’t nearly so practiced as her, when she’d done that work all her life.  It would be another ten years before she told him that her Gnarling ‘mother’ had thrashed her violently with holly branches after every one of his visits, for wasting the resources and doing work so poor it wouldn’t hold a curse.  A fair price, as she saw it, for the company of this boy she was so besotted with.  But she did escape, trading a curse to a neighbor in exchange for a giant’s yawn, and trading the giant’s yawn for a welcome.  She spun the welcome into an Awakening, doing it as my father had explained, made a promise to all Others, and then aimed Gnarling’s curses at her, secretly, one by one, over the course of a sleepless night. And that Faerie-cousin of a thing, already little more than a walking curse, was done and undone three times over by each curse in turn, until she was unmade.

My mother walked the path my father had said he took to reach that place between Faerie and Earth, arrived in America without money, identification, or the ability to read.  She crossed half a continent to find my father, they embraced, and then they were married within the week.

My father’s side of the story is shorter.  When he was seven, his older brother drew a diagram to show him the summoning of an elemental.  A part of the diagram was not closed, and the uncle I would never know had his very being pulled into the open part of the diagram.  Elemental practitioners will be able to guess the end result; his being was folded into the natural, and as my father tells the story, for an acre around, wood became bone, grass became tattered flesh and hair, dirt became ground meat, and the wind became a scream punctuated by frantic cries.  I’ve since looked into this, to see if such a thing could be weaponized, and I’m suspicious a seven year old’s interpretation of events painted it as larger in scale than it was. Within and immediately around the circle?  Absolutely.  But an acre?  The power wasn’t there.

Nonetheless, I cannot debate the point with him, because it sits heavily with him five decades later.  It crushed my grandfather, and when my father was awakened at a much older age, he was taught a great deal less.  He led a quiet life, sedate, but he says it wasn’t until he met my mother that he felt at peace.

All of this is a lead-in to some thoughts on my own education, and how my parents approached that.  I was awakened at thirteen, but my parents had not collected a lot of books or practices.  My mother knew what enchanting she had learned from watching the Other who kept her as a slave, and my father had learned just enough elemental practice to know what to watch out for, how to protect himself.  I was sent off to a circle that taught young practitioners, because events at the time had us all wary of the state of the world, and they thought I should be prepared to handle anything that came.

I was so talented with what little they were able to teach me, but when I went to the circle and the tutors that waited for me there, I failed.  I was held back a year, criticized, and it was suggested that the practice wasn’t for me.  An instructor even suggested I was lying when I said I’d made some of the things I’d brought.  My spirits were so low that I started to believe it myself.

It took me four more years before I deciphered the riddle.

Practice, my dears, is about repetition, rhythm, and presentation.  We take some form of power, often something Others have to offer, or a bit of our Self, and we use our inviolable word to push that power into the ruts that the past has carved into existence.  Those ruts are the circuits in the computer of reality, the currents in the aether of unreality.

What, then, of Enchantment?  Not to be confused with enchanters and enchantresses, but the use of practice to make something with its own special workings?

How does one create a pattern when they aim to create something wholly new?  We can inscribe the pattern directly into the thing, that is certainly a way, but then the object is little more than a diagram wrapped around an urn, or sword, or doll.  We could do as my mother once did, and create the same things over and over again.  Surely a rut would form that way.  Perhaps not in one lifetime, but it would form.  Or we could take power or an Other and bind it into the weapon… a process that typically ends with the aforementioned inscribing of a pattern.

These are conventional ways.  I would guess a majority of typical enchanting tutors would teach these methods.  Even when borrowing other methods, I’ve noticed the habit of sealing things with a firm inscription.

Yet there are items that we call ‘enchanted’ that have no inscription, and no preceding pattern of manufacture.  The things created by the Gnarling that enslaved my mother had no mark, and if they had, the gig, as they say, would have swiftly been up.  What good is a cursed item with a large magical diagram on it, or an inscription that is hidden inside the construction, when a child often takes anything and everything apart?

Having a mark creates a weak point, and someone wishing to deal with the object can deal with either the object or the diagram that binds it.  Because of the inherent ‘stickiness’ of any measure one might take, the removal of the binding that seals it can undo the working, ruining the item.  The workings may be intricate when diagrams are involved, and they can be strong, but they may well be only as strong as the material of the object that bears that intricacy.

This was my difficulty, because I was raised with what I would term craft, rather than by practice.  The word ‘practice’ implies rote repetition, with aim of perfection.  Craft, on the other hand, is skill.  Something that comes from the honing of the self.  If it is to be used by people other than oneself, then it requires a skill in conveying something to the audience, or in inviting the audience in.

This tome addresses the manners and ways in which one can develop the skill.

In Chapter Two we discuss the Others for whom craftsmanship is tied to their being.  The Dwarves of Deep Midgard, Artisan Fae of the Spring court, Master Craftsman Animuses, and some Peddlers (a broad category encapsulating your ‘magic shop’ Other, including those similar to the aforementioned Gnarling).  We’ll discuss ways to shape the self and put yourself into your craftsmanship, including titles, signatures, and immersive crafting.

Chapter Three will cover Others who create the material from nothing, sometimes with its own properties.  Greater powers such as gods may create something from nothing to bestow a gift on a chosen champion, some Animuses for whom giving powerful gifts is a common practice (swordbearers), some goblins I hesitate to attempt to label (the labels intentionally change), and those Others with access to a strong means of translating power between states.  Practical lessons that pull on similar concepts detail the creation of an item out of raw power, with lessons ranging from beginner (mundane items) to intermediate (items with power and traits).  There are also some notes on advanced rituals for those with a Demesne, who wish to create a focal point within their place of power to empower an item over time.

Chapter Four covers related topics to chapter two, but in the case of ‘accidental’ crafting, the Other or the Other-associated leaves functionally enchanted objects in their wake.  Others borne of the morass of original void, revenants with their death-tokens, echoes and objects that are receptive but not hallowed, goblins (as in so many things, unfortunately), and things both material and immaterial that reside in another realm for long enough to absorb qualities can all produce these items.  Crafts detailed here include making objects receptive vs. making them hallowed, the means of identifying enchanted detritus, ‘gardenings’ that place an object in a strange realm such as the Abyss, Ruins, or Faerie to be recovered later and ‘architecture’ that prepares a space in one of those strange realms so that an item comes into being or finds its way to the desired point, with the desired qualities.

Chapter Five, the last one in this book, details those Others who are enchanted objects, including items with personality, once-human objects, hallowed items that have housed an Other so long they are inexorably tied, and those Others, such as goblins, who can become objects upon being bound.  We discuss the why, the how, and the advantages.  While many of these cases don’t lend themselves to an easy allegory in craft or crafting (aside from the obvious), they do comfortably provide a way of returning to some of the ideas discussed in this introduction, such as practice, binding, diagrams, and how things might map to those different schools of practice and craft.  Some advanced rituals combine concepts and crafts from earlier chapters, or use practice to help further shape and design the item we wish to have as an end result.

We’ll finish with a basic practice:

A Simple Tempering

A craft to prepare an item and distill its purpose.  A learning exercise.  I’ve prepared and encouraged this exercise with my own children, having them use the personal objects they brought to their awakening rituals for the demonstration.  The clearer connection to those objects helps to see the end result.

You’ll require a space to work, and an item of some meaning or quality.  Keep in mind that, with some of the sub-exercises, you may be keeping this item with you for some time.  You’ll also require some material to draw a diagram with, measuring tools if you want optimal results, and, optional but recommended, a supply of power.

Draw the following diagram on your workspace.  This can be any size, but the object should be able to lie across the Eighth Son cross at the center of the diagram:

Potency circle with Cross of the Eighth Son at center.

The diagram is a strengthening circle, and our aim here is to strengthen the object while blasting power through it.

If you have a source of power, prepare it appropriately, connecting it to the diagram or tapping directly into the ritual.  Failing that, kneeling, slicing one’s hand and allowing eight drops of blood to drip down, and making a declaration of power will serve for most demonstrations, though this will exhaust and diminish the individual until they can recover.

The tempering process is not overly complex and is meant to be an opening action that leads into several other practices in this book.  Conducting every exercise in this text may involve twenty to fifty temperings depending.  The object should be examined thoroughly with the sight; typically, the item will change slightly in appearance, mirroring the type of power used (matching the user if their own personal power was tapped), but to the Sight it may appear hollow, decorated, or ‘open’, depending on one’s particular means of Seeing.

Tempering can serve to create a hallow, as the use of power will remove pollutants, impurities, and loose matter from the item, making it easier for spirits or suitable immaterial Others to move in.  The item can be prepared, decorated, or placed in an area appropriate to the desired type of spirit, echo, or other formless Other that the user wishes to bring into the item.

Tempering serves some other benefits.  If the item is tempered, becomes a hallow for, as an example, water spirits, and tempered again, the water spirits will be pushed into the body of the item, while the core remains hallowed.  Tempering also strengthens objects on a fundamental level, both against physical harm, wear and tear, and keeping them primed for their function.  Blades will stay sharper for longer, for example.

The drawback, however, is that a hallowed item is vulnerable to impurities and unwanted Others.  This renders it weaker or sensitive to immaterial attacks, emotional damage, or ‘picking up’ incidental spirits.  One would not want to temper something they were eating with until they had placed something in the hallow or secured it.  Using a knife that had been tempered to cut meat would bring qualities of the meat into the knife, and it could ‘go bad’, causing food poisoning.  Small physical features may continue to change as things move into the hallow.

Sub exercises:
*  Temper an item important to you (such as what you awoke with) and wear it close to your heart (or your person, if the heart is too difficult) for at least a week.  In this case, we are treating the hallowed object by surrounding it with motifs and qualities.  These motifs and qualities will attract spirits and echoes that are drawn to those motifs and qualities.  Often these will be things that match, but they can be things that consume those qualities.  The motifs and qualities are ourselves and the clothes we wear, and our daily activities, and the spirits and forces attracted should closely align with ourselves.  Examine the item again after.

* Temper an item of some quality that isn’t important to you (for reasons that will soon become apparent).  Leave it be for a time, then return to it.  Study what came to dwell in the hallow, apply fundamental negative principles for that typology of Other, and try to destroy the item.  Use the Sight at every step along the way; familiarity with this process can lead to some ways to destroy other objects.

* Repeat step two, but instead of destroying it, temper it again, specifically targeting whatever resides within it.  Observe the changes in quality.

Once done, we have some foundational knowledge we can use as we move on to chapter one…



Quasi, Unnamed

PSBN: 1139697998664
Added permanently to the BHI library by: Mrs. Durocher
Level: Intermediate
Schools:
Halflight (Heartless var., Visceral)

The moon was behind me, as I walked my lonely path.
Whispers follow’d me, brimm’d of wroth and wrath.
No shadow that I could see, but I could feel his breath.
I turned and staggr’d, then fled from promised death.
Breath fogg’d, heels dogg’d, he wouldn’t let me be.
The monster that threatn’d I, was none other than me.

A man dons an animal skin and stalks a forest trail.  Another drinks an alchemical admixture, and becomes a beast of another sort.

A feral thing wears his victim’s skin and goes to the man’s home to eat a dinner, his family unnerved but unable to say exactly why.  A gossamer wisp of a creature dresses itself up as a babe using clay by the riverbed and the flesh from a dug-up corpse.  Then it wails, and a woman finds it.  The corpse it dug up was that of her baby, recently lost, and she is stunned to long silence by how it resembles her child.  She brings it into her home.

Walls separate man and monster.  Artfully addressed, halflight practices aim to capture the best of both at once.  Once we begin the journey, however, the way back to normalcy is hard, if not impossible.

Quasi is divided into four sections, to be read in any order, as needs demand.

In Harsh Moonlight we look at the means of storing and restoring humanity.  Those who have been set on this path by another may find the techniques therein a good way to stave off transformations or progression of a condition, such as becoming a ghoul or securing a fading Self.  Beginners of Halflight practices are advised to read that section next, and take steps to prepare and stock up on measures to control or recover from what follows.  When a situation gets out of control, the stock of old fingernail clippings or stored blood may prove invaluable for a quick infusion of one’s prior self.

In Long Shadows we list and explore some of the most common creatures that wear human guises and join human society.  These include those creatures both pitiable and nefarious that are human sometimes and lunge into becoming monster, deceivers who wear human guises for long periods of time, dopplegangers, some Faerie, those Offspring who have inbred to the point of edging out of humanity, and we briefly touch on possessors, but our primary intent there is to list better resources.  Material from other sections can be reversed to target weaknesses, compel the human form for a time, or force the monstrous change where nothing can be hidden, to unravel their doings.

In Eclipsed Self we list some of the ways that a human might take steps to become Other, and why.  Some practices are listed, and are somewhat scattershot in approach, providing only some waypoints for further research.  The expert should already know where they wish to be, the beginner will want to start at chapter one and then turn to this chapter to get direction on where to go.

In Fullest Dark we explore the ramifications of Other involvement in human affairs.  What becomes of a family or bloodline?  A marriage?  It is possible for an Other to step into humanity and assume nearly everything about a human life, including the ability to practice, or to take up the life as a role, where they then assume responsibility for deals and contracts.  Conversely, a life may be entirely abandoned, shirking off name, responsibilities, or consequences.  What, truly, is the end result?  Does an individual remember?  Contains some transcripts.

Eclipsed Self, part III

Four basic rituals are listed, in order, as per the Viscera (Otherness stemming from within),  Mien (Otherness starting at the outside), Calendar (Otherness at set intervals), and Unfettered (Otherness from detachment) categories.

The Sixberry admixture is the basic ritual for the Viscera approach, and paves the way for future progression.  A simple and flexible herbal concoction, softening those parts of the Self that are firm, and scouring away that which is disposable.  Taken as a triple dose, one might soften their own bones and features enough to mold them, but should expect up to a month of aches and pains after the admixture’s effect wears off, as the body fights to return to normal.

The Citation practice is the basic ritual for the Mien approach.  A paper is prepared and laid into the skin to meet the Self, then removed.  Color may be pulled from a lock of hair, pupils from eyes, or scars from flesh.  This will weaken the practitioner in many ways, some not immediately obvious or intuitive.  The practitioner should then shore themselves up with power, with the awareness that the type and amount of power will affect just how the body fills in the blanks.  Each ‘surgery’ in this manner may strengthen or alter them in the longer term.  Advanced use of this practice can cite away more abstract elements, but this should be done with extreme care, on a sturdy foundation of healed physical changes done with this or other Mien practices.  Other advanced approaches allow citing away the qualities of another individual or Other, to be taken into oneself, forcing one’s own exaggerated, unwanted qualities into others, and treating one’s wounds by using the Citation to remove the damage.  Removed scraps will take on physical form as papers, mementos and/or things with small power to them, useful in various Visceral practices.  Note that restoration of what was sacrificed is difficult to impossible.

The ‘Bloody Sundays’ Calendar practice is rather more open ended, setting a strict timeframe for changes (not necessarily the namesake Sundays), with a list of possible contracts and Others.  Some of the possibilities include transformation into a vengeance curse, shift into one of the seven Ideal Selves covered in Eclipsed Self Part II (the Brute, the Grace, etc), and tapping into a realm for a set time.  This should be considered a moderate-tier ritual and be conducted with close assistance and due precaution.  Once begun, the contracted timeframe must be ridden out.

Finally, the most accessible Unfettered practice is the Shadow of Oneself.  The Self is opened up and astral projected into, sometimes while the practitioner is asleep.  Individual issues, memories, and facets of the Self can be explored and confronted as physical things and places, growing more meaningful as one gets deeper, and may be slain with physical means or altered with practice.  At seven points along the periphery of the Self where it meets the rest of the universe, often past key barriers (core memories, Karmic barriers, inner demons), one can address or attempt to slay things such as specific connections, specific marks of karma, mortality (and other incarnation-related aspects), and any attached curses or abstract qualities.  Once sufficiently threatened (and it will be threatened even if the practitioner is ‘healing’ it, such as by removing a curse), the Self can be expected to attack the practitioner, in hopes of destroying the part of them that seeks to change so drastically.  A moderate ritual for which assistance is strongly recommended, primarily used for strategic targeting of key problems by those who cannot wait as long as Citation requires.

The practices are listed below…

Leaving a Mark – 4.6

Lucy

Last Thursday: Bedtime Reading


Lucy was woken up by whoops.  A bit later, there was applause.

She had to climb over a comatose Verona to get out of bed.  Avery had already swung her feet over and risen to her feet by the time Lucy was straightened up, the silk wrapping removed from her hair and laid across the books Verona had piled on the bedside table.

Shoulder to shoulder with Avery, she poked her head out the door.

At the very end of the hall, past showers and library, some guys were running out the door, one of them pulling off his shirt, wearing only basketball shorts.

“You want to go, new kids?” a guy asked.

“Go where?”

“Morning ritual.  From bed to the bridge, jump.  No hesitating or stopping.  There’s nothing to wake you up like freefall and a plunge into cold water.  Some of those guys do it every morning.”

“How tall is the bridge?” Avery asked.

“Twenty-six feet.  Nice and wobbly, missing a railing in one part, but you don’t want to jump from that part, unless you want to risk skewering yourself on some of the bits of bridge that fell into the water.”

Lucy made a face.

Booker’s rule was to say yes, but…

“It’s mostly the older guys doing it,” the guy across the hall said.

“And I don’t want to get my hair wet,” she said.

“Hey, you don’t need excuses.  You’re two of the new ones, right?”

“Yeah,” Avery said.  “Hi.  I’m Avery.”

“Lucy,” Lucy introduced herself.

The guy wasn’t bad looking.  Fourteen or so.  He was rumpled from sleep, with a crease at the side of his face, had a sleepy look that, if she remembered last night right, was perpetual, and tended to the skinny side.  Nice face, and hair that probably looked nice while it was tidy but was a black halo of bedhead right now.  He wore a long sleeved shirt and plaid pyjama pants, with flip-flops.

Something about the fact that he was the first boy she’d seen who wasn’t like, ready for school, Booker aside, and that she wasn’t fully awake with her defenses up, and everything?  Her brain did a mental that’s a boy he’s a boy somersault.

She extended a hand, on impulse, and then kicked herself for doing it.

But he stepped forward, across the hall, and shook it, smiling, like it was normal.  “Tymon.  Sharing a room with my little bro.”

“We’ve got three of us in here,” Lucy said.  She turned to Avery.  “But… not so bad?”

“Not so far,” Avery answered.  She shook Tymon’s hand.

“Is your sister in another room, then?” Lucy asked.

“Someone’s paying attention.  Yeah.  With another one of the newbies, and their familiars.  Talos and I have ours.”

He put a hand over to the side, and what looked like six rodents all scampered up his arm, one or two ducking under the cuff of his long sleeve, seeming to disappear into his arm with the lump under the sleeve going away, before crawling out again at the collar and shoulder.  They merged together into a single, black mouse with patchy fur and pale yellow eyes, with one tattered ear.

“This is Dreg.”

Right.  They were the callers of these great spirits of drugs or whatever.

Maybe not boyfriend material.  They’d been told to be careful and steer clear.

“Is he the spirit you call?” Lucy asked.

Tymon laughed, suddenly enough it startled her.

“No,” Dreg rasped, speaking with an adult’s voice.  “A good familiar is a partner, something you can control, or something you’re willing to be controlled by.  Things as large and wild as Black Gutter do nothing except drown you out.”

“Dreg is a vestige.  Was Aware enough to dip into some Jekyll and Hyde type alchemy, eroded away a good chunk of his Self.  Only a fragment of the person was left, other stuff took up residence.”

“I was almost a doctor,” Dreg said.  “A sip of this, a drab of that, to bring out the sharpness of my mind and my attention to details and diagnosis.  I was an angel to hundreds of people who had nothing.  But the same drug made me frail, and some people broke me to pieces so they could take my stash of herbs and chemicals.  Then I had only the frailty, a shattered body, an old self I’d forgotten, and dashed dreams of what might have been.”

“Don’t get him started,” Tymon said.

“Yes, don’t get me started,” the mouse rasped.

“Nice to meet you, Dreg,” Avery said.  “I’ve got… She’s not my familiar, but it’s apparently similar-ish.  Snowdrop?”

Avery turned back toward the room.

“Snowdrop, come say hi?”

Lucy looked.  Snowdrop slept, barely stirring.

“She’s conked out,” Avery said.

“Verona too, it seems,” Lucy noted, looking at her friend.  She had put her phone into the waistband of her sleep shorts, because none of them had an alarm clock, and she’d been worried the sound or vibration of a dinky phone wouldn’t wake her.  Keeping it in her waistband meant she’d at least feel the vibration.  She checked the time.  Eight.  The alarm was set for eight-twenty.

“My brother calls Glass Prison, and rescued Helei, a naiad.  A more bubbly and pleasant companion to help keep his spirits up.  Jorja taps Drugstore Cowgirl, and she took a bogeyman.  Uhh… doing the opposite of Talos, kind of.”

“Does everyone else have one?” Lucy asked.

“Nah.  Even Mr. Belanger and Mr. Sunshine don’t.  A lot of people only ever pick up one or two of the three.  Mr. Belanger has his study and a wand, Mr. Sunshine has this digital space he’s made, and Mrs. Durocher has En.”

“Huh.”

“Having a familiar makes it easier to… I’m not sure I know how to say it,” Tymon said.  “it’s like trying to stop a hundred-mile an hour fastball with your bare hand when you could use a catcher’s mitt.  When there’s two of you, there’s more surface area, some different material, to absorb what comes at you.  The hand’s still there, too, you’re there.  But it’s handy when you do what we do.”

Lucy nodded.  “That makes some sense.”

“Anyway, I don’t want to keep you, and I’m getting hungry.”

“How do we do breakfast?” Avery asked.

“I usually drop off my request at the kitchen on my way to the bathroom, do the basic stuff, come back, grab my tray and then either eat in the room or go outside, depending.”

“That works.  Thanks for the info,” Lucy said.

“See you around.  Watch out for those guys as they come back in.  They might drip and you don’t want to slip or bump into someone while carrying food or whatever.”

“Yeah.  Thanks.”

She and Avery retreated into the room, closing the door.

“You can be such a lump sometimes, Snowdrop,” Avery said.

Snowdrop, one arm and her head sticking out over the edge of the bed, mumbled something.  “Mmm… merry.”

Avery put a hand under Snowdrop’s head and gently moved her back onto the bed, moved Snowdrop’s arm so her hand and the fork it clutched was at her chest, and then pulled covers around her, bracing her with a pillow so she wouldn’t migrate over to the side of the bed.

Lucy looked at Verona.  Her friend had drooled onto her pillow.  She pinched Verona’s lips closed.  “You could sleep with your mouth closed, Ronnie.  You might drool less.”

Verona made a face, twisted her head around, and resumed sleeping, face-down in a way that made it hard for Lucy to believe she could breathe.

Lucy gathered her things, and made her way to the washroom, with Avery beside her, and the multi-layered case of hair and hygiene stuff in one hand.

They had to wait amid the students who’d gathered to write stuff and drop it in next to the kitchen.  They got paper and little pencils, and penciled out their breakfasts.  Lucy stole peeks at other people’s submissions, and settled on french toast with bacon and hash browns, and juice.  Because one of her hands was full with the case of hair and body stuff, she used it as a surface to write on.

The washrooms were divided up into two sections by a central wall, with a row of sinks attached to each wall, and another wall blocking off most of the view of the row of showers, some of which were already steaming.  It wasn’t exactly private, with a fair view of both bathrooms as they approached the dividing wall, but they headed off to the right, for the girls’ side.  Lucy headed into the shower, which had two sections- one for her clothes and toiletries, and for changing, the other for actually taking a shower.

She showered, changed into a hooded sleeveless red and black top with some writing on the breast and dark grey leggings with some writing on the leg, then migrated over to the sinks.  She ended up waiting for the girl with the doll partner, Talia, to finish at the sink furthest from the door before taking up residence there.  The sinks didn’t have a lot of space around them, and the sink here was by the window.  She was able to set her toiletry case down on the windowsill and spread some stuff out there.  She draped her towel over her shoulders and tucked it into her collar to protect it from her hair stuff.

Some hair relaxer and detangler, because the trip in the back of the truck had done a number on her hair, wide toothed comb.  Tangles dealt with.  She began putting in deep, leave-in moisturizer, sectioning off her hair and drawing it taut before moisturizing it from end to root, because she’d have it pulled back tight when her hair was done.

Avery left the shower and dropped her stuff along the back of the sink next to her.  She began brushing her hair.

“Beginner magical lessons, first thing this morning?” Lucy asked.  “See where we stand after a beginner class?”

“Sure.  I could see Verona jumping straight into the intermediate class.  What was it?”

“Immaterial stuff.”

“I could see her being into that.  Both feet first.”

“She has to wake up to do that,” Lucy said.

Avery finished brushing her wet hair, then put hair stuff on it and brushed her teeth.  Another girl went to the sink two down from Avery, and began to wash her face.

“Would you jump off the bridge?” Lucy asked, working on her hair.

Avery, toothbrush in her mouth, made a quizzical grunt.

Lucy pointed out the window.

Avery spat, then said, “I’d like to try it once.  Every morning, though?  I can’t imagine that.”

“Reminds me of that thing some parents in books and cartoons say,” Lucy mused.  “If everyone else was jumping off a bridge…?”

“My dad used to say something like that.  But he said he wished we were the types to go along with the crowd, sometimes.  If we listened to the crowd maybe we’d be on the same page as one of the other siblings for once.”

“Ha.”

The girl two sinks down gave them a curious look.

“Declan said something about ‘what if we hit the ground and went splat?’ and my dad said it would still be worth the peace of mind.”

Lucy snickered.

“Ohhhh,” the girl two sinks down cut in.

“Hm?” Lucy tilted her head to see past Avery and get a better look at the girl.

“I was defaulting to thinking your parents were practitioners.  I thought your dad was being ice cold there.”

“Nah,” Avery said, smiling.

“Milly Legendre.”

“Avery Kelly.”  Avery shook her hand.

“Lucy.  I’d shake your hand but mine’s covered in conditioner.”

“Cool last name,” Avery said.

“Meh.  If you asked around you’d probably hear something like how my family’s a bunch of magic janitors.”

“Janitors?  What do you do?”

“I’m a knight of seals.  If something too big to kill gets defeated around here, they’ll call my family and we’ll put up a barrier around it.  Or on it, depending.  Which is a once every few years type thing.  The rest of the time, we travel around, checking the old barriers aren’t growing legs or wearing out, and corking up any warren holes.”

“Legs?” Avery asked.  She turned to Lucy.  “We could get Verona to wake up earlier if we convince her she’s missing tidbits like this.”

“Legs, uh… it’s not common, but spirits can get tangled up in barriers.  Then you’ve got a smart barrier that’s adapting.  If it gets really out of hand you can end up with a magical jailer that’s tied into the perimeter or door, sapient and capable of being tricked, corrupted, or distracted.  Happens more if you leave a barrier for a long time or if it has more moving parts, so to speak.”

“Huh.”

“I don’t want to take up the family practice,” Milly said.  “It’s so dull, and when it’s not dull it’s traumatizing.  I’m hoping to find something else I’m good at.”

“Sounds hard,” Avery said.

“If I’m not really good at it, then I’ll get either dragged back or kicked out, and I’m not sure which is worse.  If I got kicked out, no high school education or anything, then I’d probably end up a goblin exterminator.”

“That’s a thing?” Avery asked.

Lucy faced the mirror, watching the exchange out of one corner of her eye.

“It’s part of the corking up of the warren holes.  They pop up, spread through the nearby area, usually in the worst parts of town, then after they reach critical mass, they start spreading out.  If you wait until they start spreading out, it’s almost too late.  You’ll end up having to seal a building perimeter, burn it down with the goblins still inside, then seal it again.  That’s without getting into the stuff you have to do to keep civilians from calling in about the fire or whatever.  The civilians in the worst parts of town can be weirdly good at slipping through whatever barriers and defenses you use, but the really good barriers are costly.  Three day job, easy, expensive, and thankless.”

Milly fixed her hair, then did a twenty-second brush of her teeth.

“Sounds like you know a lot about it,” Avery said, diplomatically.

“Have to.  My dad’s had me doing it for the last three years.  Ever since I was twelve.”

“What if the goblins don’t deserve it?” Lucy asked.

“It’s a cost and benefit thing,” Milly answered, packing up her stuff.  “If any of them don’t, and I’ve yet to meet one that didn’t, then the cost of letting the others slip the net isn’t worth sparing those few.  They’re too dangerous, too nasty.”

“Huh,” Lucy said, digesting that.  That sounded like the opposite of justice to her, and raised a whole bunch of other mucky concerns, but after the Zed thing yesterday afternoon, where she’d commented on Nina, she had the impression she’d need to pick the battles to fight, or she’d be fighting until lights-out.

“You’ve got a lot to learn, newbies,” Milly said.

“That whole thing doesn’t sound exactly right to me, but I am a relative newbie,” Lucy said.  “So maybe you’re right.  Or maybe you need to learn more about whatever it is you’re fighting.”

Milly raised an eyebrow.

Avery elbowed Lucy.

“I guess since your parents don’t practice, you don’t have them coming in as speakers?” Milly asked.

“Nope,” Lucy said, at the same time Avery said, “No.”

“Well, my dad’s slated to come in in a bit.  He’ll probably talk about some of it.  I’m betting if you asked him, he’d say something about how if you get close enough to goblins to get to know them, you’ll come to regret it.”

“See you around, huh?” Avery asked.

“Yeah.  Later.  Maybe we can jump off a bridge sometime.”

Milly departed.  A pair of girls moved to the sinks furthest from Lucy.  One of them was chatting with a boy who stood by the doorway.

Avery gave Lucy a look and sighed.

“I was good,” Lucy said.

“Were you?

“I could have been worse.  Those are some creepy, scary words to hear out of someone’s mouth when talking about thinking, breathing creatures.”

“I don’t disagree,” Avery said.  “Took me a second to even realize she wasn’t joking.  But we can’t keep making enemies.  Especially when her family might be exactly who we need to talk to about some of the binding stuff we want to do.”

“Are seals and barriers the same thing as bindings?”

“I don’t know, but her family could tell us!  We can’t go to the mat for every single thing.”

“Can’t we?” Lucy asked.  “If we let it go, aren’t we condoning it?”

“I don’t know.  But maybe we need to know more about the particulars before we fight.  Like Zed and Nina’s situation.”

“Maybe.”

“Do you want me to stick around, keep you company?”

“Do you mean stick around and keep me from making mortal enemies?”

“I mean company.  Really.  Are you nearly done?”

Lucy looked at her stuff.  She was still putting in the leave-in conditioner.  “No.  Go eat.  Feed Snowdrop.  Kick Verona’s ass and get her out of bed, tell her she missed interesting details and stuff, and that might wake her up as much as jumping off a bridge.”

“So bossy.”

Avery left.

Some of the kids from the bridge came back in.  Eloise and the shirtless guy Lucy presumed was her fiance Ulysse went into the girls shower stall closest to the door, together.  Lucy blinked a few times, not really sure if she believed what she’d just seen.

Ulysse was A+ grade cute, though.  Wavy hair that looked practically golden, slim, with chiseled features, chiseled muscles, shorts that hung low enough that the bones of his pelvis were visible at the waistband.  If Tymon as a generally cute, sloppy boy had made Lucy’s brain do a somersault, then Ulysse was a dense package of individual things that each made Lucy’s brain go pleasantly blank, dissolve into fireworks, or go down crazy trains of thought.

Like… boy band attractive, but without the attached annoyance of the boy band.  Or like a celebrity, but right in front of her face.

She convinced herself that it could be glamour, or… if she remembered what Zed had said, Ulysse was a student of Durocher.  Divine favor?  Was that a thing?  A god reaching down and placing a hand on his forehead, and bestowing the gift of cute?

It could be hiding something awful, maybe.  Eloise had the creepy living tattoo.  Somehow worse than the mouse swarm dipping under Tymon’s skin.

Verona and Snowdrop entered the washroom.  Verona went straight to Lucy, giving her a hug.

“What’s this?”

“Getting some of that last bit of stink on you before I wash it off.”

“Okay, off, screw you.”

Verona and Snowdrop laughed.  Verona headed to the shower stall, the small bundle of her stuff under one arm.

Snowdrop stood at the sink, then began picking her teeth with her fork.

“Okay, stop that,” Lucy said.  “That’s giving me phantom sensations and making my skin crawl.”

Snowdrop looked up at her and smiled, then began tugging the thin fork through her hair.

“I know you’re keeping the joke going, but please…” Lucy said.  “Come here.”

Snowdrop drew closer.  Lucy turned her around, then, conditioner still on her hands, combed her fingers through Snowdrop’s hair, sorting it out.

“Sleep okay?”

“I’m awake as fug,” Snowdrop muttered.

Eloise left the shower, a towel wrapped around her.  She kissed Ulysse, who also had a towel around his waist.  He skipped over to the boy’s side.  Eloise used soap from the dispenser on the wall to wash her face.  Lucy suppressed a wince.

“You going to stick with us while we study?”

“I’m gonna stay awake.”

“Solid plan.  I worry about what’ll happen if you’re off on your lonesome.”

“I’ll leave Avery all alone.  Screw her.”

“Right.  Be careful anyway, right?  Whether you’re alone sleeping or with Avery?”

“Nah.  Maximum reckless.”

Lucy finished sorting out the worst of Snowdrop’s hair, then unplaited her hair and combed it back into her waiting hand, which held it tight until she could snap an elastic into place.  She fixed the stray strands at her hairline with gel on a toothbrush, then did the same for Snowdrop, just for kicks, giving her a curl at the forehead.

Verona exited the shower as Lucy was rubbing on cocoa butter.

“Love that smell,” Verona said.  “Makes me think of friendship and family and stuff.”

“And bossiness?”

“Nah.  Only good stuff.  Gimme?”

Lucy gave Verona some.  Verona rubbed down her hands and forearms.

“Avery guessed you were taking the advanced class,” Lucy observed.  “Immaterial stuff?”

“The enchanting tutorial thing.  I read some stuff last night before bed.  Then depending on how the class is, I might move on to the dead languages or keep doing the enchantment stuff into the afternoon.”

“Alright.  You’re good at arts and crafts and stuff.  Like making Ave’s mask.  Hopefully you don’t feel too out of your depth without the other steps and stuff.”

“Hopefully.  But I think I’d rather figure out what I’m missing and then self-study to close the gap.”

Off to the side, Eloise’s centipede burrowed out of her skin, holding bottles and things as she did her hair and makeup.  Lucy found herself staring, and Verona saw and did much the same.

The centipede whispered something in Eloise’s ear, and she looked Lucy’s way.

“What’s up?” the girl asked.

“Jump went okay?”

“I started jumping the bridge last year.  Got over a fear of heights that way.  Now I look forward to it.”

“Cool,” Lucy said.

She rubbed cocoa butter across her stomach and lower back, beneath her top, and on seeing Verona start brushing her teeth, skipped ahead to brushing her own teeth.  They finished and spat at the same time, cleaned up, then left together.  Their breakfasts were waiting outside their doors, covered sterling silver trays that were atop a wheel-less cart.  Lesser breakfast things were on the lower shelf on the cart.

Lucy got maple syrup, salt, and butter, then carried her tray into the room.

Avery was partway through eating at the desk, periodically passing bacon to Snowdrop, who lay on the bed, head tilted back, mouth open wide for each new bite.  Lucy took the end of the desk, then dug in, while Verona used the bedside table.

The french toast was homemade bread, thick-cut, the bacon a little crisper than she liked but not in a way that burned out the taste, and the hash browns were everything she’d hoped to get when she’d ordered them, and then some.

“Remember our goals,” Lucy said, after stopping to breathe.  “Binding stuff is good to know.”

Verona held a finger to her lips and pointed skyward.

Lucy nodded, taking another bite.

“Keep an eye and ear out for anything we can use,” Avery said.  “Absolutely.  Keep an eye out for allies.  Minimize enemies.”

“I feel like that’s aimed at me,” Lucy told her.

“Please.  I’m already so stressed out, being here.”

Lucy nodded.

Verona checked her phone, then hurried to finish her pancakes, topped with lemon and sugar.  Lucy fed the last bit of bacon to Snowdrop’s upside-down mouth, as the girl lay back.

They carried their plates out of their room, placing them on the cart, which was now sitting across the hall.  Lucy returned to her room to do a last double-check of her appearance, wiping at her mouth, and then joined the others in the hallway.

They walked down the hall, and a lot of the students had already gathered at the main middle area of the school.  The ‘church’.  Raymond Sunshine stood on the stage, and a lot of the younger students were sitting closest to him.

Alexander stood with some of the older students, Zed included, and a scattered few, young and old, were around a woman with a pinched mouth and heavy makeup.  A few of the oldest ‘students’, like Nicolette’s boss, Chase, were standing back by the door.

“Join the instructor you’re most interested in studying with.  Ask if you have questions,” Alexander instructed them.

Lucy and Avery crossed over to Raymond Sunshine’s area, and there were a few boys there who were goofing off, so they sat a bit off to the side, to give them room to goof.  Verona stood by the Dollmaker woman.

It was taking a bit longer for the stragglers to arrive.  Lucy checked her phone.  Nine-oh-six.  They’d been told things started at nine.

A heavyset man who wasn’t much taller than Lucy was entered through the front door.  He began exchanging a whispered conversation with Alexander, a vaguely angry look on his face.  He looked… it was hard to pin down.  Red-faced and blotchy, but in a way that looked permanent.  Like he’d been lightly boiled and had scarred over.  His hair was parted and shiny with hair product.

“That’s Bristow,” a girl said.

Lucy turned her head and recognized Jessica, who was one of four people of color Lucy had seen at the school.  The girl who worked in the Ruins, Zed’s friend.  She’d taken a seat near them.

“Jessica, right?” Lucy asked.

“Yeah.  We talked last night.”

Their ‘talk’ had been about five seconds long.  Jessica had grabbed pizza and left pretty much after Zed had introduced them.  The girl had hair that was thick, black, and wavy-straight, chin-length except for the part at the back that she’d braided.  She wore a button-up blouse without sleeves, jeans, and sandals, with a weather-worn yellow raincoat tied around her waist.  A dense checkerboard tattoo encircled one bicep.  It made Lucy think of a loon.

“Who’s Bristow?” Avery asked.

“He came up yesterday, in the introduction speech,” Lucy commented.

“Ex-headmaster,” Jessica murmured.

It looked like he hadn’t give up on the teaching idea altogether.  On top of being short, wide, blotchy, and looking perpetually angry, Bristow was very tweed.  Like a professor.  You didn’t keep dressing that way unless it was integral to your identity.

Lucy could remember what they’d learned from Miss about how Alexander had taken the school.  Planting a demesne here and tying it to the school, so he had more claim to the school.  She imagined that if she were Mr. Bristow, she’d be pretty upset at being ousted, let alone if he knew that it had happened that way.

“Zed told me to look after you three,” Jessica told them.  “That okay?”

“If it’s no trouble, any help is great,” Avery answered.

“I’m surprised you’re in the beginner class,” Lucy said.

“I have a very piecemeal education.  More piecemeal because I’m not always here.  I was self-taught, until recently.”

“The Ruins, right?” Avery asked.  “Or is that insensitive?”

“The Ruins, yes.  Insensitive, not too much.”

“We went to the Ruins for a bit.  Didn’t seem too bad,” Avery said.  “I feel like I’m missing something, because the Finder I asked implied there was more to it.  Again, tell me if I’m getting annoying.”

“Have you been to the Abyss?”

“No.  Want to, though.”

“The Warrens?”

“Some tunnels.  We visited the spirit world.”

“If your body is physical, then the Abyss is… deeply unpleasant.  And the Ruins are like…”

“A walk in the rain?” Avery asked.  “In a creepy place?”

“If you say so.  Sometimes dangerous, but mostly wearying, nothing more.”

“Right.”

“But if your body isn’t physical, if you’re a ghost, a spirit, or if you’re astrally projecting, the Abyss is little more than a dismal sightseeing tour, and the Ruins are like trying to walk on the tongue of a giant who is trying to eat you, starting from the soul, then moving to the heart.  To get where I have to go looking, I must leave my body behind.”

“Got it,” Avery said.  “Good to know.  Um, I don’t know if the offer is welcomed, but if you happened to want any help, I’m interested in exploring these places, and if you were willing to guide me and walk me through stuff, I’d be willing to be an extra set of eyes, or extra set of hands, on a future excursion.”

“I think bringing people with me would slow me down more than the extra eyes would help.”

“I might-” Avery started.  Lucy elbowed her.  “What?”

Lucy leaned in close and whispered, “Wind it back a bit.

Jessica watched the exchange between Bristow and Alexander with a level stare.  It seemed to occupy her enough that she didn’t seem to notice or care about their whispers.

Very cold, very hard to read.  The most she’d talked had been about the Ruins.

“Any advice?” Lucy asked.

Jessica turned, and gave her a serious look.  Jessica’s eyes flashed, actually flashed, in the midst of turning dark, like Alpeana’s were.  The look faded, and she looked over Lucy again.

“I find,” Jessica said, “the proportion of bad people remains roughly the same.  If ten percent of people are assholes, they’re going to be assholes whether you’re in a big school or here, or in the city or a town like mine.”

“Where are you from?” Avery asked.

“Pic River.”

“I haven’t heard of Pic River.”

“Reservation.  Five hundred people.  Anishinaabe, or Ojibwe.”

“Ah.  I thought our town was small.”

“Please don’t interrupt me.”

“Sorry,” Avery said.  “Very sorry.”

“The proportions may remain the same, but the smaller the group, the harder it is to find the necessary number of people to surround yourself with, and the harder it is to avoid the monsters who are not Other.”

“I think maybe we’ve seen some small glimpses of the monsters here,” Lucy observed.

“Maybe.  In Pic River, the good people there are some of the best people I know.  I think you have to find a family, found family or blood, and I don’t think Zed, I, Eloise, Ulysse, or Amine can be yours.”

That was somehow very heavy to hear.  Lucy wondered if she’d hoped for a different answer, and if she’d been asking for that ‘found family’ when she’d been asking Zed who she could trust and befriend.

Zed had been right on the money, saying Jessica would be hard to actually befriend.

“Is it a long trip?  Going back and forth?” Avery asked.

“Yes and no.  Yes, because I go through the Ruins and every minute can feel like months.  No, because I leave at lunch and arrive before dinner.  Then I recuperate.”

“Sorry to hear it’s hard,” Avery said.

Jessica shrugged, her expression blank as she watched Bristow and Alexander talking.  Durocher would periodically say something.  It looked like the last stragglers had arrived.

She checked her phone.  Nine eleven.

“Thanks for the input,” Lucy said.  “I did mean more for lectures, or participating in class, but I do… the perspective is good.”

“Oh,” Jessica said. “I haven’t taken many classes with Ray.  He focuses on different things than I do.  Zed says to listen first, study what you don’t get, come back later.”

“Sounds like Verona’s plan,” Avery said.

“They’re wrapping up,” Jessica told them.  “This isn’t lecture advice, but don’t lose sight of the fact that they’re a business, first.  They didn’t help me or my brother when I was asking everyone I could.  When I learned things and became interesting and useful, they extended a hand, so quickly it was like they’d known I was there all along.  You’re here because the business can use you.”

“Alexander can hear things, can’t he?” Lucy asked.

“He’s preoccupied because he’s being challenged, and I wouldn’t care if he heard.  He knows, I know.”

“That we’re here for the money?” Lucy asked.

“Not money,” Jessica said.  “Keep an eye and an ear out for anything about Bristow or Alexander.  People will take sides, soon.”

“Alright,” Lucy murmured, glancing at Avery.  She wished Jessica was a little more inclined to elaborate on things, but Alexander was clearing his throat.

“If you’d like, you can take workshop six,” Alexander told the Dollmaker, speaking loudly enough to get the students’ attention.  “We’ll take the library as a study space?  Beginner class, Ray will teach here.  Seniors, if you have any questions or requests, Mrs. Durocher will make herself available for the morning, and Seth will be making himself available to get anything you need.”

Seth was apparently one of Belanger’s apprentices, a surly looking teen with wild hair.

There was a bit of commotion as people left, chattering, and some students joined their groups last-minute.  The youngest ones heading to the beginner group.  Talia was talking to her mom for a second before joining their group.

“Where are the seniors going?” Avery asked.  Some of Alexander’s group, Lucy noted.

“They come here to collaborate on private projects and take the occasional advanced project, and ask visiting teachers for input.  That’s three groups of five or six students, I think, then Seth, a few others.”

Zed included, it seemed.

Lucy wondered what those projects included.

Mr. Sunshine was clean-shaven, and took off his sunglasses to hang them on the front pocket of his shirt, a black button-up.  His hair was slicked back, but long, and the part that wasn’t touching his head broke up into wavy zig-zags.  His belt was the most colorful part of his outfit, next to his sunglasses, and it was gray.

It made his eyes stand out.  Very green.  He carried his laptop with him as he walked around to the floor in front of the stage.  Or altar or nave or whatever it was.  The podium loomed behind him.

“Younger students, move closer to the front.  Don’t be scared,” he said, as he placed his laptop beside him.  “I byte with a y, but I don’t bite.”

“That’s awful, Mr. Sunshine,” a boy said.

Ray smirked for just a second, before expertly hiding the emotion.

Their class had fifteen students in it, it seemed.  Some, like Jessica were surprisingly old, which made Lucy feel a bit better.

Avery and Lucy ventured closer, sitting on benches toward the middle of the pack.  Jessica sat behind them, Lucy noted.  The girl seemed to be very serious about doing as Zed told her to, and looking after them.  Which just raised the question: why was Zed so interested in that?

“Talia?” Raymond asked, pointing.  Talia nodded.  “Lucy?”

Lucy raised a hand.

“Avery.”

Avery raised a hand.

“Verona’s absent then.  Good.  Then I know the rest of you through our older records and process of elimination.  Compiling a lesson plan, there.  I don’t have the forms for you two, so please listen, find a copy of Essentials in the library, and study to fill in the gaps.  If any of you lied on your forms to puff yourselves up, you’ll have to do the same, and study aggressively to live up to that you that you purported to be.  For now, I’ll assume you were honest and you know what you said you knew.”

Of course Verona’s little ploy would bite them in the ass, while Verona was nowhere near here.

Well, she’d agreed to it.  She just had to hope it wasn’t too much of a detriment.

“Let’s skip ahead to chapter seven.  That seems to be the point that most of you start to become shaky.  There are many kinds of appeal to the spirits, including the standard…”

He clicked a button.  The room went dark, the windows suddenly letting in half the light.  A glowing circle with a triangle within it appeared in the air, like a hologram, with little motes of blue dust floating away from it.

“Basic shamanism, elementalism, and simple actions.  If you wanted to knock a door down or set someone on fire, this would do.  From here, we can branch out…”

He hit the button again.  The diagram divided into three.  The top one looked like it was built into a diagram of sun, moon, and stars, with zodiac signs littering the area around it.  The bottom left one had a circle with a hieroglyph-like bird set within it, and writing in something like latin around the rim.  The bottom right one had a wave-like motif, and a symbol in the middle that looked like the decoration on the point of a fancy crown.

“Into other, complex types.  You’ll learn these approaches after.  We call them the celestial, argumentative, and heraldic approaches, but that won’t be on the test.  You can use any you want, but one type is probably best for your purposes, and if you want to do something very specific and very big, then you may find something like the standard diagram is unnecessarily complex, compared to going out and learning another type of diagram.”

He hit a key.  A verse of what looked like poetry, written in the air in glowing blue letters, a crow with a sword in its mouth, and a simple circle with a man standing in while three more people looked on from without appeared.

“There are other ways to make appeals.  The right words.  Do you say ‘I want’ or ‘I need’?  Do you say ‘give me’ or ‘grant me’?  You can spend a lifetime learning the differences between these.  Remember that they-”

Mr. Sunshine reached up, standing on his toes, and took hold of the handle of the blue outline of a knife that the crow held in its beak.  He lifted it down, and weighed it in his hand, before using the point to indicate the crow, that now looked down at him, and the silhouette of the man and the man’s audience, who had turned their heads his way.

“They being the spirits, are watching and listening.  They are your audience, and you can imagine yourself on television for a live performance, and they’re watching you to see if you make a mistake, or if you do something cool.  You can get them on your side.  You can make them into enemies, to the point that they’ll take the worst interpretation of whatever you might do.”

He glanced over the room.  “You might cringe and choose to watch something else if you see someone mess up their line or embarrass themselves during a live show.  The spirits will leave you for a time if you lie, in the same way.”

He indicated the bird he’d taken the sword from.

“Symbols.  Themes.  Devices.  Objects take on meanings.  Do this well and they’ll come to admire you.  A joke about bytes-with-a-y and bites-with-an-i might get a groan out of you, but a spirit enjoys it if you can make those jokes and connect ideas.  Name things well.  It matters.  Know what a bird might symbolize.  We can guess what a crow represents, can’t we?”

There were nods around the room.

Lucy put up her hand.

“Put your hand down,” Ray said.

She hesitated, then dropped her hand.

“Lastly, presentation.  Not just what you say, but how you say it.  If you present yourself well, they can look past small mistakes.  If you dress the part, then that helps.  Examples?”

A boy put up his hand.  About three years older than Lucy.

“Jarvis.”

“Ceremonial robes.”

“An easy way for spirits to know they should gather, or stand up and pay attention.  Anyone?”

Lucy put her hand up.

“Put your hand down.”

“Mask,” Lucy said.

“Yes, masks, but please don’t disrupt the class.  Anyone else?  Not just articles of clothing, but…”

Lucy fumed.

“Easy,” Avery whispered.

“Colors?” Dom asked, from the front row.  “Royal purple, funereal black?”

“Absolutely.  Also materials.  Are you wearing cotton or polyester?  I could get away with wearing polyester as a technomancer, but a hedge mage?  What would that say?”

“No offense, Mr. Sunshine, but I don’t think anyone can really get away with wearing polyester,” a girl said.

The class laughed.  Mr. Sunshine smiled.

“Consider also,” Mr. Sunshine addressed them.  “Are the clothes old and familiar to you, or are they new?  If you’re transforming into something or someone else, old and familiar clothes that are very much yours could hold you back.  One of these things may not make a big difference, but a few of them together could make the difference.  Miss Ellingson, would you join me up front?”

So he wanted her to participate now?  She stood, frowning a bit, and walked around the one bench to go up front.

“There are other things that are a part of presentation.  Imagine, if you will, an actor appearing on your favorite show, that you know is a jerk offscreen.”

Lucy turned her head swiftly, glaring at him.  He was oblivious.

She wasn’t missing that insinuation, right?  She looked back-

Avery was pressing her hands together, pleading.

He typed on his keyboard.

Lucy closed her eyes a second and literally bit her tongue.

“Karma is the long-running tally of how we’re doing.  It’s hard to shake bad karma in the same way that the actor in our analogy might find it hard to make up for having said something rude to an actress.  He can be charitable, stick to good behavior, but memories are long.  Karma stays.”

Mr. Sunshine typed something on the keyboard, then hit a button.

The room was plunged into a bright white, but not in a way that made Lucy’s eyes hurt.  Objects were faint and transparent, to the point that she could see the sky through the roof, where the sun was twice the size and black, surrounded by lines and numbers that tracked its movement across the sky.  Other celestial bodies she couldn’t identify were tracked in similar ways, making the sky a webwork of diagrams.  Like ash and falling snow, motes of white and black drifted down.

And each student was a silhouette, pale, with motes of black floating in them.  Some concentrated around different parts of the body.  The mind, the mouth, the hands, the chest, the gut.

She looked at herself, and saw the motes in her breast.

“Lucy here has more bad karma than some of our new students, but… not bad overall.  She wasn’t raised by practitioners, so I would attribute the slight difference to the more minor missteps that a practitioner parent would discourage.  Good.”

I didn’t consent to this kind of analysis, she thought.

She looked at Avery, who made the gesture again.

She bit her tongue harder.

“Karma is influenced not by human law, but by the universe’s machinations.  Are you being fair in word and action?  Fighting someone by striking them from behind is uneven, and may incur you a few motes of black karma…”

Raymond reached up and caught one out of the air, before holding it out.

“…a debt paid in minor misfortunes, worse practices, and other detriments, over the course of days, weeks, months, or a lifetime.  How and where you tend to act may dictate how and when you find yourself paying the karmic price.  An effort toward explicit fairness, or even a courageous act where you meet someone at less than your full strength may earn you good karma.”

He held out a mote of white.  He released the two into the air, then tapped keys on the keyboard.

The lighting changed.  Everything became a slow-motion flow of smoke, but where transparent wisps overlapped, they painted silhouettes and details.

She wore the fox mask here.  More smoke traced the outline of her cape.

“This is what one might see with a particular variety of the Sight, ignoring connections.  Lucy here-”

She felt something brush her hair.  She stepped away from him, turning on her heel.

She almost snapped at him, then held her tongue.

“Please don’t touch my hair,” she told him.

“It was an accident.  It’s admittedly hard to see in this.  Please don’t interrupt.”

She drew in a breath, then stepped a bit closer, but not quite as close as she’d been.

“Turn ninety degrees sideways?”

She gave him a look, then turned, facing him.

He stepped around so he was behind her again.  “The power we have may find ways to reveal itself to the world.  Lucy here makes a good example.  As we get stronger or weaker, we may be able to see that in the Sight.  Look at the color in her hair.  Like a blush-tinted ember, glowing from within.  From the roots, a bit darker.  I could interpret that she spent power recently.  Draining this power.  These gauges can be very useful, for judging where we stand, and if one does not naturally manifest, then they can be handmade and designated.  A practitioner of the practice of Law, concerning themselves with the rules of the universe and of karma, may wish to keep a barometer for that type of karma, or even count the different kinds and origins of karma.  Another may wish to track the state of their body, or even the magical trinkets they have in their possession.  They can be overt, for status, power, and that ever-so-important presentation, like Ms. Ellingson’s wonderful hair here, or they can be hidden, a painted picture of a bouquet in a locket.  How many flowers does it have?  What color?”

Lucy raised a hand.

Mr. Sunshine pushed it down.

Lucy contemplated just how badly it would go if she acted on the surge of silent fury she felt.  Maybe a flung-down dog tag, a rune?  A stabbing?

“Presentation, symbols, and rhetoric go together with the right diagrams for a greater ritual.  But there is one core element.  Anyone?  Basic principles.”

“The power you use?” Dom asked, from the front row.

“The power you use.  What’s the origin point?  Power drawn from the spirit?”

He hit the keys.

The room’s appearance shifted, to become something very much like the spirit world Lucy had visited together with Verona and Avery.  The floor was covered in an inch of water, littered with flower petals.  She could see the nose of the ‘mask’ she wore in spirit, and her hair was far longer, pale pink tendrils blowing across her shoulder.

Other students changed as well.  Avery had the deer mask.  Jessica had two silver lines running down from her eyes, her skin and hair beaded with moisture.  Dom, Talia, and Jorja weren’t as affected as some, but Lucy could see how Dom’s hands were paler.  Talia resembled her doll and her doll resembled her.  Jorja had little pastel pellets littering her hair and shoulders, in stark contrast to how dark her clothes and hair were, and how grim her expression was.

“Spirit is one source of power.  Basic, simple, easy, but it can be hard to negotiate for the particulars, or to control the fine results.”

He clicked.

Everything was decorated.  Every surface with a curl of gold.  The air smelled like incense, spices, and fruits.  It wasn’t bright like the other places she’d seen, but it felt like there was a lot of glare, light reflecting off of places so that there was always something glittering and trying to catch her eye.  Like every part of Ulysse had sparked the mental stutters, fireworks, and imagination, everything here sparked the same.

The scene shifted.  From gilded and gold to the natural.  Vines crawling.  Berries, fruits.  Branches extended indoors, weaving around things until they looked like they’d always been meant to be there.  The smells and sights that found her nostrils and eyes made her imagine that keeping to the rules about not eating in strange places would be very hard.  Being closer to nature, at the Blue Heron Institute had made her want to be more active and stretch and maybe played a role in why her brain was reacting like it was to boys.  And this felt more outdoors than any place she’d been, even with the four nature-covered walls of the church around her.

Again, things changed.  The walls became fronts for other buildings.  Figures moved within.  Things that were like goblins but beautiful instead of small scrambled about.  Some called out, their voices indistinct, as they held out baubles and things.  There was no sun, anymore, but it felt like it was all a very pleasant shade to dwell within, here.  The air was filled with music, and she took a step forward without meaning to.  Students before her stirred, restless.  Her eyes roved over the things in the church, and she knew Verona would have been inspired by them.

Frost crept over everything.  The creatures fled.  Storefronts closed and shuttered, and the shutters became wall without window.  When Lucy looked up, the walls extended up as far as she could see, and she had no idea if it was night or day, indoors or out.  The frost curled out over everything, in brilliant, kaleidoscopic patterns, and what didn’t captivate the eyes like optical illusions reflected things.  She saw a glimpse of herself, clearer than in any mirror she’d seen, and closed her eyes before she could see too much.

When she opened her eyes, she was in the market again.  There was chatter, sharp, in a variety of strange languages.  Bells rang and tinkled everywhere, and the air was musical with the sound of creaking wagon wheels, carts, and things that were Other, with creaking limbs and lumbering gaits.  The residents here that offered their wares were bent, stooped, or part animal, coming in all sizes, from the giant to the small.  When there was beauty, it was heartstopping.  A fine, elegant woman standing at the back of the room.  A young man with hair that became like peacock feathers, that he wore wrapped around his body, in a tantalizing way.

Maricica was from a place like this.  She would have been one of those beautiful figures in the background.  All the more beautiful for being surrounded by the crooked and ugly.

Others were looking behind Lucy.  She turned, then backed away swiftly, narrowly missing a small figure so wrapped in robes that its true face and body couldn’t be seen, snatching for her wrist.

At the raised back of the church, a withered old man with long pointed ears held up a baby, swaddled in pastel hues that seemed wrong amid the wet stone, roots, leafless trees, and the buildings that had been carved into the surfaces around them.  It shouted something in a native language.

At the sides and back of the room, creatures made bids.  Holding up coin, bent sticks, and books.  And for a moment, she forgot that it was fake, and she felt the desperate need to save that child- to offer something.

The scene moved away.  The outdoors taking over.  The leafless trees became a rule.  The path through the church became rough stone, the church itself a ruin, like something that had once been like that great, intricate hall of gold leaf and fine decoration, with everything gold and great torn out.  The ruin of the church had a cloth tied to the highest points, and she felt a bit of sorrow because whatever it had been a part of had been more beautiful than any and all of the places she’d just seen.

She hated the emotions these places were pulling at.

There was singing, a beautiful, mournful voice joining with a rough-edged, vulgar one, and she shivered.  She knew, even though she couldn’t identify the language, that it was a Faerie singing alongside a goblin.

And then they had a roof and walls again, pulling together whenever she wasn’t looking.

Not gold but bone, not cloth but spiderweb.  Humans in fine clothing knelt along either wall of the church, bowed, heads bent, hands clasped.  Like people were meant to bow low before a great king, queen, or terrifying emperor.  But the king, queen, or emperor- she had to check.  They weren’t here.

And as she watched the unchanging scene, beautiful in its own way, horrifying as she looked into each thing and saw more fine details, like polished white teeth by the hundreds, she came to realize they were bowed in case that terrifying figure made an appearance.  Like anything else was the worst thing imaginable.

She heard a click, out of place.

They returned to the bright room of motes, white and black.

There, they remained, for long minutes, so many of them pale cut-outs of white with darkness floating in them in varying amounts.  A few students were half-filled with darkness and that seemed like a lot.

Ray had a fair amount.

“That,” Ray said, after a short while, “was the Faerie.  Seven courts.  Rituals and practices you do with that power may be fragile.  In the moment, they are strong, captivating, but over the long term?  Can you truly remember what you saw?  What you felt?”

Lucy tried to recall some of the intricate designs, the things she thought Verona would like, or the music.

She struggled to.  All she remembered was how upset she felt as her emotions had gotten away from her.  Like Ray had hit a button and made her feel something.

“If you can, you may be lost.  Glamour-drowned, they say.  Once you can recall it, you may be able to think of nothing else.  It will always have a part of your brain, of your self.  At best, you can carve out a part of yourself.  At worst, you belong to the Faerie.”

Spooky.  And… Lucy had to admit, she still felt pissed.

“Again, Karma.  Restricted, orderly.  Firm cause and effect.  If-and-then.  If I do this, then that.  Firm contracts, letter of the law, and heavy prices.”

He clicked.

The brightness changed.  Instead of the bright sky and the see-through ceiling and walls, there was-

Lucy looked up.

A figure, taller than any mountain, loomed over them, glowing softly from cracks along its body.  Clothing was hard to distinguish from elaborate skin and beard, riddled with details.

A man with a spear, so tall he might well extend into space, reached out to wrestle with a woman, cowled.

Lucy’s body was darker than some.  Jorja’s body was bright.  So was Jessica’s.

“The divine.  Capricious.  Know what you deal with.  Unlike the karmic, they get frustrated with firm rules and exact wordings.  Bore them and even the most rule-based divinity will take action against you.”

He clicked.

They went from brightness to darkness.

The church, if the church was abandoned for two hundred years.  Wind blew through broken windows and carried choking dust.  Something lay dying and twitching on the broken glass of bodies.

“The visceral.  Physical power.  Brutal, unforgiving, often with a way of biting the hand that would use it… sometimes as an always thing, sometimes it waits for the chance.  The price is that it will take chunks out of you, or your lifeblood.  In goblin practice, it may poison you after it pricks your flesh.  In the Abyssal, it may cut you deeper, longer to heal.”

Lucy coughed.

He clicked.

The roof was gone, and rain fell down around them.  Lucy’s hands went to her hood, ready to flip it up.  Then she stopped.  It wasn’t soaking her.

The scene changed, subtly.  The gaps became wider, and the scene shuddered, like a train was running through it.

“Ms. Ellingson?  Would you please relax?”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“You’re agitated.  Please relax.  I would like to explain and move on to a practical lesson, but I can’t do that like this.”

You’ve been telling me to shush, you’ve been keeping me from raising my hand…

She bit her tongue.

“Would you step out, please?  I am doing my best to include you in the class when I don’t have data on you.  I will include you more after I have a better idea of where you stand, skillwise.  For right now you’re being disruptive.”

“I’m not doing anything,” she said, doing her best to not sound snappish.  “You asked me to stand here, I’m standing here.”

“And I’m thankful for your cooperation.  Seeing your hair and appearance change, when it’s so very clearly broadcast is very useful, I think.  But that clear broadcast is getting in the way, now.  Settle down, or step outside.”

“I can’t just turn off emotions.  Can I sit down over there, or?”

He sighed, looked down at his laptop, and typed.

A churchy-wall with a little window of blue glass rose up between herself and him.

“What the actual fuck?” she asked.

She turned, looking back toward the other students, to look for Avery, and saw another wall rise up into place.

“What is this?”

She was boxed in.  She looked around, looked up, and saw the light flare.

The walls dropped down and away, smoothly, like blades through butter.  One flickered, like a bad graphical glitch.

She was outside the classroom, on the front steps.

She pushed on the door, and it was locked.

Fucking frustrating stupid what the fuck-

She resisted screaming at the door.  She remained there, angry, willing that anger to be disruptive for his class.

A minute passed.  She tried the door again.  Locked.

Her ability to resist screaming got worse.  She stopped only because of the fact that she was pretty sure that Mr. Sunshine wouldn’t care, and the students would judge her.

Fucking pain in the ass fucking dragging her up in front of the class, making an example of her, playing with her emotions and then shutting her out of class when she was upset about it?

She felt eyes boring into her from behind.  Familiar eyes, she thought, as she turned.

Zed had emerged from one of the smaller buildings that formed a half-circle around the field at the center of BHI.  Without the cars parked on it, she could see the tint in the grass where a heron’s silhouette was marked on it.

“Ray can be a dick sometimes.”  Zed stood at the foot of the stairs.  He was sweaty, his hands greasy, as he wiped at them with a rag.

That she’d been able to feel him looking at her…

What had Charles said?  That the weakness of magical seeing was that sometimes the target could look back?

Had Zed been looking at her with magic?  How intensely?

“He doesn’t mean to,” Zed added.  “You’re pissed?”

“Yeah.  Putting it lightly,” Lucy huffed.

“He can’t deal with pissed,” Zed said.  “Any other emotion, he could probably roll with it.  But not that.”

“Then he needs to learn to deal.  Or a student with less restraint than me might murder him.”

“Probably,” Zed said.  “Probably needs to learn to deal, I mean.  Yeah.”

“What do I do?”

“Give it time.  I think he’s incapable of holding grudges besides the one.”

“One?” Lucy asked.  “Nevermind.  Not my business.”

“His son,” Zed told her.  “Hector.  Got sick midway through university.  Terminally sick.  Ray went to the literal ends of the Earth, into realms and into places that hadn’t been seen with eyes for thousands of years.  To find an answer.  A cure for all that ails.”

Lucy thought of her dad.  But she’d barely known he was sick.  The doctors had barely known he was sick.  His liver had given out from the hepatitis, and from what Lucy had overheard her mom saying to Ran and Barb, Lucy’s grandparents, it wasn’t impossible that the white doctor hadn’t been accustomed enough to black skin to look for the yellowing of jaundice.  Maybe.

“What happened?”

“Hector was so mad that Ray was gone while he was dying that he didn’t even entertain him.  The way I heard it, he wasn’t willing to listen to two consecutive words Ray had to say.  When someone else tried to explain, said Ray was only trying to help, Hector wanted to know what would’ve happened if Ray hadn’t found a cure.  If Hector had died while Ray was out searching.  He thought it was unforgivable.  Ray thought it was unforgivable that Hector didn’t have faith in him.  Ray could kill gods, create worlds, set up three of the websites that practitioners all over the world use… why couldn’t he be assumed to be able to find a cure?”

“Hector died?”

“Slapped his dad’s hand away, and then he passed.  I think about it a lot.  Maybe to Hector, having that dad who could slay gods, make gods, do all these things, but who was unable to be by his bedside in a time of need?  Maybe that was some great betrayal.  Ray’s a… particular, obsessive, and weird guy.  I think Hector inherited some of that.  I don’t think Ray has ever understood it.  But seeing someone angry?  Quote-unquote unreasonable?”

“Kryptonite?”

“Basically.”

“I can’t turn off feelings.”

“Go for a walk then.  Or bury it under other emotions.  When he gets to me, I dig up a really pointed pity.  Or my love for the man.  Or whatever’s ready at hand.  Or I walk away.  Some social mores are lost on him, and he’ll walk away from conversations or let you walk away and move on with his day.  To him, it’s efficient.”

Lucy sighed, and the sigh became a huff.

“Go for a walk,” Zed told her.  “Take in some nature.  Whatever.  Everyone’s going to have classes or instructors that really get at who they are.  I’ve… I had a class where I had to face myself at a time I really, really didn’t like myself.”

Lucy nodded.

Zed went on, “They’re not going to penalize you for being absent, and even in cases where there are guest lecturers with very tight time windows, you can usually find a senior student who’ll walk you through what you missed.  It gets hard sometimes, they know it.  They work around it.  Find the current and just… flow with it.”

“That makes me more pissed,” Lucy said.  “I don’t know why.”

“Go.  You may be the first student this semester who needs to take five or take fifteen.  There’s going to be a bunch more.  I’ve really got to get back to my project, here.  They’re paying me for the help, it’s bad karma to defy the spirit of the deal.”

Lucy nodded.

Zed headed back to the building with the workshop in it.  She could hear an engine running as he opened the door.

She walked, traveling the perimeter of the school, trying to refocus.

Couldn’t lose sight of the goal.  She’d had glimpses of the Faerie.  If they ended up having to deal with Maricia… would they run into a place like that?  Or other faerie from a place like that?  Or maybe Guilherme?  Was there a chance he was a culprit, with his mysterious conversation partner that was tied into his alibi?  Would she get to that warm place of tantalizing smells and nature, while chasing him?

What defenses could they erect?

With nowhere specific to go, she decided to head to the bridge.  Simply out of curiosity about the jump, and how rickety it was.

Ms. Ellingson?

Her head turned.

It was a whisper, a sound on the wind that she could have dismissed as her brain playing tricks on her.

But out here, in nature, with barely any other sounds…

She followed it.

EllingsonKennet

She walked the path, stepping away from the one that was supposed to lead to the bridge.

She found them, not that far from the school or that deep into the paths.  The Dollmaker, Graubard, and the ex-headmaster, Bristow, talking.

She recognized them, and in the same moment she connected faces to names, they looked at her.  She felt the answering recognition like a plucking of a guitar string.

She turned and walked away, her heart pounding.

Had they been talking about her, in the lead-up?  Mr. Sunshine hadn’t even been able to connect her name to her face.

So why were a guest teacher and ex-headmaster able to?

Someone else had to be tied into that.  But was that someone Alexander?  Or someone from home?  A Faerie?  A goblin?

“Verona,” Lucy whispered.

She looked for and saw the connection.

Glancing behind herself to make sure they hadn’t followed her out, she retraced the steps she’d taken since leaving that conversation with Zed.

“Verona,” she said, again.

There was a twinge again.  Verona opened the door to one of the buildings.  Then she waved for Lucy to come, smiling.

“Didn’t have to call a third time.”

“Nah.  Got bored at beginner class?” Verona asked.

Lucy thought about telling her, but that would have to wait, just in case.  It was possible Bristow and Graubard would talk to Alexander in the meantime, but… those chances were slim.  And they’d been out a distance from school.  Maybe intentionally talking outside of Alexander’s view?

“Where’s your teacher?” Lucy asked.  She looked around the space.  It looked pretty extensive, with lots of counters, some short bookshelves, and adjacent rooms that might have been more dorm spaces.  Maybe for senior students who needed to sleep near the workshop overnight.  Or just more dorm space.

“Out for a pee break, I think,” Verona said, welcoming Lucy in.  Verona had her scissors from the awakening ritual sitting on a diagram on a sturdy counter with a slate top.  There were another twenty students around the class, many working in pairs or trios.  “Waiting for her to get back before I open fire.”

“Open fire?”

“It’s complicated.  I think I impressed her, though.  I’m glad I did some reading last night.  Turns out that Librarian animus makes some great book recommendations.  Amusing how that works.”

Just how much attention are people paying to us?  How serious was that talk?  What did it have to do with Kennet?

“Catch me up?” Lucy asked.

Verona turned a book so it was at an angle both she and Lucy could read, and she beamed, excited and happy.

Lucy only frowned.  The anger of dealing with a pain-in-the-ass teacher forgotten but not lost, replaced with a deep and abiding concern.

It could be nothing, a rational part of her said.

It isn’t nothing, answered that other part of her, that had just been lit up with simulations of karma and divinity, colored with spirit and seven shades of Faerie, and shaded with darknesses both visceral and ruined.

Leaving a Mark – 4.7

Avery

Avery watched as Lucy got boxed in by card-thin stone walls, each just tall enough to hide Lucy.  One fritzed with a jolt of electricity.  She leaped to her feet, and Ray put out a hand.

The walls dropped away.  Lucy was gone.

“I put her outside.  Please take your seat, Ms. Kelly.”

Avery didn’t move.  She was aware of all the eyes on her.

“We kindly ask that students not leave a class in session unless asked to leave,” Mr. Sunshine said.

Avery looked back at Jessica, and saw Jessica make a subtle motion with her hand.  To get down or sit down.

Avery sat down on the bench and sat back.

“As I was saying… the Ruins are a power source that draws on things that are hard to grasp.  Emotion, principle, and spirit.  The power drawn from here is hard for us to easily judge, as a result.  This is a delicate power, and in the same way that you could feed a flame with a soft breath or a bit of tinder, but extinguish it with a sharp breath or a heavy mass of wood, Ruins power changes what it does based on how much you use.  These things make it hard to use.”

The rain continued to fall around them, the floor layered in water, with dark things swimming in it.  Avery moved her foot and sloshed the water.  The things moved.

She looked back toward the door, wondering if Lucy was okay.

“When creating a ritual, we feed power into it.  As stated, our presentation and the symbols, language, and phrasing we choose help to shape the end result, but most often we use diagrams to control the end result.”

Ray typed on his keyboard.

A glowing circle appeared over his head, with a triple-layered border, the center circle filled in, and symbols at the north, east, south, and west.  It looked like a dog, an old fashioned axe, a comb, and a skeletal fish.  An ‘x’ was drawn through it, faint.

“This is a circle, with nonsense symbols randomly generated by my computer just now, but it does have a purpose.  For our practical exercise, let’s assume you don’t know the language, but it’s a repeated chant, shouted.  And the power source for this ritual is this.  A bound Other.”

He clicked a button.  At the stage of the church, an Other appeared, bug-eyed, mouthless, tall, gaunt, with arms stapled to its ribs, like a perpetual straightjacket.  Its flesh was slick and wet.  It struggled, flinging itself against the invisible barrier of the circle around it.

“I’m not necessarily looking for correct answers.  Imagine I am a rival practitioner, and you’ve found me working on this ritual.  A shouted chant, I’m wearing what I wear now, and I’ve got this circle in front of me, with this Other as a clear power source…”

He hit some buttons.  A faint light began to drain from the Other to the big circle in the air.

It thrashed, fighting harder, then collapsed.  The circle above Mr. Sunshine glowed brighter.

“What am I doing?  Is it dangerous?  Split into groups of three and discuss.  I want to hear your thought processes.  Take a few minutes, write down your notes and brainstorming so I can review them later.  Again, you don’t have to give me a right answer, just show me an effort.”

People rose from the benches, beginning to form their groups.  Jorja, Talia, and Dom formed a trio almost immediately.  Older students did much the same.

Jessica didn’t stand, and watched, her expression blank, as students grouped up.  Maybe to try to spot the people who were groupless.

But there were none.

“Do you want to group?” Avery asked.

Jessica shrugged.

“I wonder if I should go look for Lucy and make sure everything’s okay.”

“If you did, I’d assume he would lock the door behind you,” Jessica said, indicating Raymond.

Avery frowned.  She pulled out her phone and dialed, but there was no service.

“We’re in a simulation.  Far from reality,” Jessica said.  “It’s a good mock-up but it doesn’t feel like the Ruins.”

“I guess,” Avery said.  She put her phone away.  “Any thoughts?”

“Some.”

“I’ve seen a similar circle before.  It was an empty circle, filled in like that, with writing around the border.  But there wasn’t an obvious power source.  It was like… a hole that you could drop into.”

“A door.  Where did you go?”

“The Forest Ribbon Trail.  I’m thinking it’s like a door, and the message around the edge is like the passcode or number plate for that particular address, kind of,” Avery guessed.

“He said that power from the Ruins was subtle,” Jessica said.

“Is it?”

“He’s not lying.”

Avery frowned.  “Are you going to help?  Or give me hints?”

“Giving hints is helping.”

“You should know what I mean.”

“Zed told me I need to work with others better.  I’m used to working on my own, and I’ve already decided on the answer.  I could say it, but then I’m not working with the group, am I?”

Avery frowned.

That wasn’t wrong, but… it was frustrating, and it was that frustration that seemed to extend from Jessica.  Because Jessica was queer and casually cool, and she explored places.  And she was harder to engage with than the weird magic circle with the fish skeleton.  And when Avery tried to reach across that gap, which was a lot of reaching, then Lucy told her she needed to wind it back.  And Zed was saying, straight-up, that Jessica wasn’t good friendship material?

And like, okay, Jessica had a girlfriend and she was a few years older, and maybe that got a bit weird, so she was off limits relationship-wise, which just hammered home how small the number of available, eligible girlfriends was, and that sucked, especially when people in that small number could so easily not match Avery in personality, or life, or whatever.

But she just wanted a friend and it was this hard?

What the heck?

She felt like she had, pining after Pam in class, during that lonely stretch after stopping with the homeschooling.  Except she didn’t pine for Jessica, and that made it worse.

It just… hurt.  Rejection when rejection wasn’t even intentional or effortful.

Avery pushed her hair back behind her ear, so it wouldn’t be in the way as she turned to look at the limp, drained, Other, slumped against the confines of the magic circle.  Touching her hair reminded her that she was trying to build a better her.  She’d stopped wearing her hair in a ponytail, a few weeks back.

Fine.  She’d meet Jessica on another front.

“He says subtle, but there’s this really loud chant, and a lot of power, and it doesn’t feel subtle that way.”

“Sure,” Jessica said.

“Isn’t it… what’s the word?  Ironic?  No.  Oxymoron?”

“Contradictory,” Jessica said.

“Is the real test if we can find the trap?  And call him out on it?”

“What if it’s not?”

“You think it’s not?” Avery asked.  “A shouty chant is subtle?”

Jessica shrugged.

“Have you done a ritual like this?”

“No.  There are other ways.  I don’t really have that kind of power to push into rituals or anything.”

“So there are other ways.  So when is a big shouty ritual with a drained Ruins beast subtle?”

“Or faint, or small, or…”

Avery thought of Zoomtown.  “When it’s noisy?  When the thing you’re talking to is big and you’re small?  When your destination is far away?  Can’t blow out that made-up fire with a huge breath of air if the breath is far enough away.”

Jessica shrugged and nodded.

“So it’s a door to someplace big, or far away, or noisy?  And we’re putting a subtle, Ruins-y power into it?  Does that mean the destination is also in the Ruins?”

Jessica nodded.  She studied Avery’s expression, and Avery felt… it was hard to put the idea into words, except maybe… seen?  Like Jessica had been half-here and now she was all here, paying full attention to her for the first time.

Avery got her notebook and began writing down the thought process.

She paused mid-sentence, looked back toward the door and the windows, and really hoped Lucy was alright.

“Why was Mr. Sunshine like that with Lucy?” Avery asked, quiet.

“He was like that with you, briefly.  He likes things predictable.  You’re both… ‘wild’,” Jessica murmured.

“I don’t think that makes it okay.”

“It’s the fastest I’ve seen someone press all his buttons.”

“He pressed my friend’s buttons.  Even touching her hair.”

“Bad mesh, maybe.”

“It feels like more than that.”

Jessica shrugged.  Her gaze roved around the room.

Like she was further away.

Avery didn’t want to be desperate, but she did want to pay attention and maybe leave the door open for that friendship later, so she dropped the topic.  “The way the runes around the outside are arranged.  Dog and axe, you can have an attack dog, and both can be aggressive, right?  And then axe to comb, hair-cutting?  Or you use the axe to cut off heads and the comb is used on heads too?”

“You may be overthinking it.  He said it was random.”

“But random can mean things.  Does it hurt?”

“He wants to see effort.  Probably not.”

“Then comb and the dead fish have those fine-toothed ribs, and then dog and bone?”

“Sure,” Jessica said.

“I was always terrible at English class, and so much of this stuff is like being asked to read something and figure out what it really means,” Avery noted, as she wrote.  “But I like puzzles, and figuring stuff out.  It’s why I like the Path stuff.  As scary as a lot of it is.”

“I don’t really ‘like’ the stuff I do.  This.”  Jessica indicated the walls and the rain.

“Did you get into it because of… family, or Anshi- I forget how to say it.”

“You can say Ojibwe.  We call ourselves Anishinaabe in Pic River, at least, because it’s, hm, encompassing.  The good people.  Most tribes around here are Anishinaabe.”

“Like I call myself a Ontarioian and a Canadian, but…” Avery hesitated as she saw Jessica’s expression change.  “I feel like it’s more profound for you?”

“You can just say Ojibwe,” Jessica said, more curt than before.  “And no, they didn’t teach me.  I’ve used some ceremonies and things my grandfather taught me before going on an expedition, but that was for me, more than it was the practice.”

Avery nodded.

“Mostly they don’t understand, but they support me.  I lost someone important to me, and I went chasing after his echo, to try to bring it back somehow.”

“I’m sorry.  It’s been a while?  Does it get harder as time passes?”

Jessica looked up at the ritual circle that floated in the air.  “Yes.  But I was going in circles before I was invited here.”

“What I said before, about wanting to help.  I’ve done two rituals as a Finder.  That’s supposed to make me better at finding things.  So I don’t know if that helps, but the offer is real.  It can be as a friend or it can be a business arrangement, where you teach me about the Ruins and I’ll lend you good finding-thing eyes, maybe.”

Jessica studied her face again, a slight frown on her face.

“Perhaps the deal,” Jessica told her.

Okay.  Well, ouch.  Friendship rejection again.

But, Avery thought, and she didn’t have the glamour to give herself a checkmark, she felt like she’d been fair and adult and reasonably respectful?

“Anything to add?” Avery asked, showing Jessica the notebook.  Avery had opened it to the point the last bit of World Studies homework had ended, taken a box cutter to the spine, and cut away the front, bringing the last third of a notebook with her.  She kind of liked it that way.

Jessica read it, then shook her head.

“Good luck, anyway, with your cousin.  I hope you can resurrect him soon or whatever.  However that works.”

“Not a resurrection,” Jessica said, leaning back.  She sat on the bench behind Avery, and Avery could feel Jessica propping up a foot on the back of the bench.

“Not a-?”

“He’s not dead.  Something happened, and a piece of him broke away.  I need to get it back.”

Avery was- she just wasn’t equipped to answer that.  What did you even say?

“Good luck?” Avery offered.

Jessica shrugged.

Mr. Sunshine walked around the classroom, kind of dour and serious.  He began collecting the papers.

“So this Lucy thing,” Avery said, while he was off in the other corner of the class.  “Is that normal?”

“Happened once last year, but he was only part-time.  He spent chunks of time away.”

“Hm.”

“If you have an issue, you can go to Durocher or Belanger,” Jessica said.  “But Durocher is intense.”

“So I hear.”

“If you show weakness in front of her, she might always think of you as weak.”

“And Alexander?”

“I don’t know.  He bothers me more than the other two,” Jessica said.  She leaned back, taking the book.  “When I look at Canada’s government and what it’s done over the last one hundred and fifty years, or when I look at police, education, business, any of that, and think of what’s wrong there, and how much awful there is, I imagine the awful comes from people who resemble Alexander.”

“Heavy,” Avery said.

“Except I think the people who I imagine being awful there are only halfway to being what Alexander is.  Or two-thirds of the way, at most.”

“He can, um, hear you, can’t he?  Alexander listens in?”

“Zed says so.  I believe him.  I don’t care.”

Jessica took the notebook page as Avery tore it out.  She held it out for Mr. Sunshine.

“Good,” he said, on reading it.

“Is there any chance Lucy could come back in?”

“She’ll have found something else to do.  It’s how the school is structured,” Mr. Sunshine said, shuffling through the pages as he arranged them into piles.  “If she wants to attend more of my classes, please tell her she should remain levelheaded and if you three won’t give me data to work with in structuring my lessons, please sit back, be quiet, and don’t engage until I signal it’s okay.  The programs I use for the adaptive lesson plan are sensitive.”

“You could have told her.”

“I am not interested in arguing the point, Ms. Kelly.  This works for me and it works for the majority of my students.  The school offers many other learning opportunities for those who don’t like how I teach.”

Avery started to say something, then defaulted to nodding.

Ray walked away.  He held up one trio of pages.

“Ms. Kelly and Ms. Casabien, good.  Very close.  They suggested this is a door to another, bigger part of the Ruins.  Songetay, Martin, and Staples, I like the direction of your reasoning. Those three argued the Other’s power was bait, the worm on the hook, to bring something through the ‘hole’.  Similar logic to Kelly and Casabien, but they saw this as bringing something here, instead of going somewhere else, and they surmised the target was big.  Again, same logic.”

He indicated a trio of boys.

“Sutton, Austin, and Leos, good effort in drawing comparisons to the pillars of the awakening ritual, fishbone as skull, axe as blade, dog as element of nature, and comb as thread.  I would have liked to see more thinking about the power source and what that does.”

He put the papers down in three piles by his laptop.  Then he typed.  “Let’s demonstrate the ritual.”

Jessica shifted position, untying the heavy yellow raincoat with the cracked exterior, and pulling it on.  Gold light flashed out from the cracks as she finished zipping it up.

The church rumbled.  The rain momentarily stopped, and bits of brick fell from where the tops of the wall met the parts where the roof was missing.  The sounds were very realistic, even for a simulation.

The rumbling intensified, the circle shifted in color and texture, the symbols rotating around and the power intensifying as everything grew dark.

They were swallowed.  The closest approximation that Avery could think of was a blue whale suddenly emerging beneath them, mouth open to swallow up the entire church.  As the mouth closed around them, everything went dark, and there was a violent falling sensation.  It put her in mind of the entry to the Forest Ribbon Trail.  She gripped the back of the bench.

They splashed on landing.

Then the rain resumed, twice as intense as before.  There wasn’t much light, now, and the water was cold and felt wetter, simulation or no.

“Many realms and slices of reality have depths,” Mr. Sunshine told them.  Only one edge of his body was illuminated by the light from the computer screen.  “The ritual is a simple one, to get deeper into the Ruins.  Necromancers and incarnate practitioners will have their own ways to travel here.  It could be a ritual like this, or an Other they regularly use, summoned or found.  This route is fast but expensive, and requires a controlled amount of power and presentation.  Continuing to use routes like this to go even deeper requires more power, using one Other as bait to be swallowed up by something larger, then using that as foundation to be swallowed up by something yet larger.”

Avery shivered as cold water ran down her neck.

He hit a key.

The rain stopped.  The darkness leeched away.  There was a rooftop over them again.  The blue tint of the windows and the light that came through seemed way more intense than before, but it also corrected.

“Three rituals you’re likely to consider,’ he addressed them.  “Are the Implement, Demesne, and Familiar rituals.  Would you stand, Ms. Casabien?”

Jessica didn’t budge.

“Please?”

She stood, pushing her hood back.

“Your raincoat?”

“Yeah.  A few months ago, I did the ritual.”

“The item we choose is indicative of a lot about who we are.  How we approach the world.  It’s a decision we make only once, one object that can be held in our hands and comfortably lifted, and it works better if it’s not already magic.  Would you care to talk about yours?”

“It protects me.”

“Every object has a function.  Choose a shield as an implement, and it will tend to gather any benefits and spirits that gather around you, to better serve its function of protecting you from harm. The shield offers a different kind of protection than the raincoat.”

“Can I sit?” Jessica asked.

He motioned with a hand for her to sit, and she took a seat on the bench, heavy.

He went on.  “But that’s not all an implement is.  It is, like a magical diagram, a kind of series of signs, that tell the practice how to act around you.  Spirits will sit up and pay attention, standing at the ready to protect the shieldbearer.  Or the raincoat wearer.  And as the user practices, they will flow in a way that works with the implement.  Imagine that you yourself are a magical diagram, and the implement is an extension of that diagram.  Its messaging is very clear, and it colors every practice that flows through and around you, from the time of the ritual until the day you die.  It can make some practices weaker, at the same time it strengthens others.  Some, like me, choose not to commit to one, because they prefer to be more flexible.  But they are very powerful.  Our own headmaster uses a wand.  It can be used to point, to direct, and his practice leans that way as a result.  It can be held up a sleeve or used to make fine motions, and his own practice becomes subtle and finer to the touch.”

He hit a key, and the air around him filled with various objects and items.  Medal, dice, axe, glasses, dog collar, wallet, shoes, a hairpin, a fan…

“A side effect of the ritual is that what you choose is, even if kept out of sight, a badge of sorts, indicating who and what you are.  The implement tells Others what to expect of you.  Ms. Casabien makes no secret she works with Others of the Ruins, which we just visited, in a way.  She’s protected against the worst of that environment, she bears some of the benefits that Ruins others enjoy, and they’ll recognize her as one of their own.  It makes it easier, but makes dealing with non-Ruins Others harder.  Be careful when picking something that has power before it’s made an implement, or you may find yourself pulled more into that realm or power source, than the power source is drawn to you.  The ritual is a simple one, conducted over three days, where you become intimately acquainted with the object in question.  This too gets harder if the object is already carrying power.  It can be more complex if the object has a long and complicated history.”

He walked back to the laptop, and clicked.

“The Demesne.  A place of power.  It can be a room, a building.  It’s rarely more than that.  The Demesne is a tough clay to mold, but the advantage is that you can be a small god in its domain, while you’re there.  Everything and anything can be altered.  You can choose, with some restrictions, where the doors take you when you leave.  It can be a place where a curse does not progress and you are safe from its ravages.  A place where the abstract becomes real, and you can monitor, say, the value of stocks, as physical things.”

He hit a key.

The room went dark, the lights going out, then the windows turning dark.

Other things lit up.  Buildings without windows or doors, as rough three-dimensional creations.  Advertisements played.  Roads as black as anything, with markers and lines in neon yellow.

The world kept expanding, buildings appearing.  The landscape at the horizon turned upward, then kept going.

“My Demesne.  I created it as a tool.  It became a place with twice the surface area of Earth.  Less populated, but all the same.  Every website, tool, and device has its analogue here.  Locations both mundane and, for example, like the Abyss, have loose analogues here.  Here, if I wish to do my programming, I can do it in five different ways, shaping the corresponding buildings and machinery, using consoles, among other things.”

He raised a hand, and a pillar rose up.  It had something that looked like a laser-traced engine block encased within it.  He rotated segments and moved parts.

“The Demesne can be a place to store power, to invest in it, to translate, for example, power from the Faerie into something analogous, like Visceral power.  It wouldn’t be an efficient translation, but I could do it.  Others, with preparation, could do it efficiently.  Others can be bound and brought to stay.  Whether they thrive will depend on how you’ve shaped your space, if you choose to have a Demesne.”

He looked around.

Avery did too. It might have been twice the surface area as Earth, but there weren’t any details.  Many objects were simple polygons, with only the edges and outlines traced in bright colors.

“I’ve spent more time on my demesne than most,” Ray observed.  “As big as it is in here, it’s only a large room in a building elsewhere.  The scale and versatility of this building are a product of time and power invested.”

He touched a wall.  A panel appeared, and circuit-like lines spread out.

Everything went dark.  They were back in the church.

“Familiars.  Mrs. Graubard, would you stand?  And bring your familiar to the front?”

Talia stood from her seat.  Her doll went with her.

“A bond to an Other.  Lifelong, inviolable.  A connection is drawn between practitioner and familiar.  This can be a controlling connection, picking a weak familiar and dominating it.  For a long time, this was the only way things were done.  It can be another kind of domineering relationship.  Picking a familiar with no true mind of its own.  Often, the familiar will be raised up, rounded out, until it is on a roughly even keel.  An echo or ghost could develop a full personality, instead of being a stuttering replay of events.  A vestige, or a broken shadow of an existence?  It could patch itself up.  What it pulls in is often consciously or unconsciously influenced by the practitioner, who has the power in the relationship.”

Avery felt a bit of a sick feeling, hearing that.

Snowdrop.

How much of Snowdrop was really Snowdrop?  How much was there because she’d been empowered as Avery’s boon companion?

She had other thoughts, like Matthew and Edith, and Matthew raising Edith, but Mr. Sunshine was still talking.

“Here we have what looks like a balanced relationship.  Now, every type of familiar relationship has its benefits.  A domineering one can turn the familiar into a target.  The familiar can be made to absorb the hurt, harm, or part of a curse that the practitioner has to endure.  They are, when beneficial, one and the same, for purposes of the power they have at their disposal, but the domineering practitioner retains control.”

He walked over to where Talia and her doll were.

“In an even relationship, Talia is filled to the brim with humanness.  With vitality, and power, and self.  Her partner, Effy, is a canopic doll.  Can you tell us why you chose it, Talia?”

“My mom made Effy on the day I was born,” Talia said.  She didn’t look so bothered to be in front of the class.  Avery only liked to be in front of people when playing sports.  “She said if I wasn’t satisfactory as a daughter, Effy would drag out my guts, put them inside herself, take my blood and skin to seal up the doll joints, and replace me.”

Avery looked around the room, to try to judge why people weren’t freaking out, but the most she saw was serious concern here and there.

“Hmm,” Ray made a sound.

“The way a canopic doll works, especially if it’s raised alongside someone, given a birthday every time I had a birthday, with parts replaced to match my height and shape and stuff as I grew up, ummm, when it harvests, it can become human, after.  She could become me.  I awoke on my own, secretly, then I talked to Effy, and neither of us were sure if my mom would keep me or Effy.  So we agreed she’d be my familiar.  That way my mom would have to keep us both or destroy us both.”

“Very clever,” Mr. Sunshine said.

Talia smiled.  “My mom thought so.  Things have been so nice ever since.  I think she was proud I thought of it.”

These people are nutso.

“The focus on blood, guts… that’s something you’ve noticed?” Mr. Sunshine asked.

“Yeah.”

“With the more equal bond, the pairing can exchange power.  Talia could give Effy a bit of her humanity as a boost, or personal power, to help her heal, or dig up that bit of extra strength.  That flow can work the other way.  Effy could give Talia some of her power as a doll, with that emphasis on blood, guts, and dollness.  If Effy gave Talia a lot of her personal power, let’s say half… what happens over the next day, or week?”

Some people raised hands.

“Jarvis.”

“It balances out?”

“The power finds its balance.  Talia would naturally give Effy some of her power over time, until they were even.  Then they would recover together.  Eating well, sleeping well, and taking care of needs as human or Other help that recovery.  Can Effy become an animal?”

Talia shook her head.

“The partnership of master and familiar is often a reprieve for the Other.  Temporary freedom from needs, demands, work, or anything else.  If Effy required a regular supply of blood and oil, as some dolls do-”

“I don’t.”

“But if you did, Effy, then you wouldn’t require it while you’re a familiar.  You get your sustenance from your master or partner.  If you had a lifespan, it would be put on pause.  Of course, needier others have a heavier drain on their master.”

Effy nodded.

“Humans still age, at roughly the same rate, but they often find they age easier while they have a familiar.  They may also find that they are more Other, in subtle ways.  The edges are rounded off in the need for sleep and food.  Some Others are better at that than others.”

He hit a button.  The air was filled with monstrous silhouettes and corresponding animals.

“The animal form is mortality.  For many Others, it’s a strong enticement.  To have a heartbeat.  To have warmth, the ability to taste food, and the ability to engage with the world.  An Other in animal form can, unless especially wild, go without too much remark in civilized society.  A dog can be walked, a mouse or snake kept in a sleeve, and a bird can fly overhead.”

Avery watched as Jorja’s familiar, which had been the floaty guy with the backwards baseball cap, now a terrier, followed the movement of birds through the air.

“There is a third type of practitioner-familiar bond.  Not the master, not the partner, but the subservient.  Frankly, if you want to pick a familiar that’s much stronger than you, the Blue Heron Institute can counsel you, but we’ll be doing it with a mind to discouraging you and making sure you’re fully equipped with the necessary information.  We would be dealing with the familiar as an Other, and you as its slave or servant, and we have no interest in doing that.”

Ray hit the button on his laptop, then closed it.  Above him, various magic circles with subtle differences floated, changing color and texture.

“Something to think about.  Imagine these big rituals, and what would happen if you used various power sources.  What’s the impact of feeding raw glamour, Faerie magic, into a Demesne ritual?  Or Ruins energy into a Familiar ritual with an Abyssal Other?  If you want to do this as a homework assignment and bring it to tomorrow’s class, I should get back to you with my response and notes by dinnertime.  Strictly optional.  Questions?”

Some hands went up.  Avery put her hand up.

“Why not do all three, all the time, right away?” someone asked.

“Because each has its drawbacks.  Each requires a close attention to who you are and what you want out of life.  Some families choose to give their child a firm push in one direction early on, forcing the decision.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  I think many practitioners who get to old age will eventually pick up more options.  But to take all three is for the power hungry, desperate, and rushed.”

“With how cushy a hangout a Demesne is, do practitioners just, like, never leave?”

“It happens.  They can become Other.  More problematic is that a demesne without the practitioner tying it to reality may drift, in the sense that it stops being attached to any one place, and settles in one realm or another.  It can also drift in another way; if you never leave, you lose perspective on what the world and things are like.  It becomes loose, dreamlike, and self-referential.  It’s hard to say what happens when we don’t have a lot of material on the subject, but I would guess it can collapse.”

Avery waited, hand up, as he answered two more questions.  One about being forsworn.  She’d already heard that Charles had lost his Demesne.  Another about forcing Others to be familiars.  Already sort of covered with the ‘master’ type of practitioner-familiar relationship.

She still felt weird, thinking about Snowdrop.  Was she obligated to help Snowdrop live longer?  She’d made Snowdrop into this, and it had been self-serving.

But Snowdrop had personality traits, qualities.  Things that were very far from being Avery.  Maybe she should encourage that.  Except that might mean encouraging hanging out with goblins and stuff, which- that was complicated.

“Thank you, everyone,” Ray said.  “Go enjoy your lunches.  This afternoon Mr. Belanger and I will be available for lessons, questions, and handling any issues that have come up about the school, or anything you might need.”

She was being ignored, it seemed.  Avery dropped her hand.

Avery packed up, slipping her notebook into her bag, then slung it over one shoulder.  As people got sorted out, she hemmed, hawed, and tried to decide if she should deal with Mr. ‘Talking to a Brick Wall’ Sunshine or go find Lucy.

She decided on Lucy.  Verona was out there too, and there was a chance that class was already over, and Verona was taking the class with the mom that made a doll that might’ve killed her kid.  Which was freaky.

Verona was probably okay with it or something.  Like, she’d think it was cool, maybe.

“Thanks for- for stuff,” Avery said, by way of farewell to Jessica, stumbling.

“Sure.”

Avery headed out the front door, blinking to switch to her Sight.  The sun was very bright for a second, and then the fog of her Sight dulled it.

She looked for and found Lucy and Verona’s tethers, and traced them to the back of one building.  She blinked to get her vision normal again, ducking into the shade of the building while her eyes adjusted to the sun and outdoors.

The class had ended, it seemed.  Mrs. Graubard was walking across the campus, closer to the side door at the right wing, with nine ceramic dolls in various clothes following behind, moving in sync, each four feet tall.

Lucy stood as Avery approached.

“I couldn’t leave class without breaking rules,” Avery said.  “Sorry, if that wasn’t right.”

“It’s good you stayed,” Lucy said.  “Can you tell us what was covered, later?”

“There might be stabbings if you don’t,” Verona said, holding the small pair of scissors she’d used during the awakening ritual.

“Of course,” Avery said.  “Apparently he’s pretty particular about stuff.  Sensitive programs that adapt to the students and stuff.”

“And he’s a jerk,” Lucy said.  “According to Zed.  Who may like Mr. Sunshine more than most.”

Avery sighed.

“Zed said there’s some story there.  Stuff with his son.  I’ll tell you later.”

“Okay,” Avery said.  “I guess it’s lunchtime, or…?”

“There’s stuff to talk about,” Lucy told her.

“Off campus?”

Lucy nodded.

Verona turned to one side, pulled her collar down, and slipped the scissors into position, held there with the bra strap.

“What’s this about?”

“They’re cleaned out of crap, hardened exterior.  Now I decide what fills up the space I cleaned out,” Verona said.  “Gonna be a bit of me.  Might repeat it a few times.”

“That’s cool.  We covered a lot of familiar stuff,” Avery said.  She looked back in the direction of the eastern wing of the school.  Where Snowdrop might still be sleeping.  “Also rituals, the Ruins, Demesne and Implement stuff.”

“Damn,” Verona said.  She frowned.

“I’ll go over it.”

They walked down toward the road, rather than to any of the big student hangouts, like the bridge or anything.  A few older teens had climbed into cars and were heading out, so they stuck to the roadside.

“So,” Lucy said, once they were far enough away.  “Bristow and Graubard were talking about us.  And Kennet.”

“They were?”

“After I got kicked out of class, I went for a walk, sorta thought I’d cool off, then I felt that connection twinge.  Heard them saying my name.  Heard a bit of what came after.  Kennet.”

Avery nodded.

“We know Alexander used some tricks with his place of power, tying it to the school, to have more claim over everything.  And Bristow got the boot.”

“I was close enough to hear stuff,” Verona said.  “Standing with Graubard.  Bristow wants to teach some classes, and to be a more or less full time teacher, like Sunshine, Belanger, and Durocher.”

“Which is a play right?” Avery asked.  “Jessica told Lucy and me that there was something going on there.  That people would have to take sides.”

“Starting to teach, talking to guest teachers.  Maneuvering,” Lucy elaborated.

Verona nodded, enthusiastic.  “It sounded like he wasn’t told that there would even be summer classes.  And there’s some families that Alexander hasn’t been involving as much, in the same way, not telling them about the classes.  A lot of them stopped coming because of tuition hikes.  Bristow was saying they can have the staff build and stuff without too much disruption over the summer, and lower tuition, to better serve the community.”

Lucy frowned.  “What’s Bristow’s deal?  Ex-headmaster, and?”

“You know how people can figure out there’s weird stuff going on?  And become victim to it, like Brie almost was, and Gabe and the others?  People on the border?” Verona asked.

“Yep,” Lucy answered.

“He collects ’em.  The Aware.  People who get caught up in urban legends, who get caught up in routines like channel surfing and playing video games until they lose their humanity, people who get mixed up in Other stuff more than usual.  Owns some apartment buildings and just has like, one building with fifty apartments, each with one weird person.  Or whatever.”

“Crazy,” Avery said, making a face.  “Must be a weird atmosphere.”

“He apparently tried to get a different kind of school going, and it failed,” Verona said.  “He likes running schools.  But mostly he does property management, with select renters.  There’s a lot of balancing of karma and stuff, as part of it.”

“I noticed there’s not a lot on karma in the class selection,” Lucy commented.  “Um, but getting more on topic, he was talking about me, about us.”

“And Kennet?” Verona asked.

“Yeah.”

“Because that’s way different,” Verona said.  “If it was talking about us, they could just be shooting the shit.  Mrs. Graubard liked how I came to her class, I knew what I wanted to do, I knew what materials I needed, and I had good questions for her.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “But that’s a problem, if we got their attention and they have information on us, now.”

“We could let the Kennet Others know,” Avery said.  “Keep that line of communication open, and let them decide how to deal with it?”

“I don’t have my phone with me,” Verona said.  “Dodging calls from my dad, kinda.  Thought maybe it’d be easier if I didn’t have it close to me for the connections and whatever.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “I’ll call?”

“Cool,” Avery said.

Verona nudged Avery. “You mentioned Jessica.  She knows about the Ruins, right?”

“Yeah,” Avery said.

“Can she help us any?  Tell us what to look for, or how we might go hunting for the bits of the Carmine Beast?”

“I don’t know if she’d be willing.  She’s pretty closed off.  But I asked again about maybe getting Ruins lessons from her in exchange for me helping her look for her cousin-”

“Matthew,” Lucy said.

Avery shut up.

“Update.  Some practitioners named Graubard and Bristow were talking about us and about Kennet.  I think they might be digging for info, separate from Alexander.  You know them?”

Lucy looked at the two of them.

“You know Graubard.  And of Bristow.  Okay.  That’s great.  Uhh, middle aged.  So probably the same guy.  Not the son.”

Lucy nodded to herself.

“Thanks.  No problem.  Yeah.  Getting the feeling, yeah.  Yeah.  Alright, bye, will do.”

Lucy hung up.

“Well?” Verona asked.

“Matthew is going to talk to some people he used to know.  Which gets complicated because he apparently dropped off the map after everything.”

His dad being Heartless, then Edith and the Doom.

Avery guessed Lucy wasn’t elaborating in case there were eavesdroppers.

“Jessica might not be willing, but the demonstration in class included a ritual to dive deeper into the Ruins,” Avery said.  “You can apparently do it with other types of realm.  But it’s expensive, messy, and more dangerous.”

“We might want to save that for when we know exactly where we’re diving then,” Verona said.

“We also need to figure out bindings, and how to protect ourselves against Fae and complex spirits,” Lucy said.  “Can we use Alexander’s type of practice to answer a question?  It would be really useful to be able to write some names out and get a firm yes or no about whether we have the right culprits.”

“Except they’d look back,” Avery said.

“There is that,” Lucy admitted.

“That’s our big problem.  We don’t just need to be able to put up a fight, if they get vicious,” Verona jumped in.  She looked animated.  “We need to put up a fight in a way that doesn’t let Edith or Matthew wear the furs and make a claim to the name.  Or Maricica, or Charles, if that would even work.”

“That’s hard,” Avery said.

Verona nodded, animated.  “It’s crazy hard.  We’d have to not only figure out who did it, but also develop a master-stroke that can cover a bunch of different kinds of Other without giving them the ability to press this… you can call it a big red furry button.”

“Big red furry button, ugh,” Lucy said.

“It’s great.”

It was weird that Verona, for once, was super worked up about stuff having to do with the case, if it could be called that.  Except Verona seemed worked up about a bunch of stuff.  Bouncy and hyper and…

“It’s awful,” Lucy said.

Verona laughed.

And happy?

The dirt road wasn’t seeing much traffic, now that the older kids had driven off to go elsewhere.  Probably picking up supplies or getting food.  One car was passing through, though.

“There’s other factors,” Lucy said.  “It’s not even just that we have to figure it out.  It’s-”

“Alexander,” Avery cut in.

“Absolutely.  The deal we struck was that when we solved the case-”

“No,” Avery said.

The other two girls turned, following her gaze.

The car slowed, then stopped.  Black and sleek, though the dirt road meant it had kicked up a ridiculous amount of muck around the wheels and undercarriage.  The windows were tinted blue.

They rolled down.

“Do you want a ride?” Alexander asked.

“I think a ride with a strange, manipulative older man would be creepy and weird,” Lucy said.

Avery elbowed her.

Alexander smiled, then, without rolling up the windows, pulled ahead and off to the side of the road, kind of blocking their way forward.  Not that they’d been going anywhere.  They’d been walking and talking.

He got out, closed his door, and leaned against it, one ankle crossed over the other, arms folded.  “I wanted to talk.”

“Apparently,” Verona said.

“First, about Raymond.  He’s surprisingly anxious, as personalities go, and today was his first class with more than five students at a time, since some heavy personal events.  It took him a while to figure out a way to teach without his stomach or tongue tying themselves in knots.  He’s attached to his students and loves imparting knowledge, but he struggles to convey himself at the best of times.  His adaptive, computer-planned lessons help with that, but you three are wrenches in that machine.  Big unknowns.  Wild practitioners.”

“You seem very pleased Mrs. Durocher figured that out for you,” Lucy said.

“I am.  But that’s another topic.  Raymond is a kind soul, but not an especially adroit one.  If you waited, approached him with a level tone, and told him how you felt, I think he would surprise you in a good way.”

“Okay,” Lucy answered.

“I’ve pledged to make myself available to help solve student problems this afternoon,” Alexander said, “But I’d like to block out some time to have a serious discussion with you three, today.  I’ve kept to my pledge, about staying hands off from Kennet, and keeping others hands off, until five years pass or the mystery of the Carmine Beast is solved.  But I find myself in an awkward position with one aspect of it.”

“Bristow?” Avery asked.

“So you know.  He would like to start a civil war, here.  To make his second bid to reclaim the role of headmaster.  I recognize that you’re capable of giving him a monumental advantage in that, if you so choose.  You haven’t, as far as I know, sworn not to share that information.  I haven’t threatened or extorted you to make you agree to, and I wouldn’t.”

“It might have the opposite effect,” Lucy asked.

“It might.  My predecessor and would-be successor is antagonistic toward me.  And that’s putting it lightly.  He’s aware of how I operate, and he has a diverse toolbox and an amazing tendency to be a headache and a thorn in my side.  That is something I remain equipped to deal with.  I can deal with the civil war.  But Brie asked questions online before Zed found her, and my would-be successor, who I’m being careful not to name, found one of those dangling threads.  He thinks the silence and secrecy is mine, to my own ends, and anything reasonable I could try to use to deter him would only encourage, instead.”

“This seems a lot like your problem is becoming our problem,” Verona said.

“Thank you for saying that, because I definitely had that feeling,” Lucy added.

Avery nodded, eyebrows knit together.

“He would have found the dangling thread and investigated, whatever happened.  But the situation being what it is only exacerbates it.  He thinks my power base is there, and I don’t really have a power base like he imagines it.  He seems to think I do, but that’s because that’s how he operates.  I prefer a lighter hand.”

“We’ve already taken some preliminary steps to handle things.  But thank you for the information.”

“You’ll need more.  About who he is, how he operates, what to expect.  In the interest of keeping the spirit of our deal, and doing what I can for the letter of it, I can tell you.  We could do it here, by the side of the road, or in a spare room, now or some time this afternoon.  When to expect him, ways you could handle him.  Measures.”

Avery thought of all of that, and of juggling lunch, which was imminent, and- her stomach growled.

“You can put your request in for lunch at the kitchen.  Then we can see about hammering this out.”

“Can we have a second?” Avery asked.

“I’ll get a sip of water.  Excuse me.”

He stepped away from his car, opened the door, and climbed in.  He shut the door and rolled up the windows, giving them some privacy.  They still walked a distance away.

None of the three of them said much.

Mostly, they took it in, thinking about the implications.

“We kind of have-” Lucy started.

“-We should,” Verona said.  “Because of the deals we made.  To protect Kennet.”

“But he’s so dangerous,” Lucy said, in contradiction to the aborted sentence of a few seconds ago.

Conflicted.

Avery turned, looking at the car with the blue tinted windows.  She could only barely see Alexander’s face.  With her Sight, he stood out more, especially when he turned his head to take a gulp of water from a bottle.

Zed had said that Jessica was someone they could trust, if not necessarily befriend.  That much had been spot on.  Jessica seemed to know what she was talking about, on the rare occasion she said more than a few words on a subject.  And she’d had words about Alexander and people like Alexander.

Was this how it went, with all the types of situation like Jessica had described?  Government and police and big business and whatever?  Stuff like police and schools probably meant a lot of different stuff to Jessica than to Avery, even based on the little Avery had learned in school, but she had a general sense of it.  She was kind of dealing with it now, and she could imagine it playing out all over the place.  That one guy who was crazy smart, driven, and essential because of other stuff that was going on?  Or untouchable or inevitable?

Every dealing with him felt like you were at a disadvantage, and felt like you were losing a bit.  And before you knew it, a whole war had happened and you’d lost too many of the battles.

“I don’t want to,” Avery said.

“Neither do I,” Lucy said.  “But do we really want to go back to Matthew and Edith and say, like, this one practitioner with a good bit of clout and connections is about to drop a huge mess on Kennet, sorry we can’t help more?”

“Is it so bad if we trust them to handle it?” Avery asked.

“It’s bad if we trust them to handle it and one of them panics and presses the big fuzzy red button,” Verona noted.  “If it’s any consolation, we can be a pain in Alexander’s butt for a bit.”

“Small consolation,” Lucy said.

Small consolation.

They had to go and say yes, they’d have that appointment with him over lunch or sometime this afternoon.  Yes, they’d get some notes on strategy and stuff.

And Alexander would be super unsuprised that they were saying yes.  He’d probably known before rolling down his windows to offer them a ride.  That was what made this feel so awful.

[4.7 Spoilers] Student Guide

Leaving a Mark – 4.x

Interlude

Last Thursday: Student Guide


Snowdrop lay with her arms stretched out overhead, legs stretched out the other way, mouth open, and eyes half-lidded.  The sun shone in through the window, warming her belly, where her shirt had ridden up.  The student guide and graphic novel she’d been reading had fallen from where they’d rested and lay at a diagonal, resting against her side.

A rustling at the door made her eyes snap open.  She flopped over, one hand holding the footboard of the bed to keep from falling off, while her head and hair moved off the bed, so she could look at the door upside-down, eyes wide.  Her hand gripped the rusty fork.

Having keen senses was essential to be a good guide of the Forest Ribbon Trail, and it wasn’t possible to survive in the wild if you couldn’t be alert and ready when something happened.

Not that she’d really done much in the wild.  She had been born, crawled her way to her mom’s pouch, and then her mom had stopped giving milk.  She’d made some basic attempts to bring food, vegetables and roots, then stopped entirely.  Snowdrop had had to go looking for food herself, when she had been small enough she couldn’t do much.  Bugs here and there.  Chewing on grass.

Then a cat had sniffed her out, picked her up by the scruff of the neck, and carried her away to a life of adventure.

There was more rustling.

She slipped from the bed, hand touching the ground first, feet following, her spare hand gripping her weapon, and crossed the room at a crouch.

She had her escape route, a grate that led into the ducts.  She checked it was there, loose.  Good.

Fork held out of sight, she hauled the door open.

“Aah!”

It was a skinny guy, surly-looking, with a bit of a slouch, and a mop of red-brown hair.

“What do you want?  What are you doing?”

“Delivering.  Papers and stuff.”

She opened the door wider, then leaned over to get the papers from the little trough thing on the bottom part of the door.  She looked them over.

“Breakfasts are student’s choice, lunches are whatever is convenient, and dinners are served for everyone, with special exceptions for diet,” the boy said, sounding like he was reciting off a page.  “The first sheet gives students the ability to vote for future dinner items.  The second sheet informs students about the confirmed guest teachers for the coming week or weeks.  The third sheet informs students about upcoming field trips, and recommends things to bring, preliminary rituals, and other preparations.  Finally, there are some last-minute changes this semester, with Mr. Musser and Bristow doing some teaching, and in the back field-”

Snowdrop yawned.

“Am I boring you?”

“No.  Not boring.  I’m-” She yawned again, cracking her jaw.

He stood a little straighter.  “Don’t let me keep you.  If you’d please just make sure your master gets those.”

Snowdrop snorted.  “Master?”

“I’d hope a minor Other like you wasn’t the controlling party.  No offense.”

Snowdrop frowned.  She tried to concoct a good swear, like Cherrypop had told her, and found herself floundering somewhere around calling him a wet noodle, which was Avery’s favorite, and telling him to put his man junk in a hole in the ground.

She opted to stay silent, sorting through the pages.

“While I’m at it, I’m sure the faculty will inform everyone who brought a familiar, but before construction in the back field even begins, we’ll be using some binding circles to keep pests out.  Bugs, mice, wisps, echoes, lesser goblins, and the like.  We go with very brute-force approaches early, then segue into subtler workings that are woven into the foundation and architecture.  Familiars should steer clear, or it will be like walking into a bug zapper and they’ll risk taking their master out in the process.”

“Oh.  What about non-familiars?” she asked.

“Why does it matter?” he asked.  “You know what?  Nevermind.  I’ve gotta deliver the rest of this.”

“Why don’t you guys have the staff do that?” she asked.

He was already on his way across the hall to the next door.  He picked out papers from the pile in his arms and looked back at her.  “Do what?”

She held up the handful of disorganized papers.

“Because I had to type it up, and the process of telling them to deliver isn’t that much worse than writing up the instructions for the staff.”

“Why not have them type it up?”

“Having the f-a-i-r-y type things write up papers to be handed out to everyone gets you problems with fascination, subversion, and really weird old languages.”

“Huh.  That’s cool.”

“It’s pointless busywork.  Keeping me occupied when a good ritual could do this.  Or an arrangement with the brownies.”

“You’ve got it worse than me.  Do you remember how you said I couldn’t be the controlling party in my partnership with Avery?  I feel bad because you’re the whipped one.”

He stopped sorting out the papers and turned around, frowning at her.

She smiled at him.

People got so weird, sometimes.  She couldn’t always predict how they’d react to stuff she said.  Questions were usually safe, though.  Questions didn’t get flipped around.  Other stuff did, though.  Even the ‘huhs’ and ‘ughs’.  It didn’t matter if she tried to reword it or fib, because it was based on what she meant, not what she said.

“I lost track of the pages I just put in.  Can you go back to doing what you were doing before?”

“It looks complicated, and annoying.  Sorry you’ve got it rough, Mr…”

“Seth.”

“Seth.  You can do it.  Good luck.”

He turned.  “Of course I can do it.  I’m a Belanger.”

“Ooh.”

“And you’re annoying,” he added.  He crossed the hall, put a hand on her head, and forced her back a step.  He drew the door closed, stopping just long enough to say, “Stay put and be good until your master comes back.  Give her those papers.”

He shut it firmly after that statement.

“Good luck with your master too!” she called out.

He muttered something she couldn’t hear through the door, even with her good ears.

She placed the papers on the nightstand, tucked her fork into her waistband, and then sat down on the bed, stabbing herself in the belly with the fork.  She adjusted, lay back, and paged through her graphic novel.  It was in French, and had been left out in the woods for at least one bout of rainy weather, and the blue in the cover had faded away.  But it was a gift from Cherry.  Cherrypop liked the part where the one guy got someone else’s spine jammed down his throat, even though she couldn’t really read that well.  Snowdrop could recite it all by heart now.

She lay down in the sun, holding the book over her head, trying to get sleepy enough that she could sleep through most of the rest of the day.  At least until Avery got back.  Sleep escaped her.  The discussion, the strange place she’d once set on fire, and the annoyance of Avery being called her Master made it hard to relax.

They were partners.  Sisters in arms.  Like spotter and sniper, scout and runner, lookout and looter, trash and treasure.  There was no master.  Ugh.

Ugh.

She sat up.  If she wanted to get to sleep, there had to be something that helped.  Counting sheep was one thing, but that was boring and it seemed like a bad way to get to sleep in a way that let her have nice dreams.  It’d lead to boring dreams.

No, there were better ways.  Good things to get good dreams.  She shuffled through papers, moving things around until she found papers, then found paper that hadn’t been used yet.

With a broken pencil she’d found in a gutter once, she carefully wrote out her request.  Strawberry milk, warmed up.  Apples.  Carrots.  Red peppers.  A cinnamon roll.  It would work if she ordered it, right?  If she wasn’t human?

She was halfway to the door when she stopped.

Writing wouldn’t work, and it wasn’t because she was an opossum.  It was because things got flipped around.  Even in writing.

She held out the paper, squinting with her eyes and trying to squint with her brain too.

She had no idea what she’d really ordered.  What was the opposite of those things?  She could hope it was like, chocolate milk, but with her luck, it’d be congealed blood or something.

Which would be cool, except it wasn’t strawberry milk.

This was hell.  She really, really, really wanted strawberry milk now.  She wanted cinnamon rolls.  She wanted crisp foods that would snap in between her teeth.

Why had she started thinking about strawberry milk?  She was so stupid, getting herself started when there was no way to do it.

She kept the note she’d written, then placed it in the little ‘v’ shaped slot that sullen Seth had put the papers in.

This would be tricky.  She waited, watching by the door she’d left cracked open, peering through the gap.

If she could talk to the ‘staff’ face to face, then maybe there was a chance.  Faerie were smart, and fairy things were like Faerie.  Toadswallow had explained it all, a few weeks ago.  Fairy-with-a-y were things that had some glamour but they were old and followed more precise rules, or it encompassed things that were a bit glamour-y but also a bit goblin-y, or a bit abyss-y.  Every Faerie was a bit different but fairy things tended to be uniform and when they had kids, if they could have kids, the kids were like the parents.

So she had a bit of an idea of what to expect here.

Five minutes passed.  Her craving only got worse.

Milk was happiness and love.  It was one of the only things that was a giving food, not a taking one.  Meat was taken from dead animals, and sometimes, according to Gashwad, living ones, but she hadn’t tried that yet.  Fruit was the closest thing she could think of, but according to Toadswallow, fruits and vegetables were sort of like the sex organs of plants.  It was only sort of by weird design that they became delicious.  Animals ate the plant’s private parts, sort of, then they crapped out seeds and the plants got to spread.  Or the plants were made so they didn’t have seeds and it was kind of like eating a juicy dick with a condom on it, Toadswallow said.  That conversation had moved on to how flowers were also sex organs of plants, and Snowdrop was named after a flower, so she was sorta named something rude.

They’d all loved that.  Goblin brains were fun in how they worked.

Toadswallow was one of the smartest creatures that Snowdrop knew.  Avery and Verona and Lucy and Miss were smarter.  Not that she’d had a lot of time with Miss.

She opened the door and peeked around the corner, to see if the food had been delivered and placed off to the side.  Nope.

She considered for a moment, then closed the door.  She opened it after a second.

“I want my milk!” she spoke to the empty hallway.

“What?” Seth asked.  He was around the corner, further down the hall.

She ignored him, frowned, closed the door, and immediately opened it again.  She repeated the closing and opening a few times.

Maybe it didn’t work because she was Other?

That’d be even worse.

What would she do if she was a Faerie-y type thing?  Faerie-ish.  Toadswallow had told her she should say Faerie-esque, but Bluntmunch had told her that to handle Faerie you had to be crude and Faerie-esque sounded too fancy.  She couldn’t play into their hands like that.  She’d never live it down with her goblin buds.

With her fork, she messed with the delivery trough, mailbox-esque thing, prying at it until it was a bit loose.  She made it rattle, then checked the coast was clear.

Then she took off her sweatshirt and slung the hood over the doorknob.  Lying on the floor, she looked through the gap for shadows.  Two ways she’d be able to notice if they came.  Seeing under the door and the rattle.

She closed the door, lying there with one fist still gripping her fork and the other holding the sweatshirt, which was hung on the knob.

Almost immediately, she heard it.  A faint screech and scrape.

She twisted, hauling on the sweatshirt, pulling the door open wide, twisting her body so it wouldn’t smack her face.  She hadn’t seen the shadows of any feet, but the creature hadn’t even touched the ground.  It hung on the mail slot, paper in hand, narrow eyes opening wide as the door swung, banged against the wall, and the partially detached mail trough thing dropped a bit more, the loose screw dragging against the wood.

She caught it by the wrist.  It was smaller than her, but only barely, with wiry hair that looked like copper wire, eyes that were more like knife slashes that made ‘x’s than regular eyes, ragged in their edges, with ‘lashes’ like frayed flesh, lined with red.  The orbs on the other side were liquid-y metal, like copper mixed with gold.  It had skin that was like thick leather that had been bleached white.  It was knobby, spindly, and beautiful, with what looked like fancy lacy stockings or fishnets trapping hair close to its arms and legs, and more layers of the same around its body and legs.  She wondered if it was halfway between goblin and Faerie, from how it was misshapen but a beautiful misshapen.

It fought like its life was on the line.  Long fingernails raked her arms.

Snowdrop fought like her strawberry milk was on the line, trying to get it to sit still long enough for her to put thoughts together and decide what to say.

It hissed in her face, its eyes widening.  There were dark pupils in that sea of coppery gold, so paper-thin they were easy to miss.

She hissed back, turning the tables on it, shoving it, and kept hissing as it landed on its rump, scrambling back.  It was fast, moving to the far side of the hallway in a second.

She hadn’t meant to hiss.  Instincts had taken over.

It reached for the line of mortared-in stones where the wall met the floor, touched a stone, turned it ninety degrees, and lifted up a trapdoor.

She’d caught up with it by the time the trapdoor was open.

“I-”

It kicked her in the lower stomach, making her grunt and take a step back.  Then it flipped over, to go for the trapdoor.

She lunged forward, hooking a foot around its leg, and dragged it back.  It reached just inside the trapdoor, and came out with a mug of something like tea.  It sloshed it in her direction.

She shielded her face, best as she could, and the fact she was still holding her sweatshirt helped a lot.

It hissed at her, wriggling so its leg was free of where she’d hooked her foot around its leg.

She hissed back, on principle, and because instincts.  The thing threw a butter knife, maybe intending it as a parting gift.  It hit the side of her chest with enough force to get through fabric and break skin.  She felt a sharp twinge of pain as it stuck in, pulled, then dropped free, clattering.

It dropped to all fours, and she wasn’t sure if it was leaving, which was fine except she hadn’t gotten to order, or if it was getting more things to throw at her.

She returned the favor, stepping forward and soccer kicking it in the backside as it was on all fours, ducking back through the tunnel.  The soccer kick was a bit of something from Avery.  She’d been pure opossum once, but then when she’d gone to the Forest Ribbon Trail, she’d gotten the big Avery download from the universe or the ritual or whatever.  Everything she needed to be a companion on the trail.  Soccer knowledge came from that, and it maybe informed the kick, making it more efficient.

The target of the kick was scrawny and it didn’t really have butt cheeks.  It wore fancy, gauze-y clothing.  Gauze-esque?  Didn’t really offer much protection.  And so the effect of the kick was really to put the toe of her shoe in near-direct contact with Faerie-esque butthole.

Driven forward at an angle, the creature’s face slammed into the edge of the trapdoor it had been ducking through.

She stood there, as the Other member of the school staff member lay on the ground, one hand with long fingernails covering its face, the other hand gripping its butt.

“I-”

It rolled over, writhing.  It tried to kick her, failed to get any strength, and clutched its butt harder.

She dropped her wet sweatshirt on top of it, then stood on the fabric, pinning it down.  She adjusted her footing so her feet trapped its arms roughly where they were.

“Can you take my order?”

It moaned something in a whispery, rapid-fire, air-light language, one hand at its face, the other clutching its butt.

“Do you have strawberry milk and can you warm it?  I want-”

Three narrow hands with long copper-gold fingernails reached out of the open trapdoor, grabbed the faerie-ish thing, and hauled on it with enough force that it was pulled from where she’d pinned it.  She dropped to her knees, reaching, and the trapdoor closed within a half-inch of her hand.

“Yeah, well, I’m sorry!” she shouted.  She reached for the stone the thingy had touched, and tried a few times to rotate it.  She needed fingers in the right position, and the divots were narrow and camouflaged.  She found the position, started to turn it-

Hands on the other side resisted her, turning it back the other way.  They were about as strong, and after a minute of struggle, she gave up.

She’d come back later.

She straightened, rubbed her stomach, repositioned her fork at her waistband, and checked her injury.  She was bleeding where the knife had gouged her before falling to the floor, and it was soaking into her t-shirt.  She picked up the knife and added it to her waistband.  She picked up the slip of paper and sweatshirt as well.

“You have my order,” she said, to the empty hallway, a bit unsure.

She hadn’t wanted to fight like that.

She returned to the room, and dug through Avery’s stuff.  She’d put her kit together before the whole thing with the Hungry Choir, and that whole thing had happened before Snowdrop, so Snowdrop had gotten it in the big Avery download.  First aid kit.

Sticker-bandages.

She poked and prodded at her wound a bit before sticking a slim bandage over the hole.  It was shallow, anyway, and the knife seemed clean.

There.

She tried to decide what to do, and decided that with the pain and her heart pounding, she wouldn’t be able to sleep.

Without her warm milk, she definitely wouldn’t be able to sleep.

She paced on the spot, anxious, thinking about Avery, when a buzzing distracted her.

She crossed the room, went to the other bed, and moved stuff aside until she found the phone.

Dad:
I might need you to come home sooner than later.

Image: this image has corrupted and can no longer be retrieved.

Dad:
They’ve had me waiting at the emergency room for two hours now.  They say it’s serious but won’t move me ahead.  There’s a lineup of patients who are getting priority of the CAT scan machine.
Call me.  ASAP.
Ten hour wait and I only just got a bed.  Now I’m waiting for a doctor to be free.  Ridiculous.
I had to call a coworker to get a ride.  I’m humiliated.  He stayed with me for the first three hours but had to leave.  I would have liked you with me for part of this.
I need to get in touch with you ASAP.  CALL ME.
I spoke with a doctor.  I’m serious now: call me.  I’m going to need you to come home.  I called your mom and you know I hate speaking to that woman.  I wouldn’t do it if there was any other option.

Yeah.  She would need to talk to Verona and Avery.  The decision had been made for her.

Snowdrop switched to opossum form as she vaulted over the footboard of the bed, paused as she considered what she needed, then became human again, dropping into a sitting position on the little shelf-dresser thing at the foot of the bed.

Changing and becoming human again let her change clothes.  She’d wanted something that fit for school, literary or fancy or whatever, and the oversized t-shirt she wore was now crimson, with thick white letters wrapping around most of it, the text extending from shoulder to the base: ‘I may love garbage but that doesn’t mean I am garbage’.

Good.  Wordy.

She also had a pleated skirt, baggy socks, and sneakers.  She grabbed Avery’s jacket from the back of the door, sniffed it, and got Avery’s scent, along with the smell of grass and outdoors.  Good.  She pulled it on, for good measure, and to cover up her scratched-up arms.  A bit big for her, but many of her clothes were.  She combed at her hair, adjusted the utensils trapped beneath the beltline of her skirt, handles sticking up, and marched out of the room.

It was tricky, sometimes.  She could only carry so much.  Miss had told her what she needed to know, before leaving.  That being Lost made it hard to hold onto things.  Many Others, with a big exception for those that were specifically about having stuff, had a hard time holding onto things.  They had less connections, or connections meant for other things.

She probably wouldn’t hold onto the butter knife, or holding onto the knife would mean losing something she didn’t really care about or pay attention to, like her own personal dog tag.

Miss had had to use tricks to keep her stuff.  If she didn’t come back, then maybe Snowdrop would take over the same position.  Then she’d have to learn and use those same tricks, like juggling and lending things.  Miss had made deals with Others who didn’t come into Kennet, giving them things with power, then taking them back when needed, or calling in favors, to keep people busy.

So she only had her fork, the knife, the goblin lockpick she’d been holding, the phone, some spare change in her pocket, Avery’s raincoat-windbreaker, and the clothes that were as much a part of Snowdrop as her hair was.

There were other parts of being empowered by the Path that changed things up.  She didn’t have the best eyesight, especially in daylight, but her vision got very sharp when it came to seeing hidden things.  Things in shadows, things that were a bit around the corner.  Looking at something like the corner of a cover in a goblin’s rude magazine stash in the woods and having a good sense of what the magazine was about, and even when it was from.

Two x-shaped copper-gold eyes peered at her through the vents as she walked by.  She gave them a wider berth.

More eyes beneath a door.  A wooden plank in the ceiling lifted up, eyes peering down.

She counted them.  Ten in all.

She picked up her pace.

Avery had gone this way.  She could smell it, checking the smell on the jacket for reference.  Not that it was really necessary, but she was nervous and…

And the hallway was a dead end.

She stared at the wall, with water running down it.  She reached out, touched it, and pulled away her wet hand, wiping it on her shirt.

This hadn’t been a dead end before.

She pressed an ear to the wall, and heard a muffled voice.  She could connect it to Mr. Sunshine, teaching.

Snowdrop turned and looked.  Ten glowing, narrow eyes watched her.

They emerged, sliding into the hallway from beneath doors and out of trapdoor spots.  A lot of them came from the direction of the kitchen.  They were roughly the same as the one she’d scrapped with, all with stooped postures, skin with some thickness to it, that could have made them look brutish if they weren’t so very slender and soft.  She imagined it was like those dogs that were huge balls of hair, but when the hair was shaved off, they had spindly legs.

These guys were very spindly, once you looked past the thick skin, pronounced, angular joints, and very triangular faces.

Some were apparently female, with long hair and more effort spent covering their breastless chests.  There were two older ones, with hair a wiry white gold instead of wiry coppery gold; one with a long beard and long hair, the other with muttonchops.

They carried various kitchen things as improvised weapons.  Some knives, a tenderizing mallet, a rolling pin, a steaming teapot.  One lurked in a half-open trapdoor wall, and the space behind the wall wasn’t a dorm room.  It was a kitchen, lit solely by dark red fires, filled with steam.

She drew the fork and knife.

They hadn’t come to serve her any milk.

They came at her, all at once, and all of them were fast.  She wasn’t a fighter, but they didn’t seem to be either.  It was possible she had more experience scrapping than them, but that was mostly play-fighting with goblins.

Which had to be a good thing when dealing with Faerie-esque things like this.

She focused on the ones with knives first, grabbing a mallet-holder and shoving him hard in their direction.  The rolling pin came down, and she became an opossum, scrambling between his legs, her nails struggling to get traction on the wooden floor for that first crucial second.

Goblin technique number one.  Aiming for anything that jiggled.  She became human again, with a thought spared to keeping the wardrobe from before, and soccer-kicked one of the kitchen staff between the legs from behind.  She backed away from a thing with a steaming teapot that seemed intent on sloshing her with the boiling contents, swiping out with the fork to keep another at bay.

She retreated into a corner, weird wet wall to one side, pressing against her shoulder, a wooden wall to her other side.  She’d have to move when sloshed.

The bearded one hissed, before spitting out some invective in a whispery, sing-song voice.

She hissed back, fiercely enough that he stopped.  They all stopped.

Their heads turned simultaneously.  Looking back the other direction, away from her.

They moved as fast as they had earlier, but their destinations weren’t her.  They were trapdoors, panels, and the cracks beneath doors that they should in no way have been able to fit through.

That Seth guy came around the corner, and walked a bit of a way down the hall before stopping.

“He’s still got it up, huh?” he asked.

She looked back at the wet wall.  It looked like something had been carved into it once, but the wet had washed most of the detail away, leaving only circular grooves and stuff.

She touched the wall.

“I hope none of those kids have to go to the bathroom,” Seth said.  “Rad Ray doesn’t like interruptions for trivial things, and having to shut down the program and let them through would drive him up the wall.  Is there any place you can knock?”

She rapped her knuckles against the wall, but there was no sound.

“Guess not,” Seth said.  “Of course not.”

“Can I come with you?” she asked him, looking around for any glinting eyes.  One peered at her from under a door, then disappeared as Seth walked up.

“I’m going to make a deposit in the men’s washroom, so no.”

“But-”

“No.  Maybe if you were, like, sixteen and…” He looked her up and down.  “Actually, could look past the clothes.”

“Can you help me?” she asked, trying to keep to the question thing.  “What do I do if the kitchen staff are mad at me?”

He snorted.  “I don’t know, but I’m glad.”

“Glad?”

Someone’s gotta take the hit.  Now, excuse me.  Try not to become too big a mess, because Nicolette’s in class and I’ll probably be the one tasked with cleaning it up before we end up traumatizing a client.”  He fake-coughed.  “I mean student.”

He stepped into the bathroom and closed the door.  She heard it latch.

Yellow, ‘x’ shaped eyes lit up all down the hallway.

They slipped out of trapdoors and gaps.  Ten or twelve of ’em, silent.

Snowdrop bit her lip.

She slid the knife into her waistband, then reached past Avery’s jacket to get into her pocket.  The things came for her, and she lunged, going for the bathroom door.

The Ratfink Key slid into the keyhole.  She twisted, pulled, and hit the handle, before scrambling back, hand cupped to protect her eyes.

The door slid open.

The fairy things stopped just short of where Seth would be able to see them.

“Uhhh,” Seth said.  “I locked that.”

She kept her hand up, but as one of the things circled closer to the wall, peeking around the corner, she looked, and saw Seth on the toilet, pants around his ankles, reaching in a futile way for the door handle.

“Can you close that door?” he asked.

She didn’t move.

“Helloooo?”

She put the key away and drew her knife.

“Unh,” he said, trying to use the plunger from beside the sink to push the door closed.  It swung in, swung back, only to get another push from the plunger.

One of the closer fairy-things took a step closer, as the door closed.  Snowdrop jabbed at the air with her fork.

“Unh.  Fuck.  What the hell?  Did you open that?”

Raymond, it seemed, was midway through a lecture.  She could hear the murmurs and use her Lost awareness to fill in some of the context.

He shoved, hard, and the door moved with enough force to close.

But the broken lock kept it from properly closing.  It swung open again.

“Don’t look,” he told her, pulling toilet paper from the roll.  “If I had a say in things, I’d be pushing to get you unsummoned, white trash girl.”

Snowdrop watched the spindly creatures prowl, pacing the hallway, Seth’s activities as he wrapped up his ‘deposit’ early in her peripheral vision.  The sink blocked most of the view, thankfully.

He hiked up his pants and came straight for her.  Which- he didn’t wash his hands?

Even opossums washed their hands, when they could.

The fairy things slipped away as Seth came storming her way.

She bolted, running.

“Hey!”

The hallway had a bend in it, and the bend blocked Seth’s view.  As she rounded the corner, more eyes began to appear.

She knew the fundamentals of running from the Avery download.  Hands flat, pacing, breathing, good running posture.

She did all of that except the breathing thing, because the goblins said there was power in utterances and her best utterance was-

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

They came tearing out of every space nearby.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

Narrow hands reached out from under doors and parts of the wall opened up for more of them to drop down.  She could only run harder, trying to get past them before they could recover from their landings.  She threw her pocketful of change down in hopes they’d slip.

She didn’t hear them slipping, but they didn’t catch up to her despite being quick.  Maybe there was something to it.

It didn’t help with all of them.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

A hand clutched for her.  Long fingernails dragged against the slick material of Avery’s raincoat.  They caught at her hair and she was really glad it wasn’t as tangled as usual.

She wanted Avery.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

A woman stepped out of a nearby doorway.

“Miss, class is in session.”

Snowdrop practically tackled the woman, wrapping her arms around her.  Snowdrop’s chest jerked out and in more than it expanded and contracted, from the force of her breathing.

She looked back.  No creatures.  No change, even.

“This, right here?  It’s a library,” the woman said.  It was Zed’s summoning, but she didn’t have her hair in a bun.  She wore narrow reading glasses, a white blouse with a very light fabric, and a long black skirt that reached her ankles, her hair straight.

Snowdrop frowned, trying to get her bearings.  Was it?  It was.  “I knew that.”

“A class is in session at the back.  I’m going to kindly ask you to respect the space and be quiet.”

Snowdrop nodded.

“Come, quiet now.”

Snowdrop allowed herself to be led, with only the small protest, “I need to go out there.”

“Hush.  Come.  You’re agitated, and the right book makes everything better.”

She allowed herself to be led, mostly because she didn’t know what to do.  Through foggy windows, she could see the crowd in the big room at the far end of the library.

The woman gave Snowdrop a careful once-over, studying her, then went to a bookshelf, bending down.

“Here.”

The book had a mouse in knight’s armor on the cover.  It was titled ‘The Mouse’s Roar’.

No pictures.  Snowdrop flipped through.

“No pictures,” the librarian woman echoed her thoughts.  “But you’ll like it.”

Snowdrop read the first paragraphs.  Her legs kicked, impatient.

She closed the book.  “I want to read this but-”

“Everyone has time to read.  They convince themselves that other things are more important.  Do you drink tea?”

“Yes.”

“I do love the taste of tea amid the smell of old books, cracking leather, and ink.  A guilty pleasure, cultivated in small European bookstores.  Just promise me you won’t spill any on the books.”

“As long as I can go out there soon,” Snowdrop said, eyeing the windows, looking for those yellow x-shaped eyes.  She hugged the hardcover book to her chest.

“I’ll put the kettle on.  Do you want treats?  Again, sticky hands-”

“My sticky hands will ruin the books.  Right.”

“Be careful.  You could read in the meantime.  Tell me your thoughts.  I’ve read most published works, but a new reader’s experiences are something special.”

“I was bored earlier, and this is a nice change, but-”

Snowdrop froze.  She saw two eyes peering out from beneath a bookshelf.

The librarian strode over, bent down, and dragged the fairy thing out from beneath the shelf.

“I’ve warned you lot,” Nina said.  She drew a piece of lined paper from her sleeve and flicked it.  It went rigid, like a blade, and pressed against the side of the creature’s throat.  “Not in this library.  I won’t brook any disrespect of this space while I’m charged with it.”

She walked the thing to the door, then deposited it outside.  The eyes glowed at Snowdrop as the door swung closed.  Nina stopped the door at the last second, to keep it from banging closed.

“If there were more people in this part of the library, I’d be quieter,” the librarian confessed.

The kettle was near-silent.  Snowdrop leaned in her seat on the stool, still hugging the book, getting a view as she looked around the corner.  She looked around at the computers, boxes, and stuff, then back at the class in progress.  She focused her vision, and the obscured images became clearer.  Was Verona in there?  It was supposed to be the enchanting person, who was a woman, and that was Alexander.

“It’s good we have an electric kettle,” the librarian said.  “But I must be careful about the steam.  Even that can damage an old book.  Tea is a once-a-day treat for me, and I’m glad to have company.”

“Glad to be here,” Snowdrop said, antsy.

“Can’t have a fire hazard,” the librarian said, as she unplugged the kettle and carried it to another part of the corner of the library.  “The library burned this spring.  They did a good job of repairing the damage, but damaged books are harder to replace.”

Snowdrop got more antsy.

“It’s a cardinal sin in my eyes, to burn books.”

Did she know?

The librarian took the old hardcover novel from Snowdrop, setting it on a nearby table, then went to get the treat.  A slice of cake.  “Do you take milk in your tea?”

Was that even a question?

A bit more pressing, though, was another question: Do you poison book burners?

Snowdrop slipped from her position on the stool.

“I have to go back out there.”

“My dear, that-”

Snowdrop fled, pushing her way past the doors with enough force to bowl over the fairy things that had stuck around.  She hurried around the corner.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

Outside.  Into bright light, which always made her anxious.

There were picnic tables lined up under a long canopy tent, and some Others were sitting at those tables.

The fairys didn’t chase.

A burly guy with a thick, curly black beard, a mane of curly black hair, and elaborate curling horns as broad as Snowdrop’s arms were long turned to look at her as she huffed for breath.  It was hot outside, t-shirt and shorts weather, and he wore a heavy black coat that might have been wool.

“Did you thank the kitchen staff?”

She shook her head.

“Steal from them?”

She drew the knife from her waistband.  “It was given to me.”

“Hmm.”

“What if, hypothetically, I kicked one of them in the butt?”

“Why would you do that?” he asked.  His voice had a sharp edge to it, but the baritones were warm.

“He deserved it, probably.”  Snowdrop drew closer, keeping the table between herself and the guy.  A woman with gorgeous wavy brown hair that spilled out across the table and onto the ground at her feet had her arms, head, and part of her upper body resting on the picnic table.  A bottle rested by her hand.  She looked at Snowdrop with half-lidded eyes, seemed to need to focus for a few seconds, and smiled once she’d focused enough.

“It’s going to be a very long semester for you, then.  You’re an animal, aren’t you?”

“Opossum.”

“They serve high quality meals.  I wonder what they would do with opossum meat.”

“Don’t be cruel, Blackhorne,” a woman said.

Snowdrop felt a bit of relief at hearing a familiar voice. It immediately turned around when she realized why the voice was familiar.  Next to the sounds the girls had made before the ritual, Avery’s own voice, and the denizens of the Forest Ribbon Trail, Wolf included, it was one of the first human voices she’d ever heard.

Nicolette.

Snowdrop went stiff.

“It’s true, Nicolette,” Blackhorne said.

“I’m not saying it isn’t,” Nicolette said, as she approached the table.  “Truth is crueler than lies.  If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t believe our own lies.”

The blitzed girl with the hair chuckled to herself, hearing that.

Snowdrop backed up a step as Nicolette walked around the table.

“Hello, little liar,” Nicolette said, stopping where she was, about ten feet from Snowdrop.  “I couldn’t help but notice you from a distance, with this cloud hanging over you.  If I may take a closer look-”

Snowdrop scrambled back another five steps as Nicolette took one more step forward.  She pulled out her fork.

“Ah.  Nevermind.  Forget I said anything.  The Brownies want your skin, huh?”

“Opossum meat makes a better meal than opossum hide,” Blackhorne said.

“I’d be way too tasty,” Snowdrop said.

“Yeah, well, you’d be an awfully small dish,” Nicolette said.  “I’d say it’s possible they’re trying to scare you, but… I have means of telling they aren’t.  What did you do?”

“All I tried to do was order in person.”

“That’s all, huh?” Nicolette asked, with a wry tone.  She looked around.  “I remember how terrified I was on my first day.  It was a few years ago, and the culture wasn’t as soft as it is now.  It didn’t help that the me of back then could be described as a massive, raw open wound, literally everything around me, material or immaterial, prodding at the edges of that wound.”

Snowdrop remained where she was, fork held but hidden from view, tense.

“Did you manage to order?” Nicolette asked.

Snowdrop didn’t speak.

“Answer.  I want to help.”

Snowdrop relaxed, but only a bit.  Helping didn’t mean Nicolette couldn’t hurt too.

“Why does it matter?” Snowdrop asked.

“Because they’re transactional Others.  And they’re fairies, but our interest is in the transaction.  They offer their services to any dumb farmhand or genius augur they can, always with a trick, a caveat.  Sometimes, it’s if you get curious and watch them work, you’ll lose your eyes.  And even when your eyes aren’t attached to your head, you’ll see through them.  Then they place the eyes somewhere you have to watch the most horrible things imaginable.  Or wearing the things they make for longer than one day or one night means you can never take them off.  From there, you become a beggar in tattered clothes if you’re lucky, an Other in rags if you’re not.  But the key is the contract.  They live to deal.”

“This doesn’t help much.”

“They keep countless dishes going in kitchens bigger than this institute, where time flows differently, to supply what people need in minutes.  They’re serious about this.  But a certain type of Other that runs contrary to that seriousness and discipline, maybe a chaotic little opossum with a trace of goblin around the edges?  Throws them off their game.  If they keep you running scared for long enough you can’t call them out on it, they can get away with a loose breach of the implicit deal, in retaliation for a loose breach of etiquette.  But if you call them out…”

“They’d chop me up into dinner.”

“They’ll leave you alone.  Really.  I really should be getting back to class, but…”

Nicolette looked around.

“Trust me?”

Snowdrop hesitated.

“I’d rather go to Avery and Lucy and Verona than fix this.”

“Come on,” Nicolette said.  “If you need help finding them, I’ll help you later.  I think the front door is locked, anyway.  I don’t have long before I should get back to workshop, so let’s go now.  No dallying.”

Snowdrop reluctantly followed.

They entered the school, and with Nicolette present, the brownies, as Nicolette had called them, were elusive.  Mostly, Snowdrop saw them when she looked back over her shoulder, or when she looked into places that even an Augur like Nicolette couldn’t see.

They traced their way back through the school, all the way to the cafeteria.

“Keep quiet, and don’t agitate.  Don’t thank them,” Nicolette said.

The kitchen was apparently empty, but pots were sitting there, simmering.

“You’re obligated to serve the residents of this school,” Nicolette said.  “Adapt to their needs.  For Snowdrop here, I think Avery Kelly should help figure out a menu or checklist, and you should take pains to not discard that menu or checklist, after you get her requests.  Workable?”

Nicolette was asking Snowdrop.

Snowdrop nodded.

“Do you have any requests?”

Snowdrop moved further into the kitchen.  She saw a fridge with a glass door, and within was milk, in various flavors.  Lots of chocolate.

And a bit of strawberry milk.

She opened the fridge and then hesitated.  Taking was bad, wasn’t it?  “May I?”

“You may,” Nicolette said.

She opened the fridge, stood on her toes, and reached up, pulling down the bottle.

It wasn’t warm, like she’d imagined for naptime, but ice cold milk had its charms too.

She had the cap off in a second, then drank.

“Seems you’re satisfied,” Nicolette said.  She sounded a bit warmer than before.  “Food?”

Snowdrop gulped down a quantity of milk that made her throat hurt, gasped, and said, “I don’t need any Bonky Donks.  I know they’re a problem.”

“Oh no.”

“This is good.”

“Don’t-”

All around the kitchen, in dark corners, on shelves, and from within cabinets that were ajar, x-shaped eyes lit up.

Snowdrop backed away fast enough that she bumped into Nicolette.

They came tearing out, hurrying forward.  Mostly they moved behind Nicolette.  Disappearing as she turned around, emerging elsewhere.  A plate spun as it came to rest on the ground.  Nicolette pulled on Snowdrop’s shoulder, moving her closer to the kitchen entrance, looking to make sure the coast was clear.  Fire flared to the side.

More fire scattered across the kitchen floor, in intense droplets.

A Bonky Donk, tidy, was deposited on the plate that had been dropped on the floor.  Chocolate sponge cake with preservatives and cream filling.

Surrounding it was a sea of melted plastic, some of which was on fire.

A Brownie with a massive beard sprinted from one cabinet to another, beard on fire, covered in burning melted plastic, chased by another brownie with a stenciled ‘Bonky Donk’ logo staining its hand.

More fires erupted.  Glass broke.

Snowdrop drank some of her strawberry milk, satisfied, then walked over, picked up the Bonky Donk from the plate, and bit into it.

Snowdrop spoke around a mouthful of Bonky Donk.  “They really did it.  They’re so good at this.  No plastic though.  Except the burny plastic.  Which-”

Nicolette clapped a hand over Snowdrop’s mouth.

Yellow eyes filled the kitchen, behind Nicolette.  Hiding as she turned her head.  Intense.

“If you keep telling them their work is inaccurate and terrible, they may lose their minds,” Nicolette said.  “They have something to prove, now.”

Snowdrop chewed, Nicolette’s hand still clasped over her mouth.

Together, they retreated from the kitchen.  The eyes followed them.

“Aaaaa!” Snowdrop cheered.

Avery, Lucy, and Verona were on their way back.  They’d gone walking while Nicolette and Snowdrop were sorting things out.  Away from school.  Now they were walking through the parking lot, coming back to school.

“Aaa!” Avery greeted her.  “Is that my coat?  I don’t mind, but-”

Snowdrop ran up and hugged her with enough of an impact that Avery stopped asking.

“Miss us?” Lucy asked, running fingernails through Snowdrop’s hair.  “Any problems?”

“Yes,” Snowdrop told them.  She dug in her pocket and handed the phone to Verona.

“Damn it,” Verona muttered.

“Also, kitchen blowup,” Snowdrop said.  “And angry brownies, and stuff.”

“And we’ve got a lunchtime appointment,” Lucy said, not sounding happy about it.  “With Alexander.”

“Is everything okay?” Avery asked Snowdrop.

“Nicolette helped.”

“Nicolette?  Huh.  I guess we owe her one,” Avery murmured.  “Weird.”

“She found me when she said I had a dark cloud over me, then she took me to the kitchens to talk to the Brownies, and then we put out the fires, and cleaned up the mess, and Nicolette said I had to order a bunch of food and not act that unhappy about it…”

“You were busy,” Verona said.  “Want to come with us to the meeting?  It might be awful.”

Snowdrop’s eyes closed, as Lucy’s fingernails combed through her hair.  Hugging her partner in crime, the sorta-head-scratchy, sorta-petting of Lucy’s nails…

She sighed.

“What’s with the phone?” Avery asked.

“My dad.  I dunno.”

“I wonder…” Lucy said.  “Snowdrop, you said there was a dark cloud?”

“Dark- Nicolette said,” Snowdrop answered, turning around.  Lucy pulled her hands away, and Snowdrop took them and put them back.  “Then she said nevermind, and to forget she said anything, so I think she realized she was wrong?”

“You’re great, Snowdrop,” Lucy said, resuming the fingernail hair-comb.  “But deciphering you makes my head hurt sometimes.  She said to forget it?  Did she say she realized she was wrong?”

Yes,” Snowdrop said, “and no, to that last part.”

Lucy put a hand on Snowdrop and Avery’s shoulder, leading them back and away from the school.  “Ronnie.”

Verona looked up from her phone.

“Come on,” Lucy said.  “I’ll help you with that after if you need.”

Verona put her phone away.

They walked away from the school.  Snowdrop could see Lucy look around with her Sight, the whites of her eyes turning red, the irises turning white.  Seeing her do it, Verona and Avery did the same.

“What are we looking for?” Verona asked.

“We’re looking for signs that anyone’s listening, and I’m looking for that black cloud.  I think the stains are darker, but…”

“What are you thinking?” Avery asked.

Lucy’s voice dropped.  “I’m thinking Alexander works subtle.  And what Charles said.  He surrounds himself with strife.”

“You think Snowdrop’s thing is Alexander?”

“I think…” Lucy said, reaching out, touching Verona’s phone.  “That.  Ray picking on me in class.  Avery, I don’t know if you-”

“Some awkwardness around Jessica, but not too bad,” Avery said.

“Maybe you’re strife resistant, because of who you are,” Verona said.  “Or because you’re a Finder and that makes you more detached, or because it deflected onto Snowdrop.”

Verona sounded almost happy, saying that, which was weird.

Happy to have a puzzle, maybe.

“I don’t want to deflect onto Snowdrop,” Avery said, hugging Snowdrop from behind.  “I hope it’s not that.”

“Maybe he held off on going after Avery for now, with plans to do something later?” Lucy suggested.

“Pssht,” Verona made a dismissive sound.  “Simple boring answer.”

“What better way to put us on the back foot and make us dependent on him, than to make us think this school is rough going right from the start?” Lucy murmured.

“We can’t back out of the meeting,” Avery said.  “We said we’d meet him.”

“It would be a minor lie,” Verona said.  “And if we’re already being targeted by vague strife clouds-”

“It’s fine,” Lucy said.  “We’ll go, we’ll keep to the deal.  But now we’re going in with some knowledge.”

“You guys are so smart,” Snowdrop said.  “This is cool.”

“This is tough,” Lucy said.  “But we can do this.  Eyes open, okay?”

Avery and Verona nodded, giving a thumbs up.  Snowdrop joined them.

Verona reached down, putting Snowdrop’s middle finger down with the rest of the fingers, and adjusted her thumb.  “There.”

“Let’s go,” Lucy said.  “I think we have a sense of what we’re dealing with now.”

“We might,” Avery said, her forehead wrinkling a bit as her eyebrows went up.  “But it might not be that simple.  We might have a sense of what’s going on, but it was just over there-”

Avery pointed off to the side of the parking lot.

“-that Matthew said not to trust anyone.”

“You’re thinking Nicolette?” Lucy asked.

“I’m thinking… if we caught on, that’s too easy.  What if it was someone else?  Framing Alexander, or something?  Nicolette getting subtle revenge?  Or-”

“Or, to borrow from Lucy’s boring book,” Verona said, “it’s the simple answer and Alexander gambled with a big play, trying to mess with most or all of us, and lost.”

“When he can see the future?” Avery asked.

“We don’t need another whodunnit,” Lucy said.  “Please no.”

“It could be a small, less complicated whodunnit,” Verona said, trying to sound reassuring.  “We’re n- oh wait, yes we are learning practice from these guys too.”

“And there’s all this other stuff going on in the background?” Lucy asked.  She put her fingers to her temples, massaging.  “Bristow and the little civil war over leadership?  Him being interested in Kennet?”

“That might be tied to it,” Verona said.  “I guess it’s not uncomplicated.”

Avery nodded.  “It could be the strife thing.  Alexander indirectly encouraging interest in Kennet, to stir the pot.”

Lucy groaned.

“You guys got this,” Snowdrop said.  “You’re smart.  You’re great.”

Lucy groaned.  “Please, Snowdrop.  I know it’s not on purpose, but that much negativity right now…”

Leaving a Mark – 4.8

Lucy

Two weeks ago

“It’s too hot for this,” Lucy said.

“As much as I appreciate a duel that is distilled down to the two combatants, all other things removed from the field… reality rarely obliges,” Guilherme said.  He wore his hot boy look, matching her in size, though he had the lines of muscles down his body.  “It’s good to learn how to fight effectively when you have sweat in your eyes and the sun beating down on you.”

They were a ways down the river from Kennet, with shale rock all around them.  Their ‘arena’ was a large bit of flat rock, with the last fifth of the rock overhanging the shallow river below.  Lucy kicked one of the loose, flat, straight-edged stones, and it clattered over the edge.

She was wearing an athletic top and shorts, sneakers, and a coating of sweat that had picked up a fair amount of dust.  There wasn’t enough of a breeze to give any relief.  If the river had been deeper, she might have kicked off her sneakers and dove in.  The sweat traced rivers down her.

The hot lead was uncomfortably warm against the back of her hand, held there by bandages she’d put some inscriptions on.  The inscriptions fed power down to her palm, which let her comfortably hold a spear.  Guilherme was unarmed, wearing a kilt with long pants and sandals strapped to his feet with leather thongs.  He was sweaty too, but it looked like he wanted to sweat, because of the accent that sweat gave, and how it traced his body.  He had a faint smile, like he was enjoying himself, or he knew what he was doing with the sweat and he was smug about it.

She felt unreasonably irritated at that.

On another, larger rock nearby, Verona lay on a towel, wearing a swimsuit top and shorts, chin on her hands, watching.  She’d been reading earlier, and wading in the water, while Lucy had been suffering.

“It would be nice to switch it up, then,” she said.  “Bit of cold rain, maybe?  We could practice fighting in that.”

Drench Verona while we’re at it.

“Then what are you going to do about it?” Guilherme asked.

“Huh?”

“She’s going to complain!” Verona called out.  “Lots!”

Guilherme smiled.

Lucy felt the urge to go on the offensive, just for the chance to deal with that smile, but every time she indulged in those urges, Guilherme handily smacked her down.  More than usual.

“Something to build on another time, maybe,” Guilherme said.  “You’re favoring the spear, I see.”

Lucy twirled the spear, letting it become a pen, then a spear again.  “And?”

“Why?”

“Because it’s easy?  Hammers and stuff make my arm hurt if I hold them too long, swords are similar, but they’re harder to swing than you’d think.  Axes are similar.”

Guilherme nodded.

“Daggers and fans and stuff are too short.  Spears are awkward if you get in close enough, but if you’re that close I lose anyway.  I feel like as long as I have the spear, I lose in five seconds instead of three.”

“You had another style when you dueled me, distracting the goblins from Brie Callie.  Changing weapons.”

Lucy shrugged.  “Is there a point?”

The boy smiled.  “To a spear?”

“To this topic?”

“Don’t ignore your instincts.  They’re better than most.  It would be interesting to chase those instincts, and see how your style as a fighter and practitioner develop.”

“If it means I’m not losing as much.”

“You put a lot of emphasis on that.  On not losing.”

“A few years ago, I got the talk with my mom.”

“Ooh,” Verona chimed in.  Lucy immediately flipped her the finger.

“Not that talk,” Lucy said.

“My dad just gave me this book from the 90s and told me to ask if I had any questions,” Verona said.  “I didn’t ask, I just wooble-searched stuff.”

“The racism talk,” Lucy said.  “What you do in a bad situation.”

“Ah, yeah.”

“I was told the best defense is not being in the situation in the first place,” Lucy said.  “Run away, because the best way to handle a fight is to not be in that fight in the first place.  Defend yourself.  Be loud, get help.  Get eyes or a recording on the scene, because cowards don’t like being seen.”

“All sensible,” Guilherme said.  “Except?”

“Except you can’t avoid all the fights, can you?  I can’t, trying to protect my friends, protect Kennet.”

“No.  You’re right, and that’s not the whole answer,” Guilherme said.

“The whole answer?”

“You.  You specifically, there’s something else there.  You should run, you should call for help, you should be visible, you should defend yourself.  Except, for Lucy Ellingson in particular…”

“I feel like this is one of my therapy sessions.”

“Try and answer.”

“Except… if you always run or walk away, if you always take that sensible course, if you defend yourself, and they, the worst people, they’re always on the offense?  Looking for fights?  It feels like I’m, we’re, ceding too much ground.”

Verona shuffled around a bit.  She had sat up, sitting cross-legged on her towel in the shade.

Shade?

Lucy looked up and around.

There was no tree or cloud overhead to cast that shade.

“Lucy,” Guilherme said.

Lucy turned.

“I’ve talked with Avery at length about who she wants to end up becoming.  Do you want to be someone who holds her spear, point turned outward, to keep the enemy at bay?  To buy a few more seconds?  If you do, I won’t argue, and I’ll help you with that.”

“I want to win, but I’m thirteen and I’m inexperienced.  I’m up against a few hundred or a few thousand years of experience and history here.”

“But you’re still ceding ground.  You’re tired, and you’re no closer to a win.”

“You’re mixing up the two things, now.”

“Yes, but it was mixed up before.  Many experts at fighting will say their weapon is an extension of their body, and it moves accordingly.  For a true warrior, I believe the weapon and fighting style should be more than an extension of the body.  It should be an extension of Self.”

“So coooool,” Verona said.  She adjusted her posture, arms extending out over the edge of the rock she was lying on.

Lucy felt a bit of sweat roll into her eyes, stinging.  She blinked it out.

“Yes?” Guilherme asked her, when she was done.

“I’m not against it, I don’t think.  What do I do?  I’m supposed to decide if I want to be safe or…?”

“You do what you want to do.  Do you have a goal?  A you that you want to chase?  Avery does.”

“I haven’t given it a lot of thought.  Mostly… picking clothes out to be, I call it bulletproof.”

Guilherme nodded, like this made sense, which it didn’t, really.

“Takes time, energy, thinking, trying to be a few steps ahead.  My clothes, my hair.  How I act, being ready with something to say before someone says something subtle.  Maybe I have less energy to think about that stuff.”

“Your hair is special,” Guilherme said.  “To Other eyes, to the Sight of your friends.”

Lucy shrugged.  Comments like that were very close to being the sort where she would’ve liked to have something to say, to push back or call them out, but like an annoying Faerie, he hadn’t made that easy.

Her hair took time and effort.  It couldn’t be bulletproof in the same way as her clothes.  Or it could, with more chemicals, heat, and straighteners, but she didn’t want to do that.  Because to a certain degree, it was her.  Something she reserved for herself.

“What does it matter?” she asked.

“If we had the summer, I would have made your training into something that helped hone you into something authentic,” Guilherme told her.

“I think Lucy’s authentic,” Verona said, rolling over onto her back, arms stretched out over her head.

“Do you think you’re authentic?” Guilherme asked Lucy.

“Are you accusing me of being something else?” Lucy retorted.

“I’m not accusing.  I’m remarking that in fighting style and in other respects, you’re held back.”

Verona laughed.  “Lucy doesn’t hold back when she has something to say.  I love it.”

Guilherme didn’t move, standing on the other side of the rock, with a bead of sweat running down his cheekbone and cheek.  Staring at Lucy, daring her to respond.

“But I hold back in other ways,” Lucy said.  “Sure.”

Guilherme nodded.

Lucy glanced at Verona, and saw that Verona’s smile was gone.  There was just a searching look, maybe a bit sad or surprised.  Like Verona had thought she had all the answers and had just found herself bereft.

“I’m not sure if I’m more annoyed at this pseudo-therapy or at my actual asshole therapist’s therapy,” Lucy said.

“If we had the summer I’d annoy you into breaking loose, or use the sparring as a way for you to search yourself, forcing you to dig deeper until you found your answers and found a way to match me.  But we don’t have the summer, and in a short while, you will leave for hostile territory.  I think you’re annoyed by these matches, more than you feel immediately empowered by them.  You come because you’re worried and you want to be ready for any inevitable confrontations.”

Lucy nodded.

“Then we don’t have time to waste.  If we’re to match your fighting style to your Self, I want your help, to speed things along, and we can’t afford to travel too far down this road of your Self following after a fighting style.  This… reserved, careful fighting.”

“Reserved and careful can be good, can’t it?” Lucy asked.  “I mean, if there’s a good chance I’ll end up fighting some pretty big and scary things?  Ghosts and goblins and eyeball-stealing shadow monsters.”

“It can.  As I said, if that’s what you want to do, I can help you.  But is it what you want?  Think, because you’ve already shown us all bits and pieces of yourself.  You’ve made declarations, you’ve dressed yourself up, and you’ve been dressed up by forces that reflect the true you.”

“You’re thinking of the awakening ritual.  I brought two knives.”

Guilherme nodded.

“The fox mask.  The announcement I made then.  Sure.”

“And?”

“And?” she asked.

“Verona,” Guilherme called out, not taking his eyes off Lucy.  “Any input?”

“I’m- one second!”

Verona was sitting up, digging through her bag.

She wrapped her beach towel around her waist, then jogged down, book under one arm.

The patch of shade followed Verona.

Lucy poked at the towel, moving it so she could see what was scrawled on it.  A darkness rune with some controls, elaboration, insulation, and corresponding writing.

“You’re ridiculous.”

“If I go home with a tan or a sunburn, my dad will be like, ‘if you have time to sit in the sun, you have time to help with the basement’.”

“Show us what you were going to show us, Verona,” Guilherme said.

She opened it, showing Lucy.

A picture.  Lucy with the fox mask on, surrounded by rolling smoke.  There were swords and daggers lying around.  It had been done in watercolor.  Her hair had pink to it.

“My Sight?  The swords aren’t usually like that, though.”

“I wasn’t sure if they’d be stuck in stone or lying around,” Verona said.

“Stuck in stone, and they look older, like-”

Lucy stopped as Guilherme drew closer.  He held out a hand.

She’d lifted her spear, unconsciously.

“Show me,” he told her.

Wary, she held out a hand, and she accepted the glamour.  It was like dust, but heavier, and it felt like cold metal that had just the edges heated by sun.

“I’m not very good at this.”

“Act confident, let others be the judge of that.  And if you don’t want to be judged, then deny them the opportunity.”

She moved her hands with care, drawing out a sword.  It was crude and lacked detail, and the edge was wobbly.  But it more or less lined up.

Guilherme walked between her and the sword, which made her step back.

When she looked down, the sword was refined, accurate, detailed, with touches of rust and cracks here and there.

There were others in the background, too.

“What else?” he asked.

“What?”

“Keep going.  I’ll help.  I’ll supply the glamour necessary.”

“What am I doing?”

“Keep going.”

She drew out more swords.  A knife.  She had to try the hand movements to change colors a few times before she could wipe glamour on rocks and turn it into watercolor.

Every time she looked up from her work, Guilherme had extended it.  Out to the river, to trees.

“Is this a trap?” Verona asked.

“I have no interest in trapping you.  It’s amusing, to teach the three of you.  It’s useful, to protect Kennet and protect myself through Kennet.”

“Okay,” Verona said.  “It might not be something you’re interested in, but you’re Faerie, does that mean you’ll try to trap us on an instinctual level?  Without even meaning to?”

“I won’t.  I’ll be mindful.”

“Is it something that could be used against us?” Verona asked.

Guilherme met Lucy’s eyes.  Lucy wanted to play off of that, like the moment called for her to take charge, declare that this was her sparring, her lesson…

And she wasn’t sure where that want came from.

“Is it?” Lucy asked Guilherme, acting in contradiction to the feeling.

“It would be a Faerie who used this against you, and if they were strong enough to do it in a quick manner, you’ve likely already lost.  For most purposes, this is something good to set up, if you have the time.  It gets faster to set up each time you do it.  If you don’t like the arena you’re fighting in, decide the arena.”

“It’s too fricking hot,” Lucy said.  “Can I change that?”

“You can do what you want.”

“I could, maybe, but I don’t know the hand motions.”

He touched her wrists and manipulated her hands.  His arm looped over her head as he turned her, full body, like they were dancing.  The dust drifted from her hands as she did a full turn.  She stepped away from him.

He moved his hands, and she moved hers.

It was like blowing air over hot soup.  Cooling it momentarily.  It washed out.

Verona moved the beach towel to her shoulders, wrapping it around her upper body.

Lucy felt the chill, too, especially with the sweating from the walk over and the early sparring.  But she’d much rather be cold than be hot.

“There’s an advantage to lining up a concrete image with something abstract.  It gives you more power and influence over that abstract.  If this lines up with what you See and the lines become blurry, you can make small, careful adjustments.  Keeping in mind, of course, that glamour is fragile.”

“Can this be used against her?” Verona asked.  “I’m wanting to be careful of traps, here, and we know Augury can be turned back on the Augur.  If they look, the target can look back, or strike out through that view-window.”

“This is a reflection of what she sees.  The artist paints a picture, the canvas gets attacked.  It’s not a window that a fist could come through to punch the person on the other side.  The danger is that she puts power and time into this and it could break with one decisive move.”

Verona nodded.

Lucy looked around.  “Can I make snow?  How-?”

Guilherme raised a hand, index finger and thumb meeting to form a circle.  He made the hand gesture for ‘brighten’ within the circle.  it created a blurry point of white that started drifting with the wind as he pulled his hand away.

More fat snowflakes drifted out across the space, also following the wind’s course.

Lucy mimed the action, making fat snowflakes, then, with a much smaller circle made with her fingers, a pinpoint bit of blue.  She hurled it down, and it splashed against the ground.

A light, cold rain began to fall.

“I’d call you a dickwad if I thought I could get away with it,” Verona said, huddling more in her beach towel, as the light sleet and snow touched her.  She pulled one leg up, like she could stand like a flamingo and keep more of her body within the towel.

Lucy smiled.  Worth it.  She wiped at her face and arms, using the rain to help get some of the dust off, from the mid-sparring falls and stuff.

Verona, already shivering, put her hands out to catch some of the rain and snow.  She pinched the moisture, then began to do the twirly dance.  Lucy swept her friend up in a bear hug, pinning her arms to her side.

“No!  Let me warm this up!” Verona protested.

“Good,” Guilherme said.  “A space like this is fragile and easily manipulated, but you’ve already connected to one of the ways to protect it.  Don’t give them the opportunity.  If they take the time to answer it, take that same amount of time to target them.  Using the environment and choosing where you stand is as important as a weapon thrust.”

Lucy nodded, still holding Verona.

“There’s a dude walking down the shore with his dog,” Verona said.  “I’m guessing this is a protected space from innocents, but I think you should drop this glamour.”

Lucy twisted.  Verona wriggled, bringing Lucy’s attention back to her, and keeping her pinned, arms against her sides, towel wrapped around her.  Lucy gripped the towel to pull it tighter, like a straightjacket.

“A reflection of your Sight is only one part of you,” Guilherme said.  “There are other things to decide, before we return to the sparring.”

“Do we need to worry about the guy on the shoreside?” Lucy asked.  Verona wriggled harder.

“No.”

“Damn it,” Verona muttered.

Lucy contrived to look, with Verona struggling.

The ‘dude’ and the dog were John Stiles and Doglick.  Lucy wasn’t sure who was supposed to be the ‘dude’ and who was supposed to be the Dog.

“Let me go, fix the temperature, and I’ll do you a solid,” Verona said.

“What solid?”

C’monnnnn.

It was getting a bit chilly, and Lucy had already been both sweaty and lightly dressed.  She took a bit more glamour from Guilherme, then started to do the careful twirl.  She paused.  “Do I do it in reverse?”

“What do you think?  Follow your instincts.”

She mimed the effect from before, reversing it.

The wave of warm air seemed to pass like lapping waves on a shore, pressing up against her.  Thing was, the temperature fluctuated.  A ‘lap’ of pleasantly warm air, a lap of cold, alternating.  The wind picked up.

Guilherme made adjustments, smoothing it out.  The temperature leveled out as something closer to room temperature.  Lucy shivered, her skin prickling as it changed.  “We can discuss the particulars of layers and environment later.  For now, you.”

Verona wriggled, and Lucy released her.  Verona adjusted her beach towel, turning it into a skirt, then began using the glamour-rain she’d grabbed earlier to start fashioning a spare fox mask.  She painted it with traces of pink, rather than orange-red.

“Cool,” Lucy said.

“I thought about tweaking your hair, to match up with what it looks like to my Sight, but I thought the mask would be a better bet.”

“Good call,” Lucy said.  “A mask is probably better if I’m… what are we doing, here?  Dressing me up for battle?”

“Emphasizing you.  A similar idea,” Guilherme told her.  “Why don’t you touch up your own hair?”

“Huh?”

“If this space is a reflection of your inner Self and gaze, then try dressing yourself up.  Experiment.”

Lucy wiped her hands on her pants, then reached back for her ponytail.  “Remind me of the gesture for extension?”

Verona showed her, while Guilherme stood back.

John caught up with them, going to Guilherme’s side.  Doglick, the feral goblin, followed along on all fours, tongue lolling, bug-eyes peering through hair.  Lucy worked on her hair, drawing out its length and scale.  Something more elaborate, that she wouldn’t be able to maintain with a team helping her.

She adjusted her clothes, and dressed up the spot where the hot lead felt like it was burning a hole in the back of her hand, making the lead and the wrapping that held it there a bit more pronounced.

“John will spar with you,” Guilherme said.

Lucy’s eyebrows went up.  She took the mask from Verona.

“No guns,” Guilherme told John.

“Of course not.”

“And for the sake of fairness, no guns for you either,” he told Lucy.

“I didn’t think that was an option.”

“John wouldn’t die from gunshots, but it changes the fight if you have the option and he doesn’t.”

Lucy nodded.  Her hair had a different weight, her ponytail drawn out large, framed in glowing pink highlights.  She wore the pink fox mask with the bright eyes and she drew out her pen, flicking it out into spear form.

“You’re almost out of power for that,” John observed.

“Probably.”

He drew his combat knife.

Which, Lucy thought, was a good reminder of the lessons her mom had been trying to instill in her before.  To run away, call for help.  In a real fight, both people got hurt or, very often, it would be the disadvantaged party that got hurt.  The smaller person, or the girl, or the minority.  Sometimes the hurt wouldn’t be obvious or immediate.  If Lucy fought with a classmate, like she had with Logan not that long before ‘the talk’, her reputation would suffer more than his, whether she won or lost, because she was black.

That talk had been when Paul was still around.  A bit of a loss of innocence.  A time she’d started to really see the world as something else.  She’d laid a lot of that at Paul’s feet, but it wasn’t all him.

She sighed, rolling her shoulders a bit.  She was still stiff from the earlier sparring.

“Lucy?” Guilherme stated.

“Hm?”

“You still have glamour on your hands and feet.  This territory is painted up as yours.  It’s paying attention to you.”

Before she could process that, John was moving, striding toward her.

She almost defaulted to her earlier habits.  Holding back, spear ready.

But she didn’t want to do that or be that.  She’d felt guilty doing it for the Hungry Choir night, with Avery jumping into the fray while Lucy hung back.  She wanted to be able to protect her friends, to handle stuff instead of being scared.

She felt her heart skip a beat as her brain touched on another memory. John coming at her, grabbing her, and putting a gun to her head.

Now he came at her again.  She stepped forward, and twirled the pen.  Turning it into a whip.

She flicked it, her whole arm moving with the motion.  John tried to catch it and failed.  She struck out again, aiming low, where he couldn’t grab it.  Then again-

He seized it out of the air.

She twirled the pen, making it a spear, to match how far John was from her.  She poked, more to keep him from advancing any further, and he swiped.

Pen cut in half, spear destroyed.

She shifted footing, moving to the side.  Could she pick up a stone, or-

She grabbed a rusty sword out of the ground, then a stone.

John lunged, picking up in speed all of a sudden, and she turned the rock into a mace, flanged, like a fleur-de-lis.  She swung, and he met it with his palm, wincing a bit.  He stabbed, and she brought the sword into the way.

Easy, John!” Verona called out, with a note of anxiousness in her voice.

He was way stronger than Lucy, and she had to adapt.  She let go of her weapons, stumbled back, and then fell.

“Don’t hurt my friend,” Verona added.

Another bit of shale rock, another stone mace, same style.

The rock behind Lucy was sloped down and away, and it made it hard to get herself propped up or back to a standing position.

She needed a handhold-

She still had glamour on her hand.  A swift hand motion- she raised up a bit of rock, to grab, prop herself up, and help push herself to the side as John bent down to grab her.

To some limited, fragile degree, she could play with the rules here.  She made a more general motion, like she had when she’d created the warm breeze, to push-

John’s boot scuffed the rock, kicking little flecks of shale and grit at her.  She winced, squinting, and flopped back down, landing hard.  He bent down, and she swung the mace.  Again, he caught it, backhanded this time.  Again, he winced.  But he was free to bring the knife down toward her, probably to hold it at her throat.

Her heart skipped again.  She didn’t want to be at his mercy again.  Not like when they’d met at his place.  She drew a sword out of the ground where there’d been none, and met the knife blade with the sword blade.

He pressed, and the blade shattered like glass, but she was able to pull out another weapon, using the weapon ring.  A knife, this time.  She brought the point out toward John, and struck at the combat knife, caught the handle-guard, and knocked it from his grip.  He was willing to abandon the weapon to avoid getting cut.

“You were almost out of power, and after several uses of the ring and hot lead, you’re still almost out of power,” Guilherme said.  “Why?”

Because I’m being more me.  There’s more Self to draw on.  Feeding the battery with a bit of hot lead, a bit of Lucy.

She’d declared the knives on awakening.  Blade.  Edge.  Offense.  She scraped her fingers against the ground, and pulled up another weapon using glamour.  She had, with Guilherme’s help, decorated this battlefield with blades.  I was easy to just believe that there were weapons scattered around, waiting to be scooped up.  She found the handle and it came out of the ground as a knife.

She didn’t want to cede ground.

He backed away a few steps and she leaped, and turned while moving her hand through the air, like she’d tried to do before.  To create that wind, to help augment her movement.

Belief played into glamour and she had to wholeheartedly buy into what she was doing, for this to work.  Covering more distance, knives aimed at John, hair billowing and beautiful behind her, her face that of a glaring fox.

John caught the knife blades, letting them sink into his palms.  His fingers wrapped around to the backs of her hands.

“I gave you this,” he told her.  “It was mine originally, I earned its power, and I’ll take some of that power now.”

She looked.  His fingertips grazed the hot lead.  His eyes glowed a faint orange.

She felt the pull against her Self as the weapon ring began drinking other power.  She still had the glamour rock, but-

There was a lurch.

Then they fell.

They landed in water, her atop John.  His hand, bloody from a knife wound, cupped her head, which wasn’t positioned to be cushioned by his body.  She felt the force of it hitting the rocky riverbed.  Warm water splashed her.

He pushed her over, into the water, and for a moment, she couldn’t breathe.  He lifted her out.

The glamour had been washed away.  He’d thrown the two of them into the shallow river for just that purpose.  Leaving her with a drained weapon ring, with him right beside her.

“Kay,” she said, by way of surrender.  “Alright.”

He pulled back, sitting in the water, and then stood.  He extended a hand for her.  The wound was already closing up.

She accepted it, standing, dripping wet.

“Did you get hurt in the fall?”

“Not really.”

“Good.”

“Frig,” Lucy muttered.  Water dripped off of her.  It looked like the battlefield, her mask, and the minor alterations to the colors of her clothes had been lost in the splash.

“John can match me in serious confrontation,” Guilherme said.  “And you lasted considerably longer than four seconds against him there.”

Lucy nodded.

“Everything okay?” Verona asked.

Lucy nodded, huffing a bit for breath.  “Annoyed at being wet, but…”

She took a second to recover her breath.

“Okay,” she said, to Verona, to John, to Guilherme, who was using a foot to nudge Doglick so the goblin wasn’t so close to him.  This works, kind of.  “Okay.”

Now

They entered the school and headed for the student lounge area.  People were eating, and Lucy couldn’t decide if she was ravenous because of the energy the morning had required, or if she was too stressed out to eat.

It looked like some were having a brunch, others were having a proper lunch, and others were just hanging out.  It sort of made sense, since it was eleven thirty.  Not quite noon.

A few of the older students, who Lucy guessed weren’t quite old enough to be in the Western wing of the school were actually taking tea.  It weirded her out that that was actually a thing people did.  ‘Take tea’, exchanging thank-yous while being served by one of their number.

Some of them had books open.  It looked like some of the materials from the enchanting class.  Verona had walked her through it, but Verona had read some of this book and been there for the first half hour of class, so a lot of it went over Lucy’s head.

It was irritating, passing through the classroom where Ray had been a dick to her.  Irritating, a bit, that Verona was good enough at the enchanting stuff that her teacher was apparently super into it.  That Avery had her niche.

Lucy’s grades were better than either of the other two when it came to regular classes.  She even had the same grade as Avery’s in phys ed, because all you really had to do was show up and try, and probably because Lucy’s mom had given Mr. Bader flack.

But here?

A topsy turvy world, when Verona was the good, engaged student, and all Lucy wanted to do was lie down in bed and listen to music.

“Are you tired?” Avery asked Snowdrop.

“No,” Snowdrop said, sullen.  “I didn’t have any milk or snacks earlier, and that definitely doesn’t make me sleepy.  I’m totally diurnal now!”

She sounded sleep-drunk.

“Come on.  Go small,” Avery said, taking Snowdrop’s hand and lifting.

“Pain in the ass, I want to stay awake.  You’re so mean to me.”  Snowdrop became a small opossum, and allowed Avery to lift her up into her arms.  She kept making noises, like she was rambling.

“She okay?” Lucy asked.

“Yeah,” Avery said.  “Think so.”

“Do we want to eat, or wait to eat?  I’m not sure what we’re doing this afternoon, if we’re seeing Alexander soon.  There’s more enchanting classes, right?” Lucy asked.

“Yeah,” Verona said.  “Covering different stuff.  Dolls and moving hallows.”

“It might be nice to take a class all together,” Avery said, stroking Snowdrop, with one hand partially covering her eyes.  The opossum pup was already asleep.

“I’m more focused on Alexander,” Lucy said.  “Who might be watching us right now.”

“Creepy.  Hey, Alexander,” Verona said.  “If you can hear this, you’re creepy.”

“Saying his name might be plucking the cord of connections,” Lucy said.  “I ran into that earlier.  He may have actually heard you say that.”

Verona laughed.

“Hey,” Avery said.  “What was with the phone?”

Snowdrop made a sneezing sound, before chittering.

“Can’t understand you unless you’re human, Snow,” Avery said.  “And it’s not your story to tell.”

Snowdrop put a paw up and pulled Avery’s hand down over her head, to ward off the light.

“My dad’s been in the hospital,” Verona said.  “CAT scan or something.  He wants me to call.”

“Are you going to?” Avery asked.

“I dunno,” Verona said.

They walked down the hall toward the library.

“It seems like a complicated relationship,” Avery said.

“It’s…” Verona started, floundered, and stopped.  “Not so complicated.”

“I’m just remembering you not wanting him to have the nightmare, and it seems not great-”

“Ave,” Lucy cut in.

“Yeah.”

“I love my dad,” Verona said.  “I do.  But I don’t like him, most of the time.  I don’t know what to do about him.  I don’t think that’s complicated.  He’s the dad, I’m the kid, and that gives him all the power.  He’s big, I’m small.”

“Unbalanced,” Lucy said.

“Mostly.  The only thing I do get is that I don’t have to play his game.  I don’t have to do chores, I don’t have to spend time around him.  I don’t have to listen to him.  It’s not like he can kick me out, and he’s too lazy to really punish me.  Worst he can do is-”

“Trash your stuff?” Lucy asked.

Verona made a face.  “I keep forgetting about that.”

“Sorry to remind you.  But maybe be careful with the magic stuff.”

“So he wants me to go back.  I feel like that’s playing his game, even if logically I know that’s not really how it is.  He’s not that manipulative, that he’d make that up, I’m pretty sure.  And I love him and I don’t want him to be sick or hurting or anything.”

“Do you want me to reach out to my mom?” Lucy asked.  “She’s a trained nurse.  She knows all the terms and stuff.”

“That screws up connection blockers and stuff, and it raises questions, and I dunno.  No.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll decide after.  I’ll stew on it for a bit.  Alexander first.”

“Don’t stew on it so much that you get a headache or a stomachache again.”

Verona made a face.

They walked the rest of the way down the hall to the library.  There were two parts to the library, and they checked both before finding the section that Alexander was in.

He had Nicolette with him.

“Sit, please.  We were thinking of getting tea.  Do you want some?”

“Ehh?” Lucy made an uncomfortable sound.  She looked at the others.

“Wouldn’t mind,” Verona said.

“Sure,” Avery said.

Enghh.  “You guys drink tea?”

“With extended family more than at home,” Avery said.

“Oh man, the Kelly family extended,” Verona said.

“Twenty-two siblings and cousins under one one-storey roof,” Avery said.

“Horrifying.  I haven’t had much tea but on an aesthetic level, I would rather be a tea drinker than a coffee drinker,” Verona said.

“You’re so weird,” Lucy said, as they walked up to the long table, taking chairs.  She didn’t voice her own concerns, that taking the tea was making this more Alexander’s comfort zone than theirs.

Alexander leaned back into his seat, pulling up an ankle to rest on one knee.  “I’m well aware the problems in my backyard have started to edge closer to your backyard.  I’m willing and wanting to help you in all things relating to my colleague.”

“And your follower is here because…?”

“Apprentice more than follower, I’d argue,” Nicolette said.

“My apprentices are my eyes and my hands, when I’m tied up with the Institute.  I’m going to be tied up with affairs here soon.”

Snowdrop, eyes half-open, made sounds of protest and tried to climb up Avery’s front to the cradle of her arms, while Avery tried to gently transfer her to her lap.

“Is she okay?” Nicolette asked, leaning forward.  She adjusted her glasses, and they changed tint, like the light shining through them was more yellow than any light in the room.

“She’s nocturnal,” Avery said.

“We’re talking about Bristow?”

“If you’d avoid using his name, I’d appreciate it,” Alexander said.  “It’s a quirk of our world, and he has reason to be keeping his ears particularly open right now.”

“What’s his deal?” Lucy asked.  “He’s a landlord in Ontario, and from what my Aunt Renee says, being a landlord in Ontario is a really bad idea.  The tenant protections can make it a nightmare.”

“He keeps strange tenants.  Some are complicated.  A gilded lily, who stumbles on magic items by accident on a weekly or bi-weekly basis.  Many are cursed.  Someone who saw something so bent and broken it drove him around the bend.  A child of a witch hunter who survived the rest of her family, who knows something is afoot in the shadows of this world.  The pattern of that family seeks to wrap her up in its flows.”

“Why does he do it?” Lucy asked.

“To the best of my knowledge, the entire building is laid out as a diagram,” Alexander said.  “The people draw power into and through it.”

Nicolette leaned forward.  “Imagine your awakening ritual.  The skull, the knife, the timepiece, the living thing, and so on.”

“Ours were different,” Avery said, before Lucy kicked her beneath the table.

Volunteer nothing, Lucy used telepathy to tell Avery.

She didn’t really have telepathy, but she really tried, with a look.

“It’s like that.  He moves people between rooms to balance the diagram out.  Maybe restructures the building to add or remove rooms.  He feeds it into his demesne, so that’s one thing.”

“Is there a ritual he’s setting up, or does he do it regularly?” Lucy asked.

“No,” Alexander said.  “It’s an ongoing effect.”

“It seems like a lot of hassle,” Verona said.  “One resident bringing in a cursed item that causes havoc, or another resident starts carrying a crossbow around…”

“Many are passive,” Nicolette said.  “Some are problems, but there are residents like the old man who has fallen so deep into the pattern of watching television all day every day that he’s stopped sleeping, stopped eating, stopped using the washroom.  The most hassle he causes is that another resident might see his reflection in their televisions when they’re turned off.”

“He can’t be helped?” Avery asked.  “They all can’t be helped?”

Alexander shook his head.  “In the case of the couch potato… no.  Too long gone.  Others, maybe.  But their landlord, my colleague, he has a claim to them.  You’d have to get past him to figure out how much help they need or don’t need.  Then you would have to figure out the solution.  Most don’t get past him to even begin to address the other points.”

“I visit two of them,” Nicolette said.  “Less often than I should.  The boy who went mad.  He’s so sweet.  He has an apartment.  It’s seven hundred dollars a month in Winnipeg for a one bedroom.  It’s not especially nice, but with rent prices being what they are in the city, he’s paying half of what he might otherwise be spending.  It’s not overly unkind, at least.”

“It might be if he’s being used,” Lucy said.

“It might be.  But he’s getting therapy, with money he’s saving on rent.  He’s close to family.  This isn’t to excuse the landlord, but…” Nicolette shrugged with one shoulder.

Alexander spoke, “A lot of the residents have something intrinsically different about them.  The Gilded Lily has always been a Gilded Lily, dating back to early childhood, when she was drawn to the antique store.  She led a chaotic, confused life until practitioners stepped in to offer counsel, and take things off her hands.  She will, by virtue of the stars she was born under or a pattern established in long-running bloodlines, either find magic items or have magic items find her.  I don’t know if you could retrieve what the couch potato has lost.”

“Maybe going to the Ruins?” Avery suggested.

“You talked to Jessica,” Nicolette said. “That’s a quest she’s been on for years and I don’t know if she’s close to achieving it.  Not so easy.  I appreciate your sentiment, but what Alexander is saying-”

“Is that they’re lost causes?” Lucy asked.

“Or they’re too far removed to be causes,” Alexander said.  “Another apartment draws all the pests in the building to it.  They pile up into a roughly human shape, go through their day, boot up a laptop, work an eight hour shift as tech support.  They call an unlisted phone number at roughly seven o’clock, watch a movie and some episodes of a TV series, then go to bed, where they slump into a less human pile.  If someone goes to the apartment and spends any time there, they often act like a host, serve food, give them the remote to choose the show to watch.  They only get disgruntled if they get interrupted during their work day.  They don’t get lonely if ignored, they don’t mind the company so long as it’s timely.  They pay rent, pay bills, occasionally forget the rent but pay up when the reminder email comes in.  They don’t need anything except deliveries of food and a twice-a-month apartment cleaning.”

“Cool,” Verona said.  “What are they?”

“I don’t know,” Alexander said.

“That must bother you,” Lucy said.

“It would if I’d looked into it and failed.  I haven’t looked into it in more than a cursory way.  They’re one specific part of an overarching diagram,” Alexander said.  “Some of them remain and are power sources.  I imagine that swarm tenant is both steady income and a trickle of power.  Others balance out the other tenants.  A skeptic that dulls practices around her to help take the bite out of the worst cursed items.  An elusive man to keep the witch hunter scion’s attention without ever bearing fruit.”

“Elusive man?” Lucy asked.

Nicolette rose from her seat.  She crossed the room to the little set of double doors that split the library into sections, and picked up a serving tray.  She brought it through, and began handing out the tea, leaving a little pitcher of milk and a dish of sugar cubes with tongs.

Sugar cubes?  A woman serving the tea?  What was this, the nineteen fifties?

“The elusive are Aware and dangerous people who fell partway through the cracks.  The one here is only ever glimpsed in passing.  Always uncomfortable to come across, with a twisted grin and an intense look in his eyes.  The harder you look for him, the harder he is to find.  When you stop thinking about him, he can remind you he’s there.  As the brownies of the Blue Heron do, he invites people to misstep or breach the rules, unnerving them until they go looking for answers, break into his apartment or try to challenge him, and then he drags them into his apartment or locks the door to the apartment if they’re already inside, and they’re never seen again.”

“Holy crap,” Lucy said.

“He does errands for his landlord in exchange for a cut on rent.  One of a few that do.”

“So is that his strength?” Verona asked.  “A bunch of people that run errands, and then the rest are just there, pumping power into his place of power?”

“There are other things.  He buys interesting items from the Gilded Lily, who runs an online store.  He maintains relationships with powerful practitioners and problem solvers.  With Witch Hunters, with secret societies of non-practitioners, who use him and his facilities as a trash receptacle for human problems they don’t know how to deal with.  He holds out-of-season holidays at his apartment complex, and uses these days as rituals to bring tenants closer together, stir the pot, lets them ping pong off one another or allows problems to flare up, and then uses the power to make big moves.  Often opening doors.”

“You said he had a school?”  Lucy asked.

“Past tense.  He started the Blue Heron Institute, but I became headmaster after a time.  He also tried to start one centered around the young Aware, like his apartment complex, using the power to make it a bigger draw for other, similar Aware.”

“Tanner, one of Alexander’s other apprentices, was supposed to be a student there,” Nicolette said.  “Tanner was aware, after he entered a neighbor’s house after a fire.  He saw words scrawled on the wall, telling the neighbor he was going to die in the hospital.”

“And he did?” Lucy guessed.

“He went back after he heard about him passing, and the words had changed,” Nicolette answered.  “He took an axe to the wall and took it home.  After he’d moved up in life, using the words, got into a good school, got a nice paying internship at sixteen, at a big headhunting and talent sales company, the words started getting vicious.  Telling him scary things that would come to pass a day later.  The landlord and head of the small private school found him.”

“And I took it upon myself to talk to Tanner about opening up his ability to see the future,” Alexander said.  “Awakening him.  Unfortunately, with a centerpiece of the diagram occupied elsewhere, the house of cards that was the second school became unbalanced and collapsed.”

“Gee, and you say this guy doesn’t like you?” Lucy asked.

“For the time being, his attention is divided.  He doesn’t think it is, and he is in the midst of making a play for the Blue Heron Institute while simultaneously reaching out for Kennet.  He thinks I have something secret and essential to my power there.  A power source, a key contact, or whatever else.  He will make a two-pronged strike, and he thinks it will split my attention.  It won’t work.”

“You said you’d help.  You’ve outlined who he is and how he operates, but unless we trash this building…” Lucy ventured, trailing off.

“Nicolette?”

Nicolette bent down.  She unzipped a bag, then lifted some files onto the table.  She pushed them across.  Each file had a portrait or picture clipped to the front.

“I suspect he’ll send his Aware to Kennet.  I’d guess at least three of these six.  The Gilded Lily is a kind girl who he’s helped out a lot, so he might ask her to deliver something to someone in the city.  She may very well literally trip over something you’ve forgotten about or weren’t even aware of, if she doesn’t bring something into the city.  She’ll pick it up or unwittingly bring it with her, and disaster frequently follows from that, forcing Others out of hiding or forcing local practitioners to handle the crisis.”

“Supposedly dividing your attention?” Verona asked.

“Except I’ve pledged not to directly interfere in or investigate your affairs, so it can’t, beyond me taking half an hour to talk to you today.  You should know, some of these individuals would be given more explicit missions.  To find things out, to seek trouble.  To zero in on things you’d rather keep private.”

Lucy sat back.  She looked at Verona, to her left, then at Avery, who held Snowdrop in her lap, hands cupped around her to keep her from sliding off.

Fuck you,” Lucy told Alexander.

“Hey,” Avery said.

“No, seriously, fuck you, Alexander.  Fuck this.  Are we supposed to be grateful?  No.  You haven’t given us anything except a problem.  You’ve wronged us.  You’ve created this mess, and I in no way accept that you’ve taken every step you could to mitigate this.  We’re not your pawns.  We’re not going to be okay with this.”

“I approached Mr. Bristow earlier this morning, after he made his first insinuations about Kennet.  I tried to assure him-”

“Did you swear?” Lucy asked.

“No, but-”

Verona jumped in, “Did you try to assure him in a misleading way that led him to this?”

“No.  Are you going to let me finish a statement?”

“Are you going to be straight with us?” Lucy asked.  She leaned over the table, hands flat on the surface, fuming.

“I took steps to check before approaching him.  If I told him that you were mere students and it was uninvolved with me or my power sources, he’d note that I care for some reason, that I feel some responsibility for it.  Then he would still target Kennet, to target something I have some responsibility for, and he wouldn’t be gentle.  As it stands, if he thinks there’s power he can take, he won’t set fires or cause widespread damage.  It’ll be subtler.”

“Are you going to make this up to us?” Lucy asked.

“I will make some efforts.”

“You wronged us,” Lucy said.

“I will thank you not to say that a third time, because I’m going to make some amends for it.  Carry on saying it, and you’ll make it clear you’re more interested in lashing out than in justice.  That has a way of backfiring on you.”

“What amends?” Avery asked, quiet.

If Avery wanted to be ‘good cop’, that was fine.

“I can arrange private lessons-”

Verona laughed, abrupt.  “I wish I’d written it down.  Because I called it.  That you’d say that.”

“Private lessons serve you as much as they serve us,” Lucy said.  “Whatever we request, it gives you information on what we want and what we’re doing.”

“Frankly, the fact you’re here gives me more than enough information.”

“Because you spy on underage kids?” Lucy asked.

“Because we keep tabs on our student’s progress.”

“And spy,” Verona said.

“I’m interested in hearing the amends,” Avery said.

“Part of being in power and making judicious use of power is that it’s very hard to avoid benefiting.  A big company that gives money to charity will get positive attention for their generosity.”

“Find a way to help that doesn’t hurt us as much as it fixes a problem you gave us,” Lucy said.

“I’ll try to-”

“Or,” Lucy cut in, talking over him for a second until he stopped.  “Or… we’re going to go around to the rest of the student body to discuss what’s going on.  I’m sure they love gossip.”

“As I see it, Snowdrop’s like a mascot,” Verona said.  “Chaos and fire and unpredictability.  I’m totally okay with trying to learn what I can, and making a mess of things here.”

“It’s nice to be on the other side of this, as an observer while someone else is dealing with the threat of things being metaphorically set on fire,” Nicolette said.

“Shush,” Alexander told her.  “Or take your leave.”

“I’ll stay,” Nicolette said.

Lucy remained poised.

It was nice, having Verona backing her up.  Lucy just wished this kind of out-there-ness didn’t coincide with Verona having other, real-life, dad distractions.

“You may make enemies of students from powerful families, if you take your mascot’s approach,” Alexander said.  “You may draw attention to Kennet.”

“There’s the tuition thing,” Lucy said.  “I don’t know if we really have a reason to not side with Bristow, if it gets him off our backs and keeps him away from Kennet.  We can tell students you’re a manipulative douche-canoe that dropped a problem in our laps to use us.  Give your reputation a few licks.”

“And I can expel you.  I’ve technically kept my end of the bargain, bringing you into the school.  I’m allowed to enforce school rules and kick you out promptly.”

“I think we could challenge that as a move made in bad faith,” Avery said.  “Not keeping the deal.”

“The letter of the deal wins out over the spirit of the deal, when the two are in contention,” Alexander said.

“It’s an awful lot of distraction and fighting on multiple fronts, isn’t it?” Lucy asked, glaring at him.  “Sounds like a multi-pronged mess at a time something you care about is at stake.  Seems like it’s a better idea to make peace and be fair.  It’s your job to make the sacrifice and balance these scales.”

“What do you want?” he asked.  “Anything I could offer, I think you’d see it as manipulation.”

“Time, to start with,” Avery said.  She gave Snowdrop a stroke.

“Time?”

“For Kennet.”

“Five more years,” Lucy said.  “Five years after the Carmine Beast situation is resolved before you can get involved.”

“No,” Alexander said.  “I can’t, as I’ve made pledges and told people timelines.”

“Did you make those pledges and tell people timelines specifically to get out in front of something like this?” Verona asked.

“In part, yes,” Alexander said.

Lucy’s eyebrows raised.

“Three months after you’ve answered the problem,” Alexander said.

“Gifts,” Verona said.  “Power sources, tricks, magic items.  Books.”

“The school provides those things.”

“Not on loan,” Avery said.  “Not tied to the school, or through the school, because I feel like the connections would be… tangled.  Entangled.”

“Gifts, from you, specifically,” Lucy said.  “We’re being forced to deal with your enemy for you.  Because of you.  And we want to pick some classes for private lectures, and we want you to swear you won’t extend any interest or use that information against us.”

“Too broad.”

“We’re probably missing classes because of you,” Verona spoke with an intensity that Lucy rarely heard in her.  “We might have to leave and handle that and come back.”

“It’s too broad a condition, that I can’t use it against you.  There are too many small cases in common conversation and interaction.  I might have to ignore you altogether.  I can’t do that while you’re students.”

“You’d have to ignore Kennet,” Lucy said.

“I’ll arrange it so that Raymond Sunshine, Durocher, Bristow, and Musser have the ability to select classes and I will avoid digging into what classes you’ve taken or how the schedule is adjusted.  Nicolette can take your choices for classes.  She can pass it on.  I’ll be giving up some power over the Institute, doing so.”

“And finally-”

“You’re asking for a lot already,” he said.

“You’re putting things we care about at risk, making enemies and failing to steer them away.  Maybe even our families, depending on how bad this gets.  No,” Lucy said.  “Last term, here.  It sure feels like we’re being dogged by strife or something like it.  And I know you specialize in that.”

Alexander’s eyebrows went up.

“If you were, they’re not there now,” Nicolette said, adjusting her glasses.  “I see the traces of some dark shadow passing you by, but that’s only the aftermath.”

“Did you have any hand in it?” Lucy asked.  “Say it now.”

“No,” Alexander said.  “It’s actually a concern.”

She turned to Nicolette.

“No,” Nicolette answered.  “I like you.  Especially after the last half of this conversation.”

“It’s concerning,” Alexander said, straightening.  “That would likely be one of my apprentices.”

“Defector?” Nicolette asked.  “To our would-be headmaster?”

“Excuse me,” Alexander said.  He finished his tea, then set the mug down, and strode from the room.

Once he was gone, Nicolette stood, picking up her bag in the process and setting it on her chair.  “That was fun.”

“What happens next?” Avery asked.

“Alexander will win in the end.  Maybe with a few more enemies than he had before.  A few key people left by the wayside.  But in the wake of it, his grip on the Institute will be firmer.”

“You say that so confidently,” Verona said.  “Like you’re not afraid of lying.”

“I’m confident.”

Lucy sighed.  She straightened, realizing how tense she’d been.

But she was happy.  Not backing down.  Not ceding ground.

People like Alexander were everything she wanted to rail against.

“I’ll take your class preferences to Raymond, if you’d like,” Nicolette said.  “I could drop off something at your doors, so you could give us your skill levels and he can fill out his program.”

“We might have to leave for a few days,” Lucy said.  “I really don’t want to.”

“Frig.  I might have to,” Verona said.

For your dad?

“I’m going to go get lunch. I don’t know if you want to talk it out over meals,” Nicolette said.

“I think we have to talk a lot between ourselves, actually,” Lucy said.  “Put me down for… I’ll pick something I’m interested in.  Faerie stuff.”

“Okay.  Alexander had you pegged as Faerie related.”

“I’m not.  But I’m interested.”  It lets me study up on Maricica, who may be a problem, even if she’s not a culprit.  And on Guilherme, who I’ve come to trust too much for a Faerie.

“Ruins,” Avery said.  “We ran into your eyeball collector in the Ruins.”

“I do remember.  Do you want to spend more time around Jessica?”

“Yes, but at the same time, I don’t want to bother her.”

“The school brought her on board as an expert that covers a base we don’t have a lot of expertise in.  We could pay her in power or favors if she’d teach.  You could get your help that way.”

Avery nodded.

“Binding, I guess,” Verona said.

“I was wondering just what this patron or these patrons of yours weren’t teaching you.  Makes sense.”

“Please don’t infer,” Lucy said.

“I think there’s room for the binding lesson to happen tomorrow.  Or would you be gone by then.”

Frig!” Verona cussed.  “I don’t want to go.”

The librarian shushed them from the other end of the Library.

“Come on,” Lucy said.  She scooped up the files they’d been given.  “We should take photos of these files with our camera phone and pass them on.  Get lunch while we’re at it.”

“Hey,” Avery said, to Nicolette.  “How much are we playing into his hands, here?”

“Alexander’s?”

“Yeah.”

“Some, I’m sure.  He’ll have contingency plans.  But you’re giving him a headache and you had him on the back foot.  It’s like you’d learn in your beginner bindings class.  Negative bindings.  Hit them with something diametrically opposed to what they are.  You guys are awfully opposed to Alexander, on most things.  It’s great.”

Lucy nodded.

Lessons from Guilherme put into practice, on an abstract level.  Being forward, turning the battlefield to her favor.  Pulling on her Self.

She hoped that with this whole Bristow headache, she wouldn’t have to put them into practice on a physical, violent, drawing-blood level.

[4.8 Spoilers] Dossiers

Notes on the Aware

The Aware are human or human enough that they retain their natural Innocence.  Innocence, if not immediately clear from some of these entries, does not necessarily imply good, naive, or free of guilt or wrongdoing.  Rather, it means they are protected from the world of practitioners and Others.  Targeting the Innocent with practice or getting involved with them as Others, if not explicitly or tacitly invited in, can lead to negative karma.  If anything, this Innocence greases the wheels of reality, making it easier to skirt by on consequences or to keep going.

Not typically very strong, the Aware keep one foot in the world of the Other and one foot in the mundane, and can be said to enjoy the benefits of both, though many find that their mundane lives are limited or hampered in some way.  They cannot typically be bound as Others are, though they can in some cases be taken as Familiars.

The Aware are a broad category that cannot be readily summed up, beyond those generalized points above.  The subcategories number in the hundreds.


Clementine ‘Clem’ Robertjon
Gilded Lily

Gilded Lilies, or Gilded, are those who frequently intersect with magic items, free of any clear design or any intent on their part or the part of others.  We categorize them as such by these symptoms, not the source, when the source can be fate, bloodline, divine interference, patterns, or curses, among other things.

Clementine is a young woman, 20, independent as a reseller of items on online markets.  She is subsidized by practitioners who keep a close eye on her listings and maintain a relationship with her to get first eyes on anything she thinks of as ‘curious’, though she isn’t fully aware of the degree to which this happens.

Her disposition is kind, if troubled.  She very much enjoys the company of people, but avoids maintaining any long-term relationships.  Many people close to her have died, including her friends and family, or else they’ve suffered worse fates.  She earns a fair income and alternates between periods of seclusion and times spent wandering the city, with a focus on the arts.

Clementine is well aware of the existence of Others and suspects practitioners, but has been kept from full awareness, in part because awakening her or fully revoking her Innocence would tie one to her, and none of the twenty or so practitioners who have directly or indirectly been involved with her are willing to do so when it comes to Clem Robertjon.  Her existence is too fraught with hazard, and her relatively intact survival up to this point may be owed to her Innocence. To take away that safety net while simultaneously lashing their fortunes to hers is not a risk any are willing to take.  She remains quietly and enthusiastically interested, frustrated, and curious and these facts should be minded.

The paper trail and notes associated with Clementine are lengthy, owing in part to her childhood diaries, where some of her misadventures are chronicled.  Many or most of these diaries are mundane things and thoughts, thinking aloud, and a great deal of work went into sifting through them for the relevant information.  At the outset, they can best be described as doodlepads or scratchpads, with sporadic notes, self-affirmations, and moments listed as single sentences with accompanying illustrations.  It appears her first find was at an antique store in Guelph, and that her rate of acquisitions increased steeply after that, before plateauing in high school, but appearances can be deceptive.  She may have found some items in earlier childhood, letting them go without remark, and she may have consistently run into items every two or so weeks since the antique store, but not recognized some as notable.  Locations, when not otherwise stated, are Guelph, Ontario.

Spring 2008 – Clementine finds an incomplete set of VHS tapes, titled ‘Magic Ways’.  These items feature an aged, rumpled stage magician filming in what may be a basement, with a drop cloth nailed to the wall behind him, teaching stage magic.  The audio quality is exceptionally poor, to the point his voice sounds as though it is coming from a well, and the tricks are bad if they can even be called tricks.  Steps are missing, some tricks fail utterly and others produce unexpected results.  Were it not for the extended runtime and the clear amateurish filming (including two very lengthy periods of time where the camera was left running while he departed to go get dinner), it could be interpreted as bad satire.  There were six VHS tapes, but the early diary of Clem Robertjon includes attempts to note down the steps and suggests there are eleven of the two-hour videos, and that rewinding to the beginning can lead to a different video being shown.

Due to a lapse in the journals, an unfortunate recurring beat around the most critical or important moments, we don’t know what transpired, but Clem brought her neighbor, a boy of the same age, to practice the tricks with her, and he disappeared.  She remarks in two short statements in her diary that she later saw him in the videos.  According to her, years later, she remembers him as listless and distracted, introduced alternately as the stage magician’s son and assistant.  She was apparently distressed enough the tapes were taken away.  They haven’t been recovered.

Summer 2009 in the Bay of Biscay – Clem dives and surfaces with a smooth, glasslike stone that turned out to be the eye of a primal power of deep water.  She was afforded three wishes if she agreed to give it the stone.  She wished for her best friend to be with her for the whole summer trip, for her family to have ‘thousands and thousands’ of dollars, and for a dolphin to ride.  The wishes were granted in a typical manner (the friend, for example, was sent to join Clem because her parents wanted to take time to work through marital issues).  Clem’s mother would die before the end of the trip, drowned while trying to find more treasures like the cup the family discovered and gave to a museum for $17,000.

Summer 2010 – Clem discovers a crow pecking at something glinting, and discovers it to be a gold tooth.  The tooth belonged to an Other (thought to be a Dreck Ghoul) that sought to be whole again.  Thought by Clem to be a homeless man, it harassed her and tried to arrange deals, threaten, and use practice to obtain its tooth, upending trash cans and turning the refuse into sendings that could enter the house.  Due to the Other’s communication issues and Clem running in fear from most encounters with it, or else being too scared to look away, she never seemed to discover it was the tooth it wanted.  Due to residual taint in the tooth, her body slowly became more like that of the Other, with patches of her flesh undergoing various changes, including suppurating, drying out, tearing, scarring, and staining with ambient pollutants.  She lost a tooth, several fingernails, and the vision in one eye, which she would never fully regain.  Believing the Other had done it, she lashed out, attacking it, and drove it off, though it would continue to watch from a distance.  In the winter of 2010, in the throes of the tooth, she picked up a dead and rotting bird from the playground and stuffed it into her mouth, chewing and swallowing much of it before faculty were able to stop her, all in view of her classmates.  Distraught and confused, she ended up throwing everything she owned onto the lawn of the backyard, and called out to the ghoul to take anything and everything it wanted.  It did just that, taking everything from toy, mother’s keepsake, and clothing in three trips, along with the ‘black gold tooth’.

Winter 2010 – Clem describes seeing someone run to catch a bus, dropping their bag.  They note a young readers’ fantasy novel, but don’t include it in the things they reclaim.  Clem picks it up.  It is apparently ‘the most thrilling thing’ to ten year old Clementine, but paradoxically puts her to sleep within five to fifteen minutes, leaving her with no clear memory of the events.  The ensuing sleep issues include Clem ducking away to find a hiding place during recess to avoid the bullies teasing her about the bird incident and sleeping through much of the school day, before police find her hiding spot in the back room of the school.  The sleep issues are erroneously linked to the earlier, undiagnosed health issues by her father and doctors and Clem spends several weeks on and off in the hospital.  The unofficial but most widely accepted diagnosis is psychosomatic reactions owing to the recent death of her mother.

Spring 2011 – Clem is walking home from school, taking the scenic route and throwing rocks at other rocks when one splits open, revealing a fossilized bone with bite marks on it.  She keeps it.  Unbeknownst to her, it makes her beloved to all dogs.  Issues arise when the dog of one of her bullies repeatedly escapes its home or yard to find its way to Clem.  It is not the only dog to attempt such, but is the key repeat offender.  The bully and the bully’s father are savaged by their own pet while trying to remove the dog from Clem’s house.

Fall 2011 – Clem sees a ring in her aunt’s collection and asks if she can have it – apparently her aunt found it but never had occasion to wear it.  Clem’s health improves and she finds herself excelling in her physical education classes, and even the scarring from the Black Gold Tooth incident improves, with half of her eyesight returning.  At the same time, her classmates fall victim to a wave of what is thought to be bad flu.  Her teacher passes and two of her classmates are hospitalized.  Given her handling of the ring and some cryptic statements in her diaries, it’s suspected she realized the ring’s link to the incidents.

Winter 2011 – Clem buys a silk scarf from the thrift store, to hide a scar on her neck from the Black Gold Tooth incident.  Effects are slow to build up and initially only affect people in her peripheral vision and people she glimpses in fleeting ways, but intensify over time and eventually affect everyone she looks at, making them seem as though they are dressed in their underwear.  Because of the slow onset and the fact that removal of the scarf only means that the effect dwindles about as slowly as it came on, she doesn’t realize that the scarf is responsible for some time (she is depicted wearing the scarf in pictures from 2014).

Summer 2012, Gatineau (finding) and Guelph (remainder) – A flower that may or may not have been plastic is found at a roadside rest stop after a trip to a lake.  The flower causes life to spring up in various places over the ensuing year, including the move to a new home.  The life that sprung up would include flies, ants, maggots, pantry moths, bedbugs, and intestinal worms afflicting the house and family.  There was reported mold and mushrooms growing in the dark and recessed areas of the kitchen, bathrooms, and laundry rooms, and roots grew into the water line once at each residence.  The family dog birthed two litters despite no apparent inciting incidents with male dogs and a prior spaying, and many store-bought eggs had hatchlings within, including five dead and three alive.  Most dramatic, however, was that Clementine’s stepmother, her fourteen year old brother’s girlfriend, and two students attending her school all fell pregnant within the one year span.

Fall 2012 – A goblin matchbox with a ‘living’ match count that replenishes when unobserved and uncounted is found on the sidewalk, and picked up because of what Clem describes as interesting art on the box.  It produces fires that are very aggressive and vigorous.  Matches also had a tendency to cause other fires to spontaneously erupt nearby when struck.  The matchbox was taken by her brother, which soon led to the family home burning down.

Fall 2012, 2nd Incident – Found while in transition between homes (unknown if it was a hotel stay or a stay at a relative’s), a chipped unicorn figurine prompted dreams of increasing realism and depth every time she slept with it nearby.  By the two week mark, she was spending three days in the dream world for every eight hours spent asleep.  A ‘laughing prince’ on the other side eventually made a pitch, inviting her to stay with it, promising to send a fetch to be her apparent replacement in her life.  In the midst of the blame and upset over being accused as the source of the fire, Clem wrote a great deal about how she was considering the invitation, overlapping the issues and alienation noted in the next logged entry.  She ultimately refused for reasons not consigned to her journals.

Winter 2012 – Clem’s brother bought a used stuffed monkey to sit on the shelf of the nursery in the new house, to sit next to his girlfriend’s love-worn childhood stuffed animal.  It was situated so it could be viewed through the door of Clem’s bedroom.  It apparently whispered of dark secrets and human ugliness, encouraging Clem to blackmail and lash out against those around her.  When she refused, it told her that she was ultimately responsible for the death of her mother and neighbor friend, taunting her with these facts until she stole and buried it.  This is widely believed to be the point she became truly Aware, past the bounds and securities of childhood.

Winter 2012 – The item itself is unknown and not recorded, but it may be a choker bought from the mall prior to a Christmas party.  Toward the end of the year, she met two new friends who quickly became part of her life; one a faerie in disguise, the other a goblin in disguise.  The item appears to give the wearer or user two everpresent, Other ‘partners in crime’, who then encourage delinquent, extreme, and criminal behavior while protecting the wearer from consequences.  Already ostracized since the bird eating incident, Clem fell into their rhythm easily and participated in vandalism and rampant shoplifting.  She discovered their nature when overhearing them discuss the kidnapping of the two babies (Clem’s stepmother and brother’s girlfriend) who were due to be born.  When named (using the dug-up stuffed monkey to glean their Other names) and vanquished, all consequences of the acts Clem and the partners in crime had committed fell on Clem’s shoulders, possibly with added emphasis.

Spring-Winter 2013 – No journal entries are available for this time period.  Later journal entries make mention of long conversations with her mother while detained.

Spring 2014 – Clementine was given a birthday present, a used, handheld game console.  It only booted one game and the game booted ‘wrong’, with distorted or alternate artwork.  Events and dialogue within the game corresponded to recent or imminent events, and successes in the game corresponded to analogous events in real life.  She went on her first dates ever around this time, then ‘got rid’ of the game console.

Spring 2014 , 2nd incident – A thrift store dress, bought for one of the dates on a ‘belated birthday’ shopping trip with her grandmother, made people treat the wearer as adult and respected.  Clementine enjoyed the initial attention and the seriousness with which she was treated, but soon came to loathe the added expectations and responsibilities.

Spring 2014, 3rd incident – Clem, enjoying the freedom to go out at night while wearing the dress, comes across someone hurting a stray dog.  The attacker runs, leaving the dog and the weapon behind.  She finds the dog dead and cold and collects the unusually colored weapon, which turns out to be a knife that kills with even a nick, with a tendency to find flesh through ‘accident’ if not regularly provided with victims.  Clementine’s father gets in an argument with her where he tells her she should be more careful with how she acts, especially so soon after juvenile detention, and confiscates objects she tried to hide, knife included.  He passes away one day later.

Spring 2014, 4th incident – Sometime around her talks with police in her stepmother’s company, a man offers the stepmother a bracelet with a puzzle incorporated into it.  When she refuses, he gives it to Clem, insisting.  Clem takes it with the intent of throwing it away as soon as possible, but immediately gets lost in the police station.  The bracelet, while in one’s possession, appears to shuffle the layout of a building, while adding one room to the arrangement that can’t be found when the rooms are in order.  Clem begins to use the bracelet to store items and keep them out of the way.  She later describes this as a mistake, but isn’t especially clear as to why.  Through inference and the fact that many items are later described as being in the possession of people close to her, with her having to go to great lengths to get them back, we can surmise that the items found their way out of the ‘extra’ room.

Note – At this stage, the progression of ‘finds’ continues to accelerate, monthly rather than seasonal.

July 2014 – The rusty key is described as having a number on it.  She finds it in the dirt, sets it aside and a friend of hers takes it.  The friend, acting on suspicion that the key was for a room at an old and disused motel, lets herself into a room, with Clem following.  The key, according to her diaries, seems to change to a random number on each use.  When used to access a space with a corresponding number, it lets the user into a space with rusty metal and fencing bolted to the walls, ceiling, and floor, and an arrangement of twisted improvised weapons and tools.  The space can be anything from a storage locker in a bus station to a house with a matching number plate.  More than one use in an uncertain span of time corresponds with more attention from goblins.

July 2014, 2nd incident – Found while looking through old boxes of her childhood toys that survived the fire, a bone white mask that seems to disappear like it was never there when put on, included with Halloween stuff.  Somewhat ‘alive’, the item contrived to be put on, relocating to the headboard of her bed and falling onto her face as she lay down to sleep.  She discovered its properties and later wore it while getting the Killing Knife back from her brother.  The white mask protects the user from most harm until the next time they sleep, at which point it pops off.  It renders the wearer mentally and physically numb, among other protections from wounds and dying, but the harm that is diverted is repaid in spades and then some.  Clem was cut by the Killing Knife but didn’t die.  Instead, when she next slept, she spent an indeterminate amount of time (to her, it was possible days, weeks, or months in perceived time) reliving variations of the cut and the ensuing death by heart attack as a loop in dreams.

At this stage Clem retreats from many things in her mundane life, ceases being as regular with the diaries, with periodic statements or pledges to resume keeping track of things, but never doing so for more than a month at a time, and with frequent references to events only she could tell of.

The practitioner community took a hand in events after an event with a piece of currency that ‘drank’ nearby change and loose money to increase its denomination before ‘shitting out’ (to use the assigned practitioner’s vernacular) a sapphire and becoming a penny again.  Once Clem had people to sell the items to and a bit of a listening ear, she found something of an equilibrium.  She was later offered a low-cost apartment at Sargent Ave Hall.

General Notes:  The primary danger posed by Clementine is that she can very easily stir up problems or set off lines of dominoes.  She may have up to five curious items on her which aren’t fully worked out in functionality, and she may stumble on more, particularly in new places or times of stress.


Shellie and Daniel Alitzer
Bright Eyed, Glamour Drowned

The Bright Eyed have been exposed to the Faerie, and may even call it their place of origin.  They may be taken as babies, lured in as children, or seduced and lost for a time as in the old tale of Rip Van Winkle.  Sometimes used as ambassadors, sent back and forth, other times their stays are brief or they are encouraged to remember their old selves.  They remain rooted in reality as mortals, but are often Faerie in disposition and outlook.  Creative, hungry for excitement and stimulation, they often have a magnetism that draws people in, and a tendency toward wild behavior that mimics the courts they have spent at least a decade in.  They do not tend to live long due to their risk-seeking behavior.  Despite what one might initially assume, they tend to live a much shorter existence in the mundane than the Glamour Drowned, despite their firmer grip on reality.

The Glamour Drowned are humans who have been exposed to extreme amounts of glamour or the depths of the environment of the Faerie courts and lost their attachments to their old selves, or even their current selves.  Many of the Glamour Drowned were used for a specific function.  In the High Spring court, for example, they may be endless dancers, trained by Faerie to dance as a competitive act, where one Faerie competes against another to see who can elevate a human more.  The Fall courts may turn them into animals to sell to the other courts as pets and accessories, with the ability to turn them human on a whim because it is easier to set aside a place for a human than, for example, a twenty-foot serpent.  The winter court may turn a person into an object, such as a goblet that is asked to tell riddles, or a tapestry that changes to keep track of the days in reailty.  Whether they escape or are released for the amusement of their prior keepers, they cannot easily let go of their prior roles and have nothing to return to if they do.  Expect them to ramble, dance, and stumble, rarely with any quality, until stars align or a moment comes to pass where they find themselves again for a critical moment of dance or whatever else.  Such scenes can leave onlookers breathless.

Shellie, 27, is a Bright-Eyed human woman, caretaker of her brother, a 30 year old Glamour Drowned.  Sold to the Faerie by their own parents as children, they were separated, Shellie sent to the Bright Fall court, and Daniel to the Dark Spring.

Daniel Alitzer was made to bear witness to the death of an immortal queen of the Dark Spring, an event contrived to evoke a sense of tragedy never before seen.  Whether it was successful or not is up for debate, but as a young boy no older than ten, he was changed by the event.  He was bid to stand vigil and sing a lament for the dead queen, working with four other boys of similar age to make the lament endless, one boy joining in with his voice overlapping, taking over so another could sleep, and he did so for seventeen years, on instruction to sound like he meant it with every single note.  That he was mortal and the process thus more fragile and temporary was supposed to add to the drama of the song.

Shellie spent a total of eighteen years among Faerie brokers, thieves, and Fae who traded in faces like money.  Working as a slave, she helped translate and decipher human media, separated true urban legends from references, and spent time in the human world seeking out art to bring back while getting caught up on things enough to do her more mundane duties.

In practice, Daniel found a routine with the other boys where they sang longer shifts and he went without sleep to be able to visit Shellie for brief periods of time.  He told her what he remembered of their old life, family, name, holidays, and other things, and told her to hold onto what she remembered of their old lives, out of hopes it would ‘keep’ better instead of being distorted in the telling and retelling.

Daniel ultimately lost himself to the dirge.  Through a confluence of events that included two of his peers being subjected to Faerie-worked deaths and tortures for indignities such as redundant verses and their voices maturing, the training of new people, and that particular sub-area of the court growing tired of the seventeen-year dirge, Daniel was able to walk away without returning.

Daniel then kept Shellie company for roughly one year before she was able to find a means of escape, injecting poisons into the skin of her face before trading it for another, then leaving the resulting body behind in the study of her slave quarters.

The two of them were homeless for some time before Daniel surfaced for a moment and sang well enough to get practitioner attention.  They were referred to Bristow.  Even with reduced rent, the pair barely scrape by on Shellie’s work at a gas station.  Neither has much enthusiasm or capacity for mundane work, Daniel is addled, and Shellie is quietly angry.

Daniel either keeps Shellie company, tunelessly sings to himself, or both.  He listens to music and experiments with instruments he rarely keeps up with.  When other residents of Sargent Ave Hall are out in the yard or on their balconies, he will sometimes keep them company.  Shellie quietly ensures there are eyes on him at all times, as he can daydream enough to wander into traffic or walk onto a stairwell as if it were flat ground.  He also has violent crying jags and fits of dark depression, sometimes without rhyme or reason, periods of not eating or doing anything because nothing on earth has the quality of life in the Faerie courts, and he can sometimes be struck with the urge to return and throw himself at the mercy of the nearest Fae who might take him back, whatever they might ask, especially when it’s quiet or he can’t find new things to watch or listen to.

Shellie works, sits in a workshop sketching and building tools and weapons, and matches her behavior to whatever Daniel is doing, consoling him, entertaining him, or quietly watching him while looking after her basic human needs.  Her work at the gas station keeps a roof over their heads, but her time in her workshop (the second bedroom in their two bedroom apartment) is where her dark passions come out.  The tools she makes are largely for body modification, as she is keenly restless in her own skin after years of trading it back and forth as part of her currency in the Bright Fall.  Skin is flensed, tattooed, burned, pierced, and grafted with surgical care in an ongoing process, with the most dramatic modifications happening where her clothes can cover her.  The other passion is the weapons she makes.  She knows how Faerie work and she knows how to make them stop working.  Given an opportunity, she tracks them down and hunts them.  Not often asked to run errands for Bristow, as they are unpredictable, chaotic, and easily distracted.  Listed here because those things may be what he seeks.

General Notes:  Both are dangerous, in different ways.  Daniel is Innocent in ways that can be argued to be more dramatic than normal, not less.  Hurting him would incur a cost and there’s a chance he wouldn’t even think to get out of the way of imminent harm.  Shellie, by contrast, is aggressive, adept at disguise, well equipped, and fearless.  It’s been argued that trying to use glamour or subtle practices on them might be more immediately dangerous than it is when trying to do so with a Faerie; the Faerie has an instinct to play the long game, to better inveigle you or inveigle humanity as a whole.  This pair won’t hold back in showing you just how familiar they are with glamour and turning it back on anyone with less than eighteen years experience.


Kevin Noone
Maji, Evil Eyed

Those with the evil eye (sometimes called Maji) are capable of bestowing harm with a look.  There are many variants, ranging from the tame to the terminal, with many different forms they can take.  The most conventional will direct spirits of harm or strife to those under the Eye, but others usher in omens of Death, Exile, Heartbreak, Toil, Fear, or Madness.  The eye may be opened by a specific event, it may be open at birth, or it may open and close as circumstances or mood change, or as certain criteria are met.  The evil eye can be trained, but it fits into a difficult niche, where practitioners can easily refute it but careless or wanton use on the Innocent can hurt karma and bring consequences down on the owner of the evil eye.  There are countless superstitions around the world to ward off the evil eye, some so ubiquitous that we think nothing of them, and the Sickness, Doom, Disaster, or Discord that is brought forth will oft turn on the evil eye’s owner if they aren’t careful.  Often accompanied by strange, mismatched, or otherwise deficient eyes.  We say a Maji is Aware if they are conscious of what their eye does.

Kevin Noone opened his eye as a Maji when he was nineteen, on the day of his younger brother’s graduation.  Due to life circumstance, Kevin weathered his senior year while his family was living in a shelter, had no money to spare, and he was expected to work.  They recovered, but his prospects were limited by deficient grades and the habits he picked up to deal with his stress.  His brother, meanwhile, enjoyed a senior year with no responsibilities, a timely gift of a car from his parents, and a minimum of stress.  Friendless, with no girlfriend, no acceptances for post-secondary studies, and no job prospects, Kevin watched his younger brother get announced as a prospective student at an Ivy League school, with a girlfriend to cheer him on and friends to whoop and applaud.  Valedictorian.

Kevin’s eye took hold and he watched with green-tinted vision as his brother made an off-the-cuff joke about writing people’s papers for them, in front of faculty and students.  Without the eye, he might not have made the joke, and without the eye, people might have laughed and treated it as the joke it was.

His brother ended up losing the spot at the Ivy League school and the girlfriend.  Kevin, however, wouldn’t find out what his eye did until his girlfriend announced she was moving to a city with a better job.  He acted supportive, but inside he screamed, frustrated.  He didn’t want to let her go.  He remembered the moment with his brother, reached for the same thing, and by the end of the week, his girlfriend had lost the opportunity.

Kevin Noone hasn’t found success or raised himself up, but he has a weapon and knows how to use it.  He did end up letting his girlfriend go, but only because he found an especially attractive young woman he could bring down to his level and keep there.

The eye can’t be turned off at this stage, as it’s been used too often.  It remains active and anyone successful who holds Kevin’s attention for any length of time finds themselves struggling, or events conspire against them.  This ended up causing him difficulties, as he tends to sabotage his own employers, in-laws, landlords, and people he might otherwise lean on.

He was taken in by Mr. Bristow, and Mr. Bristow elected to allow Kevin Noone’s girlfriend to move in as well, possibly because she became Aware as well, albeit of another subtype.  Kevin now maintains a working relationship with Bristow, a professional malcontent and assassin of characters, as well as a general go-to problem solver.  These jobs are typically paid for in reduced rent and other favors.  He knows what the Practice is, but not the general scope of this world or its Others.

General Notes:  We have every belief that Kevin Noone would shoot someone if he thought he could get away with it, and we do know he has gotten in trouble with the law, only for the officers who were dealing with him to mishandle evidence and run into career trouble.  He is a dangerous, deficient human who carries some personality disorders.  He is greedy, resentful of the world, and indulges in his superiority over others whenever possible.  He was considered for the Belanger circle but was rejected because his eye couldn’t be closed and that complicates many practices we would like someone like him to learn.  There is a benefit to mixing far-seeing with the ability to hurt those one sees, even if this is a narrow skillset, but his personality is too wicked, he would be largely incapable of cooperating with others, and he was deemed to be a better fit for Bristow than for Alexander Belanger, at a time when Bristow and Alexander were friendly.  Many of the notes above come from our investigations and interviews.

If present, expect him to be Bristow’s point man, sent to specific locations or with a specific job.


Ted Havens
Worold, World-Weary, World-Wise

There are those who go through a transformational test or event, through practice, pattern, Other, Practitioner, or item.  While these events alter the entire world or the fundamental paradigms of the world around the target subject or victim, they may be the Tested or Wonderings, Aware individuals who are caught in a conflux or strange set of events, that may be occuring in a pocket world or snarl in reality.  These events can be time loops, visits to earths of alternate histories (typically projected within a pocket world and kept there), living life in another person’s body (or many people’s bodies), returning to childhood to relive events, or jumping from childhood to adulthood to experience it.  These events tend to impart a karmic wholeness, as well as (frequently) unusual knowledge or skill, and a deep-seated, soul-shattering existential disquietude over an existence where reality and experience is so fungible.  Or, put in simpler words, the test or the experience makes them (or requires the individual to be) very okay with themselves and where they stand, and also frequently makes them very distant from okay when it comes to a world where such wacky and distressing things can happen. Sometimes these events see the individual’s history or relationships rewritten in the aftermath.

Once an individual is through the test or situation and settles into the world anew, if they retain their old memories and memory of the testing event we call them the Worold, world-weary, or world-wise, with the latter two being dependent on just how they’ve settled in the aftermath.  They often sit apart from everything.  As an example, a reformed misogynist that has the experience of having lived the lives of ten thousand random women across history may have picked up a massive degree of competence and knowledge in countless areas, but while they remain human, they may find it hard to use that knowledge.  The world will resist them getting into politics or doing more than making generous (and ideally anonymous) donations.  The world and circumstance will fight them if they try to uncover ancient treasures or archeological sites or become CEOs with their accumulated skill and ability when it comes to reading people.  The knowledge gained and the transformation in Self are for them and themselves.  This in itself often proves to be something of a test of character.

Depending on one’s choice of definitions, Ted was chosen as a scapegoat or a champion.  When a primeval predator encroached on a sleepy PEI town, a higher power of unknown origin settled on him as its means of dealing with the problem, a boy with no career prospects who sometimes hunted and fished.  He was pointed in the beast’s direction, encouraged, and was summarily devoured.

Ted then, as he tells it, saw a bright light and heard screaming.  He emerged from his mother’s loins and landed in her shit, an unfortunate byproduct of some childbirths that nurses normally attempt to clean up in a timely manner.  He was wet, pink, and lacking in muscle coordination, and lived out thirty-five years of his life as an affable if impatient genius.  The primeval beast emerged, attacked his town, and he was told to fight it.  He drove in the other direction until midnight, blacked out, and saw a bright light as he emerged from his mother’s loins, landing amid her shit.

There is no telling how many times Ted lived out his life, but he became intimately familiar with his town, he eventually found his courage and practiced, and collected weapons with a mind to defeating the reptile from an age before things had form or easy label.  He suffered ego death, found himself again, honed his abilities, traveled the world to learn from the best people possible, and became Aware of many things in the world.

He did eventually become a competent enough warrior to slay the beast, rallying the people in town as allies and armed forces, but the damage was so severe that the town was wiped from the maps and collective consciousness, to minimize questions.

Ted Havens moved west, lacking a sense of purpose now that his great journey was done, at unease with the universe and paranoid that he would be pulled into another great quest that would test him on so deep a level.  He ended up discovering the Sargent Ave Hall apartment complex, and took up residence there, where he remains a resident advice-giver and helping hand.  When Bristow is away or sick, Ted takes over the duties around the place, and many residents prefer it when he does.

General Notes: Alongside the Gilded Lily, one of the most powerful and problematic people in residence at Sargent Ave Hall, albeit for entirely different reasons.  Ted is not only a man who enjoys the benefits of being technically Innocent, but he did enter into mortal combat with a creature larger than his hometown and strong enough to give all but the uppermost gods pause, and drove it off for another few centuries.  The world-weary tend to have exceptional karma, either exceptionally good or bad, but almost always to a level and degree that surpasses what an ordinary person could achieve in a lifetime.  Ted is one of these people, enjoying the karma of literal countless lifetimes well lived.  When he does leave the complex, he does so because he believes it serves the greater good.  This isn’t always or even often the case.


Sharon Grigg
Skeptic

The Innocent enjoy protections from Others and practitioners, but Skeptics often turn these protections to weapons.  There are many ways a Skeptic can come about, but these ways can include indoctrination or acclimatization.  The indoctrinated skeptic may be brainwashed or otherwise augmented with doubt as a fundamental facet of who they are.  Some are raised with daily lessons or a worldview and given no room for any other way of thinking, others are given drugs and reshaped, and yet others are starved, torn down to nothing, then rebuilt from the ground up.

The acclimatized take a gentler road.  When Innocents find themselves faced with the practice or with Others, they will instinctively reach for ways to soften the blow.  If there is room for doubt, they often capitalize on that room, then build on that capital.  Excuses are clung to, they question their own memories or accounting of events, and may liberally revise these memories and accountings, until they return to comfortable reality.  With enough repetition, they can form a comfortable bubble around themselves, where anything extraordinary is dismissed.

Skeptics are ignorant and ignorance is dangerous.  Practice struggles to find traction on a Skeptic, and Others suffer a heavy cost to their karma and Selves simply for stepping into the light when the Skeptic is present, even though the Skeptic is often so insulated that the appearance of a god in its full bearing could be dismissed one way or another.  Conversely, when the bubble is popped (again, if it can be), the cost is usually dramatically heavier than usual.  The biggest Skeptics are often dangerous due to their propensity to dampen practice in an area around them and their simultaneous draw to practice; they have a habit of unwinding or bypassing protective wards that are keeping troubling Others locked up, or walking blithely through barriers meant to keep civilians out of a sensitive or dangerous area, often bulldozing the way for other Innocents to pass through.

An acclimatized Skeptic, Sharon developed her initial resistance as the eldest daughter of a family very interested in the occult, though they never became true practitioners.  They entered abandoned places and tried to film ghosts, while she was brought along, typically coaxed with promises of treats or trips to the mall.  As they explored an abandoned building, her brother fell through a stair and injured himself, and as it happened, was partially possessed by a ghost.  The family got the event on video, and began to distribute it online, until certain interest groups with practitioners on staff took notice and countered that distribution, somewhat late.

The family enjoyed some initial fame, and the location saw more interest, which fed the echoes.  To Sharon, however, teenage rebellion and her frustration with the state of things helped to form the armor necessary to become a fledgling Skeptic.  Her rebellion against the family peaked after a comment of hers became a briefly-lived meme, and she spun that off into a separate channel that ‘myth busted’ the very things her family was trying to play up.  Convinced they were charlatans, she fought them tooth and nail until she was eighteen and she was kicked out of the house.

She moved to a desperately poor area and there she began her acclimatization against other echoes and goblins.  Her paltry stream of content was her lifeline, giving her an income stream when her jobs didn’t pan out, and she played into it hard, essentially brainwashing herself.  She hunted down urban legends to discount them, and dampened their power with her presence, making them easier to discount.  A group of young Witch Hunters recognized the effect for what it was and took her under their wing, under the guise of showing her neat things, and she pursued that work for two years, getting some steady money that helped her get on her feet.  She would later depart the group when she heard gunshots and became convinced they were trying to subvert her by pretending there were really trolls.  Her untimely departure led to them being devoured.

Sharon has shifted gears to other content, much of it both conspiracy centered and right-wing, intersecting in the area of the starkly racist.  She periodically returns to her old Skeptical content, which gets ten times the views of her other stuff, but this fact frustrates her more than it anything; the spheres where she seeks to thrive tend to also be misogynist, and her viewership is a hundredth the size of what she feels it should be.  As someone in Bristow’s toolkit, she pursues the work not when he requests it, but whenever she is desperate for the pay bump of two to three hundred dollars that a successful myth-hunt video gets her.  She usually travels with other Aware Bristow sends, matched to the task in question, but gets along with and cooperates with very few other residents.  In brief, her interpersonal skills range from nonexistent to argumentative.  The ones who do tolerate her presence do so because her presence dampens the negative effects of whatever they are dealing with as one of the Aware and because Bristow is giving them a cut on their rent.

General Notes: Sharon is a breaking and entering specialist, very well equipped, and carries a gun.  If present, she isn’t likely to be ‘on point’ in the same way Kevin is.  She doesn’t tend to follow orders or maintain communication in the same way, but she can easily be pointed at a specific target or problem, or redirected to it by the partner Bristow sent with her, or other members of a larger group.  Glamours tend to shatter pre-emptively when she goes to investigate them, echoes dissipate, wards and barriers break, the Sight and alternate modes of Seeing are weakened if attempting to track or analyze her, and the karmic or Other protections of a given Other are weakened.  It should be noted that she is almost always recording, and has a tendency to catch practitioner’s faces in media and then disseminate it wildly to unhinged individuals and her community of hundreds who then dredge up and compile more information and even seek out the individuals.

Sharon maintains loose communications with several other Skeptics and with Witch Hunters.  Sharon is one of three Skeptics in Bristow’s complex (and is friends with one), but he doesn’t send more than one out at a time, as a minimum of one is required to keep the complex in balance, and the effects don’t tend to overlap.  She maintains a self-reinforcing bubble of several hundred followers that feed into and reinforce her mindset, and remains Bristow’s most effective counter-agent to all things Practice or Other.

Leaving a Mark – 4.9

Verona

Last Thursday: Dossiers


Verona flipped through pages in the textbook.  Which wasn’t really a textbook.  It looked like the yearbooks her school had mass-produced for everyone in grade eight and up, made cheaply with plastic spines that hooked into the holes.  The pages kept catching on the plastic spines.

“Stop turning pages so fast,” Avery said.  “I’m still reading.”

“I wonder if we can get another enchanting textbook,” Lucy said, looking around.

Mrs. Graubard looked like a doll, shoulder length brown hair that turned inward at the shoulders, straight bangs, stark makeup, and conservative, starched clothes.  Talia looked a lot like her mom, but was more relaxed in the hair department, with bleached strands framing her face and ordinary eleven year old clothes.  The doll was a weird middle ground, with crisper hair and old fashioned girl’s clothes.

The trio were going from workstation to workstation, and it looked like Mrs. Graubard was using the class as an opportunity to test her daughter, who was asked to clarify what people were doing and to give advice, which her mother then corrected.

They’d set up in the main building, moving some bookshelves and raising up some folding tables that were normally sunken into the floor, so they had more space.  All of the non-senior students were attending, and they were gathered into groups with four to a table.

A doll sat on their desk.  Each of the four of them had picked different parts of it from the bin that Mrs. Graubard had brought.  The end result was hilarious: a doll with fancy ringlets for her hair and a flower-ringed, wide-brimmed hat knit to that hair, a screaming baby’s face, eyes scrunched up and face contorted, only two teeth, and modern clothing.  The hair didn’t really fit the head, so Zachariah was trying to use the elastic portion of a superhero mask to pin things in place.

“Okay, done reading,” Avery said.  “Do you want to read, Zach?”

Zach shook his head.  He carefully let go of the head, backing away like he thought it might fall to pieces if he wasn’t careful, hands extended and ready to catch it if it started to fall apart.

“There’s a lot there,” Avery said.  “We’re doing a really basic doll, right?”

“That’s the idea,” Verona said, flipping through the pages to the reference.  “Squares drawn out?”

“Yes,” Lucy said, using a finger to rub a bit of a bulge where the chalk had caught on a slat of wood, tidying it up.  A square within a diamond within a square, out to the table’s edge, which they’d lined with chalk for good measure.

“Eight objects from the reference chart, placed so each square has one, and they spiral outward.  Inner diamond, north point… bowl of water for life.”

“Okay,” Zach said, pouring.

“Next step out, square, northeast, branch, for nature.”

Zach reached over to the tray, picked up the branch with a leaf on it, and then worked it so the frayed bottom end stuck into the slats between the boards on the table.

“Is that good or bad?  Does it reach over the boundary?” Verona asked, leaning forward.  Lucy put a hand out to keep Verona’s top from rubbing away a part of the chalk drawing, even though Verona was being mindful.

“It’s fine,” Zach said.

“It doesn’t form a bridge or anything?”

“‘Up’ as a direction has a lot of weird interactions with diagrams, but what they really care about is the point it meets the diagram,” Zach said.  “Trust me.  It should work better if we have a symbolic ‘tree’.”

“Okie dokie.  Next ring out, diamond, east point.  As we get further out, we get more freedom.  Second point can be the branch or candle, but let’s do the candle here.”

Lucy got the lighter from the tray, while Zach held the candle butt-end toward her.

“Get the bottom part melty.”

Lucy did.

He pointed the candle the other way, and she lit the wick.  He placed it melty-side down, the melt helping to keep it propped up.

“You seem to know what you’re doing,” Avery said.

“I’ve been doing this since I was a kid.  I got awoken at four.”

Four.

Zachariah nodded.

“So jealous,” Verona muttered.

Zachariah was a weird guy.  His head was buzzed to the point he was nearly bald, and he had a very square head.  Verona struggled to find anything to really mark as notable about him. appearance-wise, beyond that.  He was padded around the edges, heavy-cheeked, and a bit older than the three of them, but matched to them in height.  He wore cargo shorts and a tee-shirt with a graphic of some woman from an animated show she hadn’t heard of.  But as nondescript as he was, his attention was mostly focused, and he seemed assured about all of this stuff.

Being a practitioner since he was four made it make more sense.

“My family’s nothing major,” he said.  “We had to really stretch to even get me in.  But my best friend is attending.”

He looked over at the other table.  His friend was a really shaggy-haired kid with a bad complexion who had a bright smile that shone past the shag and skin.  He had joined a group with three girls around their age, Fiona, Melody, and Raquel.

Zach frowned at his friend, who was too preoccupied with his groupmates to notice.

Which, like… Zach was at a table with three girls, but he seemed more miffed at his buddy abandoning him than he was at having his own share of female company.

Verona rolled her eyes, flipped through the book, and asked, absently, “You’re a totemist?”

“Fancy way of saying shaman, which can be fancy.  Sal’s family does it fancy.  Not for my family.  But I’ve got good fundamentals.”

“Hopefully you can branch out after some classes here,” Avery said.  “Do something fancier, if you want.”

“We’ll see.”

“Next part of the diagram, we get more into purpose,” Verona noted.  “Do we want it to have a heart?  Apparent feelings?  Could do a flower.”

“That would be disconcerting,” Avery said.  “And… maybe unethical?”

“Disconcerting, at least,” Lucy said.

“Alignment matters in stuff like this.  I bet she’s going to teach more on that later,” Zach murmured.

“Alignment like?” Verona asked.

“Like, uhhh, straights, sets, arrangements of stuff.  How you balance your diagram’s props.”

“Like not having too much on one side?” Verona asked.

“And not having, like… branch, flower, leaf, as three things in a row, unless you’re having another ‘streak’ of related items elsewhere, to balance it out.”

“Gives you combo points?” Avery asked, looking over Verona’s shoulder at the chart.

“Sure.  It’s fine if we ‘break’ that combo with the candle between the branch and flower,” Zach said.

“They don’t want to do the flower, though.  Gear?” Verona suggested.

“Makes me think of a robot.  I wouldn’t do that unless someone wanted to write out instructions in advance.  One task?”

“Oh!” Avery stood up straighter.  “I can do that.”

“Sure.  The other items should complement the task, then.”

“Feather,” Avery said.

“It isn’t unbalanced,” Verona noted, “hammer to feather?  Or do you run into the opposite problem?”

“I think, uh, so long as we get it to move for a bit, we’ll be fine for the rest of class,” Zach said.  “Should be fine.”

Lucy plucked the feather from the tray of the random stuff they’d grabbed, and stuck it into the slats, like the branch was.

“Maybe lie it flat.  Unless you want it to write?  Point touching a flat surface?” Zach asked.

“This is all so arbitrary,” Lucy complained.

“It kind of is,” Zach said.  “Just roll with it.”

Verona read the words that Avery was writing down around the table’s perimeter.  “Comb?”

“Yeah,” Avery said.  “And something ‘beast’.”

“Bone?” Verona asked.  “Dogs chew bones, right?”

“Too deathy,” Zach said.

“I’ll go check at the front,” Lucy said.  “Though I’m not sure I get this.”

“We’re placing things on a spiral, starting with the basic signposts for life and vitality, then working our way out to function.”

Avery kept writing.  Verona paged through the book, checking stuff, and Avery wrote.

“So what does a totemist do?” Verona asked.

“Mostly we stick to Eastern traditions,” Zach said.  “But people get the wrong ideas when we talk about statues.  You think of statues walking around, when really, we’re making big, visible signposts for the spirts to follow.  Put the right statue in front of a house, and raise the prosperity of the house.”

Lucy returned, holding a horse statue.

After some hemming and hawing, they decided it didn’t matter much and placed it in the diagram.  A spool of thread, an earring, and a spoon joined the arrangement of items.

“What about the hot girl?” Verona asked.

“The what what?” Lucy asked.  “You’re asking this out of the blue?”

“Yeah, what?” Avery asked.

Zachariah laughed, awkward.

“In the student guide, you were down as ‘hot girl totems’, right, Zach?” Verona asked.

“I didn’t realize that would get put out there for everyone to see.  They do that a lot.  Salvador says it’s so we know who to talk to when we’re networking.  I did it for fun.  I figured if I had to spend hours carving something, it’d be a babe, right?  Way better than an old dude or monk reading a book.”

“I walk away for a moment and I’m already totally lost,” Lucy said.

“His family makes statues.  Guides for spirits,” Verona clarified.

“I made one, mostly for fun, and it sold.  Other people expressed interest.  So that was what I did for most of last year.  I’m not sure if they have as much oomph as a tutelary spirit or komainu, but Salvador said I should put it down when filling out the form.”

“Ah,” Lucy said.

“Salvador thinks I should go all-in on it.”

Avery had finished writing, and adjusted her coat on the bench before sitting.  She positioned her elbow carefully on the table, so she wouldn’t smudge the chalk.  She looked thoughtful.

“Where’s your head at?” Lucy asked Avery.

“Thinking about home.  The stuff we talked about at lunch.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  She checked her phone.  “No response.”

“Figured you’d tell us if there was.”

“Would you buy a statue?” Verona asked Avery.  Then, before Avery could answer, aware she didn’t want to out Avery, asked Zach, “Can you do hot boy statues too?  Are you equal opportunity?”

“I’m taking a break from making statues.  I made some to sell to help cover tuition, so… think I’m going to wait six months before making more.”

“What do they do?” Verona asked.  “And you’re dodging the question.”

“You’re asking about buying them before you know what they do,” Lucy said.

“Bachelor practitioners buy ’em, and it’s not because I’m that great an artist,” Zach said.  “They might make it easier to find a date that’s willing to come to your place, I guess?”

He looked increasingly awkward as he got into it.

“Might make it hard to get a long-term girlfriend,” Lucy observed.  “Giant… are they wood?  Naked?”

“I give them clothes.  Technically.  And I do both stone and wood.”

“Would you do a guy?” Verona asked.  “Skimpy loincloth?”

“I don’t – no.  I don’t know,” he said.  “Can we drop it?”

“Dropped,” Lucy said.

“If you can’t talk about it, you probably shouldn’t go all-in like Salvador wants,” Avery commented.  “All I’m going to say.”

“Yeahhhh,” Zachariah replied.

Mrs. Graubard was taking her time getting around to them.  It looked like she was stuck with a spoiled brat, who Verona judged was about the same age as the three of them, but acted younger.

“That would be Fernanda,” Zach said.  “My mom and her mom were kind of conspiring to have me and Fernanda spend time together, a bit ago.  Our families are on more or less the same level.  Or were.  Not a lot of power, no big library, not a lot of contacts, none of that.”

Fernanda had her hair in a ponytail.  She wore a top that left her shoulders bare, with little flappy short sleeves that extended to the arms, and skinny jeans. Whatever makeup she’d put on had a tiny bit of glitter to it, from how the light caught on her shoulder.

“She’s pretty,” Verona observed.  “Not that that’s supposed to matter, but knowing nothing else, if they’re going to try to get you to be boyfriend and girlfriend, it’s better than the alternative?”

“She is.  And it’s more like they were feeling things out before starting to talk arranged marriage,” Zachariah said.

“All of this practitioner stuff is stuck centuries in the past,” Lucy muttered.

“It really is,” Zach said.  “You’re new to it, but try living it, and going back and forth from regular high school to your dad telling your kid sister that he’s not sure if he wants the family to break tradition and bring the family’s women into the practice.”

Lucy made a face.

“Yeah,” Zach said.  “Exactly.”

“It doesn’t sound like it went anywhere,” Avery said.  “The marriage?”

“It didn’t.  Her brother got a bump in status, and her family stopped talking to our family.  The talks about the two of us stopped being as frequent, then stopped all the way.”

Fernanda, hands on her nonexistent hips, tone stern, was talking to Mrs. Graubard like she was a servant, “If my family is paying tuition then I expect better than you telling me to figure it out myself.  Stop standing there and be an actual teacher.”

“I’m a volunteer, not a teacher,” Mrs. Graubard said.

“I’m paying the school and the school is paying you, and you give us this booklet that probably took less than a dollar to make, and you won’t even give me five minutes of your time.  My family is going to talk to Alexander about this.”

“I’m sure I’ve given you more than five minutes at this point.”

“That’s gainsaying, right?” Lucy murmured.  “When you call someone out on a misstatement?”

“Yeah,” Zach answered, just as quiet.  “Would be more effective if she’d been more direct about it.”

“Like, saying ‘I’ve given you five minutes of my time already’,” Verona said.

“Being talked down to by someone like that could distort your perception of time,” Lucy said.  “Thirty seconds feeling like hours or something like that.  Makes you unsure if it’s really been five minutes, if you don’t have a watch on hand.  And someone like Fern there would flip if you checked the time partway through her diatribe.”

“Can testify that you’re right on all fronts,” Zach said.  “Also, don’t call her Fern in earshot.  Unless you want to be on the busy end of that.”

“I think I could take it,” Lucy said.  “I don’t think Mrs. Graubard can.”

“Talia’s her oldest, right?” Avery asked.  “She’s maybe never had to really deal with a teenager in full teen mode.”

“Thinking of your big sister?” Lucy asked.

“Rowan too.  He had his moments.”

“No.”  Fernanda had raised her voice and got multiple heads to turn by doing so.  “I want you to come over here and show us.  Thank you.”

“I think you dodged a bullet, Zach,” Avery said.

“I’m not one hundred percent sure the bullet’s dodged,” he replied.  “Depends on how well her big brother does.  If he elevates their family, I might be in the clear.”

“Is this going to take a while?” Verona asked.  “There’s only one part left, right?”

They looked over things, passing around the book, and checked the diagram and objects.  Verona used her Sight to make sure the objects weren’t affected by something or tricky in any way.  No cursed combs or anything.

“Do we just like, try it?” Avery suggested.

“I’m figuring there’s a minimal chance of an evil murder doll,” Verona decided.  She bent down and looked at the doll.  “We picked a good face for it, if we’re going to have to deal with it going all murder-y, though.”

“We power it up, let the diagram work?” Zach asked.

“We only need as much power as we need for a basic rune,” Verona said.  “So why don’t we… here, take my hand.”

Zach did.

She took Avery’s hand, then jerked her head at Lucy.

“Forming a ring?”

“No, no, touch your hands to the table, now.”

They did, forming something of a four-pointed star around the table, or they almost did.  Zach pulled his hand back.  “We’re powering it with ourselves?”

Everyone let go of each other’s hands.

“The power we carry, yeah,” Verona said.  “It says we only need as much as an elementary rune to get it started, and we can cut it off any time, and we’re splitting it up four ways.”

“That’s not nothing.”

“That’s okay,” Verona said.  “Uhh, do you two want to do it then?  Without Zach?”

“If he’s chickening out, then I’m not sure I want to do this,” Lucy said.  “I’ve spent too much of my Self before and it leaves you feeling like garbage.  And we have stuff to focus on tonight.”

“I’m not chickening out,” Zach protested.

“Maybe a bad word choice, sorry,” Lucy said.  “My point stands.”

“Does it?” Verona asked.

“I’m okay to do it,” Zach decided.

“Are you sure?” Lucy asked.

“It’s fine.  She’s right, it’s not too much power.”

Avery gathered up Snowdrop, who was bundled up in her coat, and carried her over to a short bookshelf, placing her on top.  She returned to the table.  “How would we do this if we waited for Mrs. Graubard?”

“I think she’s giving out vials of blood, and the stuff to clean it up,” Lucy observed.

“I kinda don’t want to mop up blood and clean a bloody doll,” Avery said.

“The doll shouldn’t get too bloody.  We just put it on the diagram, so we could draw a circle,” Verona pointed out.

“A square, technically.  You don’t want to cross the lines.  It’s not a lot of blood,” Zach said.  “Are we going to-?”

“We can,” Verona said.  She looked at her friends.  “Yeah?”

Zach put out a hand, touching Verona’s, then flinched away.  “Sorry.”

She rolled her eyes a bit, took his hand, then took Avery’s.  Lucy took the hands of Avery and Zach, all of them forming a ring around the table.

“On three, touch the edge of the diagram, and say ‘awake’,” Verona said.  “One, two, three-”

She brought the hands she was holding to the table.  Lucy did the same.

Awake.

She realized as she said the word that Mrs. Graubard had bailed on the conversation with Fernanda, and was speed-walking their way, picking up speed as she realized what they were doing.

It felt a bit like being punched, or huffing out a breath, or jumping into cold water, mingled together and not altogether unpleasant.  A big ‘whoof’ sensation, washing over and through her.  The diagram twisted up, spiraling, and drew up into the doll, dragging the objects together until they formed a tidy circle.

The doll cocked its head to one side, then fell over.

“Careful, careful!” Mrs. Graubard said.

Zach sat down on the edge of the bench, hard, with an inarticulate, “Bwuh,” and Lucy had to catch him before he fell from the bench to the floor.

The doll clumsily got to its feet, looking around.  It looked at its hands.

“Are you okay?” Mrs. Graubard asked.

“I’m fine, we’re-?” She checked her friends.  “I think we’re fine.”

“Zachariah isn’t,” Lucy said.

Mrs. Graubard drew chalk from her pocket and struck a line across the table between Zachariah and the doll.  The doll crumpled.  Zachariah didn’t perceptibly change.

“What did that do?” Verona asked.

“Breaking the connection, so the drain doesn’t continue,” Mrs. Graubard said.  She struck four more lines.  “You’re fine?”

Verona nodded.

An awful lot of people were looking.

Two of the girls that were a couple years older were dumping blood on their doll.  They and their groupmates touched the table to give it that extra boost.  Their doll awoke.

No issues there.

“What happened?” Verona asked.

“It’s a lot to take directly from your personal wells of power,” Mrs. Graubard said.

“The booklet said it was the same as an elementary rune.  Is that different from a beginner rune?”

“N- yes, but not in a way that matters for this.  Elementary runes are the most basic practices in the most basic script. Triangles and such.”

“Um,” Avery said.  She walked around the table.  Quietly, she said, “I don’t want to brag or make a big deal of it, but we do those all the time.”

“Some can.  Many can’t.”

“Will he be okay?” Avery asked.

“Zachariah?  Perhaps you should lie down?”

He nodded, sitting on the bench.  “I told them I was good to try it.  Not their fault.”

Their tutor nodded.  “I suspect it’s fine.  I just don’t want you to suffer.  Be sure you eat well, sleep well, do something you enjoy tonight, okay?  Shore up your Self.  Don’t do anything that draws too many spirits into or through you.”

Zach nodded.

Lucy touched Verona’s arm, doing the same with Avery.  Verona looked at her friend, then at the room.

People were watching, studying them.

Avery leaned in, until she was barely audible as she asked, “want to be discreet?”

“I was thinking we should do the doll thing, just the three of us,” Lucy said.

That was different.  Verona grinned.  She looked at Avery, who drew her eyebrows together.

But, in silent agreement, they returned to the table.  Between them, they drew up the diagram, arranged the objects, and wrote up the instructional text.  They had to fix up the doll’s hair and hat a bit, from where it had fallen over, and then they had to get in position.  The table was broad enough that to do the configuration with three of them, they had to press up against the table’s edge and lean forward a bit.

Mrs. Graubard watched, and as Fernanda approached, held up a finger, telling the girl to wait.

She probably enjoyed doing that a ton, Verona guessed.

“We good like this?” Lucy asked.

“If you’re sure you have the power.”

“Awake,” Verona said, in coordination with Lucy and Avery.

Again, that ‘fwoof’.  Maybe twice as strong, which was odd.

The doll stirred, then stood.  It swayed on its first few steps, then found its stride.

“The doll is a hallow, a home for the immaterial forces of our world.  Because the hallow is dressed up like a person, it is inclined to pick up sentiments and forces with strong links to humankind,” Mrs. Graubard told them.  Mostly a rehash of what they’d said earlier, but saying it like this left less room for Fernanda to butt in.  “The diagram enforces strong emphasis on structure and qualities, and the items signpost the tropes we want to follow and obey.”

Avery went to the bookcase, and picked up her jacket.  She moved it to the table, then folded back the material.  Snowdrop writhed, trying to bury her face in the dark folds.

The doll stumped her way across the table, walking about as well as someone with unbending ankles could, climbed over the hump of windbreaker material, and began to stroke Snowdrop.

Snowdrop made noises of protest, pushing back with one paw, but as the strokes continued, she surrendered, offering up her stomach for doll-pats.

“Good,” Mrs. Graubard said.

“Passing grade?” Verona asked, bouncing once on the spot.

“We don’t grade, but if we did, yes.  Well executed.”

“Ma’am,” Zach said.  “The Tedds.”

Their teacher turned, noting the doll at one of the other tables, that had been drenched in blood.  The doll, dressed in Gothic clothes, pried up the knife that had been stabbed into the table as one of the key items, and held it with both hands, breaking out into laughter.

Mrs. Graubard snapped her fingers.  Several of the spare dolls that had been placed around the room, some the size of babies, others of a similar scale to her daughter, all converged on the little Gothic doll.  The doll began stabbing them.  Students backed away.

“I’ve got-” Zachariah started, but his voice wasn’t strong.  He held what looked like a keychain, with things that weren’t keys on it.  Each of the things was a figurine, about three inches long, carved stone.  He rested his wrist on the back of the bench, figurines dangling.

“I see… bookish old man-”

“Tutelary Statue.”

“And lion dog?”

“Komainu.”

“And gargoyle?”

“Grotesque.  It’s a gargoyle only if it has a spout.”

“And naked lady totem.”

He wrapped his fist around the charms, hiding them, and brought them to rest on his chest, as he lay on the bench.

“It’s not me,” he said.  “I did it for a joke, and to stay sane while carving my… I dunno, I’ve done easily a hundred carvings over the years.  Then my dad said I should ride the wave of success, whatever form it took.”

“If it’s funny, why not go with it?” Verona asked.

“The joke got old for me a while ago,” he said, arm draped over his eyes.  “It’s not me.  I’m not that guy.  Salvador is that guy.”

Lucy turned to look over at Salvador, who was kissing the doll his group had put together.  She walked over to the other group, leaving Verona with Avery, Zachariah, and the doll that was petting Snowdrop.

Lucy, arms folded, began to talk to Salvador.

The Tedds, teenage sisters, were cheering on their doll, who was losing its fight against the teacher’s dolls.  The cheers seemed to be encouraging it.  America Tedd had the sides of her head shaved, wore a sleeveless white tee and baggy black jeans, and a fair bit of eye makeup.  All considered, for a self declared ‘goblin witch princess’, her outfit seemed pretty normal.  Verona could only imagine what her outfit would be like if she gave the combination of Toadswallow, Bluntmunch, Cherrypop and Gashwad any say over what she wore, or if she wore stuff to appeal to them.  She’d probably come out of it looking like an extra in a post-apocalyptic film.  Liberty, America’s younger sister, was similar, but wore a tank top with an old bloodstain on it, and when she smiled and cheered for the doll it was apparent she’d filed her teeth down.  The braces that had been on those teeth were mangled.  ‘Goblin raider princess’.

Verona knew from the Kennet goblins that a practitioner of goblin arts was a goblin king or goblin queen.  To be a goblin princess meant they were probably beginners on that road.  One more focused on the practice, the other on fighting in a goblin way.  Maybe?

Nah, all of that was pretty normal.  It was the look in their eyes, and the sheer fervor with which they got into the craziness of the dolls and how things got out of control that put Verona off.

Creepy stuff?  Cool.  Scary?  She could get into scary.

Weird stuff?  Awesome.

Darkness?  Darkness felt comfortable, and she was pretty sure she had a leg up on the edgy kids who usually said that, with how much she’d been able to put that into practice.  She could literally see in the dark.

The Tedds made her feel like she’d felt like she’d felt in John’s house, with Lucy at gunpoint.  It felt like things when the Hungry Choir stuff had gone crazy and Brie, who she hadn’t known was Brie, was screaming and crying, convinced she was going to die.  It felt like she was in the same room as her dad, while he was melting down in the worst way.

She wondered if part of that was some effect they wore, like they’d earned their stripes and now they had a bad vibe that most people could feel, intimidating others.

She had zero idea if that was true, and her Sight couldn’t see anything on them, aside from more bloodstains, but imagining it was true helped her to deal with it.

Even if she was only imagining it, it really helped to have an explanation or escape route as a release valve for that stuff.

Lucy returned, hurrying.

“Crap, I think I might actually hate this place,” Lucy said.

Salvador’s group had brought his doll to life.  It stood up in the circle, cracked, and hairy, foot-long spider legs had sprouted from the cracks.  The doll’s body dangled, suspended by the legs around it, its head bowed and its arms reaching out blindly.

Lucy walked around their table to the furthest side from the spider doll.  She sat on a bench, and put her hand out to Snowdrop.

“I think Mrs. Graubard doesn’t have great control over the class and that’s making everything worse,” Avery said.  “Would we be out of line going to talk to someone?  Like Mr. Belanger?”

“I think this might be him,” Lucy murmured.  “Same way it was us, earlier.”

Strife?

Graubard had been talking to Bristow and was on his side.  Was Alexander subtly discouraging her from being a teacher?

The older Tedd sister said something Verona couldn’t hear, and touched finger to lips and moved it away like she was blowing a kiss, but her expression twisted, and it was her middle finger.

The Gothic doll the Tedds and their groupmate had made vomited onto a doll that was trying to grab it.  It seemed to break the connection between the doll and its power supply, because the doll collapsed.

Maybe not so subtle.

America Tedd casually spat out a bit of something green, chewing what she didn’t spit out.

“Hey,” Salvador said, as he walked over.  “You’re missing the show.”

“Wiped myself out,” Zachariah said.

“If you’re done your project for the day, you want to come hang out?”

Zachariah sat up.  Salvador gave him a hand.

“Thanks for helping out, Zach,” Avery said.  “Sorry we knocked you out.”

He offered a one-note laugh by way of response.

“Cool learning about some of that stuff,” Verona said.

“I’m glad,” he said.  “Group up again sometime?”

“Maybe, if the situation comes up,” Lucy said.

Then he was gone, off to hang with his bud.

“What’d you say to Salvador?” Verona asked.

“Reminded him he had a friend over here.  A best friend should be looking after his bud.”

Verona smiled.

“Guys are dumb about that stuff sometimes,” Avery said.  “I see it a lot with Rowan and Declan.”

“That’s an unfair set of examples though,” Lucy said.  “Sheridan doesn’t really have friends, so you can’t use her as a measuring stick.”

“Hmm, maybe,” Avery said.

Girls in Salvador and Zachariah’s group shrieked as their doll walked on spider legs toward them, reaching.

“Do you want to go?” Lucy asked.  “I think this class might be pretty much over.”

“There’s other stuff to handle,” Verona said.

“Exactly,” Lucy said.  “Want me to grab Snowdrop?”

“Sure,” Avery said.

“Grab my notebook and stuff?”

Verona beat Avery to it, sticking out her tongue.

Off to the side, the Tedds’ doll seemed to run out of steam.  It didn’t look like it was cut off from its power supply so much as it was getting more and more tired, and slower.  It was pinned down by others until it sagged, fell over, and belched out another bucketful of green slime, covering its front and face.

“Mrs. Graubard!” Fernanda raised her voice.  “I’ve been really patient!”

They left the classroom behind, heading over to their room.

“Seems like Alexander is setting the stage, a bit,” Lucy said, once they were far enough away.  “Stir up a ton of chaos with subtle omens, and then biasing it against his enemies.  I’d be willing to believe this is him, and then someone else is messing with us, in the same way.”

“There are four other Belangers,” Verona recounted.  “Alexander’s right hand man and oldest apprentice, another person with the family name, the one who saw the writing on the wall and nearly got recruited by the landlord the first time around, and the dick who was giving Zed a hard time.”

“It’s so messy out there.  The things with Lucy’s class, then this dollmaking class getting so chaotic…” Avery said.

They reached their room, entered, closed the door, and settled.

Verona went to her bag, pulled out her phone, then checked the image she’d captured of her stuff.  The wrinkles, arrangement, and everything else were all untouched.

Carefully, she moved a shirt aside.  There was a notebook lying flat, glamour arranged atop it, with a rune carved into it.

One of the big issues of attending the school here was that they had to ration out their glamour.  But this?  This had been essential.  She traced her finger along the rune, working backward, and undrew it.  Then she carefully lifted the book out.

Avery already had a resealable plastic bag held out.  Verona checked the coloration and everything matched, then tilted the glamour back in.

A little nettlewisp charm, to protect their stuff.

She moved her clothes and got to the files and notebooks she’d had at the bottom of her bag.

“We need a better way of securing stuff,” Lucy said.  She plugged her phone in to charge.  “Matthew replied.”

“And?” Verona asked.

“And he says thanks for the info.  They had a little trouble opening the pictures, but they figured it out.  They intend to take it from here, and already have John intercepting.  The goblins took him through a tunnel a while ago, and they’re going to try to slow or distract those guys, Miss style, before they get anywhere near Kennet.  We shouldn’t need to go.”

Older people and technology.  Verona lifted her bag down to the floor, then slumped onto the bed.

Snowdrop, on the other bed, turned human, lounging.  The doll crawled toward her, picking up Avery’s brush, and began combing Snowdrop’s hair.

Verona was kind of tickled that she was still active, when the Tedds’ doll had used blood and burned out fast.  It had been more active, but they did have something going for them.

“I wonder if we could get some sort of token of Kennet,” Verona said.

“What are you on about?” Lucy asked.

“Like… if we had a coin or medallion or key or something that was very ‘Kennet’, we could draw on the Kennet power source, instead of drawing on ourselves and Kennet.”

“I think that line of thought might not make them very happy,” Lucy said.  “We’re paying a little something, even though it’s minor, and that keeps us from abusing it. If we take away that limitaiton?”

“If we take off that limiter, they have to worry about us doing something big and dumb and draining them all a bunch,” Avery said.

“What if we kept it to things that were explicitly for Kennet’s sake?” Verona asked.

“I don’t think that’s as cut and dry as you’re imagining,” Lucy told her.

“Hmmm.”

“Have you decided about your dad?”

Verona sighed.

“I’m not going to nag,” Lucy said.  “I don’t know what I’d do in your shoes.  But if we do decide to do something, I could see one, two, or three of us all going back home.  Just to make sure this thing with the landlord’s crew is okay.”

“Maybe I’ll call my mom and check,” Verona said.  “He said he called her.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t want to break up our connection diagrams, because they’re way harder to set up while we’re a long way from home,” Verona said.

“The Warrens won’t work as an option, if you want to go a long way,” Snowdrop said, as the doll with the crying baby face brushed her hair.  “The other realms are way bigger than Earth but a lot of places on Earth have ways to get to places in those realms.”

“There are entryways and areas key to the Warrens on Earth,” Avery interpreted.  “Doors could be a hundred steps apart in our world, but if you travel in the Warrens, because that space is smaller, it might only be twenty-five.  Go in a door in the Warrens, walk twenty five steps, emerge from the other door and you’ve covered a lot of extra ground.”

“That’s not what I said,” Snowdrop huffed.

Lucy, sitting on the other bed, hugged Snowdrop.  The doll floundered for a bit, trying to find a way to brush Snowdrop’s hair with Lucy in the way.

“Problem is, we’d have to travel through Goblin Warrens to do that.  And they’re dangerous.”

“Safe as anything,” Snowdrop said.  “No bumpkins, grumpkins, face-eaters, skin-flayers, freaky reality show contestants, bumps, lumps, warts, snots, creeps or anything else that would want to hurt you in there.”

“Have you been?” Avery asked.  “Did your friends drag you any deeper than the shallow tunnels?  Tell me the truth.”

“I have, for a long time,” Snowdrop said.  “I’m brave.”

“Good,” Avery said.

“Visiting gets tricky,” Verona said.  “If I call my mom now I test the connection breaking thing.  It might lead to questions.  And if it breaks, we can’t exactly draw up a new diagram and place it under our beds in a few minutes.”

“The fact your thing burned out so fast might be because of the strife things bugging us, so I’d bet whatever we’ve got back home is going to need replacing anyway,” Lucy said.

“Or maybe they’re up to something else, and they’re building up strength for one big move,” Avery guessed.  “Or they were only there for a while.  Or we’re being paranoid and there wasn’t anything.”

“I hope it’s not that last one,” Lucy said.  “I made a lot of statements about it.  Except we weren’t punished and our thing with this doll worked okay, so maybe that’s proof we were telling the truth?”

“Doesn’t work that way,” Verona told her.  “Sometimes the karmic spirits hold off, Edith told me that once.  If you mess up, they wait a day or two or whatever for a dramatic moment and then trip you up, or worse.”

“Darn.”

“I think I do want to call my mom,” Verona said.  “But we’ll have to be careful.  I’m thinking of a diagram.  Connection stuff, but elaborate.  And I want to draw it big, so I can do it right.”

“On the floor here?” Avery asked.

Verona sat up, looking.  There wasn’t much space between the beds, and with everything else…

She shook her head.

“Outside?” Lucy asked.

“Messy, but maybe,” Verona answered.

Avery, sitting backwards on one of the chairs by the desk, tilted the chair back, leaning closer.  “Let’s go see what our options are.  It’s something to do, and there’s a bit of time before dinner.”

It took them a minute to get sorted.  Verona gathered her stuff, including the files.

It was tricky.  Having everything they needed, at the risk that those things could become problems.  She’d brought everything she’d brought to the party with the expectation that, if anything came up, like Faerie or goblins, she could handle them and let Avery and Lucy enjoy their nights.  But then everything she’d brought ended up being the problem.

This was the same.  Did they bring the files? Other equipment?  Notes?

When going from class to class, it didn’t make sense.  Most kids didn’t even bring backpacks.  They kept a single notebook, some even keeping their notebooks on the bookshelves in the main classroom, instead of in their rooms.

If the strife thing was why Lucy had run into trouble with Ray, why Verona’s dad was calling, and why Snowdrop had had issues with the Brownies, then they had enemies.  People who could potentially come after them.  Or send things after them.

They headed out, more geared up than they’d been for class, and Avery, first out the door, nearly bumped into a serving cart.  Snowdrop in human form pushed past her, ugly doll following.

The cart had what looked like a Bonky Donk on a plate, and a one-liter carton of chocolate milk.

“We didn’t order this,” Avery said.

“Ugh.  I don’t want it,” Snowdrop said.  “Not hungry, not thirsty.  It looks awful.”

“Hold up,” Avery said, keeping Snowdrop from approaching it.  She lifted it up from the middle section of the serving cart to the top.  “Is this a peace offering?”

“Nuh uh,” Snowdrop said.

“Or a trap,” Lucy said.

Avery held up the carton of chocolate milk, and her eyes changed as she searched it.  She held it out for Lucy, who gave it a once-over.

Then for Verona.  Verona blinked, let the Sight take over, and viewed the bottle, no longer waxy cardboard or whatever it was a milk carton was made of, but something like thin, foggy glass.  A tiny skinless baby cow was crammed inside, almost drowning in its fluids.

“Looks fine to me,” she said.

“Same,” Lucy echoed.

Avery gave it to Snowdrop, then took the disc-shaped Bonky Donk from the plate, breaking it in half.  When Lucy elbowed her, she broke one of the halves up again, to Snowdrop’s muffled, mid-chug protest.

“Want some?” she asked Verona.

Verona shook her head.  She wasn’t into sweet stuff, and the food was a chocolatey sponge-cake with a sharp raspberry cream in the center.

They circled around, avoiding the main classroom and front doors, using the side door instead.  There was an area to the back, off to the side of the ‘stage’ of the main classroom, but there were a good ten windows around the back of the classroom that would have a clear view of them.

They headed around front.

The workshop classrooms varied, apparently, in how insulated they were.  It was sunny and warm out, and the classroom closest to them had all the doors open, to let air flow through.  On the back stairs, Eloise sat with Ulysse.  ‘With’ was a bit of an understatement, considering she had her legs draped over his lap, and was curled around him.  Ulysse was smiling.

Verona thought it seemed nice.  Not the long-term relationship thing and definitely not the early marriage, but having someone close by, like that.  A lot of the time, she didn’t know what to do with her hands or whatever, and it’d be so neat to have a boy to unashamedly touch and talk about whatever with.  Less… she wasn’t sure how to articulate it.  But it felt like she was missing out, somehow, and the one hundred and fifteen reasons why she wasn’t ready to get herself a Jeremy or a Ulysse became like a pressure on her.

That she was out, trying to find a way to navigate her dad’s situation without actually having to confront her dad was somehow right in the middle of all that.  It made her head feel noisy, trying to organize the thoughts and feelings.

She felt a jab in her stomach, like she’d eaten something off, when she hadn’t even touched the Bonky Donk, and her gut was letting her know with pain, first.  She sighed.

“Hey,” Lucy murmured, before throwing an arm around Verona’s shoulders.  “We’ll work it out.”

Verona’s head bonked against Lucy’s shoulder.

“Hey,” Avery called out.  “Sorry to interrupt, can we ask a question?”

“We’re being goofy,” Eloise said.

“You’re being goofy,” Ulysse told her.  “I came out to enjoy a bit of fresh air.”

“You were trying to bite my earlobe a few minutes ago,” Eloise told him.  “That’s goofy.”

“What’s your question?” Ulysse asked.

“We wanted to do a diagram, but the main classroom’s in use.”

“There are spare workshops,” Eloise told them.  “One was used for an enchanting class this morning.  There’s a sheet to request the space if you want to use it.  Students share, sometimes.”

“Any rules or anything we should know about?” Lucy asked.

“Can’t hurt to have a senior student with, if you didn’t get permission straight from a teacher,” Eloise said.  She leaned back, almost lying down on the top stairs, her head sticking into the classroom.  “Zed!  Your trio is here!”

“You didn’t have to bother him,” Avery said.

Zed emerged from the classroom, wiping at his hands with a cloth.  Brie was behind him.

“They want to use a workshop.”

He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

“We really don’t want to bother.”

“I don’t mind the break.  I work better if I do a lot of different things over the day, instead of sticking with one project.  I think,” Zed said.  He flashed them a smile.  “What sort of thing are you doing?”

“A connection-guarded phone call,” Verona said, her head still tilted, resting against Lucy’s shoulder.

“I can help,” Eloise said.  She disentangled herself from Ulysse and stood.  “And you should get back to helping.”

Ulysse stood up, stretching, and then caught her in his arms.  He playfully snapped his teeth for her ear.

“I’ll catch up!” Eloise called out.

Zed led them away from the scene.

Verona looked back at the scene, the very very pretty Ulysse with his arms wrapped around his fiancee, face against the side of her head, the two of them off balance but not quite falling over.

The noise in Verona’s head was becoming dull and omnipresent, like the beginnings of a headache.

She so wasn’t looking forward to this.

The day had been so neat, to start with. Why did this thing have to be hanging over her?

Was her dad really hurt?  Sick?  Was it a car accident?

They entered the workshop.  It looked like some students had done some diagram work since the morning class, and hadn’t cleaned up.

Zed sloshed water from a bucket onto the floor, then used a giant squeegee-mop to wipe the chalk away.

“Thank you,” Avery said.

With the ambient temperature, the floor dried quickly.  Zed put the bucket into the sink in the corner and began to fill it up again.

Verona pulled her bag off, then got her notebook out.  She sketched out the basic idea of what she wanted to do.

Eloise appeared, approached, and investigated.

“So cute,” the blonde said.  Her centipede crawled across her shoulders and peered down.

“Cute?” Lucy asked.

“It works, but it’s as if you were building a dress out of sticks and stones.  Here.  For this, instead of drawing a straight line connecting this to this, do a really tall ‘s’ shape.”

“Why?” Verona asked.

“I dunno, it’s what I was taught and it works better.”

“They really didn’t drill you on those fundamentals, huh?” Verona asked.

Lucy elbowed her.  “She’s helping.  Let her help.”

“Instead of the Saturn sign for time, there are ways you can be more precise with cards, to signify relationships.”

“Okay, well, do you have cards?” Verona asked.

“Not with me.  And I’d need books, which I don’t have here.”

“So… Saturn sign, then.”

“If you want to do it in an inferior way.”

“We’ll do what we have with what we know and have,” Lucy said.

Giant connection sign, with a specific set of conditional symbols for a time window, location, and set of relationships.  Then a lot of reinforcement.  She placed it within a square, with a lot of ‘support’ struts within, and made it so only the carefully labeled branches extended out from the square, before curling out into a goblet or ‘Y’ shape.  Like satellite dishes, she imagined.

“It’s blunt,” Eloise said, looking down at it all.

“Will it work?  I don’t want to break up work we did in other places.”

“It’ll work.  But it’s blunt.”

“So long as it works,” Verona said.  She felt miserable, which sucked and felt wrong, when she was doing cool magic stuff.

“If push comes to shove, I can pay a visit,” Avery said.  She was sitting on a table, the doll beside her, holding and stroking Snowdrop.  “Walk a path, maybe, to get there sooner.”

“A little dangerous, that,” Lucy said.

“Warrens are bad too,” Avery retorted.

“Speaking of paths,” Zed told her.  “Those finders I put you in touch with?  They said hi.  They have stuff they promised you.”

“Cool,” Avery said.

Verona checked everything over, then pulled out her phone.

“Speaker phone,” Eloise told her.

“Huh?”

“I won’t tell anyone what I hear, or act on what I hear, unless it directly affects me, my family, or my friends,” Eloise said.  “But if you’re receiving a call and it comes through from one person to you, it’s like a spear.  Pointed.  If it’s to multiple people, it won’t stab through this nice diagram you made and disrupt things.”

Verona switched to speaker.

She dialed.

The phone rang.  Her phone felt like it weighed ten pounds, as she held it out.  She wasn’t sure if it was her or the diagram influencing flows and stuff, pushing it down.

She pretended it was the latter.

“Hello?” her mom’s voice came through.

“Hi mom.”

“Verona, hi.  You called at a tricky time.  Things always get really busy right before everyone leaves for home.  But it’s fine.  Did you get in touch with your dad?”

“Not yet.  I wanted to ask.  Do you know what’s up?”

“No.  No, can’t you get ahold of him?”

“I called you first.  What did he say?”

“He said he was in the hospital overnight and he was probably going back in soon.  He was really desperate to get in touch with you.”

“He didn’t say why?”

“He didn’t really communicate that, no.  The call was in the middle of the night, and I wasn’t thinking straight.  I told him that your summer camp might not have phone service and that might be why you weren’t replying.”

“It was tricky, making the call with everything else going on.  He’s going back?”

“You should call him, he’s the one who knows.  I’m sure he’d just like to hear from you, whatever’s going on.”

“Okay,” Verona said, looking down at the diagram.  Everything intact.

“I really hope he’s alright.  I’ve been thinking a lot about our conversation in the car earlier this week, you know.”

Verona was silent.

“I want you to know, I don’t have any animosity toward your father.  I feel badly about the way things went, and that I couldn’t be who he needed me to be.  We simply weren’t compatible in the end.  If you need to talk to me about whatever it is that’s going on, the history between your father and I doesn’t mean you can’t.”

“Sorry, you’re on speakerphone.  There’s some people around.  It’s part of how this setup works, sorry.”

“Oh,” her mother said.  “Of course.  Sorry.  Listen, why don’t you call your dad, and get the story from him?  Then if you need to call me, you can call back in… let’s say at least an hour and a half.  I should be home from work by then, and I’ll be able to give you my undivided attention.”

“Message received,” Verona said.

She hung up, then realized she probably should have said goodbye.

She looked around, aware again that she was standing in the middle of a large diagram.  The lights of the room were off, because the light shining in through the windows, the open front door, and the open back door were mostly bright enough, and lights being on meant it was hotter.  Lucy stood off to the side, her phone out.  Avery sat on the table with the doll, a sympathetic look on her face.  Zed was at the front door, Eloise just outside, standing on the stairs.

Verona used a wet cloth to wipe up sections of chalk, adjusted the target, adjusted the time window, in case it was a long call, and verified everything was intact.  It hadn’t worn down or weakened anywhere.  Good sign.

“Calling your dad?” Lucy asked.

Verona nodded.

“Give us some privacy?” Lucy asked Zed and Eloise.

“I should observe, because you’re new students and they don’t want you blowing up the building, but I’m pretty sure this one is safe,” Zed said.  “Call me back before any adjustments?”

“Okay,” Lucy said.

Zed and Eloise left, or seemed to leave.  Verona wasn’t eager to carefully tiptoe across the diagram, trying not to smudge lines on the slate tile floor, so she couldn’t find a spot where she could see and check.

She dialed.

One and a half rings at the home phone.  She heard the hitch as it switched over.  The following three rings sounded different.  It was so obnoxious, because the way the landline was set up, answering the phone meant she had to sprint to get to the phone in time, otherwise it transferred over to her dad’s cell phone.

Her heart sank, weirdly, as she heard her dad pick up.

“Verona.  I’ve been trying to get ahold of you.  I don’t know why I pay for your cellphone when I can’t get in touch with you in a time of need.  You-”

“Are you okay?” she asked.

No,” he told her.  “No, I’m pretty far from okay, Verona.  I’m hurting, I’m tired, and I haven’t been able to take the steps necessary to deal with either of those things because I’m sitting here, waiting for your call.  I can’t sleep because what if I sleep through your message, and I can’t take meds because I need to be coherent enough to decide what’s going on.  I really hope you’ve been having a fantastic fucking time at your summer thing, too busy to answer my calls until eighteen hours later.”

“What happened?” she asked.

“I nearly passed out from the pain, is what happened.  I got a ride to the emergency room from a coworker I am not a fan of, and I had to wait ten hours, getting told it shouldn’t be much longer, it shouldn’t be much longer, except people kept coming in, needing to use the machine before me.  And all the while, I’m trying to call you.”

“What was it?”

“It’s not fun, wondering, is it?  Imagine how I felt, for those ten hours.  With nobody, not a single soul, to turn to.  Not even my own daughter. Especially my own daughter, who is ignoring my calls when I really need the support.  It was a partial obstruction of the small bowel.”

“You’re constipated?”

No, Verona! No.  It obstructed and my intestine twisted.  They put a tube down my nose, and they had to give me fluids by IV, because I’ve been throwing up from the pain and everything else.  There’s a very real possibility I’ll have to go into surgery.  They’re saying it’s fifty-fifty, but every hour that passes, the odds of surgery rise, and it’s been a bit.  If I do end up needing surgery, I won’t be able to handle things on my own.  I’m going to need you to put down whatever you’re doing and come home, just in case.  I literally have nobody else who can help handle these things.”

Lucy crossed the room, stepping carefully across the diagram.

“Get a bus or a taxi if you have to, I’ll pay for it later, somehow.  Come home.  I have an appointment at the hospital later, and they’re going to evaluate my situation and decide if the surgery is needed, which it probably is.  I’m going to have to miss work, I have no idea how I’m going to stay on top of everything there.  I need help, Verona.  For once, I need you to be serious about helping me.”

Lucy, crouching, indicated one portion of the diagram.

Verona nodded.

Lucy smudged out one lower section of a ‘6’ to turn it into a ‘5’, and did the same with the left side of an ‘8’ to turn it into a ‘3’.  With a line, she turned a ‘6’ into an ‘8’.

“And keep your phone on and stay available.  I- I’m getting another call.  It may be the hospital, checking in on me.  Not even letting me nap.  Keep your phone on!  I need you there, any time, no excuses”

“Bye.  Good luck.”

“Love you, Verona.  Keep your phone on!  Reply sooner.”

“Love you, dad.”

She hung up.

Her head and stomach hurt.

She wasn’t sure what to do.

This sucked.

“Thanks.  For the timing adjustment,” Verona said.

“It seemed like you had basically all the information,” Lucy said.  “He wanted to be mad at you, more or less.”

Verona nodded.

“It’s up to you, what you want to do,” Lucy said.

“I don’t want to go,” Verona said.  She looked up.  “I really really don’t.  But I think I have to.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “I wasn’t sure how to bring it up, if it should be before or after, but I figured I didn’t want to seem like I was biasing your decision…”

“I wouldn’t think you were, I don’t think.”

“Matthew called.  I thought you should decide how you dealt with your dad before we decided how we wanted to respond to that.”

Verona winced.

“They can’t handle it after all?” Avery asked.  “This band of Aware?”

Lucy shook her head.  “Seems not.  Others can’t really interact with them, and Kennet doesn’t have many non-Others to rely on.”

“Feels like the strife thing again,” Avery said.

“How do we get there?” Verona asked.  “Bus?”

“I don’t think the buses come out here,” Lucy said.

“Path?” Avery suggested.  “Warren.  Ruin?  Maybe Jessica.”

“We’ll find a way,” Lucy said.

“Okay,” Verona said.  Headache and stomach-ache aside, she felt kind of numb, and not sure how to react.  Numb was usually good.  It didn’t feel good now.

“Do you want to call my mom, before we clean this setup up?” Lucy asked.  “Get the info on whatever’s going on with your dad?”

“Nah.  We’re going anyway, right?”

“Right.  Okay,” Lucy said.

“Are you okay?” Avery asked.  “How do you feel?  What are you thinking?”

“That this sucks.”

“Fair,” Avery said, quiet.

“Do you need anything?  Food, something to drink?  A hug?”

“Tell me we’ll get back in time for this really important binding class we need that Nicolette said she’d try to schedule for tomorrow morning,” Verona said.  “And I think I could deal with a lot.”

“Tall order,” Lucy murmured.  She smiled.  “I offer you ‘anything’ and you ask for your magic class.”

“Let’s try,” Avery said, hopping up, grabbing the bucket.

“Lemme,” Verona cut in.  “I want to.”

She threw the bucket.

With a drenching of water, she choked out most of that chalk that spelled out the deliberate, careful connection back to home.  Time, place, lines, and boundaries dissolved into chaos.

It helped a bit with the stomachache, doing something that deliberate and dramatic.

But this whole thing was still going to be one heck of a headache.

Leaving a Mark – 4.10

Avery

They cleaned up the workshop, squeegeeing the floor, then ducked outside into the warmer outdoors.  The wind was blowing strong, carrying small leaves and bits through the air.

Whatever way they traveled, they’d be jumping from this into something dangerous or harsh.

Zed and Eloise were talking, a little way away from the door.

“How are you feeling, Verona?” Avery asked.  She picked up the crying doll, which was holding an opossum-form Snowdrop, and the doll’s legs kicked at the air.

“Ugggh.”

“‘Cause we don’t have a lot of time if we’re going to stay on schedule, and we should think carefully about the route we take. If you’re emotionally not great, we might want to avoid the Ruins.”

“You want to do the Paths?” Lucy asked.

Avery shrugged, making a face.  “Kinda?  I’m more familiar with them.”

She set the doll down.  It wobbled, then resumed petting Snowdrop.

Lucy raised a hand in a wave or signal to Zed.  He shifted position, going from leaning against the wall to walking toward them, still chatting with Eloise, who followed.

“Done?” Zed asked.

“I think we’re only really getting started.  We need to head back to check on things,” Avery told him.  “We’ve got to figure out a way there and back.”

“Ideally we head out tonight and come back tomorrow,” Verona said.

“She doesn’t want to miss classes,” Lucy clarified.

“Technomancy options lean on the tools we have available.  Most often, we have tech at the departure point and tech at the arrival point.  Or we’re departing to a tech-created place.”

“We were thinking about other options,” Avery said.  “Do you have the details on those Paths?”

“On my phone, yeah.  I’ll mail them to you.”

“There are ways to use enchantress techniques to travel quickly,” Eloise said, “but they’re costly, and they require you to have a connection to the destination.”

“We have a connection to there,” Lucy said.

“But not from there back to here,” Avery said, thumbing through her phone to her email, while Zed did the same.

“We could use the Warrens, apparently, but it’s dangerous,” Lucy noted.

“A walk through the bad part of town, metaphorically speaking,” Eloise said.  “I wouldn’t associate with goblins if I could help it.”

Snowdrop sneezed.

“There’s a simplicity to the Warrens,” Zed noted.  “Yes, you might get held up, ambushed, mobbed, or exposed to some really unpleasant things, but if you’re strong, if you can fight, and if you can hold your nose, then there’s worse.  Just make sure you know what paths to take, so you don’t get into the territory of something especially awful.”

“Paths might be better,” Avery said.  “I don’t mean to sound like a broken record, but…”

“You’re a bit of a broken record, even if you don’t mean to be,” Verona said.

“I was looking up the Paths, to try to figure that stuff out,” Zed told them.  “Since it’s related to you and I like to know who and what I’m dealing with.  Our curriculum doesn’t delve into that stuff, here.  It’s interesting.”

“Any input?” Avery asked.  “Insights?  Tips?”

“They used to think of it as dream-walking.  Reading about some of the places, I can see it.  There’s something a bit dreamlike or unmoored about it, which is pretty different from the technomancy stuff.  Places so far removed from reality that only a few key things are really locked in.  Rules, waypoints, puzzles, items.  The rest of it gets filled in or changed, depending.  There’s some really dangerous stuff out there, if you aren’t careful.”

“I kind of know,” Avery said.  The email came through.  She gave Zed a thumbs up without looking up at her phone.

“It’s hard to harness, which might be why relatively few really do the Finder stuff.  If you try to bind a location or tap a particular subsystem for power, you might end up giving it so much form and function that it stops being part of the Paths.  If it even works.  Sometimes you pick up so much other attached crap that you can’t control outcomes.  A lot of the mapping and stuff that gets done is finding out which places can avoid being bogged down and dragged back down to ‘reality’, which places aren’t going to drift away and disconnect from everything while you’re walking it, which places are safe… it’s a long list of qualifiers.”

“They sent me three locations?”

“More than they promised, but they left out some details.  They want you to be in touch, communicate with them, give them what you promised about the Forest thing.”

Avery nodded.  “Works.”

“What are our options?” Lucy asked.

“The Amaranthine Conundrum.  Everything’s purple.  Purple place balanced on a purple animal’s back.  We’d have to paint ourselves to blend in,” Avery said.

“Doable with glamour,” Verona said.

“The place was used as a prison for some Others that aren’t strong enough to break free, but are tricky or problematic.  Stuff like close this one door, another two open.  Move an object and doors disappear, and things move, accordingly.  They filled it up, then sold the instructions for visiting, with specific instructions.  Looks straightforward.”

“What’s the danger?” Lucy asked.  “You let something out because you dropped a penny?”

Avery scrolled through her phone, went too far, and went back.  “Or you corner yourself, adjusting the wrong thing, and there’s no door you can open without letting something out or closing essential doors further on.  Or the last person to pass through didn’t follow the exact sequence.  And there’s some times when the animal that the place is balanced on will take a step and it makes doors swing open and closed.”

“And the time limit,” Zed remarked.

“Yeah.  After a set time, a ‘clod’ comes tearing through.”

“Clawed?” Verona asked.  “C-L-A-W-E-?”

“C-L-O-D.  Starting from downstairs, near the entry point, closes all the doors, puts everything away.  Either locks you in, or catches you and breaks you.  You can’t die or starve to death in there because the spirits essential for those things can’t navigate the Conundrum.  So it breaks your arms, legs, face, back, whatever, and then you kinda lie there.  There’s instructions for using some of the Clodded people from previous attempts to navigate or get hints.  One in the kitchen, two in the bedroom, one on the back path.”

“Yeah, let’s not do that,” Lucy said.  “For all those reasons.”

“I’m not exactly keen either,” Avery said.  “Even if it looks like it’s really clearly outlined.  I’m not even sure how it works if we go in as a group.  Okay.”

“Let’s not.  Next?”

“Mug Mile.  The footpath is heads and faces, from a bunch of people who are all crammed in, shoulder to shoulder, chest to chest, back to back.  You walk on their up-turned faces.  There’s a system for timing it.  Apparently a redecorating crew sits a certain distance up the path, and a crew sits behind. You don’t want to get redecorated, so you have to stay between the crews.”

“I like how casually that’s said,” Verona said.  “Get redecorated.”

“A lot of the time you get Lost.  Other times, you might get transformed.  Depending on the crews, a lot changes.  One puts masks on every face and paints the walls red.  The masked faces try to bite you while you walk.  Another washes the walls and drowns a lot of the faces, giving you really limited time because the water level rises faster if you’re far enough back.”

“I don’t know why you like these,” Lucy said.  “I get crazy anxiety imagining this.”

“There are a few spots where you can ask certain faces certain questions.  The treatments of the redecorating crews change how they behave.  If you can deal with the hazards and bystanders… it looks like Mug Mile has a lot of bystanders, huh.”

“If you can deal with them then what?” Lucy asked.

“It looks pretty straightforward.  Pick a good decorating crew to follow behind that you can deal with, keep an eye out for certain hostile Lost…”

“You call this straightforward?” Lucy asked.

“It looks like the main thing you get from Mug Mile is answers.  On the washed mile, following the washing crew, there’s one face that tells you secrets about other Paths, and a face that gives you answers to things you want to know… but it looks like it isn’t really specific, it rambles off answers to questions big and small at random, and you don’t have long before the next redecorating crew catches up, or the water level gets to be too high.”

Verona nodded.  “So, to me, clear and obvious answer is that you gotta achieve inner peace, answer all of life’s questions, except for one, and then pay it a visit.”

Zed snorted.  “Whatever route you take to be that enlightened, you’re better off sticking with it instead of flinging yourself at that place and walking on a mile of faces to get your answer.”

“How dangerous are the Lost there?” Lucy asked.  “More or less than goblins?”

“You may be underestimating goblins,” Eloise said.

“There’s fewer of them,” Avery said.  “There’s a spinster who pricks you with her needle, and then in an eyeblink, your eyes and all the holes in your body get stitched closed.  The straggler is this person from the redecorating crew who you can’t help but bump into as you enter the Path, who can never catch up to his team.  He mostly tries to mess with you and redecorate you while running to catch up.  Then a bunch of other ‘regulars’ who pop up.  They’re sorta hidden in the crowd, which is I guess why the instructions give really clear descriptions.”

“I can’t help but notice the word ‘running’ in there,” Verona said.

“Looks like it’s a mile-long jog, with a rough five mile an hour pace set by the redecorating crews before and after.  On uneven, mushy, moving ground.  That sounds hard.”

“Next,” Verona said.

“The Shining Bridge.  Apparently it either takes you from our world to an adjacent reality, or an adjacent reality to our world.”

“Not exactly what you’re looking to do,” Zed said.

“Share the grisly details,” Lucy said.

“Light in that area of the Path is elastic and tactile, at least for visitors.  There are a few paths to take, but they recommend the one where you tightrope-walk on the thin beams of light.  It’s apparently very kid-friendly, except for the part where you kinda have to get there by going through some scarier places, or it dumps you in one of those scary places, and there’s always some Lost hanging around.”

“Tightrope walking is kid friendly?” Lucy asked, unimpressed.

“Supposedly!  If you don’t freeze up halfway and need rescuing.”

“How high up is it?” Lucy asked.

“Apparently there’s no ground or anything below.  If you fall enough, you’re Lost, but there’s enough stuff to grab onto or touch on your way down that that almost never happens, and if you know some tricks you can transition to other Paths.  I guess that’s part of what Ed would share if I asked for more details.”

Lucy frowned.  Avery showed her the text on her phone, indicating that bit about transitions and grabbing things.

“We could make that plan B,” Verona said.

“Or plan G,” Lucy said.  “Because there’s a bunch of other options I’d rather try.”

“Want a ride?” Zed asked.

Lucy shook her head.  “It’s a five hour drive, five hours back, and that doesn’t leave much time to do what we need to do, especially considering it’d be the middle of the night.”

“Thanks though,” Avery said.

“We have, what?” Verona asked, counting for a second.  “Sixteen, seventeen hours before morning classes start?”

“You may be crazy, wanting to do this,” Avery said.

“Having this to look forward to is staving off the crazy,” Verona said.  “Ruins?”

“Don’t know the good ways of traveling.  Jessica did say it’s hard,” Avery said.  “And I don’t want to bother her.  Maybe on a better day, or after we establish more of a rapport…”

“Oh hon,” Eloise cut in.  “If you’re talking about Jessica Casabien, there won’t really be better days.”

“Or much rapport,” Zed told them.  “Let me go talk to her.  I’ll see about getting her to help you guys, yeah?  And maybe you return the favor later.  You may owe her too, though.  You probably will.”

“Okay.  Sure, thanks,” Avery said.  She frowned, though.  It felt like this kind of imposition or awkwardness would hurt them in the long run.

“Get sorted, okay?”

“Appreciated,” Lucy said.

“I should get back to my class work,” Eloise said.  “Make sure you clean the diagram you drew.”

“Already done.”

“Good kids.”

Eloise left.  Verona and Lucy put their bags down, and began sorting through the contents.

“I can run back to the room if you need me to grab something.”

“We might need clothing for rough weather,” Lucy said.  “Remember the simulation?  Deeper Ruins?”

“I hate that I missed that,” Verona said.

Avery nodded.  “I don’t think most raincoats will really save you though.  You’d need something like Jessica’s.”

“Or something like people wear on a fishing boat, with storms at sea and waves slopping in over the top of the ship,” Lucy mused.

Avery stretched, arm overhead, hand at her elbow, pulling.  She walked over a bit, turned around, and saw the doll was still at work.

“Tell us if the doll starts to give you a bald spot or whatever, Snow.”

Snowdrop made clicking sounds and turned over.

“We should maybe turn the doll off.  We’re powerful, but we’re paying a steady cost to that thing to keep it running,” Verona said.  “And that leaves us with a bit of our Selves hollowed out, right before we’re going to the Ruins?  Maybe?”

Snowdrop perked up at that.  She made noises, trying to sit upright while the doll’s hand pressed her head down with each press.

“I think she’s right, Snowdrop,” Avery said.

Snowdrop turned human, sweeping the doll up and hugging her.  The doll’s legs kicked, arms groping stiffly out in front of her.

“That,” Snowdrop said, as she hugged the doll tight, “is a very sensible idea.”

“Snowdrop-”

“I know we can’t keep her around forever.  She’s a drain, and what happened to that other kid with a Z-name makes it really clear it’s just not worth it.”

“Can you please not be so difficult, Snow?” Avery asked.

“I’m a big girl, I can deal with it.  I’m not lonely or anything, being so far from my friend Cherry.  I’m very mature, you see.  Too mature for dolls.”

“C’mon, Snowdrop.  If everything goes right, you should get an opportunity to visit your friends.”

“Hey, opossum girl,” Verona said.  “C’mere.”

“I’m okay with this.  I’m obedient like a dog,” Snowdrop said.

“Don’t be grumpy, please,” Avery said.  “I thought the doll would be a neat little thing, not something to fight over.”

“C’mon,” Verona said.

Snowdrop sighed, and walked over to Verona, who hugged her.  Verona stroked her head with one hand.

“You can go animal if you want,” Verona said.  “Full body pets instead of head pets.”

“Sure.”  Snowdrop’s voice was muffled by Verona’s front.  “More comfortable than being hugged like this.  I’ll do that.  Soon.”

“I think you might be spoiled, Snowdrop,” Lucy said.

“Yes.  Sufficiently spoiled,” Snowdrop said, muffled.  One of her dangling arms held the doll, which was losing its hair as the eyepatch slipped.  Avery dropped to one knee on the grass to fix it.

Her phone vibrated in her pocket.  She checked it.

“Message from Zed,” she reported.  “Jessica’s grabbing stuff.  Zed says we should get the same things, if we can.  Raincoats.”

“I didn’t bring one,” Verona said.  “Didn’t cross my mind.”

“I have a moisture wicking hooded top,” Lucy said.

“Sure.”

“I’m going to go,” Avery said.  “Watch Snow?”

“I’ll come,” Lucy said.

Avery nodded.

The notes came in one by one as they jogged over to their room.  A list of things.

They were going to the Ruins.  Cool.

Avery glanced at Lucy, and used her Sight.

She could see Lucy’s hair, apparently a barometer for how Lucy was doing, and it was a bit darker, touched with pink closer to the edges, not so much along its length.

“We’re a bit drained,” Avery noted.

“Good to know.  That’s from my hair?” Lucy huffed.

“Yeah.”  Avery wasn’t really out of breath, but Lucy was.  She’d have to keep that in mind, when it came to her friends and whether they were keeping up.  “I was wondering about that.”

“The pink might be a Verona thing.”

“Is that, like, okay, or is it weird, or…?  I know the hair’s a touchy thing.”

“Not touchy, exactly.  It’s a personal thing, and people like to intrude on a lot.”

Though it was possible that this particular journey might require things other than strong legs.

More items appeared, a series of one-word texts.  Flashlight.  Rope.

“Lucy, can you write some stuff for the Brownies?  We’ll see if they can supply it.  Flashlight and rope.  Extra raincoat.”

“On it.”

They reached their room, and Lucy went straight to the desk.  Avery had her own things.  Her jacket, her medical kit.  There was a multitool…

“Personal memento,” Avery said.  “Nonmagic.”

“Objects we awoke with should work, except I enchanted my knife.  I’m not sure where Verona’s scissors are at.  She purified them, kind of.  I forget the word.”

“I think that’d be fine, if she didn’t jam something into them.”

“Can’t use my knife.  Umm.  Well, since you reminded me,” Lucy said, as she dropped off the paper at the door flap.  She went to the foot of her bed, grabbed her makeup case, unlatched it, and removed a section.  Avery tilted her head to see.  There were some foreign coins, beads, and bits of paper in the bottom, beneath the plastic insert.

“I’ve had this since I was ten.  Verona gave me this.” Lucy took out a creased piece of paper.  It had a cartoon drawing of Lucy with pink hair and Verona, done up in the style of a cartoon Avery remembered seeing but couldn’t name.  Cute.  There was something that looked like alien language all over the rest of the page.

“What is it?”

“She did this really complex, artistic cipher, just handed this to me when I was leaving her place after a weekend visit.  I asked about the pink hair, and she said something about how it seemed right.  We used the cipher twice, then she seemed to forget about it.  Might’ve been too hard to do.”

“Huh.”

Avery felt a pang of annoyance, or… not annoyance.  Not hurt.  She groped for the feeling.

She wished they’d all been friends, back then.  That she could be in that picture.  Which wasn’t fair or sensible, but the feeling stuck.

The phone vibrated.  “Extra belt.  Hand towel.”

“Right,” Lucy said, putting some with the stuff they’d accumulated.  “Did you get along with Jessica after I was kicked out of class?” Lucy asked.

“Reasonably.  I feel like I stepped in something and she got sorta cold.  When I talked about working together, I think I made a pretty good pitch.  I feel like if I could have kept on building that sorta relationship, we could build that rapport or whatever, that Zed says is impossible.”

“It might just be that Zed is right, and Jessica’s got too much going on to be friends with a bunch of girls three years younger than her.”

Avery frowned.  “It feels like for most of my life, it’s been this constant… I dunno.  Like, if I’d been born in slightly different circumstances, a bunch of stuff would’ve lined up right.  Soap.”

“I’ve got soap.  Different stuff like?”

“Like if I’d been born a bit older, or a bit younger, I could’ve connected to my siblings better.  If I was born a boy, I wouldn’t have gotten the same kind of flack for enjoying sports.  If I was born the next town over then I would’ve been able to see Olivia more often.  If my family owned a house on the other side of the river, I could’ve maybe been friends with you two.”

“That’s a lot of could’ves.”

“It just feels like there’s a lot, y’know?  You know that Chinese thing, death by a thousand cuts?  It’s like that, but it’s more like a thousand nots.  I’m not old enough to really be friends with Jessica, and she just radiates cool to me.”

“I sort of know what you mean,” Lucy said.  She reached over and turned Avery’s phone.  “Salt.”

“Sorry.  Let myself get distracted.”  Avery got a pen, went to the door, and grabbed the things that the Brownies had put outside.  She wrote down ‘salt’ on a piece of paper and put it in the door flap, before closing the door.

“I do know.  It’s not nots, for me.  Because I love my mom and Booker too much to give up this life.  I don’t know if I love myself.  I think it changes based on the day, and how recently it was that someone was a dick to me.  But I don’t think I’d give up my face, or age up, or age down, or do anything to change that.”

“I love my family, but I think if things shifted and my life got shuffled just a bit, I’d still love them, but things would fit better,” Avery said.

“Yeah,” Lucy said, opening the door.  She got something that looked like a pepper mill, as long as her arm, glass, with salt within.  She shrugged and put it in her bag, the top sticking out.

“I dunno,” Avery said.

“You’re part of our trio.  Learning magic, seeing a side of the world I don’t think a lot of people even get into.  What, one in a thousand people are practitioners?  One in ten thousand?  Another handful of those ten thousand are Aware, to some degree?  Maybe this is the only ‘fit’ where you could be our friend and be a part of all of this.”

Avery smiled.

“What do you think?”

“That’s… good point.  Hmm.  I’m not sure how good an idea it is to be opening up like this when we’re going to the Ruins, which are supposed to be rougher, somehow.”

“We’re doing a lot of things we’re not supposed to be doing.  But I’d rather do the Ruins with a guide and slight handicap than walk on tightropes made of light or navigate some puzzle house on a giant purple turtle’s back.”

“Huh,” Avery said.  “I was imagining a giant elephant.”

“Hm.”

Avery checked her phone.  “They’re heading to the front of the school.”

“I think we’re reasonably set, given the list,” Lucy said.  She grabbed her jacket, putting it on, where Avery had tied hers around her waist.

Avery nodded.

“We’re giving Jessica lots of power in the coming negotiation,” Lucy said.  “I know you’re eager to go to the Ruins, but don’t agree to anything too ridiculous.”

“It’s not that I’m eager to go there.  We’ve been there.  But I want to figure it out.  I want to go to other places,” Avery said.  “Let’s jog?”

Lucy huffed, then picked up the pace.

It looked like the class session they’d left was ending, and kids were filing out, heading down toward their rooms, to the student center, and a bunch of other places.

The two of them took the other door, avoiding the crowd.

By the time they were at the front of the school, some students had left, and were talking with Jessica, Zed, Verona, and Snowdrop.

“She’s still petting Snowdrop,” Avery murmured, as they walked over.

“I think Verona needs to pet Snowdrop more than Snowdrop wants to be pet,” Lucy answered.

“Is it because it’s her dad, and he’s not great, or is it because of the situation, or…?”

“I think anyone’s going to worry if their parent gets sick.  Whatever their parent is like.  Is it a problem?  Is Snowdrop ‘yours’?”

Avery’s eyes widened.  She shook her head.  “She’s her own self.  It’s actually… I’m really glad that she was arguing over the doll thing.  I worry about how much like… she’s an actual person, and I’m responsible for her, and how much of me is in her, and is she compelled to be my friend, like you suggested with Nina, the librarian, and Zed?”

“Ahh.  Sorry.”

“So even if I’m not one hundred percent great with her being as friendly with some of the goblins as she’s been… I’ll deal.  Because it lets her be her own self with her own preferences.  If she wants to be grumpy about the petting doll, same thing.”

“We really can’t afford to pay to keep that thing active forever.”

“I know.  But if she wants us to, that’s cool.”

Lucy nodded.

There was more to say, but they were getting closer to the people leaving out the front doors, and to the group of Zed, Jessica, Snowdrop, and Verona.  Avery noted the big bucket of chalk by Jessica’s foot.

“You guys are in a rush, and Jessica doesn’t want to wait, so here’s the deal,” Zed said, as they got close enough.  The kids who’d stopped to talk left.  “She can only take you there.  She’s not going to head there tomorrow morning, pick you up, and come back.”

Avery nodded.

“Damn,” Lucy muttered.  “We might have to miss the morning class after all.”

Or,” Verona said.  “Path.”

“Ronnie…” Lucy shook her head.

“There’s more,” Zed told them.

“You pay the entry fee,” Jessica told them.  “We need to dive deep if we’re going to be able to cross.  The Ruins map out emotions, emotional imprints, and the wilderness is hard to cross because there isn’t much.”

“What happens when we go deep?” Avery asked.

“I’ll tell you if you agree.  I’m sharing knowledge.”

Jessica looked at Zed.

“That’s my cue to go.  Be nice to them.  Brie owes them a lot for compromising, and I’m attached to Brie.”

Jessica didn’t respond, watching while Zed walked off.

“You said you’d help me look,” Jessica said.

“I can try,” Avery said.

“Then make me a promise.  You’ll make at least two more trips to the Ruins.  I’ll tell you what to keep an eye out for.  You’ll make a concerted effort to look, feel, and search for my cousin, while you’re there.”

“We three, between us, will,” Lucy said, “if that’s alright?”

“I figured it’d be her, but I don’t care.  Sure,” Jessica said.

Lucy nodded.  Avery did too.

“I think we’re okay with this?” Verona asked.  “Okay.”

“We, the Kennet trio, will make a genuine attempt to investigate on your behalf, three times in total, including this trip you’re taking us on tonight, provided the entry fee is reasonable, we’ll pay that entry fee, in exchange for you giving us safe passage, educating us in what to watch for, treating us in a fair and sane way, and your respecting of the borders and rules of Kennet, as we outline them.”

Gosh, Lucy was good at covering the bases when it came to stuff like that.  Avery saw Verona smile for maybe the first time since the phone call.  Probably thinking the same thing.

“Safe passage will have to include you putting in enough effort.”

“Okay.”

“To respect the borders, I’ll drop you off, then turn back and do my own explorations, since you’ve paid the fee.”

“Which is?” Lucy asked.

“Not sharing details of my practice unless you’re on board.  Pledge.”

“I pledge,” Lucy said.

Avery and Verona echoed her.

“The way I do it, it’s releasing an echo, then traveling to it.  Depending, you can lose some of the impact of the scene, moment, or memory.  But it has to be a strong feeling,” Jessica said.

“So what, like…”

“Each of you pick a memory with very strong emotion associated with it.  A key moment that can leave an impression.  Ideally, you feel something, dwelling on it right here and right now.  It might be visible or viewable, depending on the reception, so I wouldn’t pick anything you don’t want anyone to see.  But make it good.  If you hold back and it’s not enough to get us through, I’ll draw up the circle.”

Jessica lifted the bucket of chalk, then walked off in the direction of the parking lot.

“Well,” Lucy said.

“I don’t know if my emotions are strong enough,” Verona said.

“I think they are,” Lucy said.

“I don’t know which are.  She’s asking us to think of something that makes us feel something tangible just remembering it?  I don’t know if I feel anything tangible in the moments when bad stuff happens.”

“You do, but… you don’t always remember them that great.  It’s like you’re great at forgetting to file those memories away.”

“Which is a problem,” Verona said.  “Because I need one.”

“Happy memories?” Avery asked.

“Ehhh.”

“Coming to school here?” Lucy prompted.

“It’s not unhappy at all, but I don’t know if I can put my finger on it as a feeling.”

“Shock, surprise?  Getting bad news?  Report cards?” Lucy asked.

“Why are those thoughts strung together in your head?” Verona asked.  “I’m not that bad a student.”

“Sadness?  A feeling of loss?”

“Like getting to eat the best treat ever,” Snowdrop suggested.

Verona shook her head.  “The feelings that get to me are… it’s like, going home, and hating going home, because I know my dad’s going to be in a mood, right?  But it’s… it’s not a moment.  It’s this wide feeling that goes all over the place.  Anything that wide doesn’t have anything specific, and anything else gets drowned out.”

“Hmm.”

“I wonder if I’m broken,” Verona mused.

“I don’t think you are,” Avery told her.

“Jessica’s waving us over.  Got all our stuff?” Lucy asked.  “We can ask for tips.”

“She probably won’t give us any,” Avery said.  “If we fail her, she’ll just leave, I’m guessing.”

“Maybe,” Lucy replied.

Verona took the stuff of hers that Lucy had packed, slinging the Brownie-given black raincoat over one shoulder.  Lucy hefted her bag, and Snowdrop dropped into opossum form before returning to human, now wearing her ‘P.O.S.’ possum coat, hood up.  Both Verona and Lucy donned cape, hat, and mask.  Verona transformed her hat into a cap, then pulled the hood over it to protect it.

Avery pulled her jacket on, hood up, wrapped her shoulders with the cape, pulled on her bag, and did up the straps to secure it.  Multi-tool in one pocket, charm bracelet on.  Mask, no hat, cape.

It was a bit much, but she was pretty sure the ghosts and stuff wouldn’t care.

“Inside the circle,” Jessica said.  The circle was a fairly simple one, with a crescent moon inside it, teardrops arranged in a partial circle within the ‘c’ of the crescent.

A few bystanders approached.  Jessica held out a hand, telling them to stop before they got too close.

“Vultures,” Jessica muttered.  “Decided?”

“Is this all of us needing a really good echo to send out, or are you wanting us to add up to one really good echo?” Lucy asked.

“The latter.  But the deeper we can dive, the faster the trip will be and the easier the look.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “I hope mine and Avery’s is good enough, then.”

“Here,” Jessica said.  She handed each of them a folded up bit of paper.  It looked like she’d had it for a while, because the edges were more rounded-off by wear than crisp.

It was a picture of a boy, younger than Avery had expected, shirtless and grungy, with long hair like a girl’s.

“Key things to look for.  He’s outdoors.  There’s an old boat, painted blue, that’s seen better days.  Dinged, paint peeling.  Two men who look like businessmen.  I can’t give you clear descriptions, because he didn’t pick up any.”

“We’re looking for a memory?”

“It’ll be a scene.  Depending on depth, pattern, and placement, it may be in focus, partial, or knit to something else.  A plastic fishing net, not very long, it can be red, green, or blue, dense mesh.  A dog with mismatched eyes, barking.”

“What happened?” Avery asked.  “I mean, if it helps us place it?”

“If one of yours hurts one of yours, your authorities handle it, of course.  If one of yours hurts one of ours, someone on the reserve, your authorities tend to quote-unquote ‘handle’ it.  A slap on the wrist, too often.  Or probation, or bail.  If one of ours hurts one of ours, our authorities are allowed to handle it, usually, depending on how and where, and if there’s any history of crime outside the reserve.  If there is crime outside, we get little cooperation, no resources.  And if one of ours hurts one of yours?”

Jessica shook her head.

“He got in trouble?” Lucy asked.

“He found a toy by a lakeside.  We share, in our community, food when we have it, resources, help.  Toys.  He was young enough he didn’t think things through when he took it.  The toy, a drone, was owned by someone who was technically trespassing, and it was expensive.  Ontario police took him away for theft, and the system swallowed him up.  We had to call, search, and fight to get even basic information on where he was being kept and what was happening.  The charges were eventually dropped, after far too long.  He came back to us two years older with something missing.”

“I’m sorry,” Avery said.

“Don’t.  Don’t waste your breath, because I don’t care.  Just look, and that’s good enough.”

“Drone, being dragged away, are those possible things to look for?” Lucy asked.

“When I find glimpses or pieces, the drone isn’t there.  It didn’t stick with him.  He didn’t care that much about it.  He didn’t even have the controller to fly it.  He thought it was neat.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.

“Why?” Verona asked.

Jessica turned to her.

“Why dedicate your life to this?”

“Because he’s family.  Because there’s nobody else who can and will do this.  If I don’t, then who will?”

Verona nodded.

“Personal items out.”

“We thought maybe your scissors,” Lucy told Verona.

Verona pulled out the scissors.  Lucy had the old cipher and drawing, which got a smile and a silent ‘wow’ out of Verona.  Avery had her photo of herself at the rink.  Trying to smile.

Jessica shook out her raincoat, and donned it.  She wasn’t carrying a lot of stuff.  She reached into a pocket, pulled out a vial of water, and began to pour.  “Who’s first?”

“I can, since this was kinda my idea,” Avery said.

“Focus on the memory.  Push through, push out.  As it separates, give it the object.  Keep your hand held out, palm up.”

Avery nodded.

“Same for the others.”

“Do your best,” Lucy told Verona.

Verona nodded.

Jessica said something in what Avery presumed was Ojibwe, and the words flowed, almost like she was conversing or giving a monologue.

Water sprayed up from the diagram’s edges, like from a thousand water pistols.  The droplets were angled so they shot toward them at a slight angle, raining down around them.

The water fell, then kept falling.  The geysers became a waterfall, a wall of falling water that encircled them.  The water began to pool around their feet, then rose in level.

“Like this, we could enter the shallow parts of the Ruins.  But that won’t do,” Jessica said.  She looked at Avery.

Avery concentrated.  Thinking back to that night.

“Number six!” the coach hollered.  “Skates on!”

Avery was stirred from thought.  She hurried over, dropping her bag by the bench.  There was no locker room, they came geared up and pulled on the essentials at the benches by the ice.  Families and people from all over who were desperate for attention had converged here.

“We’ll huddle while you get ready,” the coach said.

The time for a huddle was weeks ago.  She barely recognized her own teammates.  Their teammates from Tripoli had decided to stay in their town for practices.  They’d been a disorganized mess when grouping together for the last two games, unmotivated, depressed.  Their best teammates had gone to Swanson.

Olivia had gone to Swanson.

Avery bent over, pulling off her boots and pulling on her skates.  One of the girls from Tripoli handed her a metal hook for getting the laces tighter.  Tugging, looking over, she could see Olivia.  Tan, with hair almost lighter than her skin, fully geared up in her pads.

“I won’t give you a long pre-game speech.  The Seabirds are a good team.  Tonight will be good competition, with lots of room to grow and learn.  However tonight goes, focus on that.  Be your best self.”

We’re going to lose and you can’t pretend it’s different.

It sucked.  It sucked as much as anything had sucked in recent memory, and a lot of things had sucked, recently.

She glanced out toward the crowd and saw her family.  Rowan and Sheridan had been vocally clear that they didn’t want to come, but according to mom and dad, this was Avery’s thing.  Which Avery interpreted to Declan getting the television and game console for hours every day, Sheridan and the others got the television every night.  Avery got a few hockey games a year, with reluctant attendance and sidelong jabs from her siblings.

Mom and dad had been trying.  Ms. Hardy had talked to them, and they’d stepped up after an initial panic.  Kind of.  They’d pushed hard for this.  Kept Grumble from putting the news on for the five minute drive over.

“Play your hardest.  Last game of the season.  Marcia, do you need help with your skates?”

Oh my god, some of these guys don’t know how to put their skates on properly.

The Seabirds were already on the ice, leaning over the door to listen to their coach.

Avery finished lacing up.  She pulled on glove, helmet, and grabbed her stick.  She had to wait for teammates who were taking their sweet time getting on the ice, stumping forward with two steps on the rubber mat, waiting, stumping forward another two steps.

The crowd was buzzing.  Many of her classmates were in the stands.  The boys.  The Dancers, who had probably been locked in as a group since Avery had been young enough to wet her overalls in Kindergarten.

Finally, finally, she got to put skate to ice.

She glided forward, skate grazing ice, then picked up speed.  She did some quick, tight laps, while her teammates got themselves figured out.

This was the part she was good at.  The one thing in life she was good at.  It made her heart lighter, when it had so many other reasons to feel heavy.

She’d give her all, she decided, as the faces in her peripheral vision blurred.

She couldn’t help her team to win.  That was hopeless, but she’d work with them as much as she was able when they’d barely practiced.  She’d try to manage some good moments.  Show off for Miss Hardy.

The whistle blew.  Avery stopped, sharp, then skated over.  She glanced at her teacher, who was sitting with friends.

So pretty.  So cool.  Something else to make Avery’s heart lighter when there was nothing else.

You saved me.  Maybe I can give you a bit better of a night by giving you reasons to cheer for me.  She settled into position.  Right wing.  Stick touched ice.

The puck was dropped.  Melissa faced off against Olivia, sticks clashing.  Olivia won.

Avery turned, flanking Olivia, matching her in speed.

Karci flubbed it, letting Olivia by.

Avery pushed forward, getting out ahead of her old best friend.  Olivia’s eyes met hers, maybe for the first time since she’d gone over to Swanson.  Olivia passed to a teammate.

Avery pushed harder, slipping by, chasing the puck, mindful of the possible pass back to Olivia.  She flew straight to Olivia’s teammate, saw the hesitation, and knew she had an opportunity.

Sticks clashed, she claimed the puck, turned to put her body between it and Olivia’s teammate, and pushed off, preparing to circle around her own net.  She’d get her bearings-

Olivia slammed into her, driving her into the boards, flicked the puck over to her teammate, and they’d scored before Avery was back on her feet.

“I know how fast you are,” Olivia said, not looking at Avery.  “I’m not going to give you the chance.”

Then she was off.

And she didn’t.  There wasn’t one chance.  It felt like Avery’s teammates weren’t even trying.  She caught them chatting, chatting, while there was a game to focus on.  Melissa gave it a shot, but Melissa wasn’t very good on skates.  Decent stick handling, but… Olivia was better.

Avery felt the flush of shame, and was aware of the crowd, and how quiet the arena was, all considered.

Olivia threw herself into the boards, directly in Avery’s way.  Avery, forced to slow or stop, passed, and watched her teammates give up the puck three seconds later.

When it wasn’t Olivia’s teammate, it was the girl with ‘Rochs’ on the back of her jersey.  Avery skated past her, but having to go around cost her the seconds she would’ve needed to intercept Olivia.

It felt like drowning.  The hurt of Olivia ghosting her was fresh, like this.  But if she cried and her classmates saw it, she’d be humiliated.  More humiliated.  Her face was probably bright red anyway.

Avery intercepted the puck.  She passed.  Her teammate, one of the girls who’d been chatting, she realized, gave up the puck as Oliva came tearing her way, ready to knock her into the boards.  Just… gave up.

Olivia scored.  Avery looked up at the scoreboard, above the ice.  6-0.

She pushed forward harder, not sure if she was sweating or crying.  She wiped at her cheek with the thumb of her glove.

Maybe she’d quit hockey, after this.

It would’ve been worse if she’d been completely stopped, but she kept getting tastes of what hockey should be.  The rising hope when she passed, saw the way was clear for a teammate.  Then it was taken away.

She intercepted the puck.  She caught up, claiming it from Rochs.  She broke away.  Moments like that, in the haze of being body-checked, intercepted, disappointed.

Olivia breezed in close, and bumped shoulders with her, and she had to take a shot.  She was fast, but she’d been at her best when she could pass to someone like Olivia, back when Olivia had been on her team.  She wasn’t a shooter.  Olivia shouldered her as she shot, and her shot went wide of the net.  Rochs claimed it.

She shot, and the goalie stopped it.

She shot again, and the goalie stopped it.

She passed to a teammate.  Karci.  Karci missed the net entirely, and she didn’t have Olivia riding her shoulder.

Melissa claimed the puck, passing to Avery, when Avery had Olivia right by her.  Avery’s expression twisted, she pushed forward, and took her shot.  The goalie had moved a bit out of the net in anticipation of Melissa taking a shot from the left, and Avery was clear to shoot.

She scored.

The buzzer of the shot being made was soon followed by the horn signaling the game’s end.  Not enough seconds on the clock for anything, according to their league rules.

7-1.

“Damn,” Olivia said.  “I wanted a shutout.  Good one.”

Avery turned, looking, but Olivia was already skating away.  Bumping shoulders with Rochs.

She skated backwards to the gate, only to find a log jam there.

No.  Worse.

The coach was there, to commemorate the occasion with a photo.

Avery looked, searching, but her family was already rising from their seats.  Ms. Hardy was sitting, but not really looking, talking in an animated way with her guy friend.

She was glad they weren’t paying attention.  She was hurt they weren’t paying attention.

Shame and frustration washed over her.

Avery’s eye fell on a woman in the stand, face obscured by the way the lights above them hit the plexiglass.  As Avery shifted position, the light refused to cooperate.

Is she looking at me?

“Number six!” the coach called out.

Avery looked at the camera.

The flash was enough to almost bring tears to her eyes.

She pushed out.  Let that moment go, and while she remembered, she held out her hand, slipping it into a hockey glove.  Picture provided.

Miss had been there.  She hadn’t remembered that until just now.

She’d gone out to get ice cream with her family.  Lucy and Verona had been there.  They’d been at the game, in the audience, but she hadn’t even glanced at them.  The Dancers had taken up her attention.

Maybe because the Dancers were a symbol of how hard it was to break into the social group.  Or how hard she’d thought it was to break into the group.

The Avery echo skated backwards, stick in one hand, photo in the other.  To Avery’s sight, there was a strong connection between herself and the echo, as the echo disappeared into the downpour.

The awakening ritual.

Avery could feel the excitement in a chest that wasn’t her own.  She could feel it, like Verona felt it, and she could finally understand what Verona meant.  The way emotions could feel different.  Dampened.

When the feelings hit her like she was checked on the ice, but wearing padding.

Being on the ice, Avery had felt like the environment was her friend.  The ice was her friend.  Olivia had made a point of showing that she wasn’t Avery’s friend.

Feeling Verona’s feelings, she felt like she was a very, very small heartbeat and grouping of physical sensations in tar.  A small human-shaped bit of clarity in a haze of dark smog.  And nestled in that human bit of clarity was maybe the part of Verona that could be counted on.  Ideas danced in her head, inarticulate.  Imagination.  Her mental pictures were simultaneously less clear than Avery’s own, and more pronounced.

The awakening ritual glowed, and Avery felt feelings in Verona’s chest, felt her heart hammering as much or more than Avery’s had.  The faces of the Kennet Others were lit up, and, to Verona, it was like the rest of the word was swelling, getting brighter, and living up to that imagination.

Avery wondered if she understood Verona a bit better now.

“Didn’t mean to pick that one specifically,” Verona said.

“Damn it,” Lucy muttered, glancing at Jessica.

“I really don’t care,” Jessica said.

“Can you not tell anyone?”

Focus.  I don’t care.  Fine.  But focus.”

Verona gave the scissors to her echo, fainter and number than Avery’s had been.

Avery tracked the tether.  Not as strong.  She hoped Verona wouldn’t lose that emotion and memory altogether.

Lucy lay on carpet, her head rising and falling with someone else’s breath.  She twisted her head around to look up at Booker, who wasn’t even a teenager.  Her head lay on his stomach, his head lay on their mom’s stomach, and her mom’s head was on-

His face changed, like a weird photoshop job, trying to drop in images seen from elsewhere.  From photographs.

“Don’t laugh,” Jasmine warned, smiling.

Lucy giggled, her voice young, and the way they were lying on the living room floor, her laughter jiggled Booker’s stomach, which made him laugh.  It was a contagious effect, spreading across all four of them.  But the more Booker laughed, the more she laughed, and then that set mom off because it was too much.

Booker bumped her shoulder with his knees, his face all squinty and scrunched-up, his body curling up, because he was too far gone.  He pushed her, trying to get her to move off him, then wriggled, trying to get away.

She flipped over, pushed his shirt up, and gave him a big wet raspberry on the stomach.

The echo that Lucy released wasn’t a clear one, but it had a lot attached to it, a vague family shape framing it.

She gave it the cipher with the little drawing.

“Two decent ones, one weak,” Jessica said.  “The-”

Every movement was careful.  Each foot had to be set down with care, to avoid tipping over.

She’d eaten and she was hungry.  When she’d eaten, her stomach had hurt, and she’d squirted out the contents.  After, she’d been tired, hungry, thirsty, and felt mixed-together emptiness with feeling stopped up, in her middle.

Now, even though it wasn’t that cold out, she was trembling.

She nosed at some grass, then chewed on it, prying at it with sharp teeth, tugging it free.  She couldn’t taste anything rich in it, there wasn’t a lot to it, but it was right there for the taking and it felt like an answer to the gnawing emptiness in her middle.

What she really wanted, though, the balm to all things, was her mama.  Her mama was warm.  Her mama provided food that didn’t hurt her stomach, rich and filling, quenching hunger and thirst both.  Her mama would make the world feel less open and empty.  Her mama would protect her.

She shivered, huddling into a crevice, and her mouth opened and closed as she chewed at grass.

The shadow slipped close with barely a sound.  When eyes focused on her, they were close together.

She knew from her very limited experience that eyes being close together meant predator.  It meant hunter.  She’d run into a few things, things that moved and smelled different than mama or than her brothers and sisters.  Some took to the air, others moved along the ground.  Others scampered up trees.

The scary ones had always had eyes like this.

She hissed as it drew closer, her heart pounding enough she thought she could faint.

The shadow nuzzled at her, found the back of her neck, and picked her up by the scruff.  She didn’t fight it.  She was too tired.

The shadow moved her to a shoulder, and she held on, feeling the warmth of her.

She was so grateful for that warmth, even as the rest of her was tired and very close to being done.

She nuzzled in close and accepted whatever was to follow.

“That’s a very small echo,” Jessica observed.  “It-”

The image of a small possum fizzled out, dissipating as a wisp.

“Good,” Snowdrop said, to the disintegrating image.  “Hmph.”

“She didn’t just lose a key memory or anything, did she?” Avery asked.  “She-”

“No.  No.  We’re good,” Jessica said.

The downpour steadily increased.  It began to feel like they were slowly falling.

To Avery’s vision, the tethers that stretched from them to their images, and their images were off over the edge, out past the boundary.  Pulling them down, or weighing them down.

The more that feeling of falling increased, the more the rain came down.

Avery drew Snowdrop close, shielding her some.

Images began to appear in the rain.

“Go,” Jessica said.  She turned on a flashlight.  “Keep moving.”

The world was broken up and crowded, and drenched in rain.  The school was there, surrounded by broken earth, water coming down from the trees with enough force and vigor to carve out moats.  The broken earth formed an island, and the island was pressed up against other, similar spaces.  Towns.  Roads were decrepit, eaten-through like swiss cheese or leaves that caterpillars had gotten at, and when enough of them had broken up, they’d pressed in close, mashing together.

Images swept past Avery.  Some rude, others violent, others scary.  Many were like Lucy’s memory of the man who she’d been in the laughing circle with.  Barely pieced together, or off, blurry.

They were wading through a crowd, on broken ground that was sometimes sloped, sometimes deceptive in how intact it was or wasn’t, water pouring down around them like a light stream or river, cold enough to numb.

Jessica held out her hands, getting them to stop.

Silent, like an eel, something with a head as big as one of the ruined buildings off to the side slipped by.  Eyeless, legless, skimming over the water and ragged ground.

An echo flew past Avery with enough force to take her off her feet.  Images of a woman, bored in a restaurant, rocked her, emotionally and physically.  She could smell the booth, feel the boredom.  And then it was gone, leaving her own emotions stirred, her physical body still in the process of being bowled over.  She slipped on uneven ground.  Snowdrop reached for her, grabbing her, but she’d found her footing before pulling Snowdrop off her feet too.

She hadn’t even straightened up all the way when another echo slipped past her.  A hand grazed her and passed through her, giving her a taste of the feeling in her midsection, only that feeling in her midsection, like she’d lost something or someone precious to her.

She was falling behind.  She hurried forward, hand on Snowdrop’s shoulder, and more echoes were in the way.  Too densely packed to avoid touching some.  She pushed past.

Money troubles.

Mental images, disconnected, of hands twisted in pain, struggling and failing to hold a pen.

Being laughed at.

Mental images of food, spread across a table.  A sense of accomplishment.

She forged forward, and Verona grabbed her hand, helping tug her forward as she slowed.  A moment later, Snowdrop was behind Verona, pushing.

Something more profound.  An Echo with darker shadows and brighter brights to how its blurry splash of a face and body were put together.

And with that, the sense of dying.  Of her heart slowing, stopping.  Her breathing grew ragged.

Snowdrop tugged on her arm, while Verona had a hand at her armpit.  Verona looked like she was suffering too.

A bright light shone in her eyes, doing nothing to dismiss the feeling.

Jessica threw something.  Avery felt the grit in her hair and face.

The feeling fled.  Jessica hauled her and Verona to their feet.

Through the smell of hospital.  Past a taste of vomit.

Into a memory of a book.

They were moving through a crowd, echoes sitting shoulder to shoulder, other figures here and there, stalking their way through.  A man, tall, with no eyes, what appeared to be a long coat actually a part of him, like a fish had fins, his mouth a weird shape that suggested it hinged away from the upper half of his face.

More echoes.  Some were darker, more disturbed.  Others faded.  All had a taste to them.

Lucy had the salt grinder, and was depositing salt into her hands, hucking it at the most intense images.  Forging a way.  Jessica didn’t stop her.

With skin as white as paper and slightly melted, like candle wax, slick with rain, a creature sat, as large as a building.  It reached out with long fingers to pick ghosts out of the crowd.

Jessica seemed wary of that one.

Avery had imagined, kind of, that with Jessica’s request that she go looking two more times after this, that she’d make a day trip of it.  It’d be easy.  She’d win her over.  If not by finding some clue or thread to follow, then through sheer effort.

Like trying to impress Ms. Hardy at the hockey game.  She kept making promises to herself and not keeping them.

What was she doing?

The downpour was too intense to really speak, and she felt breathless, anyway.  The images hit her too often, on too deep a level.

She was holding Snowdrop’s hand, checked on her friend, and then gave her a tug, gesturing.

Snowdrop handed Avery the doll’s head, body missing, and Avery took it.  Then Snowdrop switched to animal form, and Avery lifted her into a pocket, covering it with a flap.  A little white nose stuck out.

She pressed forward, doll’s head in one hand.

She moved forward with vigor now.  Because she wanted to do this.  She wanted to experience these worlds, and see if maybe there was a good fit out there there, or another perspective, or something.  A place where she could stand atop some equivalent of a clifftop or scenic vista.

She thought of what Eloise had said about using connections to draw oneself to a place, and looked for the connections to home, faint bands visible in the midst of faint figures, images, and images almost appearing out of the downpour.

She moved through the crowd like she evaded players on the ice and soccer field.  A ghost passed through the doll’s head, and seemed to get stuck there.  It whispered at her with the doll’s mouth, “I’ve disappointed them so badly.”

She gave the doll’s head a shake, and the ghost came free.

She supported Lucy, and with Verona right behind them, they pressed on.  Avery navigated, Lucy dispatched problems, and when they faltered, Verona pushed them from behind.

She felt maybe a dozen people dying in different ways, when certain stark echoes passed through her.  She felt people getting hurt.  She felt people hurting other people.  She saw images, and it was so hard to push the distinct mental pictures out of her head that she had trouble conjuring up the mental image of what Jessica had told her to look out for.

Blue boat with a dinged and peeling underside.  A lake.  A pair of indistinct businessmen.  A dog with mismatched eyes barking.

None of the above, in this jumble.

“Rough patch ahead,” Jessica announced.

She could talk in the midst of all of this?

Jessica reached into a pocket, then lifted up a bottle with what looked like a firefly within.

It flashed, flickered, then glowed, shedding a broad orange light.

Echoes scampered out of the way.  Four, five, or six indistinct shapes, slick and fishlike, pulled away from the gloom.  Avery hadn’t even seen them.

“Hurry.  Go, go, before it dims,” Jessica told them.

They hurried.

The morass of dark, slimy things closed in behind them as the light passed.  Echoes continued to lance through them.  Water rolled past them, sometimes up to mid-calf, sometimes with enough force that she slid back a few feet with both feet firmly planted.

Avery looked at connections, then pointed.  Jessica nodded, pointing her flashlight.  In this kind of gloom, with so much rain and so many intervening, transparent echoes, the light was feeble.  A five percent increase in how much they could see.

She pressed forward, doing the climbing work over a pile of rubble, then reaching back to help lift Verona up.  Lucy got help from Jessica.

They were covering a lot of ground, she realized.  The areas they moved through were all residential, all small towns, all compressed down to their most populated, emotionally active areas.  Places where her handprint-Sight would have been densest, were she to look at them.

The doll’s head twitched as an echo grazed it.

They moved downhill a way, then through trees that bordered a trail that apparently saw heavy use.

Into a tunnel that passed beneath a highway..

Avery touched a wall for balance, and pulled her hand away, looking at it in the meager light.  There was a red tint.

Like diluted blood.

She had to try three times before she was able to get the sentence out.  “I think we’re home.”

“Climb,” Jessica said.  “Get out.  Draw on the connections to the items you gave the echoes.  Reel them in, reel yourself up.”

Snowdrop wriggled energetically in Avery’s pocket.

“Snowdrop knows- knows ways to get around, around here, I think,” Avery said, wincing as an echo grazed her.  Alcoholism, maybe.

“I’ll go back now, then,” Jessica said.

Avery nodded.

Jessica adjusted her raincoat, fixed her hood, then ducked her head, moving out of the dripping tunnel, back the way they’d come.  No fanfare, barely a word of farewell.

They climbed.  Out of the tunnel, then up the side of the hill.

Toward familiar ground.  They’d been approximately here, a while ago.

The blood was thicker, and clotted, meaty chunks and strands of hair strewn across the ground made it clear that it had been dragged.

It was easier to follow the trail, now.

At the risk of not being able to ascend, or running into something native to the Ruins, they followed the trail.

Died at the Arena.

Dragged to…

They reached the river.  The bridge.

The Ruins were only the emotionally resonant or emotionally important places, jammed together, worn down and blurry at the edges, drenched.

Thunder rumbled in the distance.

The first night they’d visited the ruins, they’d thought the body had been moved.  Taken to pieces and then moved when they’d been on their way to the Arena, where they might have found what was left.

Moved here.

Echoes swirled, indistinct.

Avery held out the doll’s head.

Put it in the container.  Seal it,” the doll whispered.

Moving it around was like trying to get a signal from a bad radio station, fiddling with the knob, with no perfect answer, only a good enough.

-er to wass-

“-tonight-”

-f summer-“

-eal with the three even-

She gave up.

Snowdrop climbed free of her pocket.  She led them to a hollow between tree and bridge, up through gutter-water, and to the bridge itself.

To a shallower part of the Ruins, like where they’d encountered the eyeball collector.  Not all that far from here.

Avery reached for her connection to the photograph and memory, then gently reeled it in.

As she did, the world came more clearly into focus.  Like the rays of light that could appear around light sources when squinting, the rainfall went in and out of focus.

She felt exhausted, emotionally.  Raw.  The memory of Olivia swept over her like any echo, but this one settled back into place.

It didn’t feel diminished in the way she’d expected, but having let it go and brought it back in, it felt somehow less important.  She’d held it close to her heart, but it didn’t feel essential.  Maybe it was diminished that way.

They were in Kennet, without rain, the three of them dripping wet, loaded down with bags, exhausted.

Lucy pulled out her phone and checked.

“Tell me that we didn’t lose hours,” Avery said.

Lucy showed her.

Eighteen minutes, total.

“Jessica spends days in there,” Avery noted.

There was a sound of sirens, of an Ontario Police police car racing across Kennet.

“Are they here yet?” Verona asked.

“Arrived right when we did,” Lucy said, looking at her phone.  “You’ll have to put off checking on your dad.”

Verona smiled at that, a sad expression more than a happy one.

“Text from Matthew says it looks like the Skeptic, the Glamour-Drowned, and the Gilded Lily,” Lucy said.  “The local Others can’t even get close to them.  I want to regroup, get information, but we can’t let them get up to too much mischief.  I’m thinking one or two of us should stall, while the other or others get sorted.”

“Snowdrop and I can try intercepting them,” Avery said.  “Or at least keep an eye on them from a distance, in case something crops up.  We got a lot of practice with surveillance on the locals.”

“I like the surveillance idea more than the intercepting,” Lucy said.  “Just… even if it’s knowing what the Gilded Lily has or finds.  That seems important.”

Avery nodded.

Verona pushed wet hair back away from her face.  Even with a hood up, she’d gotten drenched.  “And if you do wind up intercepting or getting spotted-”

“Don’t,” Lucy warned.

“-You’re better at being nice, and I don’t think most of these guys are bad people.  So you’ll do better if you try talking it out, probably.”

Avery removed Snowdrop from her coat pocket, pulled off her coat, and tied it around her waist, then slipped her mask off.  Her shoes were soaked, but beyond that, it felt nice to be soaking wet on a hot summer day.

“Looks like it’s the park spot, west of town,” Lucy reported.

“‘Kay,” Avery said.

“Be careful,” Verona warned.  “If you’ve been using glamour-”

“I’ll keep a healthy distance.  If I can’t, I’ll try to deal with the Gilded Lily, specifically.”

“If you can,” Lucy said.  “Looking at you with the Sight, it doesn’t look like the omens are heavy around us like they were at school.  No strife, but that doesn’t mean it can’t catch up with us or find us.  Nicolette hurt Melissa.  Whoever this is can hurt us.”

Avery nodded.

“Stay in touch,” Verona said.  “Report in early and often.”

Avery nodded again.  She looked down at Snowdrop, who clung to her shoulder with sharp nails.  “Ready?”

Snowdrop shook her head.

“Great.”

Avery took off running.

[4.10 Spoilers] Spell Notes #3

Back Away – 5.a

Interlude

Last Thursday: Spell Notes #3


Clementine slowly pulled up to her parking spot, came to a gentle stop, and then put her battered old car into park.  Both hands settled at the very top of the steering wheel, giving it a death grip.

A big red pickup with oversized tires and all the trimmings sat in her parking spot.  It was elevated, exposing the work that had been done to give it additional exhaust pipes, and had a decal across the back that read ‘GO HOME FAT CHICKS’.

With the way it was parked, it simultaneously occupied Mrs. Preston’s parking spot.  And William Love’s, and the parking spot of the hoarder in room thirty-seven.  It sat diagonally, centered on the point where the four spots met.

Frigging Mr. Figueroa.

She could have called the tow company, but she’d been around the block on this one.  She’d been around the block on a lot of fronts.  Roberto Figueroa wouldn’t get towed.  He was pretty much invincible when it came to that stuff.  If anything, he would thrive on skating by.  Deborah in fifteen had called a noise complaint on him at the start of the year, and the cop that ended up arriving was Roberto’s buddy from a few years ago.  The cop and Roberto both had laughed in poor Deb’s face when she insisted on the law.

Clem had a pickup truck too, but it was about as different from Roberto’s as was possible.  It was a Kei truck, about five feet by ten feet in width and length, and just under six feet tall.  It was a little rusty, and there was still a bit of blood in between the interior panels where she hadn’t been able to angle in right with a toothbrush, which was only really a problem if she ran the heater too long, and the engine was a hack job because the truck’s engine had been too small for it to go much faster than sixty kilometers an hour.  The tires were about halfway between the size of a regular tire and a dinner plate, and the truck’s bed was shallow, not coming up much higher than the knee.

She used that last part, the positioning of the truck’s bed, and did a three-point turn, before getting out and taking her groceries out of the back of her truck.  She placed the bags on the pavement, climbed back in, and reversed into her spot.  It put the rear end of her truck between his left front and left back tires.  She eased back until she felt the bump of his tire against the back of her truck.

She was running a risk that he’d roll over her truck, but she was one of the only people Roberto didn’t come after, and about the only thing that slowed him down was being an asshole right back.  She had a responsibility.

She grabbed the black canvas bags, giving them a quick check-over, then headed for home.  Mr. Morrow was at the back, wearing slippers, pyjama pants that looked like hospital-issue, and a t-shirt.  He was coughing violently, a handkerchief to his mouth.

“Are you okay, Randall!?” she called out.

He kept coughing, not responding.

She picked up the pace, hurrying over, as he doubled over, coughing so hard that he couldn’t really hold his hand in front of his face, but instead clamped his hand to it, handkerchief held there.

“Do you need water?” she called out.

With one violent cough, a wet spot appeared in his lap, running down his pants leg.

“Oh, buddy,” she said, more to herself.  It was the awkward kind of situation where she wasn’t sure if he’d want that added attention.

He half-hobbled, half-stepped over to the door.

“Could you hold the door!?”

He let himself in, and the door swung closed behind him before she could stick the toe of her shoe out to catch it.

She sighed, adjusted her bags, and pulled the door open.  She avoided stepping in the droplets of urine on the floor.

The main hallway was ‘L’ shaped, extending from the parking lot on the one side to the alley on the other, with the front desk at the front-facing corner.  Some of the rooms for the less able and elderly were on the ground floor, as were the offices, closets, and everything else.  There was a rickety elevator that had probably taken more lives than her little Kei truck had before she’d owned it, and stairs that led up from either side of the front desk, merging behind it on the way to upstairs.

“Good afternoon, Arlene,” Clementine greeted the girl behind the partition.  She looked and saw Mr Morrow making his way up the stairs, clearing his throat, one hand holding his wet pants away from his leg.

“Hey Clem,” Arlene said, smiling.  She was a teenager about two years younger than Clem, with neon green braces that made her look younger.  She looked way too happy to see Clem, but that was just how Arlene always was.  Clem liked it.  It was like coming home to be greeted by a very enthusiastic dog.

“There’s a bit of a mess in the hall, I think,” Clementine told her.

“Randall let me know.  I called the janitor.”

“I tried to call out to him, but he gave me the cold shoulder.”

“He has ear infections, he said.  Can’t hear a thing until they clear up.  On top of the rabies scare and the oste-ost-”

“Bone infection.”

“Bone infection… poor guy.  It’s one thing after another.  He’s all dopey with the meds right now.  My uncle asked me to put him on the list of people to check up on… which I forgot completely until I just said that.”

Arlene kicked, wheeling herself over to one side of the office, where she found a clipboard.

“Glad I was able to help remind you, then.  Hey, do I have any mail?  I’m expecting an order and I’m looking forward to it.”

Arlene pushed, the computer chair carrying her to another spot.  She bent down out of sight, and then lifted up a box to the counter.  Narrow and flat and… Clem had to lean over the counter to see.  Label clearly printed.  ‘Bookhole Print’.  Arlene placed two envelopes and a bit of junk mail on the side of the counter while Clem looked.

“That would be it.  Thank you.”

“There’s also this.”  Arlene lifted up a box.  It was battered, stained on the one side, and covered in haphazard duct tape and packing tape.  The tape looked like it had trapped a lot of debris.  ‘Return to Sender’ was printed on the side.

Clem’s heart sank.  “I didn’t send that.”

“The postman insisted,” Arlene said.  She tilted the box.  “I guess you could read that label as having your address on it.”

Clementine looked.  It looked like the label had gotten wet and the print had bled out.  It was possible to read it as saying ‘Mother Theresa’.  But the intact part of the area code and address was more convincing than that.

“If it’s not yours, I’ll keep it put aside and tell them to take it and find the real owner.”

Which would put the box in close proximity to Arlene and the postal staff.

“No,” Clem said.  She gave Arlene a quick smile.  “I’ll take it.”

“Do you need a hand?  You’ve got your groceries.”

“No,” Clem replied.  She adjusted her grip, managing the four bags of groceries, the box from Bookhole, her mail, and the strange, oddly heavy box.  “No.  I’m pretty good at wrangling messy stuff.  You stay and make sure the janitor gets that mess cleaned up.”

“On it.”

“Take care, Arlie.”

“You too!” Arlie called after.

Clem carried her stuff up the stairs, bags swinging.  At least there weren’t more drips.

Poor guy.  Arlene was new enough she apparently hadn’t heard about Randall getting the actual bubonic plague, or that the rabies scare had been real.  They’d given him a heat treatment to try to burn the rabies virus out of him, and it had given him mild brain damage.

She wondered, if he’d known, or if Mr. Bristow had told him he lived by different rules, then was there a chance he could have done something different?  Was it that Randall was perpetually ill, or that he was perpetually ill but never actually died from it?  Was there a possibility that he could have just… weathered the rabies virus?  Was that even humanly possible?

She let herself into the apartment, used her heel to stop the door from violently swinging closed, and used her elbow to adjust a painting of an old woman that hung askew.

Once she was in her living room, she was able to set down the boxes.  She carried the bags to the kitchen, dropping the canvas bag into the vegetable crisper rather than emptying it.  She’d have to fix that later, but she wanted to hurry, just in case.

She removed her jewelry, tied back her hair, washed her arms up to the elbows, and then donned an apron.

With a coarse scrub-brush, she rubbed down a knife.  She’d picked up a high carbon chef’s knife a while back, hammer forged, with a black carbon texturing along the back of the blade.  It hadn’t ended up being nice for the kitchen, but there were other uses.  She dried it with care, gave it some whisks with a honing rod, and set it aside.  She cleaned up some cast iron tongs in the same manner, without the honing.

She carried her stuff over to her coffee table.

There were probably rules for this, but nobody was telling her what the rules were.  Cast iron and carbon steel wouldn’t work against some of the problems, but if she was working with unknowns, in her lengthy experience, these things tended to cover the most bases.

She sat on her couch, used the tongs to move the box… and then moved it back to its prior position.  She went for her box from Bookhole, tong-ing it over, then holding it with the tongs while slicing at the tape with her knife.

She used her hand to lift the books out, one by one.  Put to the Proof.  Compost.  Lean Mean Machine Learning.  If Ever There Was.

The other box slid slightly toward the edge of the coffee table.  She used the tongs to put it back where it belonged, and pinned it there while putting some of the books on her bookshelf.  She kept things carefully arranged, so her wall of bookshelves had books she’d read starting on the leftmost bookshelves, books she hadn’t read on the rightmost side, and some random odds and ends as spacers between.

She hummed as she sorted it out, putting away all of the books except the music biography.

“Now, let’s see what you’re about.”

She used the tongs to hold the box while surgically taking care of the duct tape and packing tape.  She cut the box down the sides, and let them fall flat against the table.  She had to peel back newspaper from… it looked like 1995.

It looked like a plaque, of the sort that an animal head was mounted on, but the thing mounted was a baby, curled up in a fetal position, wrapped in bandages.  There were signs of a tail, withered and ratlike, no longer than her hand, peeking out from the bandages, and most of it was covered except the mouth, which had raw red flesh extending from the edges of bandages to the small, badly decayed teeth.

“Hm.”  She poked it with her tongs.  There was more give than she’d expected.  “I do appreciate you being upfront with the fact you’re going to be horrible, but I don’t think I can sell you.  And if I can, do I really want to work with the kinds of people who would have you?”

She set the tongs down and stretched, picking up Compost and looking at the first few pages.  She had lost her collection of books a while ago, after a word-eating wooden bird had left her mute, unable to read, and had turned all of her books into decorations, the pages white with no ink.  She’d owned this before and she was happy to reread it and refresh herself.

Putting her life back together again.  It felt good.

She went over to her computer, because reading a biography about music composition had to be accompanied with classical music.

Discard me.”

She turned.  The little mummy had moved across her coffee table, centering itself.

“You talk, huh?” she asked.

There was no response.

She turned back to her computer, logging in.

Take me to pieces and scatter the pieces to the wind.  Burn me to ash and transmute me to elemental flame and air.  It matters not.”

She had a message from Mr. Bristow.  ‘Screentime me’.  Why did that make her heart sink as much as the mysterious package finding its way to her?

Yes, rent was cheap, with utilities included, but some of her neighbors, like Figueroa, and the expectations…

I will make endless offal boil from your holes until they make mountains.  Bury me in the ground and I will do the same for the worms.  The worms will taint the earth and the earth will taint all that grows green, and those that eat of that taint will vomit out their own viscera…”

She looked back, and it fell silent.

She hit the button to make the call before it could start up again.

Mr. Bristow fumbled with his phone in the opening seconds.  She waited patiently.  She had a few glimpses of trees, of grass, more grass, trees, and then his perpetually flushed face, upside-down.

There was a thump.  She turned, and saw the plaque with the mummy had fallen to the floor.

“Be right back,” she said.

“Yeh,” he said.

She grabbed her tongs and picked up the plaque, carrying it with her to the computer.

Mr. Bristow was trying so very hard to keep up with technology and trends.  He’d give his all, and then move on to the next thing, forgetting the last.  Earlier this month, he’d been asking the guy in room 60 about VR.

The phone calls being Screentimed was an extension of that.

“Any interest?” she asked, holding the thing so he could see it.

His face contorted in disgust.  “What is it?”

“No idea.  It talks, though.  Lots of stuff about entrails and taint.”

“That is worrying.  I’m going to call a friend about that.  How’s your apartment?”

“It’s fine.  Everything’s in working order.  Sink is finnicky sometimes.  Doesn’t always drain.”

“Let me know if I need to call a plumber.”

I’ll eat your foreskin and the foreskins of all who follow from your line.

“Did you say something?” he asked, huffing.  “Sorry, walking.  I can’t look at the phone and see where I’m going at the same time.”

“I didn’t say anything.  Where are you?”

“Old place I used to own,” he said.  “Doing a bit of reconnaissance, seeing how it’s doing.”

The phone stirred.  He pointed it at a building.  It was long, with a stone exterior.  Many of the main windows had a blue tint to them.

“It’s beautiful.  It looks like it’s been maintained well.”

“It isn’t.  Sorry.  Listen, I don’t like to bother you, you’re a good tenant, and you’ve been good to my acquaintances, but I’m wondering if I could make a request.”

He sometimes had a way of talking around things, being so roundabout that by the time he got to the point, the person on the other end was so eager to be done with the runaround that they accepted whatever he was asking for.

“What request?”

“A minor errand I’m asking some people to do.  I can’t put the so-called cat and the hound in the same place if I’m not watching them, and there are only so many people I truly trust as chaperones.”

“These things always wind up being more headache than they’re worth, no offense.  I usually get a month or two of free rent from you, but-”

“Do you want more?” he interrupted.

“I don’t- I’m fine financially, my business is doing well.  I’m getting buyers.”

“That’s so great, that’s good.  I’m glad you’re doing well.  You remind me of one of my nieces.”

“Arlene?”

“No, no.  Is she still there at the front?”

“Yep.”

“Good for her.  Good.  I’ve run through most of my nieces and nephews, and the nieces and nephews once removed, not many of them have that staying power.  I don’t like bringing people in off the street.”

“I like her.  The guy you have on the after-dark shift is a different story.”

“Accommodations must be made.  Listen, listen, I really would like the help, and I would normally ask Ted, he’s reliable, but he’s with me.  What about an apartment move?  You’re in the corner, now.  Do you like the corner apartment?”

“I love the corner apartment.  I especially love the part where the neighbor to the left of me doesn’t let out a scream once an hour, every hour, round the clock.”

“Oh that’s good.  Not so good for this negotiation, though,” he said, huffing for breath.  It looked like he was on a forest path now, and she could hear water.  “I couldn’t convince you?  Perhaps I could owe you a favor for a later date?”

“I want information,” she said.  “Answers.”

“Ah.”

“I want to ask you questions, and get straight answers.  I bring some things up with people you refer to me, who buy the quirkier items and they dodge the questions.  I want answers to those questions.”

“I can’t- shouldn’t- hmm.  I do respect you a great deal, Ms. Robertjon, you’ve been a good tenant.”

“Please.”

“I could- hm.  Hmmmmmm.”

The plaque she was holding with the tongs jerked.  She looked at it.

“Hmmm.”

“There’s nobody else?”

“You would be a perfect fit for this, I think.  You get along with them well and your particular talents, succeed or fail, should- hmmmm.”

He said often that he used to be a professor, then a teacher.  Even now he tutored, according to Arlene.

She felt a bit sorry for his students.  She held onto her patience.

“Give me a list of twenty questions,” he said.  “I’ll pick one to answer.  There can’t be follow-up questions.”

“You haven’t even told me the job.  How do I know if this ‘payment’ is appropriate?  Also… I’d still like that cut on my rent.”

“If only my nieces and nephews were as on the ball as you are.  Hmm.  It’s a long drive.  Ten hours.  You’d be driving overnight, stopping somewhere along the way.  I’d guess… a one or two day stay at the location itself.  I’ll cover all of your accommodations.  You’d be looking after Daniel Alitzer and one other.”

“What about Daniel’s little sister?  She watches him.”

“She’s with me.”

“What are you up to?  Are Ted and Shellie doing you favors too?”

“That could be two of your twenty questions, I think,” he said, before laughing.  “They haven’t maintained the wooden bridge here.  What a shame.”

He wasn’t especially old, but he had an old man vibe to him.

You will drag your dangling entrails behind you while you blindly wander my tainted realms.  Impossible miles of innards, and you’ll feel every inch of them.

“I’m getting a bit of static,” Mr. Bristow said.

“Can you hear me?” she asked.  He nodded.  “I’m thinking you should give me ten questions,” she said.  “You pick one of the ten.  And three months of rent.  As a starting point.”

You will tread on the vitals of others and they’ll tread on yours.  Your knees will bend with the pain of each step another takes on what trails behind you.  And you, you small, sweat-drenched man, for all that you pretend you are a buffon and a blowhard, for all that you claw to power, you will be reduced to doing the same, eyeless, stumbling the earth while each step tears more of your endless innards from within you.  And you must wander and search, or you’ll never find an end to your torment, nor will you find the foreskin you pine for, lost to you.”

“You there?  The connection went fuzzy.  There aren’t many cell towers this far into nature.”

“I’m here,” Clementine said.  For all that he pretends?  That was interesting.

“Good.  Clementine, my dear, I’ll send them to you.  Listen, I have a meeting with someone, I should go.  Thank you for getting back to me.  Keep an eye on Daniel, he’s a good boy.”

“We’re not done negotiating.”

“We’re- Yes, okay, listen, if it winds up being more stressful, talk to me about it.  I know Daniel can have his moods, but he’s so good at finding things of value and uncovering patterns.  You’re good at finding things too.”

“Are we looking for something?”

“I’ve got to go.  They’ll explain to you.  If it winds up being too much, I’ll give you another month of not having to worry about rent, and maybe we can talk about shortening the list further, but I’m already pushing it.  Ten questions and three months is fine as a starting point.”

“What about the mummy plaque?”

“The-”

She held it up for the webcam, using the tongs.

“Oh!  Of course.  I’ll see about texting you the details, if you’ll please remind me if I forget?  I’ve got to go.”

He hung up.

“So he’s faking it?” she asked the plaque.

It remained silent and still.

She found her puzzle bracelet, slipping it on, adjusting a cube with three turns, slid a little prism through the hole in the cube that the bracelet’s chain was strung through, then headed to the hallway, checking the coast was clear before stepping outside, locking her door, unlocking it, and stepping back through.

The door no longer connected to her front hallway, but to her bedroom.  Books were piled up on the bedside table, clothes were on the floor, which she should do something about.  She also had a whiteboard with a fancy frame, and some fine decorative lace she’d drawn into two corners with a fine permanent marker.  A reminder to file her GST and HST amounts, and, in the top right corner, a little heart and a note left by a one-night stand.  It thanked her for a wonderful seventeen hours.  There was a phone number.

She’d met them at this motivational thing, and they’d joked about how bad it was.  The joking had become flirting, the flirting had become chemistry, and chemistry had become Clem taking them back to her apartment.  They’d fallen fast asleep together at four in the morning, woke up together when it was close to noon, and barely left the bed until it was dark out again.  Cuddling, talking, touching, connecting.

In any other person’s story, it might have been the start of a beautiful thing.  A chance meeting leading straight to something like a honeymoon.

Clem walked through kitchen, then the front hallway.  She adjusted the picture of the old woman, which hung ajar.  Then she continued into the living room, every room in a straight line that should have carried her out past the street.  The windows were fogged up, with a diffuse light shining through, making up for the fact that the lightbulbs didn’t work like this.  She passed into the bathroom, where she pushed aside the shower curtain and saw the storage room.  A room that wasn’t in her usual apartment.

The shelves were stacked.  There was an energy to the space, where it felt like everything was moving, but not in a way the eye could see.

“You will be alone, Clementine Robertjon.  You’ll be utterly and completely alone, blind and hurting, hurt by others who have no idea it’s you they’re wounding as they try to make their own blind way through existence.  All of mankind will.  Every individual an exile.”

A child’s toy in the corner laughed.  Something rustled off in the other corner.

She checked a case, metal, with several locks and a chain.  She gave it a one-handed shake to remind herself of whether she’d left something inside it or not.  She’d left it locked with a bike lock and several different padlocks, which was annoying.

“You will pass from this world alone, scarred, hurting, and ignorant.”

A music box started up, tinkling.  The child’s toy giggled again.

She strode from the storage room before things could get livelier.  She carried the metal box by its handle, the little mummy plaque with the tongs.  She passed by the message with the heart again.

She couldn’t allow someone to get that close.  Anyone else would get a love story, possibly something to carry them into old age.  But she couldn’t risk it.  She liked them too much.

She needed the answers.  The solutions.  Some hope that there was a normal life somewhere on the far end of this.  Maybe then she could put that phone number into her phone.  Show up at their door and throw herself at them.  Kiss them and accept them like they’d kissed and accepted her scars.

She opened the door to find herself face-to-face with a short blonde woman with her hair in a side-braid, a very straight nose, thin lips, and a penetrating stare.  She wore a t-shirt and stretch pants, and had a bag with her.

“So you are home.  I’ve been knocking,” Sharon Grigg said.

“Ah.  You’re going on this trip?”

“Uh, yeah, hon.”

Oh no.

She’d been conned.  Three months of free rent and one question weren’t nearly enough.

She’d have words with him.

“I’ve got to do some stuff.  Do you want to come in?”

“Only if you’re doing some of the driving.  It’s a long trip and I want to arrive at least tomorrow afternoon.  I hate driving when it’s dark.”

Sharon strode into the apartment.  In passing, she fixed the picture of the old woman, which hung askew.

Daniel was in the hallway.  Long-haired, beautiful.  Languid and clumsy.  Insightful and lacking in common sense.  He held himself like he was wounded, somehow, and spoke and did so much with confidence.

“I would hug you and give you a kiss on the cheek, because you seem so sad, Clementine.  But that thing you’re holding is too ugly.”

“Right.  I should deal with this.  Let me- come in, please.”

Daniel followed her in, keeping a fair distance from her as he did so.  The rooms had fixed themselves.  The bracelet only really worked if she was alone.

Sharon had already migrated into the living room, picking up the book.  Clementine, to have the elbow room, went to her dining room table, setting the plaque down with care, so the tongs wouldn’t scratch the wood, and then got the box.  She had to fetch her keyring.  She turned to Daniel.  “Would you watch it?”

“I would take my eyes off it forever, if I could.  My life is worse for having seen it.”

God, she loved his voice.

She used the keyring to remove the locks.

“Are you into this stuff?” Sharon asked, from the other room.

“The book?  Compost?”

“Yeah.  I wouldn’t read this unless I had to for a class, and I’d put it off until the last minute.”

“I like that stuff.  Reading about people leading their true lives.  Pursuing passions.”

“And the composing stuff, is that because you’re oriental?”

“I- no.  No, Sharon.  On multiple levels.  It’s all sorts of passions and interests.  I just got one by a model and one on A.I.”

“I didn’t mean that in a bad way.  It’s positive, right?  Moms instilling their kids with classical music.”

My mom was drowned when I was nineThere was no instilling.

She ignored Sharon, dialing in the combination for the bike lock.

“May I stop watching it?” Daniel asked, sounding pained.

“You- yeah, yeah, Daniel.  Sorry,” Clem said.

He turned his back, walking away.

“You’ve got the craziest knick-knacks,” Sharon said.  She picked up a stone hand, small like a child’s, that sat on Clementine’s shelf.

“Don’t touch things,” Clementine said.  “I’ve told you before.  Please.  And put that back in the dish.  It bleeds from the stump.”

“Bleeds?” Sharon turned the hand over, looking at the place where it was ragged and rough.  The ‘core’ of the stone hand where it would have attached to the wrist was a crimson stone with bits of white.  “I think it’s probably an iron-rich stone.  It picks up humidity.  Bleeds?  Come on, be rational.”

“Whatever it is, don’t get it on you, and don’t get it on my carpet, and please stop touching my things.  And Daniel- Daniel, don’t touch anything.”

Sharon approached, standing so she had a clear view through the rest of the apartment, and presumably, of Daniel.

“That looks so fake,” Sharon observed, indicating the plaque.  “That box seems like overkill.  I mean, I get that you’re trying to sell an illusion to buyers, and it clearly works because wow.  Is the rent much higher for the corner apartments?”

“No comment.”

Rude.  Just promise me, friend to friend, that if you move out, I get dibs.”

We’re friends?

Oh god she thinks we’re friends.

This trip was going to be so much worse, knowing that.

“Are you watching Daniel?”

Sharon stepped back so she had a better view through the apartment.  “Oh… he’s doing his thing.”

Sharon walked off.  Clementine watched her, and watched as Daniel, singing to himself while facing the bathroom mirror, swaying, turned to Sharon and swept her, unwilling, into something of a dance, twirling her.  Sharon stumbled and nearly crashed into Clementine’s little table and attached mirror in the front hallway.  As relatively small as Sharon was, that trajectory and speed came very close to obliterating the table.

Clementine turned to the plaque, and was surprised it hadn’t whispered.  She gave it a prod, and found it firm.

Carefully, she transferred it into the reinforced metal box.  She sealed the box, latched it, locked it with the three padlocks, and threaded the bicycle chain through the loops in the exterior before clicking it closed.

Daniel was singing without words, while walking a tight circle around Sharon, who looked very unimpressed.  He did a kind of dance that didn’t touch her, and for Sharon, who wasn’t playing along, it had to feel like a child taunting another child, saying “I’m not touching you, I’m not touching you.”

Clementine ducked past them, leaving the plaque in the box on her dining room table.  Daniel switched to singing to her, reaching out, expression and body language like he was imploring something of her.  She took the reaching hand and gave it a kiss, and he flashed a brilliant smile at her, singing with more gusto and passion while she continued on to her bedroom.

She kept a bag in case she needed to leave fast, so that was convenient.  She gathered some minor extra things.

Behind her, Daniel stopped singing as tunelessly and wordlessly, and it sounded like he was singing something specific, in another language.  Clementine felt a full-body shiver, the rest of the world as good as gone.

Even Sharon seemed captured.  Defensiveness gone.

The moment passed.  The singing became something tuneless but pleasant.  Wordless and aimless and beautiful in its own way.  Clementine’s heart thumped in the wake of it, slow and heavier than she could remember feeling it.

She went to the whiteboard, touched fingers to her lips, and then to the heart.  It was a wistful thing.  Sad.  There was a good chance that someone that cool and that good had already moved on.  Her policy was a limit of two dates and she was on the fence about whether she should even allow the second, in this case.  Did a one-night stand followed by a day-long date count as one or two?  Was it dangerous, when she liked them that much?

But thinking about it gave her something to work toward.  Thinking back to that day-long date in bed gave her a past that wasn’t all tears.

She had to do the tax stuff too, she noted, reminding herself.

Bag collected.  She got the book on the music composer, to read when she wasn’t driving, grabbed the modeling one, and then picked up the case.

“Out.  Let’s go.”

The other two got their stuff and headed out her apartment door.

She paused, making a conscious effort to remember the little things.  Stove was off, no lights on, the child’s hand wasn’t bleeding, no ominous music, no fire, no stray bullets lying in the corner… they liked the couch.  There were three scratched-up figurines of Buddhas and they were in the right order.

The picture of the old lady- she reached for it with an elbow, because her hands were full, and stopped.  It wasn’t askew.

Good.  Well, that simplified life.

Thanks Sharon.

The tire popped as she was rounding a corner.  She steered hard, trying to correct, and to avoid the head-on collision with another car that was in the opposing lane.

A car horn blared, and Clementine leaned into the steering wheel, shutting her eyes for a moment.

It couldn’t be simple.  It couldn’t be easy.

“Damn it,” Sharon complained.

They’d had to take a detour, to drop off the metal case with some of Mr. Bristow’s friends.  Which had been an event.  She’d opened the case and the normally cool, calm, and collected people had reacted like she’d set them and their houses on fire.

She did have experience with houses being set on fire.  The matches she’d let her brother take, the time she’d had to set the Matching Dollhouse that had appeared across the street on fire, and there was the house she’d tried using as a storehouse for items that had been taken over by the Hairball.

They hadn’t ended up paying her.  Between their agitation and Sharon demanding they get moving again, she’d ended up leaving.  She’d have to take it up with Mr. Bristow.

“I swear, if you fucked up my car-” Sharon said.

Clementine drove onto the shoulder, checking a few times on the other car, which had come to a screeching stop.  Sharon climbed right out, and Clementine, once she had checked there was no incoming traffic, slipped out as well, leaving Daniel in the back seat.  She walked around the sedan to where the tire had been.  It was rags, now.

“Accident, not malfeasance,” Daniel said, leaning out of the open window.  “But accidents can be malfeasance.”

“And grown men can talk like grown men,” Sharon said.  “Fuck.

“Do you have a spare?”

“Yeah.  Of course.  I’m prepared for everything, but I’ve got camera equipment and computer stuff packed into the back, and I’ll have to take it all out.”

“I’ll help,” Daniel said.  He climbed out of the window with more of a smooth, fluid motion than some people stepped out through an open car door, and dropped down into a squat, before standing like a colt taking its first step.

“If you help me with that stuff you’ll get distracted and misplace some of it.”

“There’s a lot to be distracted by,” he said.  He held out a hand, feeling the wind.  “Dust in the wind.  And a strong, dizzying smell of blood.”

“No, there really isn’t,” Sharon told him.

“I’m going to go talk to the driver of the other car,” Clementine said.  She looked both ways, and then jogged across the street.  Hopefully they would be forgiving.  People in small towns were supposed to be nice, right?

She approached the window, and slowed as she got closer.

She stopped.

No driver.  Had- had she heard them open the door and leave?

But she could smell that blood that Daniel had mentioned.  She glanced back to make sure things were okay.

In the back seat, multiple trash bags had been lashed around a roughly cube-shaped object.  The object had been belted in with the middle seatbelt, but with the sudden stop, it had apparently flopped forward.  It rested at an angle against the two front seats, some of the trash bags ripped.  Blood dripped down onto the floor of the car.  Where it was ripped, she could see red fur.

“I think I’m going to take a pass on this one,” she decided, speaking to thin air.  “I’ve paid my dues already, yesterday.”

She left it behind, heading back to the others.  She reached out for and held a bag for Sharon, while she worked to get the spare tire out of the compartment inside the floor of the trunk.

“Are they okay?”

“Perfectly.  Bystanders are taking care of them,” Clem lied.

“It looks like they walked off for a breather after that scare,” Daniel said, his arms and upper body draped over the roof of the car.  He winked at Clem.

“Can you not put all your weight on the top of the car and jostle it when I’m preparing to jack it up?  Clementine, since you’re the babysitter, can you take Daniel for a walk or something?”

“I can.  You don’t want help?”

“I can change a tire, hon.  I can’t deal with… that.  Not after a ten hour drive.”

“I can barely deal with myself,” Daniel mused aloud.  “I must be insufferable to other people.”

“I like you just fine,” Clementine reassured him.

“I’m so touched,” he said, as they walked away.  He linked arms with her.  “And I’m fond of you.  If I could do it without hurting you, I’d sweep you off your feet.”

“I… really relate there, Dan.”

“Ah,” he said.  He touched her chin and turned her head so she faced him.  “You fell in love.  What a tragedy.  Will you pursue him?  Her?”

“Them.  I need to find my way to normal first.”

“I will be your most ardent ally,” Daniel whispered.  Then, in a more serious voice, he asked, “How will we do this?”

“I need you to be good.  I need you to make this job easy.  Then I get to ask our landlord some questions.”

The place they’d nearly collided with the other car was by a triangular bit of grass, at the foot of a ski hill.  There was a place to pull off, and some picnic tables.  A family sat at one table.

They got up to leave around the time Clem and Daniel were walking by, gathering up snacks and trash.

Leaving behind a gold watch.

Was that-

Clementine turned, looking back at the car they’d nearly crashed into.  Some teenage boys had pulled out the trash bag and were looking around.

Was this-?

“Sir!” Daniel called out, to the departing family.  “You forgot-”

Clementine gripped his wrist, squeezing.

The family didn’t even seem to hear them.  Clem had only managed to catch a few of the people who left these things in her path.  There was usually a story.  It was usually helpful.

This felt like one of those things.  She looked closer.  A watch with a broken face.

“We’ll sit at another table.”

“We’re not going to take it?”

“No.”

“But it glitters so.  It catches the light.”

“No, Daniel.  Please.  I said to make this easy.  As my friend.”

He sat at the other table.  “As stars-crossed lovers of others.”

“Are you in love, Daniel?”

“With the world, with possibilities, with dreams, and a bit with every girl I come across.”

“Nobody specific?”

“No.  I don’t know if I could.  They gave me such a love for singing and tragedy, I don’t know if I have enough room in my heart to give a girl.”

She nodded.

But she worried.

Three items in less than twenty-four hours?

She looked out over the small town.  It was just big enough that she could see it all without having to turn her head to take in more of it.  Framed by hills.

“This isn’t what our keeper thinks it is.”

“He’s not our keeper, Daniel.”

“This place, this town.  It’s so bloody and beautiful, and there are motes of dust in the air that catch the light in a way that pierces my heart.  Our keeper is so cruel, sending me here.  I wonder if he knew what he was doing.”

“That mummified thing you didn’t like?  It said Mr. Bristow pretends.”

“Oh he does, he does.  Oh, this place is so heady with blood it makes me feel like a carnivore drunk on rich meat.  It’s making you richer.”

“The items?  It’s… this place is worse for me?”

“It’s all lining up, making you more you.”

“Fuck, okay, do you want to leave, Daniel?  I don’t think it would earn us points with our landlord, but if this place is bad for you maybe we should turn around and go.”

“But then how could we find you a way to reunite with this them that you fell for, hm?” Daniel asked.  He placed elbow on table, chin in elbow, his long wavy black hair in his face.  His eyes peered through the hair, looking off to the side.  “Perhaps we could ask that deer for directions.”

Clem twisted in her seat.  A deer wouldn’t be surprising in a town like this, with more nature around it, but-

It was a girl, walking through the edge of the woods, with red-blonde hair, a raglan tee, and shorts.  A girl a bit younger ran behind, with waist-length blond hair.

“She’s skittish.  Pretending she doesn’t see us.  We should be gentle when approaching her.”

“Is this what Bristow wanted us to investigate?  Or are we getting sidetracked?”

“I think the sidetrack is the main track.”

“That’s more worrying than a lot of main tracks I can imagine.”

“I can imagine a lot,” Daniel said.  “But I don’t think he would send us to do much killing.  You’re too gentle, Sharon would hate it, and I’d be very bad at it.  I’m so distractable.  I leave that sort of task for my little sister.”

“You what?”

“Ho!” Daniel called out, raisng a hand.  “Hello!”

The girl with the reddish hair froze in place.

“Daniel, don’t-”

He was up out of his seat.  Clem had to extricate herself from the picnic bench and chase after.

The girl ventured a bit closer.

“You glitter,” Daniel said.

“Can I help you?” the girl asked.

“You’re carrying it.  It swims in the air around you.”

“He’s… quirky, sorry,” Clem said.

“Are you, um, new to Kennet?  I haven’t seen you around.”

“Not staying for long,” Clementine said.

“You dressed yourself up in it.  You took so much care, but you’ve been using it less.  Why be so conservative when you have it to spare?” Daniel asked.  “Paint with bolder strokes!  Be bolder!

He stepped closer, and between body language and his intensity in tone, Clementine grabbed his arm, stopping him from advancing.  The girl took a step back, and the younger one with blonde-brown hair stepped to one side, almost protective.

The girl looked scared.  Really scared.

“Daniel?” Clem asked, tightening her grip.

He looked at her with the saddest eyes she’d seen.

“Do you think you could take a seat at the bench?  Leave the watch alone.  Just… give me a chance to ask for directions and stuff?”

“Directions.  We have to find you your way to where you have to be.”

“Yeah.  Please.”

“I can put aside my own heartbreak if it means sparing you from yours,” he said.  He touched the side of her face.

Then, slumping, swaying like he was a bit drunk, he made his way back to the bench.

“Sorry,” Clementine said.

“I don’t um… I’m not so great with people who are… off, apparently.”

“Sorry again,” Clementine said.  “I’m sorry to bother you.  I don’t want to keep you.  You can go back to your walk, I’m going to look after my friend.”

“You should go,” the girl said, almost whispering.

Clem paused.

“Leave.  Whatever brought you here… whoever.  If you’ve got a goal or if there’s something going on… I don’t think it’s worth it.  There are other ways, that don’t make things this messy.  Go.”

Clementine paused.

The blonde girl with dark circles under her eyes shook her head.

“Okay,” Clem said.  “Okay, sure.  Yeah.  My… acquaintance is fixing the tire that blew out.  We nearly had a collision, I think it was my fault.”

“A popped tire is your fault?”

“Yeah,” Clementine said.

“Okay.”

“I’ll take us straight out of here, if she lets me drive, or I’ll convince her to go.  Somehow.  I know well enough to take advice when I hear it.”

“Thank you,” the girl said.

“I don’t suppose I could ask questions?  Get some answers?  I… I’m pretty wildly desperate.”

“I’m sorry.  I don’t think I should.”

Clementine clenched her fists.

“Your friend is really making himself at home,” the blonde girl said.

“Listen, I’m going to go anyway, we’ll get in the car as soon as the tire is replaced, and I’ll get them to go even if you won’t answer.  But please, I scrape by on the little tidbits I can dig up.  I don’t know if you have any tips, or anything-”

“Your friend left,” the girl with the reddish hair said.

Sharon wouldn’t, would she?

Clementine turned.  She looked to the road, and saw that sure enough, the car was gone.  The other car without a driver was gone, which had had the black bag in it, as were the teenagers and other bystanders.

“Sharon, you-”

“Your other friend, I meant,” the kid said.

Daniel.

She looked.

The picnic table was unoccupied.

No no no no no no no.

Daniel being off on his own was so much worse, and Shellie might literally kill her, if Daniel hadn’t been fibbing about that.

They both left?  They left her like this?  Alone?

She walked over to the table, trying to see what might have captured his attention.

She looked back, for the two girls.

Both were gone.

She pulled out her phone, to dial Sharon, because the first priority had to be Daniel.

She didn’t get as far as dialing the number.  She stared at the time.

It had not been that long of a car ride.

Which…

Fuck.

She hurried over to the other bench.  The golden watch was still there.  A broken face, each bit of broken glass showing a different set of hands moving at different speeds.

She dialed Sharon.

Hi!  You’ve reached Sharon Grigg.  I’m busy filming and can’t get distracted with my phone, I hope you understand.  Leave a message and I’ll get right back to you as soon as I’m done my show.”

“It’s Clem.  Call me,” she said, leaving a message.

She ran her hands through her hair, turning around on the spot.

She swiped the phone from the picnic bench, then strode toward the road where the car had been parked.  “Fuck!”

“Miss!” someone called out.

She stopped, turning.

It was a woman who might’ve been homeless, from the state of her teeth, with the red face of an alcoholic.  “You’ve got a, uh-”

The woman pointed at her foot.

Clem’s shoelace had dragged across the ground, and it had picked up a passenger.

“Saw it glinting,” the woman said.  “Thought you might want to know before you lost it, if it’s yours.”

It was an earring, the hook caught on the fabric of the lace.  With a long blue gemstone.

Clem spent a few seconds shaking her head, looking down at it.

What had Bristow done, sending them here?

“Thank you,” she told the woman.  She grabbed the earring and broke into a run.  Daniel first.  He was most important.  She’d start by heading toward the prettiest places, and go from there.  Which looked like the river.  She held her tongue until she was out of earshot.

This was the worst place for them to be.  The worst place for her to be.  But she had responsibilities.

Back Away – 5.b

Interlude

Normal people counted time by steady increments, like the serpent’s sway of the metronome.  Daniel studied the anatomy of a cloud against the night sky, backlit by the moon, and let it tell its inconsistent passage of time.

Easily an hour’s time passed in the time it took him to exhale once, slowly, watching the cloud.  Clementine continued her conversation with the Deer.  Clementine had pretty Eastern features, a fine Western way of holding herself and picking out her clothes, and scars here and there that didn’t hold to the notions of east or west or north or south.  They were scars that, if they were to be described with directions, and those directions were to get names, were a black direction, a death direction.  The road one walked to an early demise.  To the worst things.

Daniel had started in one place.  He didn’t remember what came before it, except what Shellie had made him hold onto.  His name, his relationship to her.

He’d traveled, and he’d stopped.  He’d reached the end of a road and all that surrounded him was freefall.  Horrendous and cold and lonely.

He had a direction he wanted to travel.  He wanted more of what he’d left behind.  Right now, on the cusp of freefall, he lay with his cheek on the picnic table in a park, his arms draped out across the surface, back arching uncomfortably to hold the position.  This was a place that smelled faintly of car exhaust, gasoline, fatty foods, smelled less faintly of grass and Faerie things, and smelled strongly of blood.  The wood was coarse and rough, carelessly hewn out.  His clothes were rougher still.  He could feel sweat in his eyes and it made his hair stick to him.

He had once dwelt in a place where there had been little freedom.  The singing had been hard and heartfelt, and every day had left him as less of the Daniel he’d once been.  But there, even in the Aulwasr Temere, where everything had been meant to intimidate and promise pain, there had been sweetness.  Sheets of wormsilk and skins taken from animals and people bathed in tears.  The hallways had been made to gather up and shape the flows of air, so they felt like silk and elicited goosebumps, if one was walking toward an important place, or chills followed by sweet relief, or touches of air against the fine hairs of the body, that felt like the caresses of hands all over.

There were things that were nice here.  Things that were beautiful.  He could appreciate a lot of it in the same way one could appreciate a bareknuckle brawl.

Wearing clothes felt like a bareknuckle brawl, compared to what he’d once been draped in.  Eating felt like a bareknuckle brawl, compared to what he’d once tasted.  This table felt like a bareknuckle brawl, compared to the art of the surfaces that once surrounded him.

His fingers twisted and contorted, forming claws that made his hands tremble with the exertion.  With those trembling claws, he reached toward the Deer, her rat, and Clementine, cheek still on the table, arms fully extended.

He wanted to drag his fingernails across her skin until he’d scraped away every last mote of dust.  Even traces, as bloody as they would be in the aftermath, would be sweet solace to what ailed him.  A taste of home, a brush of the familiar.  Even in his clumsy hands, he would do more, and he would find relief.

He couldn’t.

Clementine was in love, and Clementine had been good to him.  A potential lifetime of love in this gritty, ill-tempered world was worth more than any brief solace he might manage.

Their conversation continued while the four arms and two hearts of a cloud danced past the moon.  Their mouths didn’t move.  They were trapped in a different parcel of time.

He had learned patience from dealing with those who would never die and knew that to be their truth, but this still stood to be an interminably long wait.  Sharon had already gotten fed up with trying to call them and wait for them and had driven off.

He stood, stretching, peeling himself away from the coarse wooden table, and walked while still stretching.

Over to the watch that lay on the table.

If he was careful, turning his eye to finer, subtler details, and if he used his nose and the fine hairs of his arms to trace the movement of this blood-laced air, he could see that the world around the golden watch was broken, in very much the same way the watch’s face was broken.  A narrow sliver on the watch cast out boundaries to define a narrow slice of the town, and within that slice time was passing faster.

He shifted, ending his stretch and translating the movement into a momentary writhing, feeling the temperature and the movement of the air around him.  He stepped briefly into another part of the world where time was moving slower, and he luxuriated briefly in how different it was, fingers tugging at the roughness of his silk top, running through his hair.

Another step over, to another place where time moved at another speed.

He had a sense of it.  The air of the sky met the air of the ground with more of a rustle, the slightest of changes in direction.  Light was subtly different.  All across this town, people would go about their days, wondering how their evening had flown by, or finding they were getting a lot done.  But they wouldn’t realize.

It was subtle but he had been educated in the subtle.

He felt his way through the different spaces and passages of time, but the closest one he could find to Clementine’s wasn’t nearly enough to catch him up.  She moved the slowest, and his next best bet was to join her in that parcel of time.

Except she’d asked for privacy to talk.  He wouldn’t defy her.  It made him deeply uncomfortable to go against the express wishes of people he held in esteem.  Back where he’d come from, being disobedient, however well reasoned, was cause for terrible consequences.

By that same measure, he didn’t adjust or touch the golden watch.

Perhaps… perhaps he would take a detour.

He could see the way the light caught on some of the dust.  Even in the nighttime gloom, there were hints of a depth of color that normal human art could only aspire to.

Two faerie, here.  He had a good sense for that type of thing.

He found his way to the sliver of time that was passing fastest.  He could skip down that way, where the light of the town caught on the surface of the shallow river, explore a bit, and see if he couldn’t catch the trail, then come back.

When she was taking as much time as she was, then this was hardly a problem, was it?

There was a path that overlooked the water.  He walked it, walking down to the water, cupping some into his hands, and then quick-walking up the hill to stick to the places where time moved faster.  He cast some into the air, ducked into the next parcel of time, and caught it, then turned, trying to let the breeze catch the hairs on his arm in a way reminiscent of home.  In the doing, he forgot how long his legs were, and stumbled, nearly losing the water.

His long, skinny limbs felt like they were something unnatural, on him.  Time had moved differently there too.  Not in actuality, but in perception, in a place where perceptions could be crafted with more art than mankind could craft space shuttles and collide atoms.  He’d spent what felt like a lifetime as a boy, singing, and out here, the days slipped by without substance or meaningful event.  Here, the speed with which the days passed and his body grew caught him off guard.

He saw a movement in the grass, and crouched low.

A large insect or a rodent.  Which was it?

He watched the grass.

Insects followed, as if they were pulled along a string, but the strings were invisible, drawn out in pheromones, light and shadow.  He had known many insects back home.  Rodents, though, they froze in fear, and then they pushed themselves.

Rodent.

He wasn’t so good at this.  Especially so far from home, especially without a stage, or an appropriate audience, let alone accompaniment.  Had he been kept by another court, he might have mastered it, but he had only learned bits and pieces for dignitaries, singing on his ‘days off’ from the Great Lament.

He sang to it in a language it didn’t know it knew.  It took him three tries, and the second nearly scared it off.

It approached from the grass.  He took it into his hand and he touched it with a gentleness that alleviated it of a short lifetime of anxieties.

He continued singing, for himself now.  Picking words, sorting out verses.  He missed the boys he’d sung with.  He wished he’d known their names, but there had never been an opportunity to know them.  Then they had been consigned to grim endings for their failures as singers.

If his old keepers could hear him now, they would consign him a hundred times over to horrible fates, because he soiled what he had previously sung with the vulgarities he now uttered.  There were no acoustics, there was no instrumentation, no stage, no setting, no terrible irony in the specific pattern of calugeo on window and the lugeo of verse.

Daytime birds flew through the evening air.

He sang to them as he’d sung to the mouse.  It took him four tries, and one dipped low, and then they flew on their way.

He turned in the air.  There was a train station here in the world of men where a whisper could be heard like a shout.  Back home, those things were commonplace.  The right movements could catch and send the wind.  There, he would be able to turn the course of a distant bird.

He kept spiraling, mouse held close to his heart, as he walked down the gravel path, grass on both sides, vulgar rivets cut in where bicycle tires had passed.

Another bird passed.  He gave it his best attempt, putting the mouse at his side and letting its claws catch on his beltline.

It turned in the air, dipping low, and he beckoned.  He found the right movements in the air, dancing, the right intonation, whispers, pitch.  People nearby watched him.

He caught it out of the air, felt its heart beating in its tiny chest, and cupped it in his hands.  A stomp of his boot helped the mouse to push itself, and a turn of his body gave it a course.  It traveled from his beltline, only an elastic because the tightness and discomfort of a belt made him want to heave or excise pelvis from flesh, across his back, and up to his shoulder.  A movement of his arm helped guide it.  Tiny nails dug into flesh, and he turned to help disguise the mouse’s movements from his audience as it traveled down his arm.

Holding the captured robin within his hands, he placed it into a pocket, let the mouse travel to his hands, and then flourished, holding it high, his song reaching a proud crescendo.

To his audience, a bird had flown to his hands, he’d cupped it to his heart, then stretched his arms out, holding a mouse instead.

And his song- it lacked so much.  But here, in this world, without the necessary pieces, it was as good as it could get.  He’d captured their attention.

Only for a moment.  In another time and place, he’d have them wholly and completely, for as long as he could sing, and he could sing for hours.

He lowered his hand and let the little mouse go.

He was tired, restless from his time in the car, and from being so close to the Deer, who glittered with Faerie stuff.  Thirsty.

He looked around, trying to find a place he might quench that thirst.  The river’s water tasted like the pollution that had been delivered to it by the cars and runoff from streets.

“Mister?”

He turned.

It was a little girl.  One member of his audience.  He was so bad with ages, but she was half his height.  Even though he was tall in a way that continually surprised him, it still made her very young.  Three?  Five?  Eight?  He’d forgotten any and all points of reference for such things.

“How did you do that?  With the bird?”

He smiled.  “Trickery.”

“How?”

“Tell me, child, is there any place I could buy a drink, nearby?”

“You mean… a bar?  My daddy goes to a bar but I don’t know where.”

“Water,” he said.  “I would take Faerie wine, but I must make do.”

“I… there’s a store that way.  It’s not very far.”

“Would you show me?”

“You’re a stranger.”

“I am so strange I cannot even believe it’s the case.  Yes, I am a stranger, but I swear to you, I will not harm a hair on your head.  My sister did tell me I need someone to watch me, in case I get into trouble.”

“Like a babysitter?”

“Or a guardian, a guard, a keeper.  If you would oblige me for a short time… even though time is a little bit broken in this place, I would pledge you a hint.  A peek at true magic.”

“I- my mom…”

A woman shouted, a little bit away.

“…she’s calling me.”

“You’ll get into a bit of trouble, but I’m promising you magic.  I’ll open your eyes and you’ll see a bit more magic in the world for the rest of your life.  Isn’t that worth it?”

She hesitated.

He hummed, and with a flourish that disguised his hand movement, took the robin from his pocket and placed it on her shoulder.

She startled as it flapped its wings, though it didn’t take off, and took a few quick steps, trying to walk away from something that was sitting on her.

“Hands up.”

“What?  The-”

“Hands, hands,” he said, touching her arms near the armpit and moving them up, bringing her hands together.  He whistled briefly.

The bird settled in her cupped hands.

He began walking away, singing a song in a language birds had supposedly known once and forgotten.

The bird flapped, moving as close to him as he could get, and rather than let it go away, the girl followed, holding it out.  She gave a quick look back in the direction of her mother.

“I may have been younger than you when I first saw magic,” he said.  “I saw more than you could imagine.  Are we on the right path, to get to the store?”

“I think?  It’s not far.  But I usually have someone take me.”

Not old enough to be on her own.  Well, she wasn’t on her own.  She had him and a bird that was happy to perch and listen to his song.  She kept looking back in the direction of her mom, but she followed behind as if she were in fetters.

He sang, tuneless and wordless, trying out vocal sounds.  The bird chirped, and he moved his hand, snapping his finger in response.  He sang, it chirped, he snapped.  He snapped, it chirped.

The convenience store came into view.  Singing to it in a language one of its forebearers had once heard, he soon had it chirping to accompany the singing.  The little girl was wide-eyed, taking it in.

The store came into view.  The door was open because the store was hot, the young lady at the counter sweaty.  He hid his distaste, knew that he himself had a shine to his skin.

He had to wrestle with himself to find that part of himself that could see the joy in it.  In ‘roughing it’ in such a situation, facing the elements, even if those elements were a small convenience store with peeling paint and a bored teenager at the counter.

He picked out a bottle of water for himself and his little companion, then patted himself down.  He had no gold coins, no curios, little magic things, motes of imagination or any tokens marking favors owed by faerie, fairy, man, or spider.

He turned to the little girl.  “Do you have any coin?”

“I- no.”

“Hey, kid,” the girl at the counter said.  “Seen you around.  Where’s your mom?”

“She’s…” the kid trailed off, looking back in the direction of her mom.

“It’s a babysitting arrangement,” Daniel told the girl at the counter.  He approached her, and settled his elbow on the counter, chin on his elbow.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“I’m twenty-five.  I- I shouldn’t have answered that.”

“I don’t know how old I am, but I’ve been told I’m thirty.”

“Okay, um… I haven’t seen you around before.”

“And I haven’t seen you.  Funny how that works.”

He looked into her eyes, and his own eyes widened.

Her eyes were a light gray-blue, flecked with gold.  He could stare into them, and he could get lost in them, at least for a moment.

“I do love your eyes,” he told her.

She gave a nervous laugh.  “I’ve heard that before.  Usually from my mom.”

“They are eyes with stars in them, and they’re meant, in my expert opinion, to look out and look down on the world from a tall and fantastic natural place, on a night where the sky is filled with even more stars.”

“Haven’t heard that before.”

“Climb a mountain, young lady,” he told her, ordered her, with some intensity.  “Climb a mountain and sit atop it, accomplished and tired, and look out toward the horizon in the evening, far from any city.  You’ll be inspired.  A thought will connect.  It may be visual art, it may be music, it may be science, or a scene that must be captured on stage or film.  Then chase it. Chase it down until your legs can’t carry you and you lose all hope, break down into tears, then pick yourself up and find a way to keep chasing.”

He meant it, with every word, and she took it in without question.  She was silent for long moments, seemingly as lost in his eyes as he was in hers.

“Why?” she finally asked.

“Because you will make something beautiful.  Someone looked in my eyes once, and said something similar, but they saw a deeper darkness rather than stars, and they said I should sing.”

“Did you?” she asked.

“I did.  Then I stopped, to save my sister.  I walked away and it has been the second biggest tragedy I’ve ever experienced.  I could tell you more, but my throat is parched.  I would like this water.”

She stirred, as if shaking herself from a spell.  “It’s, um, one seventy six.  Each.”

“I don’t have any money.  I’d offer you a song in exchange for it, but I shouldn’t sing for others.  Would you take something else in trade?  Would it suffice if I struck a pretty enough pose?  I know people pay models and I’ve been told I’m very pretty.”

“I don’t, um…”

He adjusted his posture, taking light, shadow, and environment into account.  His fingers met his hair, almost clutching it, so the longer hair flowed through his fingers.  He projected intensity at her, wanting, and need.  It was less than a thousandth the artistry that some of his keepers back home had managed, and it was a thousand times what other people here typically experienced in their lifetime.

“I would like to hear you sing,” she said.

“You’d have to come with me.”

“I don’t, um-”

“Come.  You can’t remain here.  This is dismal and soul-crushing.  I’d rather give you wonder and expand your soul twofold.  You know, deep down inside, that you are meant for better than this humid, manufactured little box, with sweating refrigeration and false lights.”

“It pays the bills,” she said, with a half of a smile.

“And what does paying the bills do for you?” he asked her.  “Does it enrich the soul?  Does it expand you as a person?”

“It does make me feel a bit more like an adult.  I still feel like a teenager, most of the time.”

“It always seemed to me,” he mused, “that the more someone chases adulthood, the more their world shrinks.  They leave more behind, they close doors, and make the big life decisions that narrow down their options.  In love, in housing, in career…”

“Isn’t that the point?” she asked.  “To find your place in it all?”

“What if it wasn’t?  What if there was a way to hold onto childlike wonder, hopes, dreams, and avoid closing doors?  What if you could capture innocence or beauty or brilliance and build a world using those ideas, that imagination, and that wonder?”

“It sounds nice, but I’m not sure where you’re going with this.”

“Come with me, walk away from this.  I will show you wonder within the hour, one way or another.”

“That’s a heck of a pickup line, and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t working on me a bit.”

“I’m told I’m very pretty, and I’m very sincere about believing in wonder.  I’m quite desperate for it, as a matter of fact, and I like your eyes.  I want to look into them more tonight.”

“Aren’t you babysitting?”  She looked at the kid, who stood in the doorway, holding the bird.  She looked surprised.  “Is that bird real?”

“I’m the one she’s babysitting,” Daniel told the girl at the counter.

“What?”

“I need a lot of supervision, because I get into untold amounts of trouble if I get distracted.  It would be good, I think, if someone were to babysit her, while she babysits me.”

“Um, kid, where’s your mom?”

The kid looked back the way they’d come.

“Why don’t I give her a call?” the girl at the counter asked.  “What’s her number?”

“I don’t know.  He said he’d show me magic.  He did a magic trick before.”

“Do you want to, um, take a seat behind the counter?  I’ll give you a treat, and we’ll work out how to call your mom.  Does that sound like a plan?”

“Who would ever want to dwell in a place like this?” Daniel asked.  “Concrete and peeling paint, stains on the floor.  It makes the soul hurt.  Wouldn’t you rather learn magic?”

He walked over toward the little girl in the doorway, and the girl behind the counter rushed to circle around to get through the gate and follow.  He dropped a hand down, humming, and picked up the bird from the girl’s hands.  He turned, dancing around her, the bird at his hand, beneath his uncomfortable silk shirt, hidden, then back at his hand.  His humming became singing, more and more dramatic, the wordless verses becoming words, the tuneless singing becoming tunes.  The girl from the counter drew close to the little girl, putting a hand on her shoulder.  He beckoned them with song, walking backwards.

His foot found air, rather than ground, and he tumbled down the concrete steps at the front of the convenience store, the water bottles falling.

He lay there, hurting.  The hot night air felt oppressive.

The little girl rushed forward.  “The bird, is it-?”

He put a hand out.  The bird perched on his finger with one foot.  As the girl reached out, wanting to take it, the bird seized her fingertip.  It held his finger with one foot, the little girl’s with the other.

The bird, at least, knew there was something wondrous to hold onto.  It had captured his intent by way of the singing.

He sang, grabbing both bottles with one long-fingered hand, climbing to his feet, walking backwards.  The little girl was forced to either follow or to wrench her hand from the bird’s grip and risk hurting it.

Subtle, soft touches.  He was no brute, and much as a mouse needed a push… he had yet to meet a human being that was intact and whole, who did not know or feel that the world had to have more to it than what they’d seen and heard of it.

That made it easier to draw them closer.  The young lady from the store that had stars in her eyes followed, acting as if she were worried he’d hurt the child if she moved too fast or tried to grab her.

He did have an intense air about him when he was struck by a mood.

He sang, and with the bird helping, he moved his arm around the little girl, making her spin.  Bewildered, she obliged, nearly tripping on the grass by the sidewalk.

The song became a sad one.  He was always so much better at singing sad songs.  With the song, he could pull them along into the world he was trying to paint.  Even though they didn’t know the words in the languages he sang in, they could feel it, they could read his expression, and they could read the tone and catch the sentiment.

He could captivate them, seize their attention and their hearts, and-

“Hey!”

They startled from their reverie.  His song halted.

“Hey!  What are you doing?”

They were a ways down the rocky beach, the river to one side of them, some scattered residences on a rise to the other side.  The convenience store, sitting by the bridge, was too far away to easily make out, even with Daniel’s keen eyes.  With his singing, he’d drawn them into his world, that was counted with the anatomy of clouds, not the steady tick of a metronome.  A place where time was subjective and the perception of subjects was something to be manipulated.

An old, white-haired man on the rise called down to them.  “What are you doing with that girl?”

He still held his hand out.  The bird still bridged the two of them, gripping tightly, listening intently, the little girl following out of concern that she might hurt the bird’s leg by pulling too hard.  The young lady from the store followed.

The air was heavy with dreams and lies, here.  It sparkled, almost, and it layered on the river like the oil of pollution, but it wasn’t of man.

He drank it in deep, while the older man made his way down wooden stairs to descend the slope.

“It’s too late for you to be out here making that noise!” the man barked.  “What are you doing with that girl!?”

Daniel whistled briefly, prompting a chirp from the robin, and once he had its attention, he raised his finger, making it adjust its perch and stand on his hand alone.  The little girl reached up and out for it, then withdrew her hand once she saw Daniel’s eyes.

“If we find ourselves disallowing singing, whatever the reason, this world has become far darker and uglier than I’d feared,” Daniel said.

“Are you cracked in the head?” the older man asked.  He had a slight stoop to him, and a redness to the face that contrasted the wispy white hair.  He looked like he’d done physical work for many years.  He’d retired recently.  He wore a ring, and he’d worn it for a long time, which suggested he’d loved.  But he had a look about him like he hadn’t been taken care of.  There was only so much a man with a once-doting wife could or would do to take care of themselves.  He was tidy, and well put together, but some things couldn’t be helped.

They were all at different stages of a journey.

“I’m abducting the girl,” Daniel said, to the old man.

“What?” the man asked, the word so curt the ending was almost chomped off.

“He said something about babysitting and I thought it was okay, he seemed harmless, and nice, but then he got intense and he started singing and I don’t know why I didn’t do more.”

“It’s okay,” the old man said.  “It’s okay.  It’s fine.  You did good, keeping eyes on her.”

Daniel knew she’d been watching him, not the girl.  And she had been listening more than she’d watched.  But that wasn’t her fault.

“These two young ladies need your help,” Daniel told the old man.  “Keep up.”

“Keep up?  What do you mean?” the man asked.

He felt dizzy, seeing the sparkles, knowing he was close.

But to be close or even to be there wasn’t enough.

His life was all crudeness and bareknuckle brawling through every little thing.  It was ugly and he was an artist.  They’d made him an artist, with his song as his art.  He lived in need and he was so close to having it.

“I’ll try to work it so you don’t remember the bad parts,” he told the little girl.

“What?” she asked.

“You leave her alone!” the old man barked.  He advanced, feet periodically sliding on the slate rock of the riverbed.

“I did promise to give you a hint about my little magic trick,” he told her.  “I don’t have a mouse, so you will have to do.”

She looked up at him, confused.

He’d put the bird away, so his hands were free.  He took hers, and swept her around into a spin, carrying her into the air.

He’d studied humans more than he’d studied mice.  He knew what drew them in, how they tended to move.  His education was short and brutish, compared to the people back home, but it sufficed, here.

To anticipate her grabbing his shoulder, to let her move behind him, and match his body to those movements.

Turn, turn, with the girl.

Turn, turn, turn, with her movements now to keep her directly behind him, as far as their audience could see.  Only for a moment.

Just long enough to release the bird.

They, startled and confused, seemed to see the girl disappear in Daniel’s whirling, and a bird get released.  He laughed, and he pitched his laugh to be unsettling, eerie, and to carry.  To make the mysteriousness of the moment land, and to convince them he was closer than he was, as he made off with the little girl, holding her hand and tugging her after him.

He saw two trees and he could see how the air glittered around them, how every bit of moisture seemed to capture a flake of something more precious than gold.

His free hand caught the trunk, as he swung them around.  It was a waypoint, a gate, a framing for something else.  He spotted that something.  A cave.

The little girl ran with him because pulling away or stopping would mean falling against the jagged beach.  Into the cave.

Here, it was so much richer.  Here, the cave had been molded.

He laughed, and the sound carried.  He, here, was more himself.  Here, he could sing, and it wouldn’t fall so flat.

The other two caught up, an old man and a young woman.

“I’m calling the police,” the man said.

Daniel guessed, reached, and found a sword handle sticking from the ground, where he’d expected something to be dangling.  He turned it, and found room for adjustment.

Light from the outside reflected on the blade, and those reflections found other things to reflect off of.  The sum of light exceeded what had been put into this place.  The cave filled with soft moonlight.

Treasures lay everywhere.  And more than treasure…

“They wronged me,” Daniel called out.  “They stole me, they took my childhood and they filled it with magic instead.  I think I can get away with taking something from them and giving it back to the world.”

He picked up a knife and handed it handle-first to the little girl.  If a store could see it for what it was, they’d pay tens of thousands for it.  But they wouldn’t.

The child, though, the child could see.  The child could look around the cave and realize there was something more here.

“Did you do this?” the old man asked, looking around.  “I had no idea this cave was here.”

“You’d have trouble finding it again, if you didn’t retrace my steps,” Daniel said.  He was distracted.  His attention wasn’t on them, as much as it was on things more valuable than the individual treasure.

He wiped his cupped hand along a flat stone and came up with dust that glittered more than anything he’d seen in years.  He brushed a dusty hand along his arm and it was not dirtied, but cleaned.  Refreshed.

He touched face, and he touched features, he touched hair, luxuriating.  He danced a few steps over to the next flat surface where he could get more.  He fixated glowing eyes on the three guests.  “I want you three to help me.”

“I think we’re going to go,” the young lady from the convenience store said.  “I left the store unattended.”

“I thought this would be less than it is in actuality,” Daniel said, excited.  “I wanted you with, but now I need you with me.  I’ll leave you all better than I found you, or I’ll try, but I need you to cooperate.  You must.”

“Honey,” the girl from the counter said.  “Kid.  Come on.”

“Child,” he said, gathering up the dust.  The child turned to him, alarmed.  “I’d be grateful if you helped me.”

He reached out and she backed away.

“Sir- I don’t even know your name,” the girl from the counter said.  “But-”

“I need this,” he said, with hunger that seemed to take her aback.  His hand fell hard on the little girl’s shoulder.  The dust puffed up, but she didn’t cough.  He gave her a push, turning her in a tight circle, stepping between her and the other two.  The old man marched forward, picking up a rock.

He stopped dead in his tracks when Daniel stepped aside with intent.

The little girl was gone, and a flock of birds flew in a confused pattern through the air.  The girl from the store shrieked.

It was nice to be able to march, step forward, to walk, and to know that the stones had been shaped with intent and art.  This had all been arranged.  He could put a hand out, knowing that an artist had arranged this space and its decorations with something more elevated than geometry in mind.  To touch a spear, a chair, a draping of cloth.

“What happened to her!?” the girl from the store asked.

“I have my stage,” Daniel told her.  He collected more dust, luxuriating in the feel of it, more silky than the actual silk that felt like scrub-brush against his skin.  “She’ll be my accompaniment.  She’ll sing with, using nine throats.  You’ll look into my eyes and I’ll look into yours, and it’ll make the singing richer.  And you, sir…”

“I won’t cooperate with this madness.  This… prank.”

“You sir, will be my audience.  You’ve felt true loss, once.  You had love and familiarity and you lost it, and I can see in your eyes how strange and ill-fitting this world is to you.  You’ve been heartbroken, losing that love, and I want to break those two halves into a hundred, with but five or ten minutes of your time.  I need to, I’m sorry.”

“And if I don’t want to?”

“You should.  You’ll be richer for it.  You’ll be more.”

The birds had found places to settle.

He couldn’t get enough of it.  He was dizzy, collecting the dust, gathering it, turning and spinning and not stumbling.  He let his clothes change to something as comfortable as nudity.  He breathed it in, and it felt like the first breath of clean air he’d taken in for months.

“Follow along with me,” he told the songbirds.  “Watch my hands, use your instincts.  I gave you some good ones.”

“If you want someone to follow along with you,” a guttural voice told him, “I can help.”

Daniel smiled.

The figure was no taller than the little girl had been.  Rotund, with spikes.  He had ears like a pig, and a glinting at one eye, and he kept to shadows, the lighting arrangement of this cave’s residents not quite touching him.

Daniel sang, a few experimental notes.  The cave carried the sound.

“Faaaaaaaaarrrrrrrtttttss,” the guttural voice sang.

Daniel changed notes.

“Faaaarrrrrrrrrtttttssssss!” the voice added, with more gusto, a deeper note.

Daniel went to a higher note.  The birds joined in with long sweet sounds.

“Faarrrrrrrrrrtttttttssssss!” the voice dropped another octave.

Daniel did a three-note sequence.

“Piiiiiiiiiccckkkkklllleeeesss!”

Daniel returned to a single note.

“Aaaannnndddd Taaaaaarrrrrrrttttttssss!”

Daniel sang in languages of sadness, words that would be alien to all but a select few.

“Messssyyy shiiiiiitttts!”

He accompanied the guttural, out-of-tune singing.

“Droooopppy tiiiiiittts!”

Daniel pushed himself a step further.

If his intruder here was a child plonking at the keyboard, then Daniel could be the master, who took that sound and played into it, accented it, and drowned out what needed to be drowned out.

Excited, his heart pounding, feeling like he was alive and capable of seeing, breathing, and being for the first time in a long time, he made the intruder sound good.

“Wooden nickelllllss!”

He took the sounds, captured the echoes, and played into them.

“And more taaaaaarrrrrttttts!”

Daniel laughed.

“Like that, do ya?” the guttural voice asked.  It kicked over a spear that was embedded into stone, then picked it up. The spear being fallen made some of the light fall away, which let the little rotund thing with pig ears venture sideways into the cave.

It sounded surprised.

The birds continued to sing, to draw out the long notes.

“I’m not one of them,” Daniel said.  “I wish that I were, but I was only baptized in their stuff of lies.  I came up sputtering, choking.  I’m still sputtering and choking.  This world is so vulgar already, why would more of it bother me any?  You don’t bother me.”

“I could try.”

“You could.  But If you’d give me ugly, rude truths, I’d have to warn you… I know.  I know.  I’ve come to terms with it.  I want my glamorous lies, whatever the cost, and nothing you could do would bother me more than the fact I don’t have them.”

“Lies are fragile, gentle sir,” the voice growled.  “Pretty to look at, granted, but they all go to wet shit, given time.”

“I’m human,” Daniel said, spreading his arms.  “I’m only human.  I don’t have time.  A paltry hundred years.  Maybe ninety, maybe eighty, maybe seventy.  I won’t be around long enough to care.  I just want… I want beauty.”

He touched the cloth that was draped, tore it from the points it was hung from, and wrapped it around himself.  It felt better than the replacement clothes he’d made out of the dust.  So fine, cool, and draping so close to the skin it felt like the moment he leaned back into the bath, water at perfect temperature.

“It’s ass!  You only want it because you want it, you’re a ninny and a fuckwit!  It’s ass, and you’ve convinced yourself it’s not, and if you’d let go of that then you’d forget you ever cared!  Most of the poor souls who get dragged over there do.”

“He can’t,” a voice said, from the cave entrance.

With most of the light coming from outside, the man was only a silhouette.  A giant of a figure, with slightly pointed ears and lines to his body that were pure artistry.  He, like Daniel, had long hair.

“I’ll take over.  Can you go find the others and bring them here?”

The little fat thing scoffed.  “Your funeral, good sir, I hope.”

“Mmm,” the giant grunted.  “You two.”

The old man and the girl from the store turned to look at him.

“You should go.”

“The little girl, she’s-”

The giant raised a foot, then stomped.  The cave shuddered, and layers of workings shuddered with it.

The birds tumbled.  Mid-fall, they were interconnected, as if sheets of paper extended between them, in complex origami, or threads, or something else.  By the time they touched the ground, they were a young girl.  She scrambled back.

“You should go,” the giant said, again.

The girl clambered to her feet and ran.  The girl from the store caught her.  The three left.

“Young lord of bright summer,” Daniel greeted the Faerie.  “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“I’m barely a lord.”

“But you are a lord.  I can see that much,” Daniel said, smiling.  “I give you my greetings.”

“Someone familiar with my ilk should be more careful with their words.”

“I am barely a someone.  I’m a greedy, good-for-nothing beggar, glamour-drowned, good for nothing but a song now and then.  I give you my thanks, in exchange for your audience, and would give you yet more if you would have me.  I pledge you my self, my pride, my art, my all.”

The giant was quiet.

“Put me in a cage, if you will.  But you don’t need one, because I don’t imagine I’d run.  I’d sing for you, a songbird, a personal bard.”

There was no response from the shadowy figure.

Daniel sang, and, desperate, hopeless, he put his all into the singing.  He felt so inarticulate, since leaving the courts, as if his talent had no substance, and he’d chased it since.  At best, all he got were tastes, moments, glimpses.  Some of his bad singing was enough to entice mice and birds, and to capture the attention of two innocents, but that was not what he was being required to do here.

Here, he had to win the giant Faerie over.

Here, he sang of heartbreak and loneliness, of sickness over his long absence from the place he still thought of as home.  Because it was there he’d been baptized in lies and dust, grown into his full self, and he’d barely grown since.

He sang of longing, of restlessness.

The cave caught the sound, multiplying it, and he used it.

Tears touched his own cheeks.  He walked closer to the giant, until reflected light from across the cave let him see the great Faerie’s features.  The texture of skin, the material of kilt, a leather no doubt softer than skin.

The giant’s chin dropped a fraction.  He looked away and to the side.  Daniel was close enough to touch him and held back on doing so.

“You must miss it so,” Daniel murmured, almost singing the words.  “You must, because it is by its very definition, a place of qualities that one yearns for.  It is poetry and art and this world’s art, by comparison, is a child’s waste, finger-painted over a washroom wall.”

“Vulgar,” the giant said.  “But I do miss it.”

“I’m not without vulgarity, or the ability to hold that vulgarity back.  I can be what you need me to be.  But… I want to go home.  Even a dim shadow of it like what you’ve carved out here.  I know you like my singing.  Would you keep me?”

“Don’t you have a sister?” the giant asked.  He walked across the cave, into the shadows that the short guttural thing had created by knocking over the spear.

“She would understand.  She would mourn me, if I was lost to the Faerie once more, but I do know she would understand.”

“She likely would in time,” the giant Faerie told him.  “Does that make it right?”

“Is it because I lived in the courts below for so long that I’m surprised that you care about right and wrong, my lord?”

“I am not yours, Daniel Alitzer.  And your sister would mourn a bloody swathe between the point she learns of your going and the point she finds her understanding.  A long, path of shed Fae blood.”

“She-” Daniel started.  He stopped as his voice cracked.

It was a terrible, terrible thing, for his voice to crack.  Far worse than being ungainly and ungraceful.

“-she shouldn’t have to look after me,” Daniel said.

“She likely shouldn’t,” the giant told him.

“I can’t tell if you mean that, noble sir, or if it’s a facade.  So many of your kin would deflect.”

There was laughter off to the side.  Dark eyes in darker gloom slipped into the cave, up the walls and into the shadow by the ceiling.  Dust followed her, cascading down.  Daniel could see the wings.

Dark summer or dark fall.

The laughter rang through the chamber, amused.  A song of its own, in a cave that had been shaped specifically to cultivate that sound.

“You keep strange company, noble sir.  A faerie of a drastically different court.”

There was another titter.  The giant was quiet.

“You…” Daniel started.  He stopped.

He felt sadness swell in his chest.  “…You’re falling to Winter?  You stand on the cusp?”

Another titter from the other Faerie, and a silence from the giant.

Daniel touched every surface he could, for the trace faeriestuff that he could collect and drink into his skin, as he circled the cave.

“It’s why you’re staying away.  It’s why you’re keeping strange company.  Little else makes sense,” Daniel said, plaintive, reaching.

“I still have adventures and tasks I must see to their natural ends.”

“How many?  A handful?”

The giant was silent.

“Three?” Daniel asked.  “Two?”

At that last word, there was another laugh from the darkness.

“Please, sir, would you make me one of those tasks?  I’m a burden to my sister, and to dear Clementine, who shoulders so much already, however much she tries to keep it private.  I catch people’s attention and keep it, and lure them into whatever madness shines brightest.  I struggle to tell right from wrong.  I’m told I’m insufferable.”

“I have already taken in the drowned, as hero and as villain.  I’ve tried to mend them, and to ruin them.  I suspect the most merciful thing is to leave you alone.”

No!” Daniel shouted.  “Not when I cost them joy.  Take me in or fix me or give me something.  But don’t- don’t tell me I have to inflict myself on them.  That is a cruelty too dark for a Bright Faerie.”

“The upper courts are so much crueler than the lower ones,” the giant said.  “For reasons much like this.”

Daniel shook his head, his hands going to his hair.  The dust he’d collected drenched him, powdering him, and decorated skin, hair, clothing, and everything else.  He breathed hard.

And then he began to sing.  A lament.

“Is this…” the giant timed his words so as not to interrupt a verse, turning the singing into punctuation, “…your lament… or is it mine?”

Daniel grabbed a spear that had been left aside.

He sang of wrongs, he sang of the wretchedness of Faerie.  He drank of the dust that he’d collected and he put it into the words, to give them impact.

The giant didn’t flinch.  The one in the shadows went very still.

He sang of siblings, of blood, of mankind and great kings brought low, peasant children spirited away.

His words almost a chant, because the verses were so perfunctory, he made it clear in presentation, in word, in spirit and in law, that if he were to be struck down, he would be a martyr, that it would be Wrong.  With verse, he asked the giant’s doings be undone as that Wrong came home to roost.  His final few adventures and stories spoiled.

With verse, he made it clear that if he struck down his enemy here, it would be Just.

With verse, he pledged that if he got neither of those outcomes, he would commit to destroying this place, this town, and its people.  If this faerie had found a moral center of any sort, if that wasn’t an act, then failing to stop him for good would destroy that center.  If it was an act, then this Faerie with so little left to hang onto would prove the act false, possibly losing one of his few remaining stories.

The giant stood tall, stepping into the faint moonlight that filled the chamber, reflected and refracted on various surfaces.  His eyes were moist, his hands empty.

Daniel finished singing, breathing hard.  The chamber carried the sound, an echo that didn’t stop, and wouldn’t stop for another hour.

He smiled, showing the giant his teeth.  His hair and clothing stirred in a wind that wasn’t there, so dense and heavy with glamour the parts of it close to his body stuck there.  Dry and wet at the same time.

“What will you do?” he whispered.  The chamber carried the sound.

The giant didn’t move.

“What will you give me!?  This world is a sandstorm, compared to what I once had!  It chews at me, fills my eyes and nose and mouth!  It steals all beauty from things, erodes everything fine!”

“You had slavery.”

“I don’t know anything else.”

Look,” the giant told him.

Daniel marched forward, holding the spear with both hands.  As he drew nearer, he picked up speed, jogging, then running.

At the last moment, the giant leaned to one side.

The spear penetrated his chest.  A handspan below the collarbone.  Dead center.  Nearly.  His knees buckled, and a large hand settled on the spear.

“Moving to make the blow into something less lethal is a decision,” Daniel said.  He slid his hand down the spear, and pressed a hand against the giant’s chest, the webbing between thumb and index finger touching the spear and the blood.  He licked up the blood.

“It tastes like spiced wine.”

“Are you satisfied?”

“No, I’m- no.  Never.  Who could be, after what I’ve seen and heard and felt and touched?”

He looked down at the wound.  It wouldn’t be lethal.  The giant had moved.  But the blood spread oddly.

He reached up and let his fingernails catch the edge.

He had to pull it back the length of the spear.  Parchment.

“Is this one of your last adventures?” he asked, bitter.  He hauled back on the spear, pulling it free.  It clattered to the ground, and he kicked it away.  “A… letter of romantic correspondence.”

“I’ve tried to take in men like him, as a hero and as a villain,” the giant said.  “I’ve tried to mend them, and to ruin them.  With him, I did the least merciful thing I might have done.”

“Is that it then?  You keep it close to your heart?  Where’s the adventure in that?”

The giant was silent.

He turned, holding the bloody letter.  He looked around.

“Dark Fae!” he called out to the gloom.  “Are you part of this adventure, or does this leave him only his adventure with you?”

There was no laughter.

“If you were partner to it, he would have kept it where you could see.  I could see that tale.  The Fae of the dark fall who toyed with the lover, the Fae of high summer who loved him, keeping and protecting the memory on a pedestal.  But he kept it to himself.  Are you curious?  Do you want to see, now?  Are you wondering what it unlocks, what secrets of another court this lover might have told him?”

Dark eyes glared at him in the gloom.  They sat far apart.  Black, hairy legs crawled through hair and along the length of a slender body, while patterns on wings pulled away as venomous stingers, poised.

He’d upset her.

Daniel smiled.

“Did I take one adventure from the both of you?  How many hundreds of years was that meant to play out over?”

“Several.  Are you satisfied with your restitution?  Would you go?” the giant asked.

“No,” Daniel said, shaking his head.  “You know what would satisfy me.”

“It would destroy several others.  You going back to the Faerie.”

“It destroys them, me being here.”

“If you would go find your sister, you could bring her here, and we could discuss options.  I could ration what you need.”

“I don’t want rations.”

“Once drowned, you may be resuscitated.  Twice drowned… it is rare to surface once again.”

“Then I will do my best to take that last adventure from you, noble sir, and sup on what I can.  Unless your friend wishes to devour me.”

“She will not,” the giant said.  “Maricica?  You will not.  Go.  He’s dangerous for you.”

“What about me?”  Another voice at the door.

A young girl, black, with marvelous hair, stood in the cave entrance.  A man with short blond hair, rumpled green clothes, almost her opposite in every way, stood beside her.  He and she both held guns.

She nodded.

Daniel moved his hands, gathering up the glamour like a cape, in anticipation.

The man with the gun shot.  Daniel caught the bullet and put it aside, like a trick of the eyes.

The bullet fell to the floor, far from Daniel.

He gathered it up and manipulated it, hiding and protecting himself as the gun continued to unload.  As Maricica started working against him, the giant grunted something inarticulate.  Daniel gathered up, chasing.  She could make barbs and he could throw himself along those barbs, chasing.  She would implant seeds in him for the long-term, but he didn’t care about the long-term.  He threw himself in her direction, using the workings she would use against him to drag himself closer, and he began to sing, a reminder of what was just and unjust, and what he’d pledged.

The bullets tore through the clouds of obfuscating mist, the fake versions of himself, and the other distractions.  They stirred the air and made every other working less coherent.

The gunman was narrowing him down as a target.

The giant spoke, “It would have been better to shoot without announcing yourself first.  His senses are keen enough he would have seen you, but you would have had a chance.”

“I did say,” the gunman said.

“Theatrics matter, and it feels wrong.”

“It is more wrong that he is about to leave and become Kennet’s problem.  Maricica, you stay.  Lucy, John, chase him.”

“He’s not-”

Daniel fled, carrying what he could with him.  He made a door where there wasn’t one and slipped through, drunk and lost and drowning.

The gunman and the girl chased.

[5.b Spoilers] Phone Conversations

Back Away – 5.1

Lucy

Last Thursday: Phone Conversations


“It’s weird,” Lucy said.  “Being home, but not being able to go home.”

Verona looked up from the notes she was doing, copying over from the textbook and using a little hobby knife to excise work from the worksheets Graubard had given her in the morning class.

“If we get caught by someone who knows us, it could cause a lot of hassle.”

“True.  But we can tell the truth and say my dad is sick and we had the opportunity to swing by.”

Lucy nodded.

She checked her phone.  Avery was still out of service.

It was so unpleasant, being stuck like this, a situation unfolding out of their reach, not having a place to go, and not being able to contact Avery or know what was going on.  They were stuck here, in the southeast end of town, where the town’s industry had lived and died.  Kennet wasn’t exactly up and coming, and had a lot of spots in it which were doing pretty badly.

This was the part of a town that wasn’t doing great that was doing especially badly.  Back when weed had been legalized, there had been some chatter about turning these defunct old factories into grow sites, which would mean jobs and money and… it hadn’t happened.  Politics, according to Booker.

“I sorta get what you mean,” Verona said.  “But for me it’s like… most of the time.  I’ve only recently started noticing how bad my mood gets every time I have to go back.  I’m screaming at him a lot of the time because it’s the only way to get him to listen, kind of.”

“Careful with wording.”

“I am being careful.  What part did I do wrong?”

“The ‘most of the time’ part.”

“I think it kinda is?  And I said like most of the time.”

“Right.  Sorry.  I didn’t mean to focus on that part.  This is hard.  I hear you, about being stuck.”

“Hopefully we hear back from Ave, and then we can wrap up this thing.  We get points with the locals, then I check on dad, and we hurry back for a morning class.”

“I’m worried we’re going to be so tired we sleep through the class, if we even get that far.”

“Maybe you will.”

“Do you really think you’re going to stay awake longer than me?” Lucy asked.  “Every time you sleep over, you sleep in.”

“‘Cause it’s cozy and low-stress.”

“And you slept in at the institute.”

“Only kinda.  But hey, if you’re worried about sticking it out through tomorrow, or if you’re tired, you could nap now.”

“Feeling a bit wrung out after that trip through the Ruins,” Lucy said.  “And more wrung out because we sent Avery in alone and she’s gone silent.”

She adjusted her bag and stuff, and tried to use her backpack as a pillow.  She pulled her cloak out and used it for extra padding.

Super uncomfortable.

“Remember when we’d get up at like, four o’clock, for the time the channels went from static to these weird, badly dubbed cartoons?” Verona asked.  “We’d stay at each other’s houses, and one of us would wake the other, and we’d creep all the way downstairs to watch?  It’d be like, four forty-five or something.”

“Yeah.  There was the angry dog one we liked, and that French one that was like a fever dream,” Lucy replied.  “With weird casual nudity and a lot of transformations.”

“It was this one kid as all of the heroes in Greek myths or whatever,” Verona said.

“Was that what it was?”

“With a snake unicorn pegasus thing with rainbow wings.”

“I think they used the cartoon as a color test to calibrate as they turned everything on.  They kept cutting it off early, and then they’d go straight to the angry dog cartoon from Japan, with the same bored voice actor for all the characters.”

“Loved it, and it made next to no sense because I think they were cutting out a lot of scenes and stitching them together,” Verona said.  “I loved that time.  Sneaking sugary cereal and snacks while watching and trying to be quiet.  I kinda love that part of this, too.  One big adventure with you two.”

“I don’t love some of the stuff around the edges, or when you’re in danger, or feeling like I was dying in the Ruins back there, but I love getting to do it with you guys.  Don’t let me keep you up, if you want to try to catch a fifteen minute nap.  Or five, or thirty, depending on how long it takes Matthew to drive in.”

“I don’t think I can nap on this bag anyway.  Too hard.”

“I’d offer you my leg or lap as a pillow, but it’s too hot for that.”

“And you’d wake me up every time you moved.”

“I wouldn’t move if I could help it.  If it meant you could nap, I wouldn’t,” Verona said.

She sounded so serious.

Lucy turned over on her ‘pillow’ and looked up at Verona.

“What if I, like, became a cat, and stayed a cat for most of the time?” Verona asked.  She looked skyward, up at the stars.  “You could keep me around, and every day could be a bit like those days were.  And if you got sick of me, you could dump me on Avery?”

“You might be at Avery’s a lot then,” Lucy joked.

Verona looked at her, unsmiling, and in the gloom it took Lucy a second to see that Verona looked stung.

No, not stung.  Wounded.

Lucy started to rise to a sitting position, and Verona laughed, softly, pushing her back down.

“Badly timed joke.  Sorry.”

Verona shook her head.

“Nah,” Lucy said, her voice soft.  “Nah, you’re my best friend and I fully expect that to stay the case.  If something disastrous happened and you had to, we’d manage, and I think it’d be cool.  But I’d feel like you were missing out.”

“I don’t think so,” Verona said, quiet.

“You’re going to have weird relationships with boys.  I want to hear and see how that goes.  Or doesn’t go, if you really decide you don’t want to do that stuff.  Your call.  I’ve been thinking about your thing about living over a bookstore, and I keep imagining Zed’s distilled librarian Other with your hairstyle, and shorter, and that’s you grown up in my head.”

Verona sniffed.  “I’ll allow it.  But it’s petite, when you’re talking to most girls, not ‘short’.  Rude.”

“I want to see what you’re like when you’re Booker’s age.  And my mom’s age.  Are we going to be like my mom and my aunt Heather, hanging out together and with Avery, drinking too much wine?”

“You’ve said some of this before.”

“I meant it.  I really do.  I keep editing it in my head.  Are you going to become some badass witch, with this… this crazy natural ability that your very first teacher in your first class recognized, along with the passion and drive to learn?  Are you going to teach a class there, one day?”

“What if that doesn’t happen?  What if we drift our separate ways and the three of us stop being friends?  And I regret it forever that we didn’t reinforce those connections or set up an arrangement like the cat thing?  What if this is our last chance of holding onto the good-ish moments?  What if we did the exact wrong thing, with this ritual tying us to each other, but not strongly enough, so it only hurts more when we separate or we lose one of us in some crazy situation?”

“And you being a full-time cat is the answer to that?” Lucy asked.  “I’m… I’m not connecting the thought.”

Throwing an idea out there,” Verona said, very quiet, almost inaudible.

“You don’t really want the cat thing, do you?” Lucy asked.

Verona was silent, staring up at the stars.

“Is this you worrying about your dad?  Are you worrying you might have to go live with your mom?”

“I wasn’t, but now I am.  But I don’t want to dwell on me.”

“We’re allowed to, you know.”

“What do you want to become?  If I’m going to switch to old fashioned dresses and librarian chic, teaching classes at the Institute… which is a vision of future me I’ll allow…”

“I’m glad you approve.”

“I’m allowing it, not approving.  Avery should rock those dress shirts and messy hair, with a behind-the scenes wandering duelist witch type aesthetic-”

“That’s a salad of ideas.”

“-with, I’m picturing, a girlfriend who is ten kinds of head over heels for her, who goes to every game Avery plays with her coworkers or college buddies.  Every single game.”

Lucy smiled.  “Picturing?  Shouldn’t we draw up a compact that anything less won’t do?”

“There’s a plan.  Maybe she has two girlfriends, not cheating or anything, but as an organized thing.  Or five.”

“Now we’re getting a bit over the top.”

“She’s been so lonely, I want her to get all the adoration, to make up for it.”

“Cool.  Okay.  She’s athletic but I don’t think she’s five girlfriends athletic.”

Verona laughed.

“I didn’t mean that!” Lucy corrected.  She cleared her throat.  “What does she do, when she’s not playing sports with her group, being a lost witch fencer girl-”

“Wandering duelist witch.”

“-or hanging out with her goofy head-over-heels-for her girlfriend?”

“I don’t know.  I don’t think she knows.  But I think Avery’s the type who could work the most dead end boring job if she had those other things.  She could do a lot of things.”

That lined up with what Avery had said to Lucy.  “I hope she doesn’t have a boring job though.”

“Me too.  And you?” Verona asked.

“I dunno,” Lucy said.  “Guilherme’s been on my case about it.  Well, not exactly on my case, because faerie are too…”

“Dainty?”

“…There’s probably a flowing, fancy word for it.  But I dunno.  I don’t think any of it’s grabbed me to the point where I’m like, yeah, that’s super dangerous with lots of drawbacks, but I want to do it anyway.”

“Are you enjoying this?  Any part of this?  You haven’t said a lot about it since you said you weren’t enjoying it, back when you yelled at Avery and me.”

“I feel like I haven’t had the time to sit back and think long enough to enjoy it.  But I feel that way about a lot of stuff,” Lucy said, her face smushed against the surface of her bag.

“I want you to find stuff you enjoy about this.  I don’t want to be happy if you’re not happy.”

“I sorta like the training.  Learning to fight.  Even when I don’t especially like it, it feels like… good to know?  You know?  Just in case?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll keep thinking about it.”

Lucy adjusted, trying and failing to get comfortable.

“They said they wouldn’t be that long, but they had to take a detour,” Lucy muttered.

“It’s been a good while.  I hope nothing happened.”

Lucy tried the phone again.  Text.  It took a while to process, then switched to a red tint, a warning message saying the text wasn’t sent.  Or received.  Or something.  She called.

The number you have dialed-

She hung up.

“Is there a point where we go hunting for Avery?” Lucy asked.  “Or call her name three times and see if that gives us a connection?”

“The term is ‘ping’, I think.”

“Is that from one of the books you read?”

“Eloise used it at dinner last night, while talking to Zed.”

“Huh.  I didn’t catch that, and my mom says I’m scarily good at eavesdropping.”

“You were focused on other stuff.  Like the more intense students.  It’s cool.”

“Ping,” Lucy tried out the word.  “Do we ping Ave?”

“It could be that she’s watching them and they’re doing something boring, and she can’t call without giving herself away.”

“Even if that’s true, why wouldn’t she send Snowdrop?”

“I trust her,” Verona said.  “And I remember back when she came back from the Forest Ribbon Trail she wanted time alone.  Well, alone with Snowdrop.”

“When I was there for dinner and things got hectic, I think it was her dad who was like, want to go walk to the store?  Like, get some space, let things cool down?”

“Ahhh,” Verona said.  “So it’s like a pattern thing she does a lot.”

“Maybe.  But is she really anxious or needing that right now?  There was the trip through the Ruins, walking through ghosts, but…”

“That didn’t bother her as much.  She was almost keeping up with Jessica, after the first bit.  And Jessica’s an expert.  I was the slowpoke.”

“You’re usually the slowpoke.  She’s good at that stuff.  But being good at it doesn’t mean you can’t find it rough.”

“Or maybe she’s bummed because she had her heart set on Jessica.”

“She was talking in our room about feeling out of place a lot.  While we were getting the stuff.  Not meshing, feeling like she’s the wrong age or in the wrong place.  But she doesn’t- this sucks to say, but I don’t really feel like I know her.  I want to, but I’m not sure how.  She doesn’t seem that down about it, not enough that she has to go do her own thing for a while.”

“Maybe,” Verona said.

“She’s too hard to reach and I don’t feel like those other things are it.  I’ll ping her?”

Verona nodded.  “Together.”

Lucy counted on her fingers.  Together with Verona, she said, “Avery, Avery, Avery!”

A moment passed.

“I didn’t feel anything.  Could be the skeptic,” Verona guessed.

Lucy shook her head.  “Phone too?”

“Maybe they don’t believe in phones?”

“I don’t like that she’s that hard to reach.  Are you okay with me going, or do you want to go?”

“I think turning into a bird might be a bad idea, with the owls out there at night, and, you know, the possibility I could fly into that Griggs lady’s antimagic field a hundred miles up into the air.”

“You, you know, could walk?  And don’t immediately assume I’m talking about cat form.”

“Well, like you said, I’m a slowpoke…”

“Right.  Okay, you-”

Lucy stopped short.  She could hear an ominous growling.

She made a hand gesture, hand pointed down, fingers flicking up, then took Verona’s hand, as Verona reached up.  She hauled Verona to her feet.

The growling intensified.

Lucy gripped her chain necklace with her keys and ring strung on it, and put a finger through the weapon ring.  She breathed in, then breathed out slowly.

She flicked her phone, and it unfolded into a black fan, edge tipped with broken glass.  She held it by her leg, hidden from sight, in case there was a bystander.  Magic items and magically created items tended to get weird when innocents saw them, and things created from the weapon ring counted.

A sharp bark made them jump.

Barks overlapped, and were followed by the kind of scream that a very large, deep voiced man might manage if he’d just seen his kid get hit by a car.

Dark, yes, but it was a dark scream.

They -it was a they- came tearing into the lot with the old building where Lucy and Verona had been waiting.  They used trash for cover and circled around, approaching from all sides, ducking through darkness.  Lucy squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, turning on her Sight, and saw a mess of swords and stains.

“Cover!” Verona shouted.

Lucy covered her eyes, bringing her elbow to her eyes.

Verona used one of her cards.  The lot illuminated in a flash that seeped in around the edge of Lucy’s arm.

Lucy leaped forward, fan out, trying to spot the small figures that were still darting along the shadows.  She saw glints of blades catching the light from the distant streetlight, and kicked out.

Teeth gnashed at her shoe, pulled back, and seized at her shoelace.  It was a long-haired, feral goblin, with a slobbery tongue and weird four-legged posture.

“Doglick,” Lucy said.  She dismissed the fan and her Sight.  “Don’t eat my shoelaces.”

The goblin continued.

“Doglick!” she raised her voice.  She adjusted her foot and stepped on his neck, pinning him down where he couldn’t get at her laces.

He reached up, untied her lace, and put one end in his mouth.

“Do you want to get neutered?”

Doglick froze, shoelace still in mouth.

Lucy looked around.  Only Toadswallow had managed to avoid getting blinded.  ‘Nat’ and Butty were incapacitated, Butty face-down and limp, while Nat was using her piercing, fishhook, nail, and paperclip riddled, oversized right hand to wipe at her eye, and tearing at the skin around it in the process.

Doglick barked, once.  Lucy looked back down at him, pinned with his neck under her shoe.

Slowly, eyes locked to Lucy’s, Doglick opened his mouth, and gave one slow experimental chew of the shoelace.

Verona ducked down, opened Lucy’s bag, and grabbed Lucy’s knife.  She held it by the leather sheath, then slapped the handle into Lucy’s hand.  Lucy pulled it free.

“Booker’s torch,” she said.

The forged blade ignited, gradually taking on a red heat.

Doglick went limp, head turned sideways, arms and legs flat to the pavement.  His tongue pushed the shoelace out of his mouth.

Toadswallow waddled over, grabbing Nat’s hair and pulling on it to drag her after him.  She made inarticulate sounds of protest.  He gave Butty a hard kick, and the weirdly smooth goblin skidded about five feet along the pavement, face and belly rubbing against the ground.

Hair still held by Toadswallow, stooped over, Nat looked up at Lucy and fixed her good eye on the flaming blade.

“Off,” Lucy said.  The fire went out.  The blade continued to glow red as it cooled.

Which was kind of annoying.  She’d tried putting something on the sheath but she hadn’t figured out a good way to not have it peel off and fail.  She had to hold the knife for a bit longer.

“Our esteemed Matthew and Edith are on their way,” Toadswallow said.  “They went out of town to intercept, couldn’t hack it.  Almost went tips up.”

“What happened?”

“I was told not to say,” Toadswallow said.  “You may have my groveling, snotty-nosed apologies.”

He said it with no sincerity.

“So you decided to scare us?” Lucy asked.

“We agreed we’d welcome you home.  You arrived early.  Think of it as us keeping you on your toes, making sure you’re battle-ready.”

“I think we did okay,” Lucy said.

Toadswallow grinned, showing off sharp teeth.

“Those were some good dog noises,” Verona said.

Doglick yipped, then barked.  The noises sounded like they came from two very different dogs.

“And the scream.”

Doglick screamed, the same sound as before, then screamed again, sounding like a woman being murdered.

Lucy leaned on his throat a little harder to make him stop.  “I was about to leave to get Avery.  We can’t get in touch with her.  We tried pinging her, but there was nothing.  It’s like she disappeared.”

“Snowdrop too,” Verona added.

“Something’s up,” Toadswallow said.  “Butty laid down a prime crop-duster earlier, the sort that makes flowers wilt and gives brain damage to babies.”

Butty, still face-down in the pavement, shirtless and sweaty, wearing only a lime green thong, giggled, high pitched, his entire body jiggling.  Nat, meanwhile, pulled her hair free of Toadswallow’s grip.  She grabbed a bit of fallen sign and tore at it with her hand, giving Lucy, Verona, and Toadswallow wary looks.

“Why does this fart matter?” Lucy asked.

“It was as redolent as it should have been, but not as lasting.”

“You keep track?” Verona asked.

“I am an esteemed expert in matters of vital expulsion.  Rest assured,” the monocle-wearing goblin told them.  “If it comes from the body and can leave stains, I know more than enough.”

“Fair enough,” Verona told him.

“Okay, if you’re right, then that’s interesting, but I’m not sure how it helps us,” Lucy said.  “And we’re getting distracted.  I’m thinking I’ll go find Avery, I don’t know if one of you wants to help, or-”

“Matthew and Edith will… they’re here.”

Lucy spotted the headlights.

“Do we split up again?” Verona asked.  “Stick together?”

“Come,” Lucy said.  “At least to talk to them.”

Verona grabbed her stuff.  Toadswallow and Doglick followed.  Butty remained face-down, giggling periodically, and Nat was off in the midst of trash, hunched over with her back turned.

“Where are Blunt, Cherry, and Gash?” Lucy asked.

“Away.  Blunt and Gash are at the perimeter, keeping an eye out for trouble.  Cherry is doing something useless,” Toadswallow told her.

“Blunt usually manages this crew.”

“Indeed he does.  But he has work over the summer that may call him away.  The sod.  He wanted to make sure they listen to me before he goes.”

“Surprisingly responsible.”

“Not how I would phrase it.”

They reached the truck, which was parked so the front half stuck through the gates.  Dust from the pavement stirred visibly in the headlights.  Edith’s eyes glowed.

“Update us?” Lucy asked.

“We had to follow behind and then we took a different road into town, because they parked by the road,” Matthew said.

“You couldn’t get close?” Verona asked.  “Did the skeptic mess with your hosting stuff?”

Edith’s lips pressed together into a tight line.

Out of the sight of the two in the car, Lucy touched Verona’s wrist, squeezing lightly, while keeping her eyes forward.

“I hope you’re okay,” Lucy said.

“We should be, given time,” Edith answered.  “We’re a bit shaken.  We thought we would overpower them with a show of force, and eat the karma.”

Lucy winced.

Edith picked up her hand, and Lucy could see that the sleeve of her jacket was burned, and the flesh beneath had blisters.

“You should get that treated.  Do you have antiseptics?”

“We want to handle this situation first,” Edith said.

“Great,” Verona said, smiling.  “Faster resolution is great.”

“Then can we start by going after Avery?” Lucy asked.  She saw their expressions change, then said, “If you can’t get close… can you drop us off, somewhere closer?”

“Okay,” Matthew said.

Lucy climbed over the side of the truck, into the bed at the back.  Verona followed.

“Ah!” Nat made a noise, scrambling on all fours to catch up.  “Ack!”

Snatchragged had been renamed by Toadswallow because he had his rules, and Avery had suggested Nat, which the goblins had accepted because it was like ‘gnat’, the bug.  She hurried forward, her proportions and way of running like a stocky bulldog, all upper body, her hair a tangled mess.

“Do not touch the side of my truck,” Matthew raised his voice.

She climbed up the side, presumably avoiding touching the tire with her modified hand, because it didn’t pop, and scraped the truck’s side on her way up to the edge of the truckbed.  She held out her work.  A twist of metal in a vague hook shape.

Verona reached for it, and Nat pulled it back, “Gaharba aabgah!”

She held it out for Lucy.

“Why?” Lucy asked.  “What is it?  Or- we need to go.”

Nat pounded a hand on the side of the truck, metal screeching as it hit and dragged against metal.

“Don’t- my truck!” Matthew shouted.

“Go,” Verona said.  Nat nodded vigorously, adding “Gah!”

Matthew turned the truck around, and they pulled out.

“What’s this?” Lucy asked.

“Ahck a iggy iggy aghin oock.”

“Itty bitty hacking hook?” Verona asked.

“I don’t know how you do that,” Lucy observed.

“We’ve hung out since the tongue thing.”

A few weeks back, Nat had beat Doglick in a fight, so Doglick had snuck up to her while she was sleeping, hauled her jaw open wide enough that it dislocated, and then seized her tongue in his teeth, nearly chewing it off before she could knock him away.  He’d taken a good strip of it with him as he ran off.  What remained looked like a piece of bacon that had been driven over by a car a few times.

It would supposedly heal.

“Iggy iggy!” Nat raised her voice.  She sounded like a very small three-pack-a-day smoker with no tongue.

“Not itty bitty?  Then I have no idea what you mean,” Verona told her.

“Iggy iggy!  Yah yah ya hee yah ah ho iggy!?”

“I think it’s for Faerie,” Verona said.

“I- how?” Lucy asked.  “Why?”

Nat made a back and forth motion with her hand, still perched on the side of the truck, her other arm gripping the edge.  “Aghk aghk ah anh ah huurrr.”

“I think she likes your knife and wants a turn with it sometime,” Verona said.  “In exchange.”

Nat nodded with emphasis, then held out the hook.

“Fae-targeting hook of unknown effect?” Lucy asked.  She took the thing, and felt resistance.  “Okay.  Will see about giving you that try.”

Nat let go, cackled and hopped off the side of the truck, ducking and rolling.  Because she was roughly as wide as she was long, with her gorilla-like build, she was good at rolling.  She was off in the shadows of trash bins by the side of the road a moment later.

The back window was open.  Matthew had apparently been waiting for the goblin to leave before he spoke up, “How’s that school treating you?”

“It’s fine,” Lucy said, at the same time Verona gushed, “so cool.”

“What are you learning?” Matthew asked.

“Not much since we had to come almost straight back home,” Lucy said.

“I did learn this,” Verona said.  She held up her notebook, then showed Lucy.  It was a triangle, with each of the three lines marked out with five thick diagonal lines.  It was set within a circle and it looked like the circle was meant to provide a foundation for some support struts, as Lucy liked to think of it.  Because triangles were weak.

“What is it?” Matthew asked.

“Heraldric or heraldic design.  I meant to wooble search the word.  It should be okay for minor cursed items, if the Gilded Lily has some.”

“Doesn’t seem like you wasted much time bringing trouble to Kennet,” Matthew said.

“I think it was coming anyway,” Lucy said.  Verona nodded her agreement.  “Alexander came because he knew something was up.  If we didn’t stop Nicolette, then she would have told him and that probably would have happened anyway.  Once Alexander knew and started keeping it secret, this Bristow guy was going to be interested, because he hates Alexander.”

“This has been falling apart since the Carmine Beast thing,” Verona added.  “Something like this might’ve happened, whatever we did.  Miss seemed to do the most with keeping people away, and she didn’t erect walls or do anything big.  She nudged, and she dissuaded.”

“Essentially,” Matthew said.

“That doesn’t really help when they’re dead set on getting in.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Are you mad at us, for not being more on top of this?” Verona asked.  She twisted around to face the window.  “Do you really think this wouldn’t have happened without us?”

Lucy looked too, as there wasn’t an immediate response.  She could see, with a bit of motion as the truck turned a corner, a bit of Matthew’s face in the rear-view mirror, then a bit of Edith’s glowing eye.

Something about the looks in their eyes made her think of Verona’s expression after she’d brought up the notion of being a cat.

Wounded.

They’d had a bad night.

“No,” Matthew said.  “No.  I believe you when you say you think this would have unfolded anyway.”

“Yes,” Edith added.

“But you had to think about it before you could say you believed us?” Verona asked.

“Yeah,” Matthew said.

“You know, I really want to be a good practitioner for Kennet.  I want to be a good practitioner period.  I want to do this for the rest of my life.  I want to get along with you guys.  I don’t think we have any bad intentions,” Verona said.

“And Edith and I want to support you three.  It’s been nice, teaching you, even if we’ve approached the limits of what I remember being taught and what I’ve been able to piece together with Charles’ help.”

“Speaking of-” Lucy jumped in.

“He’s hanging back,” Edith said.  “He’s especially vulnerable to all six of the people described.  Though I’m a bit worried we’re all vulnerable.”

“What are they like?” Verona asked.

“We weren’t around long enough to see.  The little one is loud when she gets going.”

“The little one being?”

“Griggs, I have to assume.”

Lucy, looking through the window to the dark interior of the truck, past it, saw a silhouette that even Matthew had missed spotting.  “Avery!”

Avery disappeared as the truck reached a point where Lucy couldn’t see past the doors and Edith, then crashed into a sitting position in the truck bed, one hand on Snowdrop.

“What happened?” Verona asked.

“You’re not answering.”

“I don’t think a lot of stuff’s working,” Avery said.  “Clem- there was a watch.  Snowdrop said it was breaking things up.

Snowdrop climbed down Avery and became human.  She wore a t-shirt that read ‘Rabies Vector?  Nah’, featured a sketched possum face, and then had ‘Humble Trash Inspector’.

“It’s a really small effect, and super obvious,” Snowdrop told them.  “And before you ask, it’s the furthest thing from time travel.”

“It’s time travel,” Avery translated.

“All the way back to the dinosaur age.  Or back to anything.  Like I said, super obvious.”

“Only forward.  Slowing down patches and speeding up others.”

“That’s not what I was saying, Avery,” Snowdrop said, huffing.

“Keep going.”

“It’s all localized to that park, and nowhere else in Kennet.”

“It’s all over Kennet.  Affecting lots of stuff.”

“Oh boy,” Lucy muttered.

“Did you talk to her?” Matthew asked.  He reached back and pushed the back window open wider.

“She wants information.  She was practically begging me for something I could tell her about how all this works,” Avery said.

“You can’t,” Matthew said.

“I know I can’t.  I told her to back off and she said she would, and then her friends disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

“Moved in a different timestream, so fast we couldn’t really spot it.  Um.  I talked to Daniel Alitzer too.  Intense.  Kinda scary.”

“Are the skeptic and drowned guy together?” Verona asked.

“I think they went separate ways.  Or he went after her, but I’m not sure what that looks like.  I think Clem would cooperate if we gave her something, she seems kind, but I don’t think she’d leave the others.”

“So we’ve got three people wandering around.”

“We’ll split up,” Verona said.

“I don’t want to deal with Daniel,” Avery said.

“You’ve been doing the self-affirmation with glamour, right?” Lucy asked.

“Yeah.”

“Might be a bad idea to have you too close to him, then.”

“Yeah,” Avery said.  “That was part of it.  He spotted it right away, then got kinda in my face.  Turned up the dial to ten.”

“I can deal with intense,” Lucy told her.  “Or I can deal with the skeptic.  Or whoever.  Then there’s the Lily…”

“I can track her,” Avery said.  “It’s not hard.  Snowdrop can sorta do it too.  But tracking her isn’t the same thing as catching up.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “Verona?  You and me, who goes after the glamour-drowned guy?”

“The faerie guy is more interesting, but… I’d rather you deal with him than the skeptic.  I think the notes had her down as ‘starkly racist’.”

“I can deal with that.”

“You can but it’s like… I think you’d get caught up in a fight with the skeptic, right?  And I’d get caught up in Daniel’s thing, probably.  I’d rather not.”

Lucy nodded.

“What do you need?” Matthew asked.

“Charles, maybe,” Lucy said.  “He’s the only one who can really interact with them, right?  That weakness to their thing aside?”

“Edith and I discussed that while trying to work out the text on the tiny pictures you took of the documents.  Daniel’s glamour and Clem’s cursed items would very possibly destroy Charles.”

“Destroy like… one hit K.O.?  Worse?” Verona asked.

“Yes.  One or the other or both.  He doesn’t have any defenses.”

“We might need help with the time thing,” Avery said.  “It’s pretty crazy and it means we’ve got a lady wandering around, sometimes faster than the eye can see, and there’s a chance she could pick up another thing like the gold watch.”

“She only finds a thing every few weeks, I thought,” Lucy said.

“Exactly,” Snowdrop chimed in, “and time’s all normal and everything.”

“Good point.”

“Get bent,” Snowdrop replied with a smile.

“We’re splitting up, then?  Where do we meet up?” Avery asked.

“The site of the Hungry Choir ritual, that first night,” Verona suggested.  “It’s far enough away from our houses.”

“I’ll talk to Charles to see if he has any ideas for the watch and containing it.”

“This diagram I have might help hold it back,” Verona said, waving her notebook.  “You’re going after the Lily?  Take this.”

She tore the page out of the notebook and handed it over.

“I don’t know where to begin with Daniel,” Lucy admitted.  “Do I go to the closest place to the Faerie, or the furthest?”

“Furthest,” Snowdrop said.

“Closest,” Avery agreed.

“What are they up to?” Lucy asked.

“They were trying to distract and deter, but the number of people poking around stopped around when your school started.  I don’t know what they’ve been up to, exactly.  Faerie business.”

“Hm.”

Lucy grabbed her bag and hopped over the side of the truck, sneakers slapping against the road.

Avery used the black rope, jumping over to the railing of the bridge.  Verona remained where she was.

“Skeptic?  Do we know where she is?”  Verona asked.

“No,” Matthew said.

“She has a channel.”

“I think the time thing makes it so…” Verona pulled her phone out.  She checked, then shook her head.  “No service.”

“Stick with Matthew and Edith, work something out, keep an eye and an ear out.”

“Yeah,” Verona said.

“If we deal with our things, we can find you.  Drive by the town center maybe every fifteen or twenty minutes?”

“Alright,” Matthew said.  “Do you want to move to the back seat, Verona?”

The back seat was a narrow bench behind the driver and passenger seats, with next to no legroom.  Even for someone like Verona.

“I’m good back here, I think,” Verona said.

“You could maybe swing by and see your dad?” Lucy suggested.

“After.  It’d distract me in the middle of things.”

“Okay.”

“Going,” Avery said.  Snowdrop shook her head.  The two of them held the black rope, jogging down the bridge.  They slipped into the darkness between streetlights and then they were gone.

“Faerie cave for me,” Lucy said.

“Good luck.”

“You too.”

Lucy hated leaving Verona behind in that truck.  They were already in this weird limbo of being home but not home.  Unable to check in because of other stuff, because they weren’t supposed to be here, at the same time they had to be here.

It was one of those weird things that made their life as practitioners feel like it collided with their lives as people.  In a rough way.

And leaving Verona in that truck with Matthew and Edith?

Lucy jogged.  She didn’t want to run in case she had to run later and they’d already walked the Ruins.

They’d spent weeks doing surveillance.  A really tricky thing when they hadn’t wanted a repeat of the incident where Avery had visited John Stiles.  Like with the Augury crap, when you looked, sometimes the person looked back.  Or turned the fact that you were there and looking into a chance to retaliate.

She ran to the end of the bridge, then made her way down the slope to the river bank, scattered with loose slate stones.  A beach that was like someone had dropped a thousand panes of glass onto rock, except the shards were black stone, and the elements had worn off the sharpest edges, while leaving the fact they were all corners in effect.

Stones slipped under her shoes here and there.

As part of their surveillance, they’d watched Matthew and Edith a lot.  They lived normal lives.  They worked jobs, with Edith working only part time.  Edith saw family a few times a week.  They traveled in or she traveled out.  They’d had Snowdrop follow her on a few of those trips out of town, to make sure there wasn’t anything major.  There wasn’t.  Matthew, meanwhile, stayed closer to Kennet.  More solitary.  He saw friends, sometimes went for drinks, but it was a pretty small friend group, and it wasn’t like… nothing like what Lucy had with Verona, or like what she had with Avery.

In the off hours, the two were recruiting.  They took turns, with the person who was free handling going off into the deep woods.  Edith would occasionally hit the spirit world or go to some distant lake or petrified tree, and she’d find a spirit and coax them into helping to guard the perimeter.  Matthew did something similar, but it was a little less of a coax and more of a cattle prod.

He could use his Doom, and the further from Edith he was, the more comfortable he was in employing it.  He moved some Others around, and drove off some that were problems, but not so problematic that John was needed.

It was scary, seeing glimpses of that.  Scarier, now, with the way Verona was in the back of that truck, because she had to be, kind of, and if practice was taken out of the equation, she was in the back of the truck of a pair of people who they were considering prime suspects in a pretty major crime.

For a certain meaning of crime.

“Be careful out here,” a voice cut through the dark.  “Watch your step.”

It was a couple, older than Booker and younger than Matthew, so probably mid-twenties.  They had a husky they were walking who was panting in the summer evening heat.

It wasn’t a drenched-in-sweat heat, but it was warm.

“Thanks,” Lucy said.

She wasn’t far from the Faerie cave, now.  It was tricky footing in spots.  Gently sloping rocks that had been worn down when the water level was higher, littered with slate.  It was okay in daylight and dangerous at night.

In a way, the placement of the cave might’ve been intentional.  Nobody would walk up on a Faerie emerging from the cave in the evening if this path was so not fun to navigate.  The Faerie probably learned to walk this blindfolded.

Yet there were more people on the shore.

Lucy gave them a wary look, studying them to figure out if any of them were the Aware.  But the man was too old, and one of them looked to be seven or eight, and she was crying.

“What happened?” Lucy asked.

“I got turned into birds,” the child said.

“He drugged us somehow,” the old man barked out the words, angry.  “He gave us something, he poisoned us to mess with us.  I’m going to call the police.”

“I don’t think phones are working right now,” Lucy said.  She pulled out hers, and blinked a few times as she noted the time.  It was nine.  They’d left late afternoon.  She showed them.

“Reception?” the lady asked.  She was the same age as the couple who’d been on the beach a minute ago.

“Or something.”

“I thought it was just me.  I’ve got to get back to work.  I tried to call my boss and I couldn’t get through.  I’ll take the girl.”

“My place is closer,” the old man said.  “The thing to do is call the police.  Then we reunite her with her mother, and turn their attention to that boy, who should be institutionalized.”

“He made me into a flock of birds,” the little girl said.  “How?”

“Drugs,” the old man said.

“I didn’t drink the water he gave me.  He barely touched me.  It was only the bird.”

“Then he used the trained bird to deliver it.  I don’t know,” the old man said.

“Was there anyone else?” Lucy asked.

“We got interrupted.  Big guy,” the old man said.

Would turning him over to the police help?  Would that remove one threat from the picture?

How the heck did a guy who’d had too much glamour as a kid turn someone into birds?  Multiple birds?

It was more worrying because Lucy didn’t really trust the police. Especially with someone vulnerable.  Too many people got shot like that.  Even in Canada, it couldn’t be ruled out.

And if he wasn’t vulnerable and he was dangerous… then cops definitely shouldn’t go in.

“It might be better to call mental health or whatever it is?” Lucy suggested.

“Adult protective services,” the old man said.  “I don’t think they’d answer.  I’ll call the police.”

“Don’t,” Lucy said.  “Police arrest.  They- if he needs to be institutionalized, go straight to the institution.”

The woman said, “When the phones aren’t down.  I don’t think the store even has a landline.”

“My place does,” the old man said.

Lucy looked back toward the cave, and saw a small figure.

She wasn’t making headway.

Better to try to get out ahead of this.

If she could get him out of here or get him to cooperate before anyone arrived, that would be best.  Except with time being weird she wasn’t sure whether that arrival would happen five seconds after she got to the cave or five hours.  Or whatever.

She broke away from the group and nearly slipped on rocks on her way over.

“Our tumescent faerie boy is handling the issue,” Toadswallow said.

“That’s a terrible idea.”

“Faerie are idiots,” the goblin said.  “They’ll be dumber than Cherrypop is, sometimes.  They adore terrible ideas.  For the drama.”

“I guess we should be glad it’s not Shellie.  Because she goes after Faerie.”

“Oh, I think our boy might give that a shot,” Toadswallow said.  He smiled.  “It’s a terrible idea, picking a fight with a so-called warrior like Guilherme, and the boy’s got enough ninny glitter in him to love terrible ideas as much as the Faerie do.”

“Ninny glitter,” Lucy noted.  “I like it.”

“Thank you.”

“Gonna go-”

“Go.  I’l come.”

She hurried over to the cave entrance, detouring through the arch of birch trees and then stepping out of sight.

“It’s why you’re staying away. It’s why you’re keeping strange company. Little else makes sense,” the voice came from the cave.  It was resonant, sad, and projected weirdly well.

“I still have adventures and tasks I must see to their natural ends,” Guilherme answered.  Calm, assured, but somehow a bit sad too.

“How many?  A handful?”

There was a pause.  Toadswallow sidled up.

“Three?  Two?”

Maricica’s laugh echoed.

“Please, sir, would you make me one of those tasks?  I’m a burden to my ssiter, and to dear Clementine, who shoulders so much already, however much she tries to keep it private.  I catch people’s attention and keep it, and lure them into whatever madness shines brightest.  I struggle to tell right from wrong.  I’m told I’m insufferable.”

It was good, Lucy decided, that Verona wasn’t here, listening.  Verona… probably would have been on the same page, on a lot of those things.  Sympathizing to the point she stopped listening.

“I have already taken in the drowned, as hero and as villain.  I’ve tried to mend them, and to ruin them.  I suspect the most merciful thing is to leave you alone.”

“No!” Daniel shouted.  “Not when I cost them joy.  Take me in or fix me or give me something.  But don’t- don’t tell me I have to inflict myself on them.  That is a cruelty too dark for a Bright Faerie.”

“The upper courts are so much crueler than the lower ones.  For reasons much like this.”

It made Lucy think of her talk with Verona.  She couldn’t see Daniel and she didn’t want to peek around the corner and get spotted, but she could hear his tone.  She could hear how wounded he seemed.

He was supposedly close to thirty and had escaped when he was closer to Booker’s age, twentyish.  What was that?  Ten years of being in, give or take, and ten years of being out?  And he was that wounded for that long.

Thinking of Verona, of that woundedness, it made the moment sit differently in Lucy’s head, forced her to rexamine it, to figure out how it fit, why it had played out like that.  It wasn’t just the joke.

Then Daniel began to sing.  The words were foreign, but the emotions were universal.  What he expressed and put into it wasn’t the same thing it evoked.  Anger, injustice, and again, that woundedness.

His life had been taken away from him.

How had Lucy taken Verona’s life from her?  It was an odd comment about being a cat.  That wasn’t a possibility.  It was a lark, a hypothetical.

The singing shifted gradually into something bigger, punctuated by strong words, bridging them together.  He could, in a single sentence, use pitches and cadences that evoked the child, the adult, the meek and the mighty.

The right and wrong.  A string of one-syllable notes, like a heartbeat, quickening.

Did Verona want out of that house that badly?  Was that it?  The quiet child and the domineering, self-indulgent tyrant?

So badly she’d just give it all up?  The chance of growing up together, graduating University together?  Going through life milestones together?

Tears welled in Lucy’s eyes.

She would.  She might.  She could.

That heartbeat tempo picked up, became verses, became angry, in a way that left injustice well behind, and that was an anger that Lucy had only briefly experienced, with Paul.  It pulled her away from herself and dizzied her and it made it hard to leave that feeling of realization over where Verona had been at behind.

Anger that promised things.  Anger that led to inevitabilities.  Like how there was no way Lucy would run into Paul after carrying everything and be civil in any way.  He’d hurt her mom.  Wounded her.  He’d hurt Booker.  He-

A hand settled on her shoulder.

John.

She breathed hard, blinking, and wiped at her eyes.  She’d activated her Sight without realizing, and she was surprised at how much the emotion that bled out of the cave was getting to her, staining her.

“What will you do?” the whisper leaked out of the cave.

“We stop him,” Lucy answered.  “He put civilians in the line of fire.  People’s families.”

John nodded.

“What will you give me!?  This world is a sandstorm, compared to what I once had!  It chews at me, fills my eyes and nose and mouth!  It steals all beauty from things, erodes everything fine!”

“You had slavery,” Guilherme answered, succinct.

John spoke, voice low.  “I’m a killer, d-”

“I don’t know anything else,” the boy spoke.

He was way older than Lucy, twice her age, but it was hard not to picture him as a boy, or to think of him as anything but, hearing his voice.

Look,” Guilherme said, with an unusual degree of emphasis.

Lucy nodded.

Look.

She’d implored something similar of Verona.  To look forward.

“Do you want me to dispatch him?  He-”

Lucy’s Sight caught the sudden flood of crimson.

“-He just injured Guilherme.  I don’t know if it was fatal.”

“Nonlethal.  Rubber bullets if you have them.  Leg shot if you don’t.”

“I do have them.  Both rubber bullets and leg shots can be fatal, but together… it may be the best I can do.”

“I more or less trust you.  We get him to Clem, or we let the authorities grab him.  If he’s really a danger to people, then maybe a hospital where they can give him some stability.”

“Dark Fae!” the boy shouted, his voice echoing.  “Are you part of this adventure, or does this leave him only his adventure with you!?”

Maricica was silent.

“If you were partner to it, he would have kept it where you could see.  I could see that tale.  The Fae of the dark fall who toyed with the lover, the Fae of high summer who loved him, keeping and protecting the memory on a pedestal.  But he kept it to himself.  Are you curious?  Do you want to see, now?  Are you wondering what it unlocks, what secrets of another court this lover might have told him?”

“The letter,” Lucy whispered.  “Trying to trade it to Maricica?”

“By offering it, he takes it from her,” John said.

Lucy nodded.

“Are you prepared?” John asked.  “Or should I do this alone?”

“I’ll be there.”

Lucy had to dig into her bag.  She wasn’t sure if she’d kept the soda can around so long that it was no longer carbonated.

She focused on her Self, that she’d been trying to shore up as a power source.  A bit of glamour, and then the weapon ring.

She turned the can into a gun.  She swayed slightly in the aftermath of it.

“Careful,” John whispered.

“Once drowned, you may be resucitated,” Guilherme said, in the cave.  “Twice drowned… it is rare to surface once again.”

Lucy looked at John, who shrugged.

“Then I will do my best to take that last adventure from you, noble sir, and sup on what I can.  Unless your friend wishes to devour me.”

Friend?

Oh, Maricica.  It was hard to picture her as Guilherme’s friend, but that might have been the intent.

“She will not.  Maricica?  You will not.  Go.  He’s dangerous for you.”

John touched Lucy’s shoulder, murmuring, “Don’t announce us.”

Lucy stepped around the corner, holding the gun without pointing it at the target.

Daniel had glossy black hair that formed very loose ringlets that drifted in a breeze that wasn’t present, and was draped in something that looked like wet silk, but it wasn’t wet.  It was fine, clingy, in deep sapphire, with what looked like white silver.  He was pretty and slender, but hollowed out.

The moment to signal John had passed a bit too long, and faced with Daniel, and everything he seemed to be, she found herself filling the silence instead of letting it hang.  “What about me?”

She took in more of the scene.  A few feet away, Guilherme knelt, a hand pressed to his chest, another reaching behind to his back.  Blood flowed around fingers, as he tried to staunch the wound with his hands.

There was something in Daniel’s eyes that made Lucy worry.  Scarier than any horror movie.

Again, it felt out of sync, and out of time.  She gave John a nod.

He pulled the trigger.  Daniel flinched back in what felt like the wrong timing, his hand brushing cloth and kicking it up.  His clothes were more voluminous than they’d appeared at first.

Within the volume of that voluminous, Daniel seemed to move.  Like he’d skipped, stepping forward on one foot with the other brought overhead, only for it to become belatedly apparent that he’d touched the ground with hand, not foot, and he was doing a cartwheel.

The bullet passed through the cloth and clattered to the floor, twenty feet away.  Daniel only expanded the prior effect.  Some of the movements of cloth suggested feet in the air, hands, and head.

John kept shooting.  Each shot stirred and tore cloth.

She held back her one shot.

Guilherme said something about shooting first.

Her ears were ringing from the bullets.  She belatedly caught up as John said, “I did say.”

What had he last said, to deliver a casual ‘told you so’?

Oh, right.  Not announcing herself.

“Theatrics matter, and it feels wrong,” Lucy said.

“It is more wrong that he is about to leave and become Kennet’s problem.  Maricica, you stay.  Lucy, John, chase him.”

She glanced to the side for Maricica and saw only darkness.

Chase him?

“He’s not-” she started.

Daniel dove for a wall of the cave, clothing forming a loose circular shape as it touched the wall, framing a hole that Lucy wasn’t positive had been there before.

She ran for the hole, and it disappeared, the cloth becoming a wisp of smoke and dust.  A wall remained in its wake.

She changed direction, then ran from the cave.  John joined her.

Onto the uneven, sloping rocks that were littered with slate.

Down the riverbank.  Down the water.

John’s pace was something measured, while hers felt frantic.

It felt more frantic by the moment.  She’d felt weirded out since the singing and that weirdness wasn’t going away.

“You trained with Guilherme.  You’ve touched base with the goblins.  You’ve learned tricks,” John told her.  “You’ve gathered tools.  You can do this.”

“I don’t- maybe.  But it’s messing with my head.  The singing-”

“It messed with my head as well.  Yalda was not magically good, but she had a good voice.  Many children who were slaughtered by bad chance and stray bullets in the conflict were children who’d had some experience with singing, it seems.  She got it from them.  Clarified it, as she took lives.”

“I’m sorry, what happened.”

John touched his own necklace, which had a ring on it.

“I’m not looking for sympathy.”

“You have it anyway.  It sucks.  This… this sucks.  This kid- I know he’s more than twice my age but I don’t want to hurt him.”

“Good.”

Lucy did a double take, looking to the side, seeing Daniel step out of the trees, then looking in the direction he’d been running.  There was only a leaf caught on a single strand of spiderweb, twirling.  Maybe in the gloom, a trick of the eyes, she’d believed it was him.

“You must be a very confused young lady.  Shooting someone is not the way one normally acts on such wantings.”

“Wantings?”

“Not wanting to hurt me and being so willing to put bullets in me.  Don’t raise that gun, sir.  I don’t want to be held responsible for where that bullet travels after it leaves the chamber.”

“I liked your singing,” Lucy said, as a stab at diplomacy.  “It got to me.”

“The talent comes and goes, matching the situation.”

“A lot of the music I’m into is pretty raw.  Indie artists getting started.  I like unique sounds,” Lucy said.  “My brother got me into it.  Want to listen?”

She held up her phone.

“The twang of it wears on me so quickly.  No.  No.”

“Can we talk?  Find a common ground?  You were sent here, right?  By your landlord?”

“I’m good at finding things of value.  People with potential, treasures, and glittering things.  He wanted me to bring him some of the most valuable things.  To take them from someone else.”

“What are the others doing?  Clem and Sharon?”

“I don’t know.  Clem is watching me.”

In the background, she could hear sirens.

Multiple sirens.  She glanced, and it looked like three or four police cars.

Sirens were curious.  If phones really weren’t working, or were only inconsistently working, someone at least managed the nine-one-one call.

She hoped the others weren’t caught up in that.

“Are you hungry?  Thirsty?” she asked.

“I had water and then I lost it.  The water here is such swill.  Even filtered.  The food is more swill.”

“Can we work something out, Daniel?  You can’t keep going like this.”

“Why not?” he asked.  “All I must do now is leverage what I have now into more.  More glamour.”

“Ninny glitter, my acquaintance called it.”

“The abiltiy to make imagination into reality.”

“A little girl into birds?” Lucy asked.  “How is that any better than how they treated you?”

“For one thing, it was moments.  For me, it was a lifetime.  I haven’t yet lived out that full lifetime, but I know I will carry it with me always.”

Lucy thought again of Verona.

“That little girl will remember that too.  Not for sure as something clear, but definitlely a terrifying moment.”

“A roller coaster of a moment.  To be birds,” Daniel said.  He smiled.  “I am far from good at manipulating animals, or at turning people into animals.  That’s a Dark Fall concern, a High Fall concern.  Isn’t that right, Maricica?

He threw something.  It might have been a pinch of dust, but it became like a needle, aimed at a moth in the darkness.

It hit Maricica’s shoulder and became dust again, settling into a fine curl of bramble on her shoulder, incorporated into her dress.

“It was crude work,” Maricica told him.  “Terribly crude, it might not have held up for your entire performance.”

“I worried that it was so,” Daniel said.  “I know I’ve angered you, taking away one of your stories.”

“We live forever and strive to stay entertained.  When we can’t, we fall to Winter.  A story taken from us is a hastening of that end.  With our poor Guilherme, you took half of what he had.  Of his love story and mystery, he has only his mystery left.”

Winter?

Lucy looked at Maricica, who smiled like she knew Lucy was looking, even though her eyes were pointed nowhere near Lucy herself.

Guilherme was… dying?  Or something approximate?

There was only a mystery?

“My court was Dark Spring. The aristocratic underground.  Crime, conspiracy, dark nobility, tyranny,” Daniel said.  “We didn’t concern ourselves with transformation, as much as I learned some.  You had to.”

“Yes,” Maricica said.  “It was a must to learn a bit of everything.  Especially once the courts allowed travel between them.”

“The glamour I’m best at is my native glamour.  Glamour I was raised in, while I was made to be a singer,” Daniel said.  “Are you familiar with the courts, little girl?”

“I’m a teenager, not that little,” Lucy said.  “And some.  I got the rundown.”

“Do you know what kind of glamour we did?”

“No.  But I feel like you’re setting up for a big moment, leading into it like this.”

John pointed his gun at Daniel.

“That bullet will miss and it will hit somebody,” Daniel said.  “Terminally.”

“John,” Lucy said.

“Letting him talk was a mistake.”

“Then let me talk more,” Maricica said.  “To not give him too much, and to deny him his reveal.  The Dark Spring court dwells on emotion.  Dark emotion.  The High Spring court does glamour in fine art, detail, and evoking emotion like laughter, joy, pleasure.  Its inverse dwells in emotional pain, in grief, fear, and resentment.  Rather than create art for the audience, they turn audience into art.  A man made into a painting, a woman cast in bronze and left to live forever, seeing the world from the statue’s eyes.”

“I was untouched by the punishments, because I sang well, but I saw them carried out enough.  Do you wish to see the worst possible things, girl?”

“Not especially.”

Daniel moved his hand, letting dust fall as a curtain.  He swept up the curtain in one hand, then gave it shape in another movement.  A cloak.  A shroud.

Which soon draped a figure with a hidden face.

“A touch crude,” Maricica said.

“I do try,” Daniel said.  “Very sorry.”

Lucy backed away as the shrouded figure moved a bit closer.  “Can you come with us instead of this?”

“You’d separate me from what little I have and I have so little.  We’re expecting to stay two days but we’ll probably stay three or four.  If those three or four days are paid for in suffering and loss, then… I hate to say it, but it does make this feel more like home.”

The shroud advanced toward Lucy.  John drew his knife and slashed, and it cut the creature’s flesh.  Even Daniel seemed surprised.

It reached for Lucy, regardless, and John stabbed it approximately where the heart was meant to be.

The hand continued to reach.  It pushed forward, uncaring about its own wound.

She pulled out the hook that Nat had given her, and aimed to pierce the thing’s hand.

A hand seized her wrist, and at first she thought it was Maricica.  Maricica was standing to her right.

But it was Daniel.

He moved so fast.

Because… he was using the gaps in time?

“Let go of me.”

The shroud drew closer, and John stabbed it.  It buckled.  Lucy twisted, then threw John her knife.  “Booker’s flame!”

The knife ignited.  The shroud was cut down.

“That cost me a lot, and it’s gone so fast,” Daniel said.

“Many young faerie struggle with that reality,” Maricica told him.

“Would you take me with you?”

“Not after you spoiled my fun, no.”

“Maricica,” Lucy said, “Maybe?  It’s a resolution.”

“A shallow one,” Maricica answered.

“I’ll take shallow,” Daniel said.

“I shall not,” Maricica told him.

“Deep then?” he asked.  He moved his hand near Lucy’s hook of twisted metal, and made it disappear.  Then, a second later, hook in hand, he hacked at Maricica.

She caught him before he could drive it home.  She tittered.

Lucy backed away.  She still held the can, and she began to make it a gun.

Daniel threw another pinch of glamour, and it became a needle.  The needle penetrated the can, and it fizzed violently.  She dropped it.

“Wasteful,” Maricica said.

“What’s the harm in spending if I have no expectation of living thousands of years?” he asked.  “Or in borrowing.”

“If you’d like to deal…”

He adjusted his grip, no longer holding the hook properly, and instead held her hand that held the hook.  He leaned in, and her wings intervened, patterns peeling away and swaying like cobras before the bite.

And he didn’t care.  He bit into her arm, fended off the first cobras, and savaged her.

“Stop!” Lucy shouted.  She didn’t have hook, knife, or gun.  So she drew a weapon with the weapon ring, turning a pen into a rapier blade.

This time she felt especially weak.

John circled around, holding the burning knife.

“Stop,” Maricica said, calm, as her arm was torn down to bone.  “You know this only gives me power over you.”

“I don’t,” he started, mouth bloody and partially full.  He swallowed and finished, “care.”

John lunged in from an angle Lucy couldn’t see, grabbing him, and pulled him away.

“Lucy!”

Lucy leaped in as well, reaching- grabbing.

Only Daniel was no longer there.  She reached through mist.

And came face to face with a shrouded figure.

John hadn’t had Daniel.  John was still four paces away.  Maricica was still fallen. Daniel was there, in the background, taking advantage of the fact that everyone’s attention was on Lucy.

She had to fight, to avoid letting the thing get its hands on her.  Ducking, dodging.

She started to stab with the rapier pen.

“No,” Maricica said.

Lucy pulled back, letting the pen fall from her fingers, because she was already so close to stabbing it.

“Back away.”

They did back away.

“Touch it, and it conducts emotions to you.  Even hurling a stone at you.  I cannot easily deal with them.  We should only be glad he creates them one at a time, unlike some of that court who make dozens.”

Daniel took three long steps backward, and then one to the side.

And then, not even a blur so much as a glimpse, he was gone.  Running.

It was John who leaped forward.  John tossed something bundled up at Lucy and then he bear-hugged the shrouded figure that was dangerous to touch with even a rapier blade, then kicked the next.

Clearing a path.

Lucy ran in the direction the boy had gone, looking for and trying to find the fracture or space where time moved faster.  But because the world around her seemed to blend in together, it wasn’t easy.

The bundle was her knife, wrapped in packaging he must have had at hand.  She was glad to have it.

She turned to her Sight, and then, when she didn’t see anything, did her best to focus it.

The fractures were a kind of damage.  Her Sight showed her damage.

Slowly, surely, she could see the distinctions in the staining.  He gained on her with every second he ran.

She found the best path, and then she followed.  A hundred paces behind, but she was keeping up, now.

It was too easy to draw some parallels between him and Verona.  She worried that if she couldn’t help him or stop him, she couldn’t help or stop Verona, who might really be buying into that cat idea.  Or something else.

So she chased, dreading what came next, and worrying that the dread was him working his Dark Spring court know-how on her.

For he knew he was being pursued, and now he was painting his surroundings around him as he ran.  And she was running through a dressed-up Kennet, into a dark, dark place, after a person without hope for the future.

Back Away – 5.2

Verona

To Verona’s Sight, the trees to her right were a blur of spiderweb and film, a continuous mass, while the town to her left was shrouded, every building enveloped in white-grey wrapping, the dim lights glowing against the film while the contents, surface, and ‘bones’ of the building appeared to be missing.  They took a path that gave her a sweeping view of what was going on, and she saw a city enveloped.  Like dense spiderweb had been layered over it all, keeping the shape even as the city and everything else were taken away from beneath.

It was hollow, and within that hollow, she could see aggregate red masses, throbbing and moving.  A heart that beat, growing more agitated over time.

She gripped the rack at the top of the truck, standing on the bed, and let Matthew carry her toward trouble.  Away from trouble too, she figured.  Lucy and Avery were dealing with their own parts of this bigger situation, and she was leaving them behind.

They were stronger together.  The best points of her life these days were when they were a trio.  The worst parts were when she was alone, which was usually when she was with her dad.

Funny, when she’d always thought of herself as a loner.

Her hat flapped but didn’t leave her head, and the rush of wind helped a lot to cool her down.  Getting cool and then hot again always made her sweat like heck, and the Ruins had been cold.  The summer evening was warm.

Verona had tried to bring up what Nicolette had mentioned back in the library, when they were figuring out who should go after who.  There was something about binding, and how they were supposed to hit the targets of a binding with the opposite of that thing.  She really, really hoped that Lucy and Avery had picked up on that, when she’d stressed that they shouldn’t go after targets too similar to one another.

She would have said it, but Matthew and Edith had been in earshot.  She would have phoned them, but her phone wasn’t in service.  Because things were disjointed in time, different parts of the city moving at different speeds.

It wouldn’t be good to mention binding in front of Matthew and Edith, not when the local Others had been so sketchy about their willingness to teach that stuff.

“Where are we going!?” she called out.

“What?” Matthew called out, through his driver’s side window.

“Why this way?”

“Following my instinct!  I feel pressure!”

“Alright!”

If they found the skeptic, she’d have to dissuade her.  Somehow.  Verona was guessing this Griggs woman would be stubborn.

And if Matthew’s instincts were wrong and he drove her out into the middle of nowhere, then maybe she could loop back and help the others.  She wouldn’t mind that.  Then they could deal with the skeptic together.

Or, and she felt it was necessary to account for this stuff, because Lucy worried and she really, really, really, really wanted to not let Lucy down, she had to consider the worst case scenario, and be a bit paranoid.  Which meant considering that Matthew and Edith might drive her off into a secluded space and come after her.  Or let something else come after her.

She reminded herself where her spell cards were, along with her glamour stuff, like pre-prepared feathers and cat hair.

She could run if she needed to, she was pretty sure.  She could fight if she needed to.

Which got her thinking about their last fight, just a few days ago, and the outcome of that.  The Cold Tears thing at the end of school party.

“Whatever happened with Melissa!?” she called out, adjusting her grip so her arms were folded along the top of the truck, foot braced to keep herself from sliding back.

A body hit the roof.  Verona let go of the rail, which was a mistake, because the truck was still moving at a good clip and it left her with only her two feet under her.  Her arms windmilled, she walked back three quick steps as she tried to regain her balance, looking down to see if she could grab the side, and then slid on the last step.  She tripped over the hatch at the very back of the pickup, careening out over onto the road.

She reached for the feathers in her pocket and found the fur instead.  Glamour.  She touched it to cape and pulled the cape around herself.

She’d been trying to make the glamour use with the cape a thing, in the same way they’d been told about glasses being tied to the Sight.  She hesitated at the last second, the ground coming at her fast, and threw down a paper, hoping it was the right one.

The blast of wind was a lot, and as it pulled at the folds of her cape, she worried it was too much.  Rather than dampen the velocity of her fall, it thrust her skyward, and in the gloom, her Sight not really helping all that much, she had little sense of anything around her.  She flipped, head over heels, and the flipping might’ve been higher velocity because of the way she’d balled up, cloak pulled around herself.

She screeched, tumbled through the air, and then contorted her body.  Tail was a guide, legs pulled in close while they faced the sky, splaying out while she faced the ground.  She repeated the process for two flips, fixating on her landing point and controlling the movement of the rest of her body as she landed, making contact with all four paws at once.  Her body absorbed the landing, and the glamour fell away with the impact.

“Och, lassie.  I didnae mean ta friten ye.”

Verona picked herself up.  The truck had skidded to a stop, and Alpeana was perched on the roof.

“Been a bit, Alpy,” Verona said.

“Och, aye.  Tha business wit tha politics an’ tha ill blood.  Ah cannae abide by it.  Ah hope ye’re well.”

“My heart’s racing, but I’m alright.  What if you made it up to me by being my familiar?”

“Ye move fast, lassie.  Bold approach thar.”

“I’m kidding with you.  Partially.”

“I’m not sayin’ nae ta ye.  Ah wouldn’t mind a break fae a’ this,” Alpeana said, ducking into the ditch by the car to avoid the headlights of incoming traffic.  “Speaking o’…”

Matthew waited for the other car on the road to pass, then climbed out.  Verona remained where she was, a little ways behind the truck.

Matthew looked uncomfortable in his own skin, rubbing at his neck, then his wrist.  In the wake of the rubbing, bindings appeared, magic circles and lines drawn out on skin, in what could’ve been flesh-tone ink on flesh, glowing black as they were agitated.

On the other side of the car, Edith climbed out, her eyes glowing.

“Thar’s trouble, Matt, Edie.”

“What trouble?” Matthew asked.

“Ah was daein’ me rounds, ‘n some uninviteds came in.”

“Uninvited whats?

“Edie’s lot.  Spirits.  Somethin’ else.  It’s tha Aware ye said were comin’.  Trekkin’ in a whole mess behind ‘er.”

“Is it the Gilded Lily?” Verona asked.  “Did she have things?”

“Aye, but I cannae tell ye if there was anythin’ to it.  Every tit and thar mum’s got things.”

“Are they far?” Matthew asked.

Alpeana shook her head.

“We need to curb this.”

“Aye.  I’ll show ye the way.  Glad ta contribute.”

She indicated a path that led down the road.  Verona jogged up to the truck and climbed back in.  Alpeana climbed in the back, crouching so low that she wouldn’t really be visible from adjacent cars.  Her eyes entirely black, her hair long and tangled, her arms and legs bent like she was poised to leap.

“Alpeana,” Matthew said.

She shrank down a bit more.

“No surprises while I’m driving.  Please.”

She nodded.

“Ah’m not so good at these thin’s.  Used ta be we walked ta church and we walked back.”

“Trucks, you mean?”

“Aye, yes.”

“Hmmm.  Good rule of thumb?  If you saw someone swinging a wood axe around, would you spook them mid-swing?”

Alpeana shook her head.

“This is bigger and faster than an axe swing.”

“Ah.  Aye.”

“That thing about the familiar… Avery and I have been teasing each other for a bit.  Would be cool, if you had a preference, but you’ve been gone a lot.”

“Aye.  Tryin’ ta stay on top of this.  Bleedin’ all ways, all’m are troubled out thar.”

“Yeah.  And staying a bit away from the Carmine beast succession thing?”

“I’ve no part in tha, best I’m aware, and I dinnae want to.  Let what happens happen, an’ Ah’ll keep doin’ what ah need be doin’.”

“I hope it works out.”

“Ah’m hopin’ it at least doesn’t do any harm.”

Verona nodded.

She had a strong suspicion Lucy would have feelings about that stance.  Maybe Avery too.

“We’re meant ta go left, here,” Alpeana said.

Verona knocked on the window.

“What!?” Matthew called back.

“Left turn!”

He turned.

“Are you scared of him?” Verona asked.

“Scared o’ tha Moira, a wee bit closer to tha surface.”

“Yeah,” Verona said.

“Be canny, careful lassie,” Alpeana said, quiet.

Verona nodded.

The truck drove for a bit, with two more turns, and they didn’t really have a lot to say.  Verona kind of appreciated the silence, and the chance to keep an eye on things without distractions.

The truck rolled to a stop.

Verona and Alpeana climbed down, and Matthew and Edith got out.

“A girl with a lot of trouble following behind her sounds like the Gilded Lily, so… watch out for weird things,” Verona said.  “I might have to draw up a diagram to contain the thing.  I gave my other one to Avery.”

“Let’s see what’s going on, first” Matthew said.

They walked down the base of the mountain.  They were still a bit above Kennet, giving them a nice view.  Louise’s house behind them, the city before them, shrouded in cocoon.

She still had a few bird bodies, and another cat body.  She had her spell cards, minus the wind one.  She still hadn’t rebuilt a nice stock since Melissa had dumped her bag out.

“I asked about Melissa, before we were interrupted,” Verona said, to Matthew and Edith.

“Yeah,” Matthew said, his voice soft.  “We took your friend home.  We tried to talk to her, without giving too much away.  She wasn’t willing to listen.”

“She’s kind of single-minded.  I remember her not being really great at sports or dancing or anything, but she would practice like crazy and eventually get there.  She was center on the hockey team, with Avery as right wing.”

“You’ve known her for a long time.”

“Not really known.  But like… ever since about kindergarten, she’s been either in my classes or in another class in the same year.  I’ve seen her face a lot.”

“We told her to call us if she had questions,” Edith said.  “She hasn’t called.”

“Okay,” Verona said.  She gave it a bit of thought.  What would Melissa be doing, then?

Going back to the same places?  Maybe?  Or did she keep something she shouldn’t?

“If you want to give us some directions that you think might work, we could try that,” Matthew said.

“What happens if she kept some of my magic notes and she’s copying them?”

“It shouldn’t work,” Matthew said.  “Not without a power source, or the emphasis and attention on her words and actions that comes with being Awakened.  Even if she had the notes.”

“It could,” Edith said.

Matthew raised his eyebrows.

“It would need a few things.  If her word wasn’t trusted, it would slow her down a great deal.  But if she knew enough to be careful about that…?”

Edith trailed off, leaving it almost as a question for Verona.

“I didn’t write down any of that, pretty sure,” Verona said.  “Nothing about awakening, or words, really.”

Edith continued, “…then it could be accidental.  She’d have to be isolated or otherwise be unusually principled about when, where, how and how honestly she chooses to speak.  She’d have to be unusually dogged about copying and setting down patterns.”

“So, like, cooped up in her room, not talking to her parents, drawing the same runes over and over again?  I could sort of see that second part.  Not the not talking to her parents bit, probably.”

“It’s unlikely,” Matthew said.  “That’s a lot of effort repeating something that isn’t working on the first, fifth, tenth, or fiftieth try.”

“Yeah,” Verona said.  “Hard to imagine.  She’d need something that let her think she had a shot.”

Matthew sighed.  “A bit of a relief, then.  Besides, most would become Other, instead of Awakening in a raw way.  With no clear power sources on hand, she would be draining from herself.  Depending on the practice she’s trying, and how well, she could spend too much of herself and invite the wrong thing in.”

“Not unlike me,” Edith said.

“I don’t think you’re wrong,” Matthew said.

“It took me a little bit to find my feet.  Until then, I wasn’t right.”

“I’m kind of mentally giving that a two out of ten chance it happens,” Verona said.  “For Melissa.”

“That’s high,” Matthew told her, a bit surprised.

Verona reminded herself the feathers were there, tucked into her sleeve.  Not because the situation was bad, but because she was letting her guard down.

She looked out over a cocooned Kennet, with its throbbing, writhing larvae of a heart beneath it, all dotted with dull blue lights.  “I think the Carmine Beast’s blood is soaking into things.  Makes that sort of mess more likely.”

“Aye,” Alpeana said, as she reached over from branch to branch, moving through the woods.  “It’s a right bloody fankle.”

“That fankle ends if John steps up to the role of Carmine,” Matthew said.  “That influence would be his.”

“And that’d be a good thing?” Verona asked.

“I think so.  I like John, I respect him.  And I think he’d be a good judge.  Different, but good.”

“So you’re rooting for him?  You want him there?”

“Yeah,” Matthew said.

Verona looked over at Edith.

Edith added, “Yes, but I worry about what follows.  I don’t think John survives it, for one thing.”

They descended past the tops of the trees, into the recesses of thick forest.  It was dark, to a surprising degree.  Verona had first experienced this when going to save Avery from the Forest Ribbon Trail.  She kept her Sight on, but it didn’t help much.  She tended to see better when there was at least a little light, and there wasn’t much.

Alpeana scurried through the branches overhead, so fast she was almost twitching in her every movement.

“I feel it.  Pressure,” Matthew said.  “I was chasing it, driving this way and that.  We’re close to a nice big patch of it.”

“Is that your Sight?” Verona asked.

“I lost my Sight a little ways into hosting this thing,” he said, giving his chest a thump.  The markings flared again, jittery, and Edith backed away a half-step.

There was a pause.

“Sorry,” he said.

She shook her head.

He took a moment, then looked over at Verona, “My Sight is gone, but my vision is tinted.  I’m more sensitive to some things.  Kind of like Sight, but not optional.”

“Ah,” she said.  “Any idea what’s this way?”

“No.”

“Edith?” Verona asked.

“Spiritstuff.”

“Eddies and whorls,” Alpeana said.

They walked in silence.  It was so dark Verona almost walked into a tree, and she could pretty much see in the dark.  Here and there, animals made noises, at least until Alpeana scurried one way or another.  Animals seemed to fall silent when she was within twenty paces of them.

Verona moved more in Alpeana’s direction, down a side path that eventually rejoined the main path.

She was getting kinda tired of walking, but she wasn’t about to complain.

“About Melissa,” Matthew said, as Verona rejoined them.

“Yeah?”

“Do you have a preference about what we should do?”

“Are you asking because you don’t know?”

“I’m asking because we want your opinion.” he said.

This felt a bit like a test.

It felt a bit like a reaching out.

And she really didn’t have a great answer.  She wasn’t sure why it was being directed at her in specific.  Or if Matthew and Edith aimed to ask the other two and compare the answers.

Or if they asked because, Melissa stumbling onto all of this was Verona’s fault.

She’d brought her stuff to the party so she could fend off problems for her friends, not to cause them.

Melissa was, in a way, Verona’s responsibility.

“Let me talk to her, maybe?” Verona asked.  “At the very least, I’ll check if she’s got anything of mine, still.”

“Alright,” Matthew said.

“Alpeana?” Verona asked, her voice sounding eerie in the dark woods.

“Aye?” Alpeana’s voice sounded ten times as eerie in the dark.

It was comforting.  Like the weirdness was shared in a way that made it theirs.  The wildlife scared off.

“Have you visited Melissa Oakham?  To give her nightmares?”

“No, I haven’t,” the Scottish accent came from nowhere and multiple places at the same time.  “Ah’ve held off, so I’m not interferin’.  D’ye want me ta start?”

“Not just yet,” Verona said.  “What happens when you hold off?  You did for my dad, and… for us?”

“For yer Lucy, aye.  After tha gun was put to ‘er bonny head.  It don’t do nothin’, haudin’ back.”

“Okay,” Verona said.  “Does it help, if you do get into it?  Give them a shake?”

“Can do, aye.  Can do a wee number on them too.  Tha pure tough ones, they dae better, ordinar’.”

“Lucy’s tough.”

“Aye, but Lucy-” Alpeana went silent.

“Trouble,” Matthew said.

Just like that, Alpeana was off, scampering through trees faster than Verona could run, and Verona ran forward.

She didn’t know why she did it, when she wasn’t good at trouble, but there was a teeny tiny part of it, she realized mid-dash, that had to do with not wanting to be entirely alone with Matthew and Edith in a dark wood without anyone friendly nearby.

Maybe that was stupid, letting the suspicions about the Carmine Beast murder color everything.  Maybe it was naive, thinking Alpeana was a friend.

She bounced off a tree trunk in her hurry, doing her best to see in the dark with her Sight.

She needed more.

She hated to do it, but she touched the cat’s fur in her back pocket, which she’d laced with glamour, she didn’t touch her cape, and instead, she brought her hand up to her eyes, two fingertips touching each eye.

“Let me see bright,” she whispered.  “Improve my Sight.”

She had no idea if rhyming worked, but it couldn’t hurt.

She dropped her hand and it was like moonlight was shining down through the foliage, making the tree trunks stand out dark, the uneven forest floor now easy to navigate.  She could dodge the thickest bushes and the fallen branches.

She caught up with Alpeana after a minute.

Alpeana hung on a branch, hair drooping down in a way that obscured much of her body.  Her pale arms stuck out of the black tide that flowed down from that point, piling on the forest floor, some bracing against the ground, others with nails digging into the arms of an old man.

Verona slowed.

The old man bucked and thrashed.  For a moment, it looked like he was going to be strong enough to rise up, sitting up and maybe pushing his way out, fighting the hands.

She stopped, watching.

“Lend me a wee hand, lassie?” Alpeana’s voice was more ethereal than before.  “A bit o’ spirit, or anything ye can hain?”

“I need to know more before I do.  Sorry,” Verona said.

“Ye dinnae go on tha patrols with John, these last few weeks, aye?”

“Not really.”

“He’s a kenspeckle figure ’round these parts.”

“I have no idea what that is.  Kenspeckle?”

“She means we know him,” Matthew said, behind Verona.  “Couple of times every year, he’ll try to find a way in.  Miss would leave it to John, most often.”

“I can help?” Verona asked.

“Please do,” Matthew said.

“He’s dangerous?  Bad?”

“Yes.”

Verona swung her bag around front, opening the front pouch, and then grabbed a folded paper.  She unfolded it as she drew nearer.

She was two paces away when the old man surged to a sitting position, then stood.  Alpeana grabbed him with multiple arms, the tide of darkness vomiting out wide and thick, making him bend.

But it didn’t make him fall.  He staggered forward, and Alpeana had to fight to crawl across branches and find a grip, that let her stay above him.

His face emerged from the darkness.  It was an old man’s face, but it looked like someone had taken the old and baked it in a bit too much.  Like those little details that made an old person look old, wrinkles aside, had multiplied.  Too many liver spots, too many broken veins.  Too many old scars, too much yellowing of the teeth, which were a bit too long as he fixed his eyes on her and smiled rictus-wide.

Alpeana fought to bring him under control.  He pushed back, arms twisting, struggling to find an angle.

“Back, lassie!”

“You said-”

“Back!”

Verona swiftly backed up a few steps.

One finger found purchase, dragging against one of Alpeana’s ten pale arms until the arm was pulled just a bit down, then seizing it in the firmest sort of grip.

One wrench, a sharp movement, and Alpeana’s forearm snapped.  Half of the arms that were reaching out of the morass snapped with it, in a cacophony of dull cracks that shook the area.  Small branches rained down around them.

The flow of the morass grew weaker.

The frail-looking old man stood a little straighter, pushed back a little harder.  The smile didn’t leave his face.

He locked eyes with Verona.

“Hello, dear.”

She swallowed hard, backing up a step.

Alpeana dropped from the branch, the mass above him collapsing down.  He staggered forward a few steps.

“Edith,” Matthew said.

“I can’t burn him without hurting her.  And I’d hurt her more.  And Matthew-”

There was something.  Edith was pointing off to the side.  Verona wasn’t in a position to see what she was pointing at.

Multiple of Alpeana’s limbs twisted, broken end of bone audibly grinding against broken end of bone, as the old man used the sole bit of leverage he had, while being swamped with oily darkness.

Verona hesitated, then lunged forward, running.

She hadn’t spent the last few weeks doing nothing.

A bit of glamour, a photograph-

Creating an image.  Of herself.

She closed in, ducking low while her image went high.

He let go of Alpeana’s arm and grabbed the image, because it was close enough to be an easy movement, and Verona saw a glimpse of him palming something pink and bloody, before punching that same palm into her image’s mouth.

The image disintegrated, and the pink thing was flung into the darkness, instead of what it was meant to do.  Verona jabbed out with the thing she’d palmed, from the folded up paper.  The Thorn in the Flesh.  She stuck it into his leg.

But she was below him, and he fixed his eyes on her.

He dropped, letting himself be pushed to the ground by Alpeana’s weight, directly atop Verona.

Alpeana’s hand gripped Verona’s ankle, and hauled her, between his legs and into oily darkness.

Into nightmare.

She slammed the door with enough force the neighbors could hear it.

“Verona!”

The door opened with matching force, hitting the wall.

She strode for the front door.

“You do not slam a door in my face!”

She got to the door, unlocked it, and he grabbed her arm, hard.  She pulled, trying to get free, and she couldn’t.

He pushed her arm back, until her back was flat against the door, and he loomed over her, holding her there, huffing for breath, while she did much the same.

“This is my house, you’ll respect me if you want to live here.”

“I don’t.”

“Then get a fucking job, Verona, grow up, and leave.

“I would if I could.”

“You could if you tried.  But you don’t, and I don’t know if it’s to spite me-”

“Not everything’s about you!” she shouted.

“Not everything’s about you!  If you’re not going to get a job, go to college, or take a training course-!”

“I’ve heard this a million times!”

“And you never listen to me!”

She fought, trying to get away.  She could smell his breath, and he remained twice her size.

He had grey in his hair, now.

He squeezed her arm harder, then let her go.

She pulled back, resentful, moved to the side, and tried to open the door.  He didn’t let her, remaining where he was, keeping her from opening it fully.

“Are you going to waste your life?” he asked her.  “Is this it?”

“I guess so.  Fuck you for that, I guess.”

She tried to open the door with enough force to make him back off, he didn’t, and she stormed off, leaving him there, heading to the side door and using that to leave, instead.

Out into Kennet.  A bit duller, a bit darker.

To Melissa, twenty or so years old, with multiple piercings in one ear, low-slung jeans, and a top with a hole in it near the collar.

They hugged.

“My dad sucks.”

“Yeah.  Everything sucks, y’know.  Except you, you’re tolerable.”

Verona snorted.

They walked, or Verona walked and Melissa limped, out into a Kennet in Twilight, too littered with things, but somehow nonspecific, areas blurring into one another.

To Downtown.

“Ronnie.”

Verona turned.

Lucy was there, with a bunch of the popular kids.  Mia, Emerson, George, and Wallace.  Wallace had his arm around Lucy’s shoulders.

She looked so pretty.  She looked so nicely put together, fashionwise, and so happy, and whole.

Pity or something in her eyes.

“Ronnie, I tried getting in touch.”

Verona shrugged.

“Do you want to hang out?”

“Hey, don’t,” Emerson said, quiet.

“Come with us?  Catch up?”

Verona shook her head.

“Or just you and me?  We can go grab a bite, if you haven’t eaten.”

“Hey,” Wallace said, shifting his arm so he had a hand at her shoulder, like he wanted to hold her back.  “We only have a bit while you’re still in town.”

Lucy shrugged away from the hand.  “What do you say?”

“I don’t want to inflict myself on you,” Verona said.

“You’re not.  Really, you’re-”

Lucy’s voice sounded far away.  Verona walked away, arm in arm with Melissa, which wasn’t as dramatic as it could’ve been, because Melissa wasn’t a fast walker.

Avery was gone.  Avery had left first.

Lucy had left for University after.

And Verona…

Verona went with Melissa to a space behind old buildings, littered with decaying old chicken nuggets.  They found a seat on wooden pallets.

Melissa had the stuff.  A glass pipe.  A baggie.  A lighter.

Verona fidgeted, waiting.  Everything, her dad, Lucy, Avery, feeling ashamed, anxious, hopeless.  A bone deep, profound sense of loss, for everything that could have been and everything that should have been.

She drew in a breath so deep it hurt, and had to fight to avoid making a sound as the breath left her lips.  Her eyes were wet as she watched Melissa finish.

“Talk to Jer lately?”

Verona shook her head.

“He’s head over heels for you.”

“I don’t want to inflict myself on him.”

“Only I get the pleasure of your company, huh?”

“You can tolerate me,” Verona said, not looking at anything in particular.  Images blended into one another.

It was always worse in the moments before.  Worse because relief was a breath away.  The emotions came crashing in, heavy and hard in a way that made her feel diminished each time, and then she could put that glass pipe to her lips.

She put the glass pipe to her lips.

Then she could inhale.

She inhaled.

And it could all be washed away in throat-burning, lung-burning chemical smoke.

This was it.

This was it.

Only this.

She coughed, sputtering.

“Oh, lassie.”

Hands reached for her and she fended them off.  Lying on her back, swatting them away.  Shielding her head and upper body from- from everything.  Helplessly flailing against that.

“I wanted ta get ye as far from him as I could.  I pulled ye in too deep.  I’m sorry, lass.”

Him.

Verona focused her eyes, arms still shielding her head.

He was bent over, his one leg not working so well, the rest of him weakened, but not really bowing or breaking.

She looked around, for Matthew and Edith.  They weren’t helping because-

A figure, a woman, staggered forward.  Too thin to be Edith, and she was, head to toe, entirely on fire.

She was an echo, Verona realized.  And then she wasn’t.  The fire consumed her.

“Can ye help me, Verona?  I need a wee bit more.”

“I don’t know how,” Verona said, blinking away tears.

“Ye can jus’ say it.  Hold this hand, aye?”

Alpeana, not a human but a morass with limbs sticking out here and there, trying to press down a man who refused to bow, reached out one broken arm.

Verona took it as gently as she could, so she wouldn’t cause any pain.

“I take power from Kennet’s Others, for Kennet.  I give it to you.  Draw and drink until you have what you need,” Verona said.

She felt it, pulling from her when she, right this moment, didn’t feel like she had a lot.  But Alpeana swelled, the mess of black drain-hair reaching out like it was prehensile, invading his ear canals, nostrils, and mouth.  It took on a weight that made him fall to hands and knees.

“What is he?” Verona asked.  She cupped Alpeana’s arm with her free hand as she sat up, then stood, so she wouldn’t jostle it too much.

“A variant on a ghoul,” Matthew said, behind her.  “Eater of Unborn.  He causes women who were pregnant to… have you taken health class?”

“Yeah,” Verona said, quiet.  “I’m twen- I’m in ninth grade, Matthew.”

Almost outright lied there.

“Go easy on tha wee bairn, Matthew.  I put ‘er through tha wringer.  Dinnae mean it, but…”

“The details don’t need to be dwelt on.  Ghouls can range from weaker than a kitten to impossibly strong, depending on how well they eat.  Most tie themselves to death alone.  He ties himself to birth and death both.”

Alpeana had him pinned, now.

“The echoes- are they part of him?”

“There were spirits too,” Edith said.  “There’s a tide of invaders.  Most are nothing, but if we don’t deal with them now, they might become problems later.”

“Oh,” Verona said.  It was hard to think, because the nightmare sat so big and heavy in her mind.  “Is that how they would have treated you, back in the day?”

“Maybe,” Edith said.  “I got lucky.”

“Can we steer them, or give them sanctuary, or something, instead?” Verona asked.  She wasn’t sure why she was fixating on this like this.

“We should do something about that one first.”

The eater.

“What do you want to do?  Kill it?”

“You can’t kill something dead.”

“Then birth it or…?”

“I have no idea how you’d do that.”

“Yeah,” Verona said.  “Bind it?”

“Matthew,” Edith said.  “One slipped down that way.  I’ll try handling this.”

Matthew nodded.

Then he jogged off.

“Careful, Alpeana,” Edith said.

“Aye.”

Alpeana shifted position, so she was suspended directly above the old ghoul.  Edith bent down, and to Verona’s sight, she unfolded.

The Girl by Candlelight emerged, bright and warm on an already warm day.  Statuesque and bearing the candle across her shoulders, lit at both ends.

She bent down, touching the candle’s flame to the ground.

It ignited, drawing out a flaming circle.

The circle grew thick and tall, closing in a ring around the old man.  In the moment before it fully closed, Alpeana pushed him back and away, then retreated through the gap before it could close.

“Better if you do this than me,” the Spirit said, sounding very similar to Edith and very different.

“Just tell me,” Verona said.  “What do I do?”

“May I come in?  Only a bit?”

“What happens if you ‘come in’?”

“I can reach through you, and you can draw on my power.  Many practitioners act as vessels to hold spiritual power.  You’d have a bit of me in every bit of you.  You’d do it for a minute or so.”

There were other questions to ask.  She wanted to say yes, but she was afraid to say yes if it meant she was doing like she’d done in the nightmare, pushing the world out and away.  She wanted to do right by Lucy, by Avery, and be reliable…

The fastest way to get as far away from that was this, and yet…

She shook her head.

“No?”

“I need to hold onto me right now, I think,” Verona said, hugging her arms to her body, as if it was cold.

“Then I don’t know what to do,” Edith said.

“Can you clear the ground around the flame?”

“I can try, lassie.”

“Thanks,” Verona said.

Alpeana, human again, bent in close, and reached out gingerly.  Verona took the thorn back.

“Does this help?”

“I don’t think so, but thank you.  Thought I might have to lose this.”

“Ye have my thanks for tha aid.”

Verona nodded.

She drew in the dirt with a stick, as Alpeana pulled away debris and patted down broken earth.

“I found it,” Matthew said.  “Dealt with.”

“I felt you handle it,” Edith told him.  “I offered a more direct line of aid, it would have let her touch and push power into the fire, but she refused.”

“I think it’s better you didn’t,” Matthew said.  “But I think some of our Others would be uneasy, seeing our resident practitioner already knows how to draw up a binding.”

“Some would be,” Edith said, almost inaudible.

Verona drew, doggedly, with emphasis in each stroke.  “I don’t know how to properly bind.  This is item enchantment type stuff.”

“It looks like it should work,” Matthew said.  “It feels like it should work.”

“That’s good, then.”

The old man stood, lit by the flames in an otherwise dark wood, smiling.  He paced a bit within the circle, which had been drawn out ten feet wide.

“I found the source of this particular problem,” Matthew said.

“Source?”

“The perimeter’s weak.  Things are slipping through somehow.”

“They’re movin’ wi’ direction,” Alpeana said, from behind Verona.

“Pushed or pulled?” Edith asked.

Alpeana shrugged, watching Verona draw.

“Is this the Aware, again?” Matthew asked.

“It wouldn’t be the skeptic.  I guess it could be Daniel.  But the Lily makes most sense.”

“The Lily is pulling in outsiders?”

“She draws magic items to her, or she finds her way to them.  Maybe there’s something…?”

“That tight a pattern?” Matthew asked.  “She does one thing.  Suddenly breaking from that to include Others doesn’t work.”

“If she has a certain power source or origin point?” Verona asked.  “If the power, say, came from a god and then the god changed its mind?”

“Even gods tend to hold to patterns.  It can cost nearly as much to change direction as it does to get the thing started in the first place,” Matthew said.

“Okay,” Verona said.  “Then probably it’s one thing.  Maybe an item.”

“Weakening the perimeter and drawing in Others by the same thing?” Matthew asked.  “That’s inconvenient.”

“Tha toon’s wet wit’ Carmine blood, Mattie.  It asks fer more bloodshed.”

“I don’t know what to do,” he said, clenching his fists.

“We’ll do our best.  Lucy, Avery and me,” Verona said.  She was about halfway done.  “Trust us.”

As she said that, the flames dipped.

The old man stepped closer, pressing his lips together into a tight, almost smug smile.

“Edith?” Verona asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Ah’m nae feelin’ so strong,” Alpeana said.

Verona looked.

Alpeana was… she looked less like she had hair that had been pulled from a tub drain, and more like she had really filthy, regular hair.  Features had softened, there were freckles on her skin, and her dress wasn’t as tattered.

“The skeptic.  She’s watching,” Verona said.  She looked around, scanning the darkness.

She didn’t see any faces.  She didn’t see any camera.

“Get somewhere safe,” Edith said.  “Matthew-”

She stopped.

Matthew was stock still.  One fist clenched, the other wrapped around it, held at waist level.

“I’ll go,” Edith said.

“But-” Verona said.  She looked back at the fire, and the smiling ghoul, lit by the ring of flame.

“I have to go.  It’s too dangerous if I don’t.  If something happens to Matthew, you may have to deal with the skeptic, before the Doom hits its full strength.”

“Deal with?”

“I- knocking her out might do it.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

Edith hesitated, looking at Verona and Matthew, then said, “Be safe.  I love you.”

Matthew flinched at that.

Then Edith ran, following Alpeana into the deep woods.

Over the course of a minute, Verona paced, looking and trying to find the skeptic.  Matthew remained still.

The fire that ringed the old man was steadily becoming a regular fire.  The kind that burned out.

“Matthew?”

Matthew stirred.

“Move fast,” he said.  To the ghoul, he said, “Run.  Leave, if you know what’s good for you.  Anywhere but here.”

The ghoul showed his teeth, then cracked its neck and shoulders.

“Yes?” Matthew asked.  “You’re not welcome here.”

“You’re not a Lord, to tell me that.”

“I’m the closest thing we’ve got to one.”

“I’ll go.  But I will come back.  You will owe me one favor.”

“I’ll do no such thing.”

The ghoul smiled, bowing his head.

And then he moved, swift.

Leaping over the flame.  Out into the woods.  Not in the exact same general direction as Edith and Alpeana, but not especially far from them either.

Matthew stiffened.

“Come,” Matthew said.  He started striding the other way.  “I think the best thing to do would be to get very close to her, or get very far from her.  The middle ground is the most dangerous.”

“I can’t see her.  My Sight’s not, um-”

“Neither can I.”

They walked through dark woods, in a focused direction.

“If we can find her trail,” Matthew said.

“In the dark?”

“Yes.  Somehow.  If we can deal with her, then we might have options.  But- what?”

Verona had stopped in her tracks, at a face in the gloom.

It was a trick of the light.  Maybe.

Or an Echo, as a person without the benefit of Sight might see it.

She moved on.

“If the Doom gets loose, get far away, and try to put a circle, any kind of circle, around yourself.”

“What happens if it comes for me?”

“It draws back, poised, and then it strikes, in a singular blow.  It’s strong enough that it can be direct, or it can be circumstance.  You can’t avoid it, but you can dampen the blow.  If I’m alive and my wardings are intact, it should be drawn back to me eventually.  You may have to deal with this skeptic woman to let that happen.”

“Okay,” Verona said.

“Thank you, for helping tonight.”

“Glad to,” Verona said.

“Careful.”

“I really am,” she said, considering and then deciding.  “I am.  I want to be a part of this.  I want to help.”

“I wish I knew how Miss found you three.”

Was that a compliment?

There was a moment she could have asked, but it felt awkward to.

And then, a bit through the dark woods, looking for any sign of the skeptic, Matthew touched a tree trunk where bark had been cut away.

“Do you have a light source?”

“Yeah.”

Verona dug for her flashlight.

“The fucking perimeter,” Matthew breathed.

All around them, there were flat, round stones with the centers hollowed out, hanging from trees, and there were bundles of sticks in the ground, shaped like dolls.

Many had been broken or uprooted.

Bark cut from a tree.

Verona pulled the brim of her hat down a bit.  She had to consider she might be on video.

“The perimeter, damn.  Damn.  This is not easy to replace,” Matthew said.

“This keeps Others out?”

“It keeps a lot of Others away, and it slows the approach of people with negative intentions.”

“I could learn at the institute how to make this stuff,” Verona said, her voice quiet in contrast to his being loud.

“This is a mess.  The fact she didn’t just break it, but she upended them, it makes things worse.”

There was an animal carcass on the ground, bloated.

A goblin thing.

“The wards that Charles put down a decade ago… the goblin alarms and wards, Edith’s runes… torn up.  I can’t tell, but it seems to have had a domino effect.”

“Domino?  One knocking down another as it fell?  How?  How bad?”

“I have no earthly or unearthly idea,” Matthew said, “except that it seems to have collapsed…”

He extended an arm, indicating… it looked like everything to the left of him, then everything to the right.

They picked through the ruins, Matthew picking up the occasional thing and putting it upright.

“Do you see which way she went?” he asked.

Verona shook her head.  She couldn’t make heads or tails of this mess, let alone divine which way the skeptic might have gone.

“The Skeptic’s here, then something else is drawing the outside Others to Kennet.”

“Probably the Lily,” Verona said.

“It’s coordinated,” Matthew noted.  “They were painted as random.”

“Yeah,” Verona said.

She digested that, while picking through things, and taking note of the old, old protections that had been set up.

There was a story about how Kennet came to be what it was.  This was… it was one brief chapter in that story.  Now with a big hole carved in it.

She thought back, trying to figure out the interplay of Aware that had done this, and thinking about whether one other member of the group could have played a part in things getting this messy.  The loop guy?  Ted?

Or…

“Bristow,” she said, quiet so the camera wouldn’t overhear her.

“Bristow?”

“The landlord.  He collects them.  He puts them into the apartment in configurations, where they boost each other, or play off one another.  There’s… it’s like the building’s a diagram.  He might have arranged them into some kind of interlinked set, before he sent them off.”

“They don’t operate like a set.  Each going off in their own direction.”

“But each, inadvertently, is playing off of the others.  Maybe in the way Bristow wants.”

“All the more reason we need to find her.  Any signs?”

No signs.

No trail, nothing she could figure out, looking at dark gray against dark grey in the gloom of a tree-shrouded forest at night.  Her flashlight shone on one thing at a time, her phone casting a bit of additional light.  It didn’t help that she was spending a fair bit of time looking around, making sure the ghoul wasn’t out there.

It sucked that it got away.

But as she looked back, she saw light.

Red and blue, flashing.

Police.

“Matthew,” she said.

He looked, and he stood straight as he saw.

“The way this is supposed to work,” he murmured, “is that Innocents are too unnerved to remark on the odd things they find.  Especially with some of these types of ward.”

“It doesn’t matter when it’s her.  It doesn’t matter that phones aren’t working across Kennet.  She called the police.  They were the cop cars we heard earlier.”

“They’re only now getting here.”

“Because time’s broken in Kennet,” Verona said.

She felt prenaturally calm.

The nightmare was fading into the background.  She wasn’t sure if being this calm and collected was her being strong like Alpeana had meant, or if it was weakness, but… it was all she knew.

To keep it together, in the face of the unreasonable.

“Can you hold it together?” she asked him.

“I don’t know.  It’s been years since I had to wrestle the Doom like this.  Now twice in one night.”

“Go,” Verona said.  “Trust me.”

He hesitated.

“Trust me.  Go.  But before- before you do,” she had ideas.  “I need you to say some things.”

“You’re not going to face the police head on?”

“I can figure this out.  Hurry, we don’t have much time, and you need to get clear.  Tell me…”

She walked him through it, as the flashing lights drew nearer.

Somewhere in those woods, the Skeptic’s camera tracked them, monitoring them and stripping them of all power and protections.

Instructions given, she let Matthew go.

Opposites defeat opposites in bindings, Verona thought.

Hat pulled low, she ran into the darkness, fleeing before the cops could arrive.

Opposites beating opposites seemed like a sword that cut both ways.  If pretty beat ugly, then by the other side of the coin, ugly beat pretty.  Truth beat lies and lies beat truth.

As far as Verona could reason it, it came down to which could get the advantage on the other first.  To have the upper hand, to beat them down, or to encircle them.

She would try, here.  She wanted, needed this.

To face this woman, who, at least on paper, represented that ugly, dismal, lonely, and wonder-less reality.  To beat her.

And she’d have to hope Lucy and Avery were doing the same.

[5.2 Spoilers] Faerie Courts & Goblins

 

Back Away – 5.3

Verona

Last Thursday: Faerie Courts & Goblins


Having no Sight sucked.  The woods were dark and Verona was pretty sure that something was crawling up her leg.

“My daughter,” a voice creaked, diffuse, reaching out into the woods.  “Please.  Visit me.  Why have you gone so far away?”

“Go away,” Verona said, as firmly as she could.

“I don’t ask for much.  A call once a week would be nice.  Give me something to look forward to.  A visit now and then.  Bring the grandchildren.”

“I’m thirteen.  I don’t have grandchildren.  Go away.”

The woman who was speaking had black hair, and was wearing a sweater too big for her narrow frame.  Forty-something, but it was hard to tell because it was dark and details didn’t match up well.  She looked old but her hair was black and neat.  The blur of an echo was there around the edges.  Tatters more than the cloudiness that had been around… what had her name been?  Bev?  The wife of the old man Alpeana had visited.

Verona had put together a plan.  It involved a little bit of sneaking around, for which she’d transformed her hat into a hood, and it had taken some preparation with Matthew, but she’d discovered there were a few wrinkles.  Sharon Griggs had retreated a little ways, which gave Verona the freedom to move, but it also meant that the Others that were leaking in through the open perimeter were more there.

The woman inched closer to her, hobbling, reaching out to a tree to lean against it.

Verona checked the coast was clear, then jogged through the woods.  To the side of her, the echo of the woman matched her movements.  Verona took a few quick steps back, and the echo moved as if she’d taken a matching number of steps toward her.

Verona stopped, and the woman trudged forward another step, closing the gap.

No matter how she moved, the ghost was nine feet to her left and inching closer.

“Go away,” she said, a third time.

Words were supposed to matter.

“Is this because of what happened with bottles?” the woman asked.  She took another hobbling step forward.  Eight feet to Verona’s left.

Verona ran, not to get away, but because she needed to move fast if this was going to work.  She ignored the echo – if she didn’t pay attention to her, maybe that would help.  She could jog through the woods, keeping her head down, and trace her way through to where Sharon Griggs had been most active.

The police lights were periodically flashing through the trees.  Sharon was walking toward them and away from Verona, wearing a lot of wires, and carrying a laptop under one arm.

The ghost had closed to seven feet away.

“I’ve apologized so many times for bottles.  I’ve apologized for Ace, and for Speedle, and for Plank.”

Bottles was a name, maybe?  Not a human name, unless it was a nickname.

“I can’t forgive you,” Verona tried.  She bent down and fumbled, until her hand brushed up against a mutilated animal.  A squirrel, bloated, with a rancid smell leaking out of it.  She grabbed it by a back foot, which made the smell increase, and hucked it into the deep foliage.

“Don’t hold onto grudges.  We’re family, Holly.”

“I don’t think you should get anything by default by being family,” Verona said, continuing to move, keeping an eye out for the advancing echo.  “And I’m not Holly.”

Playing along with Bev had helped her stay together.  Now there was this woman, and Verona really wanted her to go away.  Avery might be upset Verona was trying to destroy or weaken her, but there was a lot going on.  So she challenged the ghost.

“Are you angry about Aaron, Holly?”

“I don’t know who Aaron is, I don’t know who Bottles is, and I’m not Holly,” Verona said.  She found another bloated animal, by nose more than anything else, and picked it up.  She found another a step away.  She tossed them.

“I know you wanted to say goodbye to Bottles, but something had to be done.  Vet bills get too expensive.  It’s not worth hating me over.”

Verona snatched charms from trees and from the ground.  She couldn’t get them all, but she could put a dent in things.  She tried holding out a fistful of charms in the ghost’s direction.

It was only just barely past her arm’s reach.  Verona withdrew her hand as it stepped closer.

“I don’t know what you want of me,” the echo told her.

“I want you to go away and let me work.”  Verona found another animal and picked it up.  It deflated in her hands, leaking out gases, and she had to twist her face away.

She got stomachaches if the wind blew in the wrong direction, but this, at least, didn’t bother her much.

“I did my best for you, Holly, and ever since my cancer diagnosis, you’ve been so cold and distant.  You’ve forgotten everything good I did for you and you clung to the bad.”

“You didn’t do anything for me,” Verona told the ghost.  It was so close it could have extended a hand to touch her face, now.  She backed away and it didn’t help at all.  Her Sight wasn’t working especially well, and she didn’t trust her cards.  Most of the cards she had would draw the attention of the police, anyway.

“I fed you.  I clothed you.  I gave you a home.”

“Those are things you have to do, legally.  Or you lose custody.  You don’t get points for that.  If you bring a kid into the world, that’s for you, your benefit.  It’s not for them, not until you’ve made that world bright and positive and worth being brought into.”

The ghost stopped.

“I don’t know how many times I can explain myself.  You don’t seem to listen.  Bottles… it was good we put him down while he was happy and young.  Ace jumped up too much.  He escaped his gate.  We couldn’t bring people over, it was too much.  Speedle got into the garbage, which you didn’t take out to the curb.  I told you, I was never going to clean up another mess like that.  If you didn’t take the garbage out when you were supposed to, I’d have to get rid of him.  And I did.  Plank kept us up at night with his squeaking and scratching.”

“And Aaron?” Verona asked, hating that she was wasting time on this.  Something tickled her leg again.  She couldn’t take her eyes off the echo to look.

“Your boy needs to learn to talk to his elders with respect.  But I was still too heavy-handed with him.  I’ve admitted that, and I don’t know how many times I can apologize for that.  Please, forgive me.  Let me back into your life.”

“You were never a part of my life.  You’re a shitty ghost of a shitty person,” Verona said.  “And I really have other things to do.”

“Please, Holly.  I’m dying, alone, and the nurses treat me like garbage.  You can’t give me a bit of your time?”

“It sounds like you took it on yourself to murder a lot of pets. I don’t even know what you did to your grandkid, lady, but what the hell?  Maybe you deserved to die alone or whatever.”

“I’ve admitted that,” the ghost whispered, fading a bit.  “I don’t know how many more times I can apologize for that.  Bottles, Ace, Speedle, Plank, Aaron. I brought apology flowers to Aaron in the hospital and you wouldn’t even let me give them to him.  You wouldn’t let me see him.  It’s like you want me to be alone…”

The voice got smaller and fainter as she went.  Verona experimentally backed up, and the ghost didn’t match her movement.  She began looking for more animal carcasses and charms, grabbing a charm from a branch.

“I added a lot of new members to our family, Holly.  Bottles and Ace and Speedle and Plank and Aaron.  You told Kathlee that you wanted another pet but you were afraid.  I told you you didn’t have to be afraid if you’d just take responsibility and be good.”

The voice was gaining more strength again.

“I had to get rid of them.  I had to.  You can’t hold a grudge over that.  I had to get rid of them.  I had to.”

There was that eerie copying of tone and tempo, like the woman was a recording, the exact same words playing out in the exact same way, but with different strength, depending.

The echo stood there, and her head twisted ninety-degrees, until her chin was pointing to the right of her and her forehead to the left.

I suppose I have to get rid of you too, little black-haired witch,” the echo said.  The voice sounded like it had come from an ordinary person standing a matter of feet away.  No fuzz, nothing distorted, nothing broken.

The echo -or whatever it was– approached, fast.  In her retreat, Verona bumped into a branch she hadn’t seen in the near-total darkness, and wasn’t able to get away quickly enough.  The echo-thing reached, and Verona shielded her face.

It reached through her arm, sliding through flesh like a splash of cold water.  In Verona’s mind’s eye, she could see flashes of a scene.  This same woman, healthy and a good bit younger, looking down at a crying young girl.  The woman was holding a limp, dead weasel or ferret in one hand at her side, in the same way one might hold a grocery bag.

“Why?” Verona asked.  Her voice sounded like it came from very far away.

The vision passed, and before Verona could recover, the hand continued forward, long painted nails scraping the side of her face as the hand settled into place.  The palm was cold and it smelled so strongly of hospitals and wet fur that the smells seemed to have solidity to them, transferring some of those smells into physical sensations.  More scenes flashed through Verona’s mind.  Hospitals, plots in the backyard.  Crying kid. Crying kid.  Crying grandkid.

“Don’t you dare talk back to me, Aaron.”

“I’m not-” Verona protested, surprised a bit that she could speak even with the hand over her face.

Gripping her face, nails pressing in against scalp, the ghost picked her up, lifting her up with one hand, while her legs kicked and her arms flailed.

Verona reached for the echo’s arm, trying to find leverage, and her hand passed through it, treating her to a vision of a sullen, heartbroken Holly at the breakfast table.

She tried to divorce her thoughts from the scenes that flooded her head.  Things that weren’t her.  Glimpses of Holly.  Glimpses of the woman.  Of the hospital.

Verona couldn’t form a coherent thought, but she could tap into instinct.  She let her bag slip down her shoulders, and caught one strap.  It was hard to swing while being held like this, so she held it down where her foot could touch it, and used her foot to thrust it in the general direction of the ghost.

The ghost dissipated.  Verona dropped to all fours, the bag collapsing and rolling a bit down a slight slope.

She waited, watching.  Off in the distance, the red and blue lights were still flashing, the headlights shining through trees.  Sharon had gone over there.

This was a game of chess, essentially, and Sharon had a lot of advantages.  The sole advantage Verona had was that Sharon didn’t know she was playing.  Not yet.

And that advantage was dwindling.  Sharon was free to do her thing, while Verona was stuck.

Verona watched as the echo materialized once again, pulling together from what looked like wisps of fog, edged with red that could have been raw flesh.  The woman gathered together.

Verona picked up her bag, holding it like a weapon.  Even in the gloom, Verona could see the salt that Jessica had tossed onto her head while they’d trudged through the Ruins.  The moisture and the grooves in the bags, especially the straps, had helped to hold onto the salt.  Just enough to count.

Pure salt was better than anything tainted, Verona remembered.  But this apparently counted enough to help.

She held out her bag, keeping it between herself and the echo.

She turned on her Sight, and she could see in the gloom.  She could see the Echo, wispy, with something meaty inside it.  The meaty larval chunk twisted, writhing, and Verona could see the parasite or tumor that was attached to it, black and slick.

The woman wasn’t advancing, so Verona retreated, cutting across the woods, keeping one eye on her.

The woman stood there until she was done reforming.  Then she disappeared.

Verona, using her Sight to look wildly around herself, heart beating what felt like a thousand times a minute, mouth dry, saw the hand reach out of darkness.  Pale, with painted nails.

Avoiding the hand meant falling over.

She lay in moist leaves in darkness, and looked up to see that the ghost loomed above her, foot raised, head still turned to the side, parasite-tumor still squirming or even exulting within her.

The ghost kicked her in the side, making her roll over onto her stomach. For a moment, Verona was a dog, hurting, bewildered and surprised.

She kicked back, and her foot passed through the ghost.  She had another sensation of the dog, snapping.

“It is going to be such a relief to be rid of you, you shitty little cur.”

Verona scrambled back, and her hand touched something hairy.  It squeaked.

She hoped for a second it was Snowdrop, but when she looked, she saw what might have been a badger, badly decayed, the end of what might have been a really big, wide balloon sticking out of its mouth.

The squeaking became a long squeal that rose in volume and pitch by the second.

Verona scrambled.  She had to be far enough away from the skeptic.  She reached for glamour, the last bit of cat fur, and pulled her cape around her.

She stopped at the last second as the ghost appeared before her.  She pushed against a tree to try and change direction, and saw an image of the ghost holding a kitten.

She was glad she hadn’t become a kitten, that close to this infected ghost.

It was attached to her, somehow.  The way it had followed, a measured distance away.  The way it was fixated on her now.

She remembered how the doll had been dealt with.  How the connection magics had been explained.  Adjusting her grip on her bag, she dragged it along the ground, creating a line.

Probably losing some of the salt.

The ghost, standing a ways ahead, began to walk toward her, giving the line a wide berth.

The badger’s squealing peaked, and Verona’s bag fell from her hands as she instinctively brought her hands up to her ears, at the sound.  Holding her hands firm there, she hurried to put a tree between herself and her best recollection of where the badger had been.

And then it detonated.  The sound was like a fart combined with a grenade.  A wash of foul smell and fine droplets of decay and ass spattered the area around Verona.

She coughed, and as she pulled her hands down, she dimly heard the shouts of police, along with a young woman.

No.

The coughing left her breathless, and every breath she tried to take tasted like a fart that had been primed inside a dead badger for at least a week.

This ruined everything.  She’d had a plan.

She started running, directly away from the incoming police, from Sharon.  Because maybe there was a chance to do something if she could get away.

She didn’t even make it one step.  A hand seized her by the neck, then hauled her back, holding her there against the tree.  She was already breathless, trying not to breathe or cough, even though she felt like she was suffocating.  The hand tightened.

Even though her back was to the tree, the infected ghost was behind her, standing in and reaching out through the tree.

Another hand gripped her chin.

Verona reached up, and her fingers reached through ghost hands to touch her own skin.

“Won’t be getting into the garbage now, will we, kitten?”

Verona’s foot scraped the ground, reaching for her dropped bag that was coated in salt.  She moved her head, in case some salt still clung to her scalp.  But she’d worn the Brownie-given raincoat that was now bundled up in her bag.  The bag was too far out.

This sick ghost could grip her and she couldn’t touch it back.  It wasn’t fair.

She could hear the police shouting, coughing.

Verona managed to suck in a breath, and she gagged at the taste of it.  She needed to buy time.

What were the ghost’s triggers?  If it saw her as an animal that was bad.

“Do you want to know why I haven’t visited?” Verona asked, quiet, her voice strained.  She fought the urge to cough.

“Tell me, Holly.”

“Do you know why I haven’t called?”

“Tell me.”

“Do you-” she started to cough, stopped, and saw stars from the force of the urge and the lack of air.

“Tell me!” the ghost raised its voice.

A beam of a flashlight swept her way.  The sensation of hands at her throat and chin disappeared.  Verona drew her shoulders together, best as she could, to make her profile smaller, and to try and let the tree block their view of her.

“What is that?”

“I told you.  Mutilated animals.  if you’d listened, then we could have wasted a lot less time.  Again, really thankful you were so prompt-”

“No need to be sarcastic, miss.”

“Sharon.  You can call me Sharon.  And I’m not being sarcastic.  I’m a big, big supporter of the police.  Some creeps were out in the wood, playing with fire.  I can show you the location.”

“You should talk to the park authorities.”

The flashlight beam swept past Verona.  She tried to stay still.  She was trying hard not to breathe or gasp too loud, but holding her breath reminded her of why she was holding her breath, and she found herself gagging.

The flashlight beam settled.  It shone on the tree behind her, the diffuse outermost edges of the beam sweeping out to her left and her right, and it didn’t move.

Did they see her?

There was more tickling at her leg.  She looked down, and saw a Cherrypop-sized goblin clinging to her shoe, circling around toward the inside of her foot to move away from the beam.

She couldn’t bend down to grab it because that would have risked giving her away.  She couldn’t bring her foot up for the same reason.

“You need to investigate this.  There are some creeps in the woods who seem to think they’re doing something satanic, but these things are always idiots with an overactive imagination and a lack of long-term thinking who end up hurting others.  Hurting animals, in this case.”

“Animals die in the woods.  That’s for park rangers to handle.”

“Listen to me.  Please.  I’m a visitor to your beautiful little town here, I happened to be getting film footage for my streaming series, and I stumbled onto something horrific.  I’d really appreciate it if you could check this out for me.  I wouldn’t waste your time on something I didn’t think was serious.”

“What’s this streaming thing?”

“Like a documentary, online.  I record stuff, I’m currently recording stuff, and I’ll disprove myths.  I have another, better channel, but it’s not getting many views yet.  It’s still new.”

“It’s a Woobtube thing, Damien,” another man said.  Another officer.

“Another site.  Woobtube has issues.  But you have the right idea, sir.”

“Are you recording right now?” the first officer asked, stern.

“I’ve got my microphones muted and I’m standing so the camera I’ve got attached to my shirt isn’t pointing your way.  You can listen on my headphones if you want to check.”

“That’s fine.  You popular?”

“Six thousand people check in regularly to watch me prove ghosts don’t exist.  I’ve got four hundred on my other channel.”

“Good number.  Wow.  Amazing,” officer one said.

“Really impressive,” the other said.  “You’re a minor celebrity.”

“Uhhhh… yeah.  Thank you.”

“Can I see?  Show me this thing?”

“Can you check out the thing I’m talking about, after?”

“It really might be some kids messing around.  I had to step in when some kids on the beach were throwing frogs into a campfire.  They’ll do messed up stuff with fireworks and animal carcasses.”

The other officer added, “Let the stink clear out for a minute.”

“If a kid really put a firework in an animal corpse, isn’t that actually serious?  The risk of forest fire, and they could be out there.”

“They probably are.  But they’re long gone by now.  I twisted my ankle two years ago chasing some teenagers down by the rivershore.  It’s not worth it.  I’ll ask the usual suspects tomorrow.”

“I guess.  Not very satisfying.”

“I have some guesses about who would do this sort of thing.”

“It’d be great for my stream if I could record you arresting someone.”

“Things don’t happen like that in reality.  Investigating something like this takes time.”

“A year ago, I stumbled onto some real creeps, and the arrest happened pretty fast after that.  Here, you wanted to see a video.  I’ll show you the highlight reel.  Maybe if you do get an arrest, you can do a phone interview with me?  For my channel?”

“Alright, but only if you show me these numbers first, what is it?  Six thousand people watching?  I don’t believe that.”

Verona waited, glanced around to check the flashlight beams weren’t anywhere near her, then ducked down.

She had a glimpse of Sharon standing with an officer on either side of her, their upper bodies illuminated by flashlights they held, Sharon holding her laptop out, with an officer helping to keep it balanced while she typed.

Verona coughed as quietly as she could, trying to breathe in full lungfuls of air, which were laced with the stink of the little badger bomb.  She was probably laced with the stink of the badger bomb.

She stopped, crouching, and stuck her leg out.  The goblin was clinging to her shoe for dear life.

“What’s your deal, little guy?” she asked.  “Come from outside?

The tiny goblin nodded.  It had no nose, only two oval nostrils that might have been larger than its eyes, which were black and spaced too far apart.  It had a beak rather than a mouth, too small, too stubby, too low on its round head, and set off center from the rest of its face, jutting out a bit from the folds beneath the weird nose.

It stuck one long finger into its large nostril, dug around, and then drew a line of snot onto her leg.  It barely seemed to care that she was watching it.

“Hey dude,” she told it.  “Got a name?”

It shook its head.

“Want one?”

It shook its head.  It drew another line of snot.  If it was drawing anything specific, it was impossible to tell.

She could have shaken it off, but she had other priorities.  She thought for a second.

“Hey, little dude, do you like art?” she whispered.

It looked up at her, then snorted, spattering her leg some more.  It rubbed it in, nodding.

“Hey, wait wait.”

It reached into its pants.

“Wait wait wait wait.  Let’s strike a deal, little guy.”

It stopped, hand still in the back of its pants.

“If you do something for me, I’ll hand out a present.  I think you’ll really, really like it, and if you don’t, then I promise you I’ll try to find a way to get you something you do like.”

It picked its nose with one hand, the other still in its pants, standing on her shoe, looking up at her.

It was a bit of a dope, it seemed.

“Yes?”

It nodded.

“Do you have friends?”

It shook its head.

“Do you know where there might be some stray goblins who might want a prize too?”

It nodded.

“Find them, really really fast, if you can.  And then go and find all the goblin traps and dead animals around here, and hide them.  Find the little broken charms and ward things and hide them.  If you can do it before those police officers find it, it’ll be great.”

The goblin stared at her, as slack jawed as something with a beak could be.

“It’ll make this woman out there super mad.  It’ll ruin her day.”

He nodded.

“It’ll annoy the police too.  They might even fight.  And you get a prize.  But only if you hurry.”

He stared at her.

“I am a practitioner of Kennet.  Do this and I will give the prize to the most deserving goblin, provided I’m able.  I pledge this.”

That seemed to get him going.  He stood up, then scampered off.

Verona used some grass to try to wipe up her leg, but they mostly stuck there.  She stood, adjusted her bag, then reached for glamour and cat fur.

The feathers and bird form might be necessary for later, and she’d really rather use the bird form while not in the woods where owls were more common.

She wrapped herself up in a cat form, then took off running, keeping to cover, because those same owls would come after a cat.

Every rustle of a branch was a potential predator, or potential prey.  Her eyes, open wide and ‘set’ to a wide field of view that could take in more light, not so good at seeing up-down movements, while the side-to-side sway of a branch was clear and made her attention snap this way and that.

She wasn’t a nature cat.  She was a cat that knew the city.  There were too many distractions and too many possible vectors for attack.

She just had to remember that she could turn human in a pinch.  If trouble came and she had a third of a second to react, she had to drop the cat form.  Just had to keep that in mind.

Being a cat made it easier to recall the visions the ghost had dropped on her.  It made it easier to forget the dream.  To forget the looming issue of her dad.  The ghost had had some eerie similarities, with the hospital association, but she could sort of buy that maybe the parallels were what had drawn the ghost to her in the first place.

Man, people could be awful.  That ghost… probably someone so evil that their ghost had had that magnetic effect, sucking in something ugly and parasitic, and combining to make something stronger.  An echo who could break pattern, observe.  Maybe the touching and ability to hurt was from the parasite.

Verona almost started to reach for her scalp to check where the fingernails had scraped her, and then stopped just in time, segueing into pawing at one ear.

She’d almost split her glamour.

She ventured out onto a branch, keeping tabs on the officers.

One officer had broken away, while his buddy was still watching on the laptop.  Sharon twisted her body to keep the wandering officer in her bodycam’s field of view, while her other hand kept the laptop propped up.

Verona prowled forward, smelled the fart, and her mouth involuntarily opened wide, retching and hacking, and fighting a need to sneeze.  Hair all down her body stood on end.

A flashlight beam, bright, fell on her.  Her pupils adapted quickly.

She didn’t lose the glamour.

Verona ran off, trying to get to high ground, above the stink, pausing periodically to cough and retch.

The dossier had said that glamours tended to shatter pre-emptively when Sharon turned her attention toward them.  Which Verona had kind of thought might be a good early warning sign that Sharon was coming.  Now she was here, perched on a branch, wearing a cat form, and she was pretty sure she couldn’t turn human now if she tried.

Sharon’s ability made the world make sense.  It simplified, made things easier.

A glamour that tested Sharon’s grip on reality would shatter first, probably.  But an animal in the forest?  That was fine.

It was so, so tempting to go straight for Sharon.  If she could pounce, land on that laptop, and make it fall, that would be perfect.

But it was too hard to manage, and she wasn’t sure the glamour wouldn’t break.  If she jumped down from a tree, then there was a chance she could fall out of the tree as Verona, instead of as a cat.

Off in the other direction, so far away even her cat eyes could barely make it out, a deer stalked the woods.  Something about the way it moved bothered her, so she hurried over in its direction, continuing to be careful about possible predators.

She caught up with it after a minute or so.  It walked with a bowed head, and its face and one of its antlers was melted like candle wax, trickles hanging low and wobbling like jelly as it moved this way and that.  It turned a head toward Verona, and she could see the symbol inscribed on its brow, along with a sphere set in the candle wax where an eye should be, milk white and faintly glowing in the gloom.

She hissed, and it turned and walked in the other direction, using three functioning legs and a melted one that dragged.

They really needed to get this perimeter back up.

She hurried back, and she saw that the other officer had walked off a fair distance.

She had to circle around the cloud of stink, and evaded a small goblin that was running by with a dead mouse and a dead snake on a skewer.

He was getting dangerously close to the messy spot, and the goblins were nowhere near done.

She went hunting.  She sniffed out some decay, then chased it down.  She found the beaked dope of a goblin and a female goblin with droopy noodle-breasts basket-weaved into a dress carrying a bloated toad between them.

She bowled them over, knocking the toad from their grip, then hissed at them.  The dope barely reacted, reaching for the toad.  She swatted his hand away, hard, then took the toad’s leg into her mouth, and dragged it.

It deflated as she dragged, leaking out foul smells and foaming at the nose and mouth.

Sharon was still back there?  No.  She’d stopped showing the officer videos, and was hanging back, while he walked in the same general direction of his buddy.  She trailed behind them, following after, with her flashlight beam periodically sweeping around.

There were other cops from the other cars further away.  Verona hadn’t accounted for those.

Didn’t Kennet’s officers have more to do around here?  They’d sent four cops?  Six?

Sharon talked, “Hey guys, so I convinced them to check out the scene.  They seem to think it’s bored teens, but it seemed more serious than that.  It was a lot of animals.  I know you saw it.  It’s bad enough I think serial killer.  And with the way that creepy Asian teacher was being evasive, I can’t help but wonder if he knows something.”

“Creepy teacher?” an officer called back.

“They’re asking a question.  Yeah.  I interviewed him earlier.  He’s this Asian guy, had a bad accent.  I don’t get the impression he’s been in Canada long.  I quizzed him, asked if he heard anything weird.  Stuff for my video, right?”

Verona had to hurry.  She dragged the toad, trying to get out ahead of the officers.

“Sure.  Stuff for the video, makes sense.  What’d he say?”

“That the class numbers didn’t add up.  The way the students get divided among teachers, he had three new kids from homeschool, but he was missing one.  So I asked him if he followed up, and he said no.  Which seems suspicious to me.”

“You think?”

“You’d think you’d ask, right?  I asked if he had records of students who were supposed to be in his class, and he said the school server had a data crash early May, and he lost those records.  Which, you know, do your job, right?”

“I’m not sure I follow, but yeah.”

Verona was too small, the toad too big, and the officer’s stride too long.

Different tack.  She dragged it away, off to the right.

“So you asked about the bodycam, right?  Part of the reason I wear it is I run into some real creepy types out there.  Crazies, twisted people, people who’ve gotten lost in their own fantasies.”

“They’re definitely out there.”

“I’ve clocked enough hours at this I’ve learned some of the tricks and tells.  They talk a certain way, or feign confusion.  This guy, he was pulling that.  Something’s up.”

“Huh.  Get his name?”

“I took a note.  Tony Lai.”

“We’ll look him up after.”

“Ninety percent of the time, when I really press people like that, you find the stories don’t add up, or they’ve got some weird beliefs and fantasies.”

“You ever think of being a cop?”

“I’m tiny, for one thing.”

“Doesn’t automatically rule you out.”

“And I can be a real bitch, but I don’t have the clout when it counts.  I’d think about it, if things were different.”

Verona dropped the partially deflated toad, backed away, then pounced on it.

It foamed from one nostril, but nothing happened.

Hurrying, she resumed dragging.

Sharon was no longer in earshot.

The burbling intensified, and the dragging got harder.  Verona checked, and saw the toad was swelling.  Re-inflating.  Fast.

She let go and bolted, dashing away.  The froth nearly buried it, as it began to tremble.

It detonated before she could get one hundred percent clear.

Verona, human, tumbled roughly into a bush.  Her hat lost its glamour.

She scrambled, looking for a hiding spot, clutching her hat to her chest because the brim was too wide.

The smell hit her a second later.  This was a different sort of bad smell.

The cops came running, flashlights out.  They held hands to their mouths, and backed away as the smell hit them, too.

They’d run straight into it, while Verona ran away, moving as quietly as she could through undergrowth.  She didn’t have her Sight.

“What are you doing?  Go after them!” Sharon called out.

“They’re-” one officer started.  The next word was choked out by vomit, as he heaved out onto his front and then onto the ground.

The other officer covered his mouth, trying to press into the pale yellow-brown fog.  He reversed direction, then stooped over, hands on his knees, controlling his breathing.  His hand wiped at his eyes.

“Why didn’t you keep going?”

“Can’t see.  It’s-” he stopped to gag.

“It’s what?

“Caking my eyeballs.  God.  I can taste it with my eyeballs.”

“I guess this whole fucked up project, excuse me for swearing-”

“Uggggh,” the first officer, still vomiting, managed to say something between heaves.  “Fuuuck.

“-They might have been making stinkbombs,” Sharon said.  She was keeping a good distance away from the dissipating fog.

At the edge of that fog, the dopey goblin wandered out.  He looked up at Verona.

She made an ok sign at him.

He gave her two thumbs up, then ventured closer.

“Soon,” she whispered.  “Prize soon.”

He walked closer, stamping a foot.

“Soon, I said!”

He came for her, running, and she ran away, not just because he was after her, but because she didn’t want to be this close by when the officers recovered.

Goblins converged on her.  Most were smaller than Doglick, who was the next-smallest after Cherry.  One was about Doglick’s size, the female goblin with the dress woven out of her own droopy breasts.

Verona held up a finger.  She pulled off her bag, opened it, and reached inside, digging.

Art notebook.

She had to flip through, as goblins got increasingly impatient, some growling.

She folded the cover of the book around to the back, and then held up the page for the assembled goblins, glancing back to make sure Sharon didn’t have eyes on her.

The smallest goblins jumped with excitement, clawing at the air.  The one with the dress smiled, showing off sharp teeth.

“Want?”

The answer, from goblins who seemed mostly nonverbal, seemed to be a resounding yes.  The female goblin said something rude about ‘wants’.

The picture was a pencil sketch Verona had ended up doing while using rude videos online as her nude models for figure drawing.  Some of that was about learning anatomy and refining her art.  Some of it, though, was her just wrapping her head around what was going on there.  And this was one mystery she’d hoped to enlist Jeremy’s help in figuring out.

The picture was a particular, stand-out piece of a male, put to paper in as much glistening detail as her art skills allowed.  She’d gone to some effort, detailing it, as if sufficient detail could bring it to life on the page or unlock some understanding.

“Does this satisfy our arrangement, booger guy?” she asked.

The goblin with the beak nodded with enthusiasm.

The strangest things could be so valuable in practice.

“You need to leave,” she told them, keeping her voice low as she checked the other direction.  “Get out of town.  And you can have this?  Deal?”

The goblins nodded.

There were more cops, sticking closer to the road, and others out in the woods, investigating.  She hoped they hadn’t found anything much.

She gave the goblins the picture, and they silently fought over it, biting and clawing at one another.  After about ten seconds, they inadvertently tore the page, and two groups ran in separate directions, each with a different half of the picture.

She found a hiding spot, then hunkered down for a wait.

She almost screamed, jumping out of her skin, when she realized she’d sat down next to something.  It was a girl, with skin that drooped on her like a bulldog, and a few gaping wounds at her chest and limbs, the skin hanging away.  She wore a dress that had probably looked nice, once, but had been stained black with the oily ichor that leaked from her wounds and orifices.

Everything that was inside the wounds, past the eye-holes of drooping eyelids, and inside her mouth, which perpetually drooped open, was as sleek as the skin wasn’t.  it was all black eyeballs with yellow irises, all interlocked together so the corner of one was nestled into others. All eyeballs moved in unison, and the sound of them all moving was like a faint slosh of water.  They flicked over to looking the other way, and again, there was that faint slosh.

The girl held a finger to her lips.  A fingernail was missing, and an eye peeked out from the nail bed, the edges of that nail bed bleeding black ooze.

Verona nodded, then gave the girl a thumbs up.

It wasn’t a long wait.  Verona’s sense of smell struggled to recover, and she was increasingly aware of an ammonia smell from the girl.

“This isn’t a good town to be in.  They’re very protective of their territory,” Verona whispered.

The girl’s eyeballs sloshed around, moving in what could almost be a language, like Morse code, except there were more things than dashes and dots in there.

“Can’t understand you, and you need to be quiet,” Verona whispered, as a flashlight shone on… not them, but on their general section of forest.

The girl waited until the light had moved on, then reached out, in the general direction of Kennet.  She made clutching motions with her hand, opening and closing them.

“You want something?”

The girl nodded, eyeballs moving this way and that.  She brought her hands up, one with barely any skin on it, only two fingertips remaining attached, the hand sleek beneath.  She pressed index fingers and thumbs together and made a diamond shape.

“Diamond?”

So-so gesture, hand wobbling.

“Jewel?”

The girl nodded.

“I think a lot of things are after it,” Verona whispered.  “I think it might be fake.  Bait, or a lure, or a trick.  Someone’s trying to make a lot of trouble for Kennet, and luring strangers here might be part of that.”

The girl nodded.  Jowls separated from and slapped against the sleek eye-flesh beneath as part of the motion.

“I love this whole thing you’ve got going on, by the way,” Verona whispered, gesturing head to toe on the girl.

The girl made a similar gesture, indicating Verona’s top and hair.  Eyeballs made their noises as they looked.

“Thank you.  Please don’t tell me you’re evil and eat babies or whatever.”

The girl made a so-so gesture again.

“I guess that’s all any of us can say, huh?”

The girl nodded.  Then she pressed a finger to her lips.

Verona went silent, pulling her knees to her chest.

A flashlight swept over the woods.

“There was something out there.  They were quick about cleaning it up.”

“I believe you.  But I think when you stumble onto something in the woods, you can think it’s more.”

“It was more.  Really.  I have extensive video from my stream.”

“Can you rewind?  Show us?”

“I have to end the stream and then upload it.  I don’t have it set to auto-upload videos, because it makes these really unprofessional cuts and interruptions.”

“How long does that take?  Minutes?”

Sharon laughed.  “For hours of stream?  To compress and everything?  Overnight.”

“Will you be here in the morning?”

“That’s the plan.  My friends and I have a motel room.”

“Be careful up there, alright?”

“Really?  That kind of place?”

“It is.”

“Damn.  Okay.  I’m- I’m bewildered and upset that there was so little to show you.  I’m sorry.  And I’m annoyed because this really isn’t the kind of video I want to make.  I’ll have to do follow-ups, to chase this down and work out what happened.”

“Just leave the police work to the Ontario police, okay?”

“Yeah.  Yeah, for sure.”

“We can’t officially tell you about any ongoing investigations, and I think with that kind of following, you might count as a journalist-”

“Please, no.  I want to undo the damage media causes with my primary stream.”

“That’s interesting.  Listen, I- we can’t tell you stuff, not officially, not on the record.”

“There’s no record.  Not a journalist.”

“But if you’re staying in town, we could meet up again, you can tell me about that over some Dead Tim’s, and I could do that interview with you, if you’ll cut my name from it.”

“Sure!  Cool, yeah.  What’s your number?”

The following exchange was too quiet and full of murmurs for Verona to hear.

Verona looked at the Other sitting next to her.  It sat with all of its eyes, some as long as Verona’s hand, some as big as a thumbprint, fixed forward.  A dribble of black ichor hung from a nostril, growing longer without breaking off as an actual droplet.

“Good.  Thank you, Sharon.  I’ll talk to you soon, then,” the officer said.  He sounded happy.

“Absolutely.  Thanks for everything you do, guys.  Bye.”

There was a pause.  As the four officers drew nearer to Verona, walking down the road toward where their cars were parked, Verona heard a faint scoff or sniff sound, from one and laughter from another.  The first officer muttered, “Shut up.”

Then they were gone.

“As if,” Sharon said, once they were out of earshot.  “Like I’d date some hick who lives in a shithole like this.”

Verona tensed, feeling instinctively protective of her hometown.  Even if it was a bit of a shithole, sometimes.

“Heyyyy big brain thinkers!  Were you watching?  Sorry I had to mute things for my chat with the officers, but I hope you liked what the bodycam showed.  I’m reading chat and you guys think we finally caught a real live one huh?  I think you’re going to be disapppoinnntteeeed.  Our culprits knew exactly what they were doing and those stink-bombs- haha.  Those poor guys.  They got a faceful of it.  They were just buying time to hide the really fake setup they did.  Cops think they hurt some animals, and they agreed with me that this teacher’s story seemed off, so they’re going to do the ol’ door knock and, at my advisement, lean on him a bit.”

Sharon kept talking, walking out of Verona’s earshot.  The headlights of the police cars briefly flashed through the trees, filtered into a dozen bright segments each as the cars turned around to get onto the single-lane road.

The girl with the eyes rose to a standing position without leaning on anything, and her skin slid around and resettled.  She started walking toward Kennet.

“Hey, hey, no,” Verona hissed.  “No.”

The girl pressed fingers together into a diamond.

No,” Verona whispered.  “Please be as cool as you look.”

The girl pressed her fingers together to make a diamond again.  She started walking, and Verona nearly tripped over a bush in her haste to get in the girl’s way.

“No.  Really.  Please.”

Off to the side, a blurry figure strode through the trees with more speed than he should’ve had, walking through branches and greenery.  He wore a business suit, not dissimilar to Verona’s dad, and his hair was messy, his clothes disheveled.  He had his hands on his head, muttering.

“If I work an extra four hours this week and take saturday off… I’d have to get the promotion, and add an extra five… maybe if I took out another line of credit… she deserves a ring.  Fifty two ninety nine and seventy cents.  If I can skip a meal now and then… she won’t be satisfied with less…”

“Dude,” Verona said, to the ghost.  “I don’t think she’s worth it.”

“She’s worth it.  She’s worth it.  I can’t lose her.  Fifty two ninety nine and seventy cents.  I’ll have to work an extra seven hours this week, four or five next week.  If I work through the holidays… I need- need a ring.  That’s the ring.”

He fixated his gaze on the distance.

“That’s the ring.”

Maybe it’s a ring,” Verona told him, keeping her voice low.  “I think it’s a trap.”

“I’m trapped.  I don’t know what to do.  I have only four more months and then she leaves, I need five thousand, two hundred and ninety nine, I’m barely making enough to scrape by as it is…”

“Aw guy,” Verona said, wincing.  “It’s all a scam, I’m pretty sure, engagement to marriage and everything that follows.”

The girl with the skin got Verona’s attention, pointed at the same location, then made the diamond shape.

No,” Verona said.  “It’s some kind of Other-bait.  Why are you guys being dumb about this?”

“I won’t have her and I won’t have a roof over my head,” the echo said.  He looked at Verona.  “Roof over my head.  I need help.  Roof over my head.”

“I don’t know what you’re trying to communicate.”

He reached out for her, then approached, walking swiftly.

She stepped back, bumped up against a tree branch, then used her bag, blocking his hands.

The salt still on the bag seemed to shred his substance.  He collapsed into the bag, coming to pieces as it tore his arms and then chest up.  His echo-substance head passed through her, and she had glimpses of him, elbows on the table, face in hands, looking at a spreadsheet on a tablet.

Then he was gone.  He didn’t reform.

“I’ve got stuff to do, I can’t be your hallow.  I’m sorry you had it rough,” Verona said.

The girl with the eyes looked down at him, moist eyes squelching with their simultaneous movement.

“I didn’t do that on purpose.  But that might be the sort of thing that happens if you keep going after this jewel.  They’re pretty territorial down there.  I think they were torching echoes and spirits on sight.”

The girl looked back at the jewel.

“No, really really.  I know you want it, but…”

The girl turned and walked away, opposite direction.  She cut across the path Sharon had been so near, then disappeared into darker woods.

“Good.  Okay,” Verona said, huffing.  Her heart was pounding from the two close calls, and everything else.  For a moment, with no immediate threats, she didn’t know what to do with herself.  Adrenaline left over in her system.

It didn’t help that there were so many high-stakes things coming up.  Dealing with Sharon in a proper way.  Helping the others.  Getting back to the Institute.

Dealing with her dad.  Whatever was going on there.

Her thoughts turned to the dream.

Alpeana had said something like how someone strong enough could take away lessons or grow from it.  Right now, thinking about it, she didn’t feel especially strong.

She’d somehow expected, going in, that the practice stuff, the magic would be this extra thing.  Like the Sight was, kind of, but more.  A sixth sense, a third eye, an extra hand.

But with the recent thing with her losing her bag, and the dream, and Lucy getting mad, and how personal some of those things had been, it felt kind of like the opposite.  Like instead of being extra, it was striking right at the middle of her.  The core of who she was.

And it felt like enough strikes to something vital could make her shatter.

She wasn’t sure she had it in her to face down her dad.  To hear that he was sick and she genuinely needed to help.  To hear that he wasn’t sick, and that he was willing to go this far.

She watched as a faintly translucent figure walked through the woods, a woman with lime green skin that had pineapple print on it, and magenta hair.

She didn’t have it in her to intervene.  Probably, if the entire perimeter was down, they were coming in from all directions.  This mess wouldn’t be all the way cleaned up by the end of summer, even if the perimeter was put back up right away.  Somehow.

She wanted to go to magic school with Lucy, have a sleepover every night, hang out with Avery and Snowdrop, and get to know some freaky practitioners.  She wanted to unravel some mysteries and tie up problems and doing that was something she was supposed to do.

She hung her head, struggling to find her equilibrium.  A bit of roughhousing from the infected ghost aside, the vast majority of today had been an emotional beating.  The ruins, her dad, the ghost, seeing Lucy have a bad day…

She squeezed her eyes shut tight, trying to block out the light, and a tear rolled down her cheeks, surprising her as much as the eyeball girl had.  She wiped it away as fast as she was humanly able, then blinked a few times.

She wanted to hug Lucy and Avery.  And to nuzzle an animal Snowdrop.

To do that…

“…gonna go see my friends, check into this motel that is apparently not very good, and see about getting some shut-eye.  Investigations continue tomorrow and might even carry on into the next few days.  There’s a few things here to dig into.  No, haha, I’m reading chat.  There’s nothing saying the motel is haunted.  You’re smarter than that.”

she had to deal with this bitch.

Verona took a moment to sort herself out.  She popped on her mask, knowing that around Sharon, she would have no peripheral vision, when she could normally see through it with the Sight.

She ducked out across the path, closer to the cars.

She stopped in her tracks.  Sharon was there too, about thirty paces down the straight dirt path, with its periodic set of dodgy wooden stairs.

“Uh, hello,” Sharon said.

“Sharon!  Hey!” Verona said, peppy and upbeat.

“Uhh, I don’t know you.  But I think I saw you.”

“I was hired,” Verona said.  “Just a bit ago.  My friends and I cleaned up the animal bodies before the police got there.  How was it for the stream?  Did you get a good clip?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sharon!  Sharon Griggs, right?  We’re both here because of Bristow?  Come on,” Verona laughed.  “We did the fire thing, we arranged the old looking guy there and then sent him home.  I hope he’s going home.  The dangly things and bundles of sticks in the ground, and the animals that the others set up were all sorted and hidden away.  Just like I was told.”

Told by Matthew.  She’d also had Matthew hire her for pocket change before he left.  Just so she could say this stuff.

Sharon fumbled at the camera that was clipped to her shirt, with its curly wire extending to the laptop.

“Oh!” Verona exclaimed, loud.  “Are you still streaming?”

Sharon shut it off, closing the laptop.

Verona waited.

“Are you messing with me?”

“Yeah.  Hey, Bristow says hello,” Verona said, dropping the cheery tone.

“What?”

He speaks English.  He says hello sometimes.  “This was all a setup.  Now you’re being messed with.  I was surprised you brought the police into this.”

“My integrity is really important to me.  This is ugly.  It’s slander.  You’re attacking my career.”

“Your career is kinda awful,” Verona said.  “And you’re not very good at it.  Four hundred subs?  Wow.  That’s sad, but it makes me kind of happy you’re not getting more traction as a racist.”

“What are- what are you even talking about?” Sharon asked.  She seemed flustered.  “I’m not racist.  My best friend is Asian.  Tell me you’re not one of those people, who sling around major accusations like that.”

“Four hundred subs.  Did you tell that cop you’re new to this?”

“You were listening?”

“Did you, though?”  Verona pressed.  She knew from the dossier that it was a point of annoyance for Sharon, and she was damn well going to use everything she could.

“It’s none of your business.”

“So did you lie?  Hiding your embarrassment over how badly you’re doing with your conspiracy videos?”

“It’s not conspiracy, hon.  It’s making sense of a chaotic and messed up world.  Why am I even talking to you?  Who are you?  You just jump into the middle of my stream to lie and try to mess with me?  Were you sent by a rival streamer?”

“That seems to make about as much sense as your conspiracy videos probably do.  Did you ever consider that maybe you’re really dumb and that’s why you’re not doing well?”

Not her best line, but she was tired and she really just wanted to press Sharon to get a response.

“I’m done with this.  I’ve got things to do.”  Sharon walked ahead, toward Verona.  Verona backed away, trying to maintain a rough equivalent distance.  “Good job, to whoever set this up.”

“I told you, your landlord arranged this whole thing with you being here.  I’m here because of him too.”

“He wouldn’t do that.  He likes my videos.”

“Are you really gullible, then, on top of everything else?”

“Less than ninety-nine percent of the population.”

“How does that work?  What kind of education did you get?”

“I got life education, hon.  How old are you?  Eleven?  Twelve?  What kind of education do you have?”

“Such a cop-out answer.  I’m sure there are criminals and people who work at fast food for their entire lives who say they got life educations.”

“Get out of my face.  You smell like those carcasses and I can smell it when the wind blows from you to me.  You really did move them around.”

“Did your life education keep Bristow from messing with you?”

“He didn’t.”

“Then why am I here?  You’ve got all the answers?  Why am I here, Sharon?  Why do I know your full name?  Or the weird building you live in?  Or your history with your family, who seem to believe in so many things you don’t?”

“Because I talk about a lot of stuff with my community.  It’s not hard to put the pieces together.”

“So you drop personal details online?  Then you really are dumb.  We were told in grade two that you had to be careful about what we said online.  We could barely write in full sentences, back then.”

“Out of my face.”

Verona had to step carefully because there was a wooden staircase on the path, only three steps, which bridged a ledge where the dirt road led off the edge of a rock.  Sharon got a bit closer.  She scrambled back a bit more.

Sharon wasn’t engaging, so she switched tacks.  “What’s this conspiracy then?  Are you a flat earther?”

“No.  I believe in science and sociology.”

“Vaccines?”

“I believe in science, and the science raises questions.  I think corporations have been sketchy for as long as there have been corporations.  Being worried about what they’re putting into your body when we don’t know what happens over generations is just sensible.”

“Secret cabal controlling the world?”

“It’s not a secret, hon.  The information is out there, people just don’t want to believe it.  The same names keep popping up, and a lot of those names are the sorts who wouldn’t have gone from being scattered refugees to some of the most powerful men in the world if there wasn’t something going on.  They organized.”

“Maybe they’re good at what they do?”

“Or maybe they collaborated and gamed the system, shook hands and made deals, and schemed their way to where they control entertainment and media.”

“See, that doesn’t make sense to me.  Most people out there seem to be real idiots, sometimes, but these guys have a secret master plan, and it hasn’t leaked once?  Nobody’s fumbled the ball or let something slip?  No paperwork?”

“They’ve slipped.  You just have to know where to look and who to listen to, the information is out there.”

“And you want to be one of the people they listen to?”

“I am one of the people they listen to.”

“With no degree, no connections, a cheap apartment with a guy who sends you on weird errands, and four hundred subscribers?  Sharon, hon, there’s a kid in my school who makes up his own stickyblock dragons while his baby sister screams in the background and he has seven hundred subscribers.  There are girls who do dance videos who have thousands.  Is this really your deal?  This is where you want to be in the world?”

They were in the parking lot now.  Verona continued to back away.  Sharon, stone-faced, walked up to her car, opening the door.

“Sharon, hon,” Verona said, “Leave.  Go to Mr. Bristow.  Go grill him like you told the cops to do to that poor teacher, Mr. Lai.  Push him for those answers.  It’ll be pretty illuminating.”

Sharon looked like she was going to climb into the car, but then she stood again, holding a rifle.

She leveled it at Verona.

Verona put her hands up.

“Did Alexander Belanger send you?”

Verona swallowed.  “He gave you that name, huh?”

“Did he?”

“When you talk to Mr. Bristow, tell him a girl in a witch’s hat and cat mask told you, no lie, Alexander has no involvement with Kennet.  In fact, he swore off of dealing with this town.  He’ll take me seriously.”

“That means nothing to me right now.  Who are you?”

“Talk to him.  Really truly, if you quiz him, it’ll be better.”

Who are you!?” Sharon raised her voice, shifting her grip on the gun.  “Tell me or start saying your prayers.”

“You’d really shoot an unarmed kid?  And prayers- you’re religious?”

“Of course, and of course.  Last chance.  Who are you?”

“I’m a kid who’s in town to check on her sick dad.  For the rest of it… ask Mr. Bristow.  If he doesn’t know, he knows where to find me.  Now I’m- I’m going to trust you’re not going to shoot me in the back.  I’m trusting you’re not that big of a monster.”

Verona turned.

The gunshot rang out as she stepped forward.

She stopped.

It was a miss.  Going high or something.  But… still scary.

“You messed with my stream.  My livelihood.  Why?”

“You insulted my town, you pointed cops at a good teacher.  You… you’re not a good person, Sharon.  For the rest of it, you have to ask your landlord.”

“Not good enough.  Turn around.  Face me.  And take off the hat and mask.”

Verona turned.

Sharon stood by her passenger side door, holding the rifle.

John stood on the other side of the car.

John was… probably not all that special or invincible, if Sharon shot him.

But he was here.

“Mask off.  Or I’ll see if I can take it off with a bullet.  I’ve shot people before, I’ll do it again.”

Verona looked at John, then nodded.  “Okay.”

John took that as his cue to move.  He walked without making noise, circling around the car.

Sharon reacted to the movement in her peripheral vision.  She turned, and he caught the barrel.  He wrested the gun from her, then hit her in the face with it.  He caught her before she could fall all the way down, and smashed her head into the handle of the door with enough force it flew off and bounced halfway between John and Verona.

Sharon dropped to the ground, forehead split open, unconscious.

“I thought she canceled you out.”

“She does.  But I don’t need what she takes from me.  Are you okay?  I heard the shot.”

“I’m okay.”

“Good.”

There was a pause.  Verona wrung her shaking hands together a bit, blinking a few times.

Verona looked down at the unconscious woman.  She reached for her bag, fumbled, and found a little thing of tissues.  She pulled out a bunch and then pressed them to the head wound.

“I think we’re okay?” Verona guessed.  “It was self defense, right?  That makes us karmically okay?  And we didn’t spoil her Awareness.”

“I don’t know,” John said.

“Okay.”

“Things are bad,” John said.  “The perimeter is down.  It’s getting out of control.”

“I know.  I’m kinda really hoping Avery and Lucy are getting a handle on their parts of it.”

“I had to leave Lucy, but she has help.”

“Can we go back and help them?”

“We can if you’re up for it.  Are you?”

Verona hesitated.  Then she nodded.

He bent down and picked up Sharon by her belt.  He opened the door and tossed her into the back seat.  Rather than use the broken passenger side door, Verona climbed in after her, and continued to apply pressure to the cut on her forehead.  John, holding the rifle, climbed into the driver’s seat.  He paused, turning.

Verona was already inside Sharon’s pockets, fishing.  She handed the keys to John, then, while still leaning forward, grabbed the laptop from the front seat.

“Seatbelt,” John said.

“Really?” she asked.  But she belted up.  She worked one around Sharon’s middle too, as best she could.

John drove them into the city, where that drumming heartbeat in the center was rapid and starting to bleed out in larger quantities.  Verona checked the laptop and it was a simple password input, but she didn’t know what to put, so she moved on.

She fished in Sharon’s other pocket, found the phone, and used Sharon’s thumb to unlock it.

“Mr. Bristow…” she murmured, as she found the contact.

Back Away – 5.4

Avery

Avery perched on top of a telephone pole, watching as a man made his way down the street, surrounded by a milling mass of blood-streaked pigs and bloody-muzzled dogs.

It wasn’t her choice to be up this high, especially considering how the skeptic could be around and then what would happen?

But that guy was scary.

He was bloody, with a torn pig’s face stapled to his own.  He wore a butcher’s apron over a white dress shirt with the top button undone and the sleeves rolled up, carried a cleaver in one hand, and had a piglet skewered on a stick in the other, which he waved around and smacked other pigs and dogs with to get them moving.  Sometimes the ‘scepter’ twitched, legs kicking or moving through the air as if it were trying to swim or run.

He didn’t seem to have trouble walking, despite the 20 animals that moved as a crowd, pressing in against his legs and weaving between them.

“He looks nice.”

“Shhh, Snowdrop,” Avery said.  “I agree, but shhh.”

Some dogs at the rear of the man’s group had spotted her, possibly because of their verbal exchange.  They barked, almost in unison, and Snowdrop jumped.  Avery had to steady her.

The man on the ground turned, looking up at her.  The eyes behind the stapled-on pig face were wet and bloodshot.

He said something, and between the fact it was foreign and his voice was badly muffled and slurred by the fact the pig lips had been stapled to his lips, she couldn’t even guess at the language, let alone make out the words.

He waved his baby-pig scepter, and a dog broke from the pack, awkwardly climbing the telephone pole.  It huffed, losing nearly as much ground as it gained as it slid down, awkwardly trying to ascend with legs on either side.  Others milled around the base of the pole, looking up at her.  Dogs and pigs.

She took Snowdrop’s hand, and Snowdrop became an opossum, which Avery moved to her shoulder.  She could feel the needle claws dig into her cape and shirt.  She tapped her heels together, then jumped, hockey stick in hand.  To the next telephone pole, which was far enough down the street there were two houses sitting side by side between the first pole and the second.

She met the edge of the top of the next pole with the middle of her foot, and shifted her weight, arms sweeping out as she found her balance on top.  She couldn’t do the black rope thing while there were this many eyes on her.

More dogs barked, shouting the alarm.

“Zurreisuh see en fetzen!” the man howled the words.

His swarm moved, heading in her direction.

She took a second, looking around.  For the connections- she couldn’t make out her friends.  For the thread that followed the watch.  For any sign of Clementine.

Nothing.

The pole shook.

Animals were wedging themselves between the stone wall and the telephone pole, claws and hooves kicking and scraping for purchase.

She tapped her heels together, preparing to jump-

Snowdrop nipped her, making a high-pitched sound.

She twisted Snowdrop’s way, still teetering forward.  She could see how the man was poised, twisting on the spot.

She hit the pole with her hockey stick.  A violent impact cracked the wood and made the stick shake violently in her hands.  It knocked her back, down, and away.

She flipped through the air once before she ‘planted’ her feet on the air, wind brushing against bare calves and shins before her feet hit the ground.  The wind cushioned the landing.

The glint of metal flashed through the darkness.  A tossed cleaver.

If she’d jumped without changing course, that could have been a dead-on impact.

“Ehssenzeit!” the man howled.

The animals moved as a mass, the ones still wedged between the pole and the wall now struggling to push their way free.

It was a lot.  Avery hurried back, swiping her hockey stick through the air.  It made them pause.

The second time, they hesitated less.

The third time, they ignored the stick, snapping and biting.  She hit the gravel back-alley road with her stick, and it exploded into dust and a spray of gravel.  Animals yelped.

The stick wouldn’t hold up to a sustained beating like this.

She bolted, using the cloud of dust and gravel as cover while she ran.  They might have heard, though, because they barked.

She brought her stick around, and held it near the flat end, then held the length of it behind her.  She tapped the back of each shoe once with the stick as she ran.

Tap-tap.  Wake up.

She shifted orientation, leaning forward more, then began to bound forward.  Outrunning the pigs and even the dogs.

A dog barked, lunging in from a side street.  Pigs followed.  Snowdrop shifted position, looking back, and she chanced a look.

The man with the pig face collapsed, drowning in the midst of his charging swarm.

There was a ripping sound from Avery’s right.

As she looked, she could hear the footsteps.  She brought her stick around-

It was him.  The man with the face, only it was a different pig’s skin, now, and he was naked, wearing only blood and the tattered remains of the pig’s skin.  He carried the cleaver and scepter, swinging the cleaver at her stick.

The rusty blade stuck into the wood.  He tossed the scepter aside and grabbed the stick between where her hands held it.

Snowdrop pounced, turning human, and stabbed him around the eye with her fork, her arm slung around his neck.

Avery took quick steps, her shoes still catching the wind with her enchantment, found a moment’s purchase on the ground, and used it, kicking the grass to drive her foot off the ground with a gust of wind.  She placed it firmly between the man’s legs, her foot scraping between the mass of his thighs to strike home.

She could hear him grunt, and saw the skin of his stomach and chest ripple with the impact.

Holding onto the stick, forcing him to hold it, she twisted, kicked the ground again, at an angle this time, and kicked him in the leg.

He barely seemed to notice.  Even the kick between the legs didn’t make the impact she’d hoped for.

His hot, sour breath was heavy in her face.  Snowdrop’s fork dragged against his lower eyelid and he didn’t even flinch.

“Snowdrop, get the-”

He lunged forward.  She couldn’t even begin to resist, and instead found herself caught halfway between trying to keep from being bowled over and trying to get away, if she could twist to one side or find footing-

He slammed her into a wooden fence, and put her straight through it.  Wood broke and the fence fell over.

It was a crappy fence that might have fallen over on its own soon enough, but it still hurt.

“Staples!” Avery grunted.

The fork’s tines dragged against the man’s face until they hit staple, and she wriggled it, working the fork through it, prying.

The staple came free.  The man let go of the stick to slap a hand to the side of his face.

While Snowdrop worked on another, kicking at his arm to avoid him getting a hand on her, Avery hauled back on the stick.  The damaged end with the knife in it broke off, but it came free of his blood-slick grip.

She clubbed him in the side with it, stepping back as he twisted, in case he was twisting to face her.  He was still focused on Snowdrop.

“Come an’ see!” the man barked out, guttural, except it kind of sounded like one word.

Pigs lurking in the alley hopped over the broken slats and onto the fallen fence, hooves scraping.  Behind Avery, a pair of near-identical dogs prowled forward through the gap between two dilapidated houses, heads low, hackles raised.

“I have places to be!” Avery raised her voice, trying to sound tough.

He reached for Snowdrop and nearly got her.  Avery leaped forward while his attention was gone, and this time she plunged the broken end of her stick into his bare, hairy, bloody belly.  It made a sickening, wet sound, and made the sound again as she pulled it free.

It got his attention.

The dogs and pigs swarmed in.  She hopped up, onto the rooftop of the nearby house.  Not even a second later, she lunged back down, springing sideways and down from the gutter toward him, smacking at his hand before he could grab Snowdrop.  The stick’s rune flared, and the impact made a crunching sound.

Snowdrop pried off the third or fourth staple, kicking one foot to ward off a dog that was hopping up, nipping, and fending off the one reaching hand.

As the staple came free, he stumbled back, burying his face in his hands.  Snowdrop fell, maybe out of concerns he was reaching for her hand at his throat instead of his face, and Avery hopped forward, jabbing with the broken stick to fend off a dog that might have bit her.

A pair of pigs came charging through, and she had to hop out of the way to avoid them.

Holding his stomach wounds, the man with a pig’s snout stapled into place toppled, landing on one of his animals.  It squealed and fought its way free.

“Don’t move!” Snowdrop shouted.

It took a moment for Avery to make the mental translation.  She twisted around, and saw a dog swelling, the broad-shouldered naked man crawling out of its skin, tattered fur only attached around one hip and his groin.  He had a dog’s face stapled in around his face.

He came at her before she’d fully recovered.  She hopped back, hit the corner of the house’s backyard where the fence surrounded her on two sides, and the partially collapsed fence sat to her left, giving her no escape routes.

She wasn’t good at this.  She wasn’t a fighter.  Lucy wasn’t really a fighter either, not in mindset or even enjoying the fight, but she was good at it.  Verona had done that thing, carving into the cold tears guy, showing she could handle herself in a pinch.

Avery could barely think, let alone pull out something crazy in the way of inspired moves.

Snowdrop screamed, a long, continuous sound.

“Snowdrop!”

She hopped straight up, ready to plant her foot on the edge of the wobbly fence, then spring over, and the man with the stapled-on dog face lunged.

He managed to grab the toe of her running shoe.  She yanked it back out of the way, and summarily fucked up her landing in the process, touching the fence with one hand and one foot, and nearly folding over the top of it, as it swayed and threatened to topple.

She swiped out with her hockey stick, and slapped him across the face.  It crunched with the impact, and his head turned a full ninety degrees.

He backhanded the stick out of her hand, then bowled forward, through the fence and through her footing.  She leaped backward, and the landing was awkward, as she nearly walked into a pig. It gnashed very human-like teeth at her.

“I don’t eat pork anymore, guy,” she told the pig, while backing up away from the bloody, masked man.

Snowdrop’s scream was ongoing.  Avery had a glimpse of her through the hole in the fence, and saw her friend backed up against a garage wall, a half-circle of dogs approaching.

She heard the scream stop, and saw Snowdrop keel over.

Avery put two fingers to her mouth, and whistled, her other hand going to her pocket.  Slip of paper, folded in half.

It was crudely done, a circle with a dot inside it, set within another circle that was interrupted with a Venus sign.  The other side was the same.

She’d put glamour inside it.  She held it overhead, and struck it like she would a match still in the matchbook, papers rubbing against each other, and rubbing against glamour.

The circular rubbing motion was the glamour-movement for lighten, and this was a refinement of what she’d done on the Forest Ribbon Trail.  A bright white flash, while she had the attention of pig, dog, and pig-dog-man.

The big guy hadn’t reacted to a runed up kick to the gross male bits.  He’d taken a runed up hockey stick to the face.  She worried the light wouldn’t work either.

But, she exhaled a shaky breath, he didn’t seem to like light either.  He stumbled forward, swiping blindly for her with broad, bloody hands.

Black rope.  She touched it while everything was blind, and crossed to Snowdrop’s side.  She touched her friend’s face, and it was warm.  She pulled an eye open with a finger, and saw it was rolled up.

“Hey, come on teammate,” Avery whispered.

A dog nearby was shaking its head, and it kept stumbling, then turning to face her, like it could almost see her while blinded.

Snowdrop was out cold.  Fainted.

“Can you at least go small?” Avery asked.

The dog huffed, fixating on her.

Avery turned Snowdrop over, grabbed the girl by the belt and the armpit, and did her best to lift her up while putting herself under Snowdrop.  Her legs strained as she stood.  Human Snowdrop was not that light.

She grabbed the fork while she was at it.

She reached into her pocket for another slip of paper- she’d had three, but it felt like one had come apart in her pocket in one of her falls or something.  She pulled it out, trying to see if there was anything she could use, and it was scrap.  Third one.

She moved back toward the gap between houses, as fast as she was able, one hand holding the slip, the other gripping the fork, knuckles pressing against the wall of the house for balance as she moved as fast as she was able while carrying sixty pounds of opossum.

“That was some fantastic forking, back there.  I’m sorry we got split up,” Avery huffed.  “I’m sorry.  You did great.”

A pig covered in wiry hair with a bad scrape along the length of its body appeared at her exit, where the gap between houses fed into a driveway.  It wasn’t a boar, or it was because a male pig was a boar, but it was still a pig,

Avery held up the paper, and activated it.  Another flash.

She used the black rope, jumping, while she was sure nobody watching could see her.  Past the pig, across the street, and into another shadowy nook.

The boar twisted, wrenched, and then split open like a really bloody hotdog in the microwave too long.  The man stood from the remains, covered in red, wearing a hairy pig’s face stapled to his own face, lips stapled to his lips, edges of the eyes stapled to his.  He turned, looking directly at her, cleaver in one hand, and a dog came up to him, bearing the ‘scepter’.

He held the scepter high, and little legs kicked.

Dogs and pigs gathered in that little alley around him.

Avery looked back behind her.  But she was tired, dogs were fast, and there was no guarantee that there weren’t more animals out there, waiting around the corner.

She set Snowdrop against the wall, using her own body to keep her from toppling over, and then pulled off her bag, removing hat and mask.  She put the fork in her pocket.

One hand at Snowdrop’s wrist, the other at Snowdrop’s thigh, she leveraged her friend so Snowdrop was across her shoulders.

Every minute she’d spent with hockey and soccer mattered, in letting her manage this.

She went against every scared part of herself that was telling her to get as far away from that man as she could, as fast as she could.  Gritting her teeth, she marched toward him.

Out into the street and streetlights.

He waved the scepter, and it made a noise.

Three dogs broke from the pack, coming right for her.

“Help!”  Avery called out.  “Help me!”

Her eyes scanned.

She saw someone at the screen door of their house, peering at her.

“Help,” she said.  Because she couldn’t put up a fight and she couldn’t run, not without giving up her friend.

The man at the door pushed the door open, followed immediately by his wife, girlfriend, or sister.

The dogs paused, as the number of people they were up against doubled.

“What happened?  Was that you screaming?” the woman asked.

The guy was mostly focused on the dogs.

“It was her,” Avery said.  “My friend.”

“Oh!” the guy jumped a bit.  “Didn’t even realize you were carrying someone.”

“We did a look around after we heard,” the woman said.  “We thought about calling the cops, just in case, but…”

She trailed off.

“Do you want to come in?” the woman asked.  “Those dogs don’t look well.”

“Please.”

The guy helped her with Snowdrop, and they went inside the house.  It looked like other neighbors were peering around and paying attention to the dogs that were out in the street.

The big guy was gone.

They deposited Snowdrop on the couch.

“Is she a homeless kid?” the man asked, standing at the screen door, watching things outside.

“She’s my friend, and she has a home,” Avery said, kneeling by the couch, checking Snowdrop.  No injuries, aside from a big bruise at one arm.

“What happened?” the woman asked.

“I was trying to catch up with someone, and they got in the way.  Feral, or dangerous or something.  Then Snowdrop and I got split up for a moment, and she screamed and passed out.”

Avery straightened, checking out the window.  The dogs were still out in the street.  A few brave souls had ventured out.  She could see a pig in the shadows by someone’s porch, burlier than she’d thought pigs could be, with teats suggesting it had been pregnant.

“Should we call someone?” the woman asked.

The guy answered, “We could wait until they move on.  What are they, hungry coyotes?  Dogs?”

“Dogs,” Avery confirmed.  “They look like strays.”

“Do you want us to call your family?” the woman asked.

Avery shook her head.

The fleeting thought that she didn’t know what was up with her dad getting mad at his coworker crossed her mind.

Verona and Lucy were doing their own things.  Snowdrop was out.  Her family was… she couldn’t call her family.

It felt very, very lonely, in the moment.

“Thank you for coming to help me,” she said, her eyes fixed on Snowdrop’s unconscious face.

“Of course.  Anyone would, wouldn’t they?” the woman asked.

“I’m not sure everyone would,” Avery said, turning, and blinking a few times in quick succession.  “Thanks.”

“People are good,” the woman said, touching the cross at her throat.

Avery smiled.

The smile fell from her face.

In the other room, about five paces behind the woman, the man stood in the unlit kitchen.  Big, broad shouldered, glistening with gore, a pig’s face stapled over his own, except where staples had been pulled out at his upper left brow.  The sagging skin made one eye squint closed.  He held a rusty cleaver in one hand, and a knife he’d probably grabbed from the kitchen.

He made no noise as he stepped closer to the woman’s back, easing forward so he wouldn’t make the floor creak.

Avery chanced a peek out the window, and saw that the dogs were gathered outside.  Forming a loose ring around the place.

“Can you, um… is it possible you could give me a minute with my friend?”

“Okay,” the woman said.

“Wait, uh…” the guy said.  He leaned in close.  Avery could hear his murmur.  “Kids steal.”

“People are good,” the woman said.

“It’ll be just a few seconds,” the guy added.

Avery nodded, very quickly.

The big guy with the pig face was in the middle of another slow, noiseless step when the woman walked away, heading for the stairs.

In retrospect, she wasn’t sure what she’d have done if they’d wanted to go into the kitchen or backyard.  She wasn’t good at considering the more far-out variables like that.

And she had other concerns.

The big guy stepped into the doorway that separated the kitchen from the living room.  Naked but for congealed blood and tattered skins.  The tattered skins didn’t really protect his modesty, but they were grisly and dangly in a way that made it hard to tell what was pigflesh and what was his.  That scepter was tucked into the ragged skins at his hip.  His hair was caveman-like, long and greasy and messy, and his beard leaked out around the bottom and neck of the mask.

Avery tapped her heels together, carefully stepping between him and Snowdrop.

Ick bin nicked gut,” he said, voice soft.

She had a bit of the glamour from the leaked packet in her pocket.  Which reminded her of everything she’d been working on.

With her hockey stick gone, she didn’t have weapons.  She gripped the glamour in one hand, and with her other hand, thumbed away a bit of sweat at her temple and cheekbone.  Touching a spot where she’d given herself a checkmark.

Little marks of gold stood out against her skin.  Bullseyes and checkmarks, stamps of approval, of herself, by herself.  Smudgy signatures, to commemorate occasions.

Lucy had grumbled about the habit, some.  Verona hadn’t really ‘got’ it.  But that was okay.

Right now, it was a reminder, that she could kick ass when she needed to.  She could be a good friend.  She could make those shots she kept telling herself she was bad at.  She could be noble, and brave, and cool.

She stood straighter, facing him.  The glowing gold marks faded slowly.

He smiled, and extended his tongue as far as it could go so he could lick both his lips and the pig lips that were stapled around there.

Something hit his head with enough force that he bit his tongue.

Gashwad.

He held something that looked like a crumpled up newspaper, except that newspaper pulsed like it was wrapped around a heart… but it was too flat and broad to be a heart.  He jammed it into the gap between pigflesh and manflesh.

There were others.  Doglick took a big bite out of the thing’s ankle.  Nat pounced onto him and tore into flesh with her piercing-riddled hand, using the grip she got from that to pounce for and grab the cleaver out of his hand.  She tumbled to the ground with a thump, then held up her trophy with a toothy grin.

“What was that?” the man called down.

Gashwad bit into the monster’s neck.  Back behind the monster, Butty, glistening with sweat, threw himself onto the floor, coasting along the floor on his own sweat like it was a slippy slide.

The monster took a step back, trying to wrench Gashwad free, and stepped onto the sweat.  He slipped, falling with a crash, and all four goblins were on him in moments.

“What-”

“Stay upstairs!” Avery shouted.

“That’s not-”

“Bark,” she told Doglick.  Snowdrop had told her.

Doglick barked, and Avery gestured for him to escalate.  He took a deep breath, then uttered overlapping barks and growls, like two or more dogs were fighting.

“I’m okay, I think, but stay upstairs!” Avery called out, before launching forward.

She wasn’t the center position in soccer or hockey.  But she could assist.

She leaped in, bending down, and swiped the scepter.  With her foot, she kicked the fallen kitchen knife across the floor, out of his reach, aiming for the handle.  She skidded on Butty’s sweat until she hit the back wall of the kitchen.  The knife clattered to her right.

“Outta the way, don’t get hurt!” Gashwad growled.

“I can-”

“We swore!  We swore, we’d help keep you safe.”

The awakening ritual.

She backed away, picking up the knife, and then slapped the scepter down on the floor.

She plunged the knife into it.  It squealed, kicking and vomiting maggots.  The man reacted, almost like he had a surge of strength, twisting his head around.  Whatever Gashwad had put in beneath his mask, it was writhing and tearing at what was beneath.  It swelled, and staples pulled free.

Come an’ see!” he hollered.

There were dogs at the screen door of the kitchen.  Avery went to close it, but they were faster, barging their way in.  Doglick escalated the barking.

Avery backed off, then backed off more as Gashwad motioned for her to go.  He growled something at Butty, who was at the fridge, holding mayonnaise and soda.

She turned to Snowdrop.

She had help.  They had help.

It wasn’t necessarily nice, clean help, but… she didn’t feel as cornered or alone.

She tried to think, trusting them to handle this.  She needed Snowdrop small.  She had… she had the black rope, that didn’t help.  She had the enter key from Zed, which she could jam in a light socket, she had the fancy glasses that could read crowds, no help here, and she had the glamour in her pocket.

She pulled out glamour, as much as she was able to scrape it free, and gripped it in her closed fist.

Turning her head, she saw some stray, coarse white hairs.

Opossum hairs.

Same trick as turning into an animal.  She bent down over Snowdrop.

Gestures for shrinking, texture, spreading out the texture once it was established.

It was easy, because this was a form Snowdrop was meant to take and had taken any number of times.

She cupped the now opossum-sized Snowdrop in her hands, and then grabbed her bag.

The man rose to his feet.  Nat and Doglick were fighting a dog and pig outside the screen door, and it meant they didn’t have much in the way of manpower.  Or goblinpower.

Just Gashwad, crawling over the man, and Butty, who held a plastic container of mayonnaise that was throbbing, frothing at the gap where lid met plastic jar.

Butty tossed the jar to Gashwad, who caught it and slammed it into the man’s mouth, giving the base of the jar a quick pat.

Which apparently set it off.  The contents detonated with an audible bang, and a froth of blood, mayonnaise, and other fluids geysered from his nose and the gap around his mouth where it didn’t form a seal around the bottle.  There was a shotgun geyser from his rear end too, but that was mostly blood, and so violent he didn’t really have a complete pelvis anymore.

Dogs and pigs made noises and dashed away, ceasing the fight.

“Go go go,” Gashwad urged.

“No no no!” Avery hissed.  “Clean that up!  These people are nice!”

“No time!”

“I was promised things at awakening and if you don’t clean this up they will look up the girl who’s associated with this-”

“What happened!?” the woman called down the stairs.

“Stay up there!”

Doglick resumed barking, looking like he was enjoying himself.

“Clean up the mess you made,” Gashwad told the others.  Nat gave him a look, glaring.  He reiterated, “Clean, ya ratfucks!”

Avery grabbed paper towels, and swiped up the maggots and blood from the scepter as best she could with one hand.  Gashwad cleaned up blood, as did Nat, before they turned their attention to the corpse.  Butty bent over, tongue to floor, and began propelling himself forward to the bloody mayo mess.  Doglick cleaned up a bit but mostly laid down the ‘cover’ of letting the homeowners think some wild dogs were fighting in their house.

Avery didn’t look, because she wasn’t sure her stomach could take it.

“We’ll get it,” Gashwad said.  “Go.  We’ll find you.”

Avery nodded.

Out the front door.  She could see other dogs scattering, running off.  A car stopped abruptly to avoid running into one.

Snowdrop stirred.

“Heyyy, my coolest girl,” Avery said.  “You okay?”

Snowdrop stirred, struggling, as if she needed to stretch in the right way before she could work her way to full consciousness.

She turned to a human before Avery had fully let go, and Avery transitioned from that to wrapping her in a hug.

Yessss,” Snowdrop said, backing up a few steps post-hug, looking around.  She was wearing a dress printed with ‘The ‘sum of all fears’, the silhouette of various screaming opossum heads at the bottom border.  “No need to catch me up.”

“We’re safe.  It’s handled.  I carried you away, goblins came in the nick of time.”

“Great.  I’m glad.”

“You’re- what?”

“You have my back and I’m the dumb mascot who faints when it counts and that’s cool.  I can work with that.”

“Snow,” Avery said.  “No.  Not what happened.”

“It’s okay!” Snowdrop said, clutching Avery’s wrist with two hands.  “You help me and I get a free ride and that’s our way of doing stuff.”

“You helped, Snow.  You did.  You screamed for help and I was able to get us to safety because of that.  The goblins… I don’t think they would have gone quite so above and beyond if it wasn’t for you building that rapport.”

“Okay,” Snowdrop said.  “I can live with that.  That’s enough.”

Avery put her hands to Snowdrop’s cheeks, cupping her face.  “I don’t want things to be bad between us.”

“They’re great.  We’re great.”

“You keep me sane.  I couldn’t have gotten through the first part of that without you.  I couldn’t have gotten through the second part of it like I did if it weren’t for you.  I say it and I mean it and let my words count.”

Snowdrop nodded.

“Why are we not great, Snow?”

“Why did you translate for me, before?” Snowdrop asked.  “In the truck?”

Avery shook her head, thinking back.  “I… I don’t know how used to you Matthew and Edith are, and Lucy is tired, and it’s not that she’s dumb, like, at all.  She gets better grades than me or Verona.  But she gets frustrated, I think, with the effort, sometimes.  It doesn’t mean I don’t respect you.  That bothered you?”

“No.”

“I love you, Snowdrop.  You’re the best thing this practice stuff has provided me with, and I worry I’m taking you for granted sometimes, or that…” Avery took in a deep breath.  “…I dunno.  Is it bad if you’re what you are because of me?”

“Yeah,” Snowdrop said, laconic.  “Terrible.”

“I don’t- just the fact that you’re set up to be my companion, and we forced that on you.”

“Ruined my long, healthy life.”

“Seriously, though.”

“I’m yours,” Snowdrop said.  “Your slave, doomed to adapt to you every moment as you grow up, you loser.”

“You’re-”

“From the moment I’m made to the moment I die.”

“One time thing, huh?” Avery asked.

Constant downloads of Averystuff,” Snowdrop said.

So Snowdrop had gotten the one-time information packet on everything Avery knew and everything relevant about Avery.  And that was it.

“We grow and change from that point on, huh?”

“Nah.  Not me and definitely not you.  You cowardly, uncool loser.  Which is awful. You had a real shot at being way shittier and wayyyy more uncool.”

“If we’re going to grow and possibly diverge, I’m willing to make the effort to stay close.”

“Not me.  Screw that.”

Avery smiled.  “I can’t think of a thing I’d change anything about you, Snow.”

“I’d change a lot about you.  Especially the way you pet me.  It’s so gross and clumsy.”

“Come here,” Avery said.  “Some pets, but then you gotta help me find Clementine.”

“No, no pets, no help,” Snowdrop said.  Avery extended her hand, and Snowdrop turned into an opossum.

Avery adjusted her bag, buckling it across her chest to keep it secure.  She was still holding the gross scepter in one hand, and did her best to pet Snowdrop with the end in one hand while she began jogging.

She reached a side street with nobody out and about, checked with her Sight, and then black-roped her way to another telephone pole.  She skipped forward a few times, from pole to pole, until she had a good view of the town.

Thinking over her stuff while she was wondering how to help Snowdrop had reminded her.  She did have the glasses.

The glasses were tricky.  They were subtle, and effectively replaced her Sight with another kind of Sight, that surrounded people in colorful hues, indicating emotion.  It was bad with individual people, and stronger with groups, where currents and flows became apparent.

Problem was, they were really dorky and conspicuous.  So a lot of the time, there were situations where she’d try to test them and skim a situation, only to have the people she was looking at turn their attention toward her.

She gave the scepter to Snowdrop, who made a full-bodied effort to hold onto it with her opossum form, then accessed her bag.  She donned the shades, and then looked out over the city, taking the scepter back from Snowdrop and resuming the pets, fingernails scratching skin beneath fur.

There was a lot of lime green at the edges, bleeding in with red.  Green was attention, vigilance, and focus.  Lime green was… something.

“Do you remember what lime green was to the glasses?” Avery asked.

Snowdrop sneezed.

“I think it was interest.  Was it interest?  Does that sound right?”

Snowdrop sneezed.

“Okay, yeah.  Thanks Snowdrop.”

She could see splashes of fear, including in the neighborhood she’d just vacated.  Technically ‘her’ neighborhood, but the spot was as far from her house as it was possible to get before being in a different place altogether.

There was also one dramatically colored burst near downtown, and weirdness out in the woods.

She tracked one blob of weird color and saw a woman, thin and stooped, giggling to herself.

The woman looked up at her and giggled more, covering her mouth with her hand, shoulders hunching together.

The fact the woman wasn’t freaking out seeing Avery on a telephone pole was telling.

“Hello?  Are you new to town?”

The woman ran off, running like a kid did, with no sense of the mechanics of capable motion.  She giggled the entire way.

“Are we being attacked?” she asked.  “What the heck is going on?”

“The friggin’ perimeter’s down,” Gashwad growled.

Avery looked down and saw the goblins were climbing the telephone pole.

“The perimeter?”

“Wards and shit, yeh?  And something’s bringing all those assholes in here.”

“Strange Others?  The pig-dog-man?”

“I heard he asked to live here, once.  They said no.  We cleaned him up this time.”

“He’s dead?”

“His type come back again and again, if they’re angry enough.  Keep that furnace of shitty feelings burning.  He’ll come back.  He’ll try again.”

“He walked into that house like it was nothing.  I thought innocents were protected, or was he just messing with-”

“No messing,” Nat spat the words.

“If you don’t get caught you can’t get in trouble,” Gashwad added.  “So things like him, they pick ’em off while they’re far enough away from things.  Or they get real good at killing without the police findin’ em.”

“Same for goblins, I guess?”

“Some.  Easier if you go after the people who’re fucked up.  The ones with karma just asking for trouble.  Makes it easier to not get caught, and they have less friends to check on ’em.”

“And you go after innocents too?”

“Me?  Neh.  I like a good scrap.  I’d rather go to the deep woods and find some squirrel headed fairy shitter that walks around with a sword and shield and show ’em how a real fight’s done.  Rub their face in the dirt and make them question their life choices.”

“There are squirrel knights out there?” Avery asked.

“There’s almost everything if you look long enough.  Those spirit-infused animals are total losers.  Sniffing their own shit pellets and thinking it smells like roses and adventure.  Making tea with acorns?  Fuck you, little squirrel nerd.  Makes me mad just thinking about your stupid tea.”

Nat joined in with a “Yeah!” and Doglick yipped.

“We have stuff to do, right?  You cleaned up the mess?”

“Broken screen and I wouldn’t eat off the floor Butty licked clean, but it’s good enough.  Satisfied, princess?”

“I am reasonably satisfied, thank you.  I hate leaving that mess and anxiety on their doorstep.  I should do something nice for them.”

Gashwad scoffed.

“Thanks for doing that, by the way.  Helping.”

“Helping?  Pshah and fuck off.  No.  That big asshole’s been bothering us for years, acting bigger than he is, and there’s nothing funner than going after something like him, bogeyman that keeps coming back.  You leave them a scar and the scar keeps.  So if you blow out their rear end, turn it into a hole you could hide a baby in… that’s just funny.”

“That was… something.”

“Butty’s thing.”

“The mayo bomb?”

“He’s a fester, you know.  That’s what he does.”

“I’m not playing that game, Gash.  I’ve been told he’s a bulge, a fester now, ummm, I think Cherry called him a boil.  You guys make this up.”

“Exactly!  Perfect, you’re not so dumb after all.  That’s what he does.  He takes all the ugly, all the mess, all the bile and crap and he concentrates it.  Longer he waits and lets it sit before it goes pop, the better.  Rest of the time, he’s just a greasy stain.  He’d be good to have around if he wasn’t so shit.

“He’s greasing the pole!” Nat exclaimed.  “You’re greasing the pole we’re climbing by rubbing up on it like that, you

Butty, further down, giggled, until Nat jumped him, knocking him off the pole.  She began pounding him.

“I’m supposed to find Clementine, the Gilded Lily,” Avery said.

“The shit picker upper.”

“Sure.  But… I don’t know where to begin.  It doesn’t help that time is moving faster around her.  I can find the trail, but then she turns around, I’m in a slow zone, I think, and she zips away.”

“Break her legs.”

“I’d have to find her before I could and I can’t.  And I wouldn’t.”

“You said you can’t before you said you wouldn’t, eh?” Gashwad sniggered.  “It crossed your mind, hm?  You’re learning, girly.”

“Um, it didn’t and I really don’t think I am.  It’s just that you’re really wrong, and I can’t say both reasons why at once.”

He sniggered again.

She saw a plume of purple, then deep blue, and black.  All downtown.

“Is that Lucy?”

“The glitterstink?  Probably.”

“Is she in trouble?”

“We all are,” Gashwad said.  “It’s a mess and it won’t clean up anytime soon.”

“It’s great,” Nat piped up, from the ground.  Doglick yipped.

“It’s horrible.  I don’t think I can catch Clem on my own.”

“Matthew asked us to hunt the bastards who’re invading.  Can’t really go with ya, tits, but if you wanted one of us…”

Doglick yipped.

It’s not that I wouldn’t appreciate help, but…

She wanted Lucy and Verona.

“Going to help them, and circle back to Clem.  I know that’s not ideal but… keep an eye out?”

Gashwad snorted.  Good enough, as a ‘yes’ went.

“Ready, Snow?”

Snowdrop sneezed.

She leaped, using her shoes.  She hit the ground and then bounded forward.  She’d gotten enough use out of her shoes that she had a good instinct for when they’d pull the rug out from under her.  Air spirits were capricious, yes, but they were also spirits of friendship and whimsy.  Screwing over a friend wasn’t fun or whimsical.  It made for less goodness in the long run.

She made sure to do some front-flips and turns in the air as she got underway, bounding forward, keeping to the shadows where the streetlights didn’t illuminate the road.  It helped that so many roads turned off half or all the streetlights after a certain late hour.

She headed for Lucy.

Or what she presumed was Lucy.

Toward the big blob of dark colors.  She pulled the glasses off and she put her Sight on.

To see the movements in the air.  Particles of glamour swirling around.  Connections… and the void where there were so very few connections at all.

There was a street where there hadn’t been one before, sandwiched in somehow, and the buildings were decorated.  Purple-black bricks, banners of gossamer-fine silk, and unfamiliar shops.

What the hell had happened, here?

“Avery.”

She stopped.

It was Charles, balding and scraggly-bearded, clothes simple and badly worn.  He wore an ill-fitting t-shirt that had once had a front pocket but now had holes in the rough outline of where the pocket had been, and cargo pants with a dark stain at one leg.  It was warm out, but he was skinny enough that he maybe didn’t get enough from the warmth.  Skinny and scary and offputting.

“You’re alone?” she asked.

“I had an escort.  She got distracted.”

“Lucy?”

“Maricica.”

“There are a lot of scary Others around.  Isn’t it dangerous for you?”

“Yes, it is.  Matthew came to me.  He needed eyes on him while he reasserted his bindings on himself.  We noticed the Others aren’t interested in me.”

“They usually are?”

“If you asked someone to pick one person out of a crowd to shoot, they would pick me, if possible.  If you asked an Other to prey on a victim…”

“Goblins were just talking about that.”

“They aren’t interested.  Which means they’re interested in something else.  We thought I might be a good way to figure out where they’re going.  A destination that seems to be moving.  Screening out the obvious.  Maricica could protect me.”

Avery paused.  She looked down at Snowdrop, who squeaked.

“Are you real?”

“I hope so.”

“Because this is a lot of glamour, and I was just very frustrated at how I haven’t been able to find the Gilded Lily.  She’s too slippery, or there are forces keeping me away from her.”

“Hmm.”

“So you saying you might have a way to find her.  If these Others are after something and that something could be her…”

“Too good to be true?” Charles asked.

“Yeah.”

“Good.  Hit me.”

“What?  I don’t- I-”

“Matthew told me you play hockey.  You should know how to hit a person.  Hit me.  Hard enough to shatter a glamour.”

“That feels like a pretty brutal way of-”

His expression darkened.

“I have permission, I don’t get bad karma for hurting someone vulnerable?”

“Everyone has permission to hurt me.  You get good karma by doing so.  Everyone does.  It’s helping the universe to bring about justice,” Charles said.  He smiled, but it was a mean, sad, dark smile.

She shivered.  Creepy.

She started to move, then stopped.  Then she thought about Lucy and Verona maybe needing her.

She slapped him.

“Good,” he said.  “Anything?”

She shook her head.

“A relief,” he said.

“Is it?”

“Imagine I were some poor soul, glamoured up to be Charles Abrams and play a trick on a novice witch.  Few things so piteous as that.”

She frowned.

“It’s good.  Thinking that way.  Trusting little to nothing.  This world will eat you alive.  You shouldn’t have stepped into it, but this is a good way to survive it, now that you have.”

Avery frowned more.  She stroked Snowdrop, then adjusted her bag, uncomfortable.

“Where are the others?” she asked, to change the subject.

“Verona was handling the Griggs girl, alone.  Matthew, Alpeana, and Edith were with her, but they had to leave.  Too dangerous.   I don’t know where the goblins or Guilherme are.  Maricica was evasive.  As for the rest, Lucy, John, and Maricica are…”

He indicated the shadowy street that wasn’t supposed to be there.

“Are they okay?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you okay coming with me?” she asked.  “I’d- I think I’d like to get their help before we go for Clementine.  The Gilded Lily.”

“Are you okay with me coming with you?” he asked, in return.

She hesitated.

“You’re allowed to say no.”

She thought of how frustrating it had been to fight alone.  “Come.  I need all the help I can get.  And we’re getting too scattered.  This entire thing’s a mess.  The perimeter, apparently.”

“I know.  I made it, back when I was here but not yet forsworn.”

“How?  Why?”

“The how is simple.  A lot of lesser Others caught.  Brainless spirits, echoes, and things, lashed to wards or turned into wisps with a void around them they felt compelled to fill.”

“Wisps?  Void?”

“We’ll talk while we walk,” he said.

She nodded.

They walked together toward the strange street.

“Forgive me, I can’t run fast.  Wisps are a form of spirit.  Concentrated and drawn to a point.  Briefly lived but strong.  Some places and things concentrate them.”

Avery thought of the group thing with Zachariah.  “Statues?”

“And shrines and natural phenomena.  But a spirit wants to persist.  The circles I would use to form the wisp would create and seal the void, making it part of the wisp.  I would make it so it could only be filled with one thing.  A specific arrangement of things.  Sometimes dust, sometimes branches, and sometimes spiderwebs.  Given time, the dust would gather and concentrate until it was like stone.  The spiderwebs would disappear but the memory of them would remain.”

“That sounds like a lot of work.”

“I made a means of collecting spirits small and immaterial enough, and I arranged it so they would be concentrated into wisps without my being there.  Send them out so they would stop just beyond Kennet’s borders.  They would turn away the people who could find them, or outsiders, or cloud scrying attempts.  Each ward a little push for a person, a bit of resistance for an outsider, a speck of dust in the sight of a scryer.”

“And it’s gone.  We can’t rebuild it?”

“It takes time, and it’s fragile at the start.  Right now, there are too many forces who would tear down that fragile, nascent effort. There are other ways, but they are expensive.  They’re singular, powerful effects that drain power.  It could halve the power of every Other here, making it too costly to remain for some, like the goblins or Alpeana.  And it would be vulnerable to the right key.  The right Other or practice, with enough force behind it.  My way was patient, it covered a lot of individual approaches.  It could be layered with other things.  Like the goblin alarms.”

“It still fell to the right key, didn’t it?  If it’s the skeptic?”

“It was the skeptic.  And you’re right.  If I hadn’t been forsworn, I could have done more.”

A store that was selling pipes and only pipes.  A kitchen with a stove between customer and server, with no heat or steam, nor a modicum of light, the chef standing behind her stove with hair covering most of her features.

Avery passed what could have been a pub, where slim people in fashionable clothes were talking, laughing, and flirting.  Above the black stone table, a beautiful woman of about twenty was bound in thorns, hands to ankles, thorn bands pinning a white dress to her upper body and legs.  Her head was bowed, her hair clearly well cared for.

Really beautiful, and… so sad, somehow.

A customer sat on a stool, looking like he was posing for a picture, one hand with fingers in the woman’s hair, stroking it.  He said something, and she smiled, laughing, before a look of regret crossed her face.

Thorns glowed, and a droplet of luminous gold welled at one, bright, before it fell into a martini glass.  Small as the droplet was, it filled the glass.

Just looking at that glowing liquid made Avery feel like she was a kid again, no troubles, hanging out with Olivia, having a great time.  Her lips moved involuntarily.

The man sipped from the glass.  The woman… she looked so deeply sad, for what had been taken from her.

Avery went to the door.  If she was quick, brutal, maybe she could catch them off guard.  She could cut the thorny vines and-

Her finger touched the surface.  The knob was painted onto the wall.  As the shadows of her hand and arm moved past it, it looked like there’d never been a knob.

She backed away.

“It’s a trick,” Charles said.

The scene was subtly different.  A young man was draped on the bar, unconscious.  A droplet of something luminous and white dripped from a collar of thorns to a glass, while a stunning girl who looked like a teenager, with upswept features, looked like she was tired, but in a sultry, inviting way, for her companion of ambiguous gender.  There was so little left in the boy at the counter that it didn’t even fill the glass.

Avery looked and the door was at the opposite side, and she knew this was… it was a scene remembered, painted, but it wasn’t real.  If she went to the other door, it would be false, too, and she could go back and forth forever without ever accessing the interior.  Probably.

“You could break it,” he said.  “Hitting it hard enough.”

“Could you?  Is that a thing?”

“I would risk being sucked into it.  The glamour could ensnare me, and you would have to pull me out.”

“Is there a point to breaking it?”

“It would get his attention.  It could distract him.  It would weaken what he’s building, making all the rest weaker.”

“What if I don’t want his attention?” Avery asked.

“Then you don’t break it.”

She nodded and moved on.

Snowdrop turned human.

“Good job petting me for so long,” Snowdrop said.  “I’m satisfied.”

“I’m sorry.  I’m distracted.  And you’re spoiled.”

“Nuh uh,” Snowdrop said, smiling.  The smile fell from her face as she looked back at Charles.

They passed a tailor’s, and the clothes in the window were nice enough that Avery felt like just the passing glance had made her more fashionable.  Maybe that was a trap, too.  It lined up with what they’d heard about the Faerie, enough that Avery could connect the aesthetic to the Dark Spring.  Daniel’s court.

Daniel had done this?  Or had Lucy, as a trap for Daniel?

Lucy wouldn’t.  Couldn’t.  This was too much.

“Dark spring,” Avery murmured.

“Yes,” Charles said.

“Super boring, super uncool stuff,” Snowdrop said, looking.

“I thought markets were the Autumn courts.”

“All courts have markets, all courts have lords and ladies and monsters.”

“Daniel’s sister was autumn.  Maybe he liked markets because he spent time with her.”

“Or he built on what was nearby.  A downtown area.”

“Hmm.”

They walked past a store where flowing script in English promised youth, with a price tag, as well as ‘perfect beauty’, ‘true absolution’, ‘wretched suffering’, ‘unsatisfying revenge’, and ‘fashionable loss’.

A store that sold coats and umbrellas.  A human woman stood in the display window, modeling clothes, looking like she was trying to avoid nodding off.  She jerked awake, locked eyes with Avery, and looked more deeply afraid than Avery had seen anyone.

And she’d seen Gabe realize he was a goner.  She’d seen Brie sobbing her heart out.

She touched the window, and the woman touched the other side, before giving a furtive look over her shoulder, and striking a still pose.

A woman, slender, with upswept features and what could have been some really fantastic runway fashion, emerged from the darkness of the store.  She dropped curtains over the window, and Avery saw the girl in the display window flinch.

“Fakery.  Memories of things long ago,” Charles said.

Avery was so tempted to break it, just in case.

Another store that sold ‘Makeovers, expensive but thorough.  Other stores offer beauty from now to forever.  We offer makeovers to past, present, and future.’  From beauty to wretched beast, from hero to villain, villain to hero, from musician to artist, boy to girl, girl to boy, young to old, and from Dark Spring to any court one chose.

“Why did you make the Wards?” she asked.

“Because I was asked.  I wanted them too.”

“Why did you want them?  Why were you asked?”

“I wanted them because I wanted a sizeable demesnes.  My old house was not far from Kennet.  Closing the perimeter meant I faced challengers from one less direction.  My deal with the locals was that they wouldn’t put up too much of a fight.  I would stick to their rules.  I came, went, acted as their practitioner when they needed it.”

“And they asked for it because?” Avery asked, again.

“Because, I think, each and every one of them had grown so weary of what lay out there.

“Out there?”

“In our world.  Other and practitioner.  John spent most of his existence on the run, his Yalda in tow.  Goblins often get exterminated in their sleep, and they can sleep twenty hours a day.  It’s a big weakness.  They’re also bound, bartered, coerced.  Gashwad has been bound twice.  Bluntmunch ran from a Goblin Queen who wanted him for his muscle.  Toadswallow always runs the risk that he’ll be asked to tutor a child, only to have the parents try to kill him, in case he could leak any small family secrets a child could share.”

“Couldn’t they make a better contract with him?”

“They could.  But that’s not what it’s really about.  For some, it’s about having knowledge and denying it to others.”

“And Matthew and Edith struggled with the Doom and Edith’s situation.”

“Yes.  They still struggle.  They’re anxious tonight.  They came close, simply by being near the wrong person.”

“And Alpeana?”

“I haven’t talked to her much.  She gives me regular nightmares, so you’d think… no, I haven’t talked to her much.  The world is big, and the areas she would normally be asked to serve are vast.  Riddled with those who would use her, or practitioners that would mug her for what she’s already gathered from echoes and spirits and refined into dreamstuff.  Here she can focus on the work.”

“And Miss?  Last one, except the Choir, but we know most of the story there.”

“Miss.  Still gone, hm?”

Avery nodded.

“Good,” Snowdrop said.  “Good for nothing.  Didn’t like her at all.  Don’t miss her, when I only spent a little while with her.”

“You haven’t gone to find her?” Charles asked.

“She came up to the Wolf and me, and she talked to the Wolf.  Kept me company until Nicolette came.  She talked to me a fair bit.  Explained.”

“Hmm?”

“That if you take certain kinds of something from the Paths, that there can be traps and tricks.  If we call her back, soon or later, there’s a risk that, like, she has the Wolf’s face and hands, and a bit of the Wolf in her heart, and by the time we realize and she lets us see her face, it’s too late.”

“That is a risk.  Do you think it’s her primary reason?” Charles asked.

“I think… she didn’t want to come back.  Maybe because she knew this was coming, and she’s maybe vulnerable to it all in the same way you are?”

“Or the opposite way.”

“Huh,” Avery said, trying to parse that.

She could hear faint singing.  Charles stubbornly limped on.  Avery itched to hurry ahead, but she worried that leaving Charles defenseless could kill him.

“You never answered my question.  Why did Miss want Kennet like this?”

“I don’t know.  She was wary of me.  She didn’t like practitioners.”

“Doesn’t,” Avery said.

“Hmm.  Whichever it is, she didn’t share or even hint at it with me.  Nor Matthew, nor Edith.”

“At school, there was someone who worked with rituals on a city scale.”

“Kennet as a large ritual?  Nothing so complex.  I have an eye for that.  It was a space that became tacit sanctuary, drawing in supporting spirits.”

“I don’t know,” Snowdrop cut in.

Avery looked down at her.

“From what I know I think it’s really nefarious and dangerous though.  But she didn’t confide in me before she left, when she was telling me about being Lost and what to be careful for.  So I don’t know.  I’d totally give her the middle finger and tell you.  So there, ha.”

Avery had caught the ‘so there, ha’ before.  It was a tricky one to turn around.

It was ‘sorry’.

“No.  That’s fine.  I didn’t know you knew anything.”

“I knew it would bother you I knew so I went out of my way not to tell you.  So there.”

Avery set a hand on Snowdrop’s head.

The singing was louder.

“The singing can capture my heart.  I don’t have defenses.  If he sets his eyes on me and claims me, I’m his pawn.”

“Can we break that?”

“Hitting me.  Stopping him.  Controlling me.”

The street had a curve to it, and the curve led to a raised platform, circular.  A small crowd had gathered.  Fifty or sixty people.

Many of those fifty or sixty were Fae.  Dark haired, dark clothed, beautiful, stylish, and intense.

Glamour.  Avery hoped, anyway.

But there were twenty or so that were people.  Kennet citizens, it looked like.  Wide eyed, captured by the performance.  Lucy was at the front of the crowd, feet on the road, hands on the stage, like she was ready to climb up.

But she couldn’t.

Daniel had a blade, and he shared the stage.  With Maricica, who lay unmoving, one wing torn out.  With six older teenagers, who lounged and sat back, reaching out toward him as he sang, periodically touching a blade to a cheek or a lock of hair.  They swayed, and tensed and reacted as if the song ran through them.

And, to Avery’s Sight, those bands that connected him to them were like more bondage, tying them down, wrapping them up.  Squeezing something out of them, so he could drink it.

The crowd was fifty or sixty Dark Spring Fae, conjured up with glamour, and twenty-five more who were people.  Kennet citizens.

The song was haunting, intense, and bitter, and sad.

He sounded- there were no words.  It was like most music Avery had heard in the past came from something broken and stopped just past arm’s reach of her.  There to be appreciated but… at arm’s reach.

This melancholy singing ran through her like that blade he held.  It stirred up feelings of loneliness, and feelings she hadn’t known she had, like anger and frustration at the people who had let her down.  Some of those people were here.

He locked eyes with her and for a moment it was like he was singing to her.  He smiled.  The song turned.  To betrayals.  To exile.  To imminent loss.

Like it was a promise that everyone would let her down.  That her father wouldn’t accept her.  And if she listened it would come to pass and it would be tragic, but it wouldn’t be a sword hanging over her head anymore.

Snowdrop touched her arm, and the touch felt like an apology for the inevitable.

She touched Snowdrop’s hand, then touched the mark at her arm, where she’d put down glamour.

Illuminating it.  Stirring it.  Reminding herself.

Daniel didn’t even seem to notice.  He had Maricica.

But she- she could tap into that, she could remind herself of good things.

She slapped herself, hard.

Heads turned.  People reacted.  The singing shifted, to recapture what was lost, and for a moment it wasn’t as strong.

Lucy saw her.  She smiled a bit.

By contrast, Daniel’s smile was gone.  The look in his eyes was sharp, and his gaze was on her.  The Daniel she’d seen earlier had been beautiful and sweet and off-kilter.

This Daniel was beautiful too, yes, but wild and bitter and so, so dark.  His every action seemed to promise he was about to slit a throat with that long blade he held, to accentuate a note.  Now that he was angry she’d spoiled a moment, her sharp slap cutting into things, it only seemed more inevitable.  The blade touched throat and ran from point to hilt, but his touch was so fine he didn’t saw at or cut the skin.  He sang and he played them like they were his violins or cellos, their movements an accompaniment to his song.

An entirely different person than the one who had been at that picnic table.

He didn’t sing but created, created emotions, created sounds, created glamour and spun it out into a crowd that expanded subtly.

Glamour, if unbroken or unchallenged, can become reality. 

What happens if this becomes reality?  Do we go to the Dark Spring?  Does the Dark Spring come here?

“Guard Charles?” she asked Snowdrop.

Snowdrop gave her the finger.

She met Lucy’s eyes, and as she started walking, Lucy did too, so they were each on one side of Daniel, pacing, looking for openings.

He didn’t seem bothered.  If anything, he accepted it, inviting it, moving with more enthusiasm, as his song twisted into something bloodier.

There were a hundred Dark Spring Fae in the crowd.  Glamoured up.  The audience he wanted.  In addition, at the periphery, spellbound, were thirty, forty, or fifty Kennet civilians.  Rounding out the growing crowd were a number of unfamiliar Others, increasingly restless as the song continued.

Glamour unchallenged is a problem.  So let’s put up a challenge.

[5.4 Spoilers] Outgoing Call

Back Away – 5.c

Interlude

Last Thursday: Outgoing Call


“Excuse me!  Excuse me!”

Clementine stopped in her tracks on the path that led along the river.  She turned to see a family approaching.  Dad, mom, and a daughter that was maybe ten, all fairly nicely, normally dressed.  They’d come running up to her, and were a bit out of breath.

The dad had brown hair, pale skin, and a wiry beard he’d tried to tame with wax.  He wore a salmon colored polo shirt, khaki shorts, and athletic sandals.  The mom was short, overweight, maybe Italian, with grey shooting through very thick hair, with a zebra-print shirt and red dress that didn’t really suit her.  The kid looked like a mix of the two, with a slim look closer to her dad’s, black hair, a pink tee, jean shorts, and strappy sandals.  The kid was bent over, one hand on her knees, catching her breath.

“Can I help you?”

“Yes, um, sorry.  My daughter lost something, and it’s very valuable.  I’m wondering, did you happen to find anything odd lying around?”

“You’d have to be more specific.”

“Because we’d pay.  We’d pay, or trade. Or whatever you want.”

“I can’t give you what you want unless you tell me what it is you’re looking for.”

“Daddy!” the girl cried out, her face crumpling.  She put it into her hands.  “I don’t- I want-”

She began to cry.

Clementine backed up a step.

“No no no, don’t run,” the mother called out.  “Listen, it shines, it’s- it’s so pretty, this-”

“Can we convince you?” the dad asked, still catching his breath.  “You haven’t said no, and it’s- we would really appreciate it.  I have, we have sixty thousand in our account.  And we have a camper RV we’ve been traveling around in.  Would that do?  That’s-”

“That’s crazy,” Clementine said.

“What if we agreed to half upfront, then you could show us, and then half later?”

Clementine backed away another step.

She’d dealt with a lot, over the years.  She could count the periods of calm, so to speak, more easily than she could count the times her life had been turned upside-down by something or another.

And she could count on one hand the number of times that anyone had tried to take back one of these messy things.  Sure, she’d had buyers for what she put out there, or if she showed someone her stock.

But someone coming after her unprompted?  She touched the scar at the side of her neck, where it was like a strip of flesh an inch wide and three inches long had been ripped away, the skin never growing right there again.  Pink and sunburning easily, rippled like a stretch mark.  Another similar one from the same incident extended to the corner of her lower right eyelid, making it never open all the way.  Not that it mattered because her vision in that eye was foggy.

This kind of reminded her of that.  It reminded her of the eating of a dead bird, a cringing thought that made the smallest involuntary sound escape her lips.  A habit she’d picked up, in a long series of attempts to try to break bad thought patterns.

She stepped away again.

“Daddy!  Mom!  She’s not accepting!  We need it!  It’s so bright.  It’s so Right.”  The look on the kid’s face was borderline panicked, changing to something almost dazed at the end of the sentence.

“Hush, dear,” the mom said.

“Do you want to deal, miss?” the man asked.  “What do you want?  Anything you desire.”

“I want an ordinary life,” Clementine said.  “The money’s nice, but… I want an ordinary life.”

“Yes, yes, daddy, we can-”

“Yes,” the father talked over his daughter.  “Okay.  An ordinary life, and if you want the money… would you settle for fifty thousand?”

“That easily?” Clementine asked.

She was aware that all three members of the family were still panting for breath.  Big, short breaths, one after the other, with a steady rhythm.  In keeping with that, they didn’t stand completely straight.  The more she looked, the more off they seemed.

But an ordinary life…

“Not easy,” the mother said.  “But we can do that.  Absolutely.”

“Absolutely,” the girl chimed in.

“Yes,” the father said.  He smiled.  “If you’ll give me an hour, I can run off into town and get that settled, come back to you.  My family could stay with you.”

“The banks don’t open until morning.”

“Oh, the money!  Yes, no, the money-” He laughed.  The mother laughed too.

“We keep the money in our RV,” the girl said, casually.  “All bundled up in neat stacks.  That’s easy.  My mom and I can grab that.”

“I- then what’s in town?”

“What life do you want?  Are you particular?” the dad asked.  “Do you want to take a boy’s life?  A girl, man, woman?”

“Uhhh… I want my life back.  Without all this… really scary stuff in it.”

His expression changed at that.  He huffed out breaths, rhythmically.

For a moment, the three members of the family were almost synchronized in that heavy, huffy, regular breathing.  They exchanged looks.  The mother nodded.

“That’s much, much harder,” the dad said.

“But not impossible?” Clementine asked.

The family exchanged another look between them.

Clementine reached into her pocket, then pulled out the earring.  “For this?”

There was silence.

No words from them.  The steady, loud breathing had ceased, and it was only now that it had stopped that she realized how loud it had been.

She had goosebumps, and it was warm out.

“When you were going to give me a life… what were you going to do?  Take a life by killing someone?” Clementine asked.  “Do you do that a lot?  Kill?”

She moved her hand, and their eyes tracked the dangling ornament, a blue gemstone that was narrow and long to the point it was almost a spike.  It caught the light no matter where she held it.  A little thing that had snagged on her shoelace.

“What about a trade?” the man asked.  He resumed the breathing in the wake of his question.  The other two remained silent.  He touched his wife’s shoulder, and she dug into her oversized handbag.

She handed the father what looked like a disc.  It was a black stone, carved to appear like a snake, coiled up into a tight spiral with no gaps between the lengths of its body, head at the center, tail tip at the edge, a half-foot across.  It looked heavy, the way he held it.

“What is it?”

“A key.  You’d have to carve a hole into a door.  Or make a door with a space that’s soft.  A panel of clay.  Push it in, then turn it.  Then you walk through a darkness so long you might worry you’ll never get out.  Then at the end, you get an audience.”

“With?”

“It’s better if I don’t say.”

Clementine shook her head.

“She might be able to give you what you want.”

“I’m not interested in a ‘might’.  And you didn’t answer my question.  Were you going to take a life by killing someone?”

“Yes.”

“We’re very proficient,” the girl said.  She resumed the heavy breathing, head bent in a way where she was almost looking up at Clementine.

A man, decked out in blinking lights so he was visible in the dark, dog trotting beside him with flashing LEDs on its collar, was coming down the path.  There were sparse buildings and trees to Clementine’s left.  The river and rocky shore to her right.

“I don’t really care about this.  I’ll give it to you if you’ll agree to stop killing people.  And give me the money,” she said.

The three went silent.

The biker, behind them, was still approaching.

She wanted this resolved before he caught up, which wasn’t that long.

“Well?” she asked.

“I tried to be nice,” the father said.  “We were willing to resolve this with some reasonable conversation and deals.  But if you’re going to be unreasonable, I think we’re just going to take-”

The bike guy approached.  Clementine tensed.  He saw them and gave them a wide berth, driving out onto grass, so the dog wouldn’t run into them.

She worried the family would do something to intercept.  She didn’t expect the guy on the bike to turn his head, following the gemstone, and then crash his bike because he wasn’t looking where he was going.  The dog yelped and had to jump to avoid the bike’s tire as it went sideways.

It seemed to startle the family too.

“Are you okay?” Clementine asked.  She closed her hand around the earring, and the family members tensed.  The little girl’s expression turned to a resentful glare.

She slipped a hand into her pocket, found some change from her shopping at the gas station, and palmed a quarter.

“I’m- yes.  Sorry.  I’m so sorry,” the man said, as he climbed to his feet, righting his bicycle.  “Did you- what was that?  Did you have something?”

“Look after your dog, sir.  I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Can I see what you were holding?”

The ‘dad’ sidled closer, his attention caught between Clementine’s right hand and the bicycler.

“Don’t come any closer,” she told him.

His expression remained blank.

Something tackled her, clawing at her side.  She shrieked, briefly, only to realize it was the dog, nosing at her closed hand.

While she was distracted, the young girl darted forward, running at her.

“No!  Back-” Clem started.  And before she was even done the sentence, she realized it was useless.  She twisted, put both hands together, and then threw, full strength.

The young girl managed to scream at the same time she chased, her mom right beside her.  Down the slope, across the shore.

Glinting in the minimal light, it sank into the river.  Mother and daughter stopped at the water’s edge.  The dad had pulled away, making it partway down the slope.

Clem ran, the shriek of the kid behind her.

She looked back over one shoulder, and the guy on the bike and the dog were gone.  The shriek stopped.  The girl and her parents were halfway up the slope, slowly making their way uphill, expressions distorted.

She looked back again, over the shoulder closest to them, to make sure they wouldn’t catch up or pick up speed, and they barely moved in the entire time she checked.  She left them well behind.

The watch.

People kept appearing and disappearing around her, or getting stuck.  Time was inconsistent.

She stopped running as she reached the end of the trail, looking around for the RV family.  She couldn’t see them.

This far down the river, the town was barely visible; the water caught moonlight and lapped against dark rocks.

“I need to find a way to deal with you,” she told the watch, checking it.  She unfolded her other hand, and checked the jewel.  She’d tossed the quarter, and in the dark, it had been enough to trick them.  She’d hoped they’d dive in, but they’d seemed afraid of the river, shallow and small as it was.

Looking at the river, she could see glinting light, and remembered that she was trying to track down Daniel.  That kind of light seemed like something he’d notice, and she found herself searching for the source.  What was it reflecting?

In the end, as insanely dangerous as it was, she pulled off her shoes and socks, then ventured across the shore.  Rocks bit into the bottom of her feet without breaking the skin.

It was silvery light, like moonlight but more, and even the moon wasn’t quite that bright or clear.  She waded in further, aware of the danger of what she was doing.

“Daniel!” she called out.

The rocks were wet and slimy beneath her feet, and she was walking on a slope.  The slate rocks were hard-edged, and a fall would hurt, if she wasn’t dragged into a deceptive spot where the water poured over and cycled.

From a point in the river, she could see the source of light.  A cave.

She crossed the river, shoes in one hand, the earring and watch in the other.

A head rose from the water.  Long, like a horse’s, and it was roughly that size, but it looked like a dog more than a horse.  It had pale eyes and the long, shaggy hair was soaked, drifting on the water’s surface.  It seemed intent on her right hand.

When its mouth opened, that dog idea was reaffirmed.  Sharp teeth.

As it got closer its upper body rose out of the water.  The ribs and spine were very visible amid the froth of water, the joints knobby.

She moved fast, hurrying more than she should on slippery rocks, and waded through algae on her effort to get to dry land.

The thing, like a gaunt horse-dog, had drooping breasts and human hands at the end of its overlong, knobby limbs, held together so the backs of the hands almost touched.

It was silent, watching her while she backed away.

As she got to the cave entrance, it dipped its head below water.

She maybe wouldn’t cross the river, next time.

She turned her full attention to the cave.

A silvery blade was stuck in the floor, reflecting moonlight across the cave.  Across the blood and bloody footprints and shoeprints that littered the cave floor until it looked like more blood than stone.

“The gilded lily,” a voice spoke from the darkness, deep.

“I don’t know what that is,” she answered.  “Are you dangerous?”

“I’m wounded and healing.  That is my blood painting this floor.”

“But are you dangerous?”

He laughed, and it was a laugh that was deep, low, and carrying close to the ground.  Good natured, like it promised to lift her up.

“The answer depends on who you ask.”

She looked at the sword.  Another one?

“Have you seen Daniel?” she asked.  “He’s a skinny-”

“Yes.”

She stopped.

“He was the one who wounded me.”

“He’s not that type of person.”

“Whether you’re right in that or not depends on the half of a word you left out.”

“The- what?”

“He was not that type of person.  Correct.  Your statement stands.  He is not?  I’d call you a liar.  Not that it matters if I do or not.”

“What changed?  This sword?”

“No.  This is a trick of light, with exceptional sharpness.”

“It’s not all that often that I get instructions with things.  Usually when I do, it’s a trap.  Where did Daniel go?”

“I’ve not moved, miss Clementine, ever since your traveling companion departed.  The state of the floor might give you an inkling of why.”

Clementine looked down at the blood.

“I need to find him,” she said, as she looked at the patterns formed as shifting moonlight and the various shades of crimson played against one another.

“We need you to find him.  And to take him far from here.”

“A girl I talked to… Daniel called her a deer.  I don’t know if that was symbolic-”

“I know of her.”

“She said to leave, too.  Why is it so important?  What’s going on?”

“Among other things, Clementine Robertjon, he’s stabbing people like myself.”

Clementine absorbed that, reflected on it, tried to put her finger on her frustration over the lack of answers, and then just settled on saying, “Fair.”

“I can help you find him.  I can’t go with you, so you’ll have to continue alone.  Take that with you.”

She looked at the sword.  “And if I say no?  That I don’t want or trust it?”

“That is your choice.  Hold out a finger.”

“What?  Why?”

“Please.”

She did.

She could hear him blowing out a breath.  The air in the cave stirred, brushing up against her bare arms and legs.

A single hair settled on her fingernail, brown and as long as her forearm.  The two ends of it pointed in separate directions, more like the hands of a clock than anything that followed the wind.

“Find him.  Take him far from here.  I’d tell you to take him far from that building where the two of you live, but I know that is futile.”

“How do you know so much about me?”

“I listen,” the deep voice said.  “People tell you a lot if you listen.”

“They don’t tell me what I want to know,” she said.  “Like what is going on.  What am I?  You called me a gilded lily.”

There was no response from the darkness.

She strode forward, and she lifted the sword from the ground.  The cave was briefly illuminated, and then the light moved with her, basking the area around her as she ventured into the darkness, toward the last source of the voice.  She held it up.  “What is this world?  What are you?  Why won’t anyone tell me!?”

She slashed the sword at the darkness as she asked that last question.

It stopped.

She pulled, she tugged, and it didn’t move in the slightest.  Caught on darkness, just beyond the pool of light it shed.  Or held, somehow.  More firmly than the stone had held it.

“Please,” she said.  She adjusted her grip, then reached into her pocket.  She held out the earring.  “Do you want this?”

The laughter came slowly, starting as a sound she wasn’t even sure was there, then rising in volume and intensity.  She jumped as she realized how close it was to her.

“Do you want it?  I want answers.”  She remembered the family coming after her, trying to kill her.  “If you don’t give them to me, I’ll-”

She held the earring against the blade’s edge.  She could gouge it, or scrape it, or ruin it.

The grip on the silver blade’s tip shifted, pulling until the long, narrow sword bent in an arc.  It caught the light, the light flashing in her eyes, and then she felt it slip from her hands, the blade scraping along the pads of her fingers without touching them.

He held the handle, somewhere out of sight, and that blade that caught the pale moonlight extended toward her, point at her throat.

“I don’t want it,” he said.

“The earring?  But-”

“But everyone seems to want it.  Keep it, use it if you will.  But wear it only for one scene, one event.  From the moment you put it on, you should be entering a new place or doing a single thing.  Attending an evening ball, or talking to one important person.  This is not a hard limit, but two points make a line, and three can be a constellation.  It would leave you hollow, if too many of your relationships are touched by that glittering light.  Seal it away in a box covered in jewels on all six sides to confuse and refract its light or wear it, but don’t hold it as you are now.  Worn, it makes you desirable.  Appropriately boxed up, it sits quiet.  Held… people will kill you to have it.  Collected as a set of two earrings, two rings, diadem, necklace and pin, the wearer will be king or queen of all things in their awareness, but you would not get that far.  It is as good as inevitable that you would die trying.”

“You know what it is?”

“No, but I know of enough things like it that I can work out its meanings.”

“Okay, well, thanks.  That’s answering a question, but it’s not answering my questions.”

“It’s not my place to answer your questions.”

“Why not!?” she shouted, still mindful of the blade’s point.  “Why the hell not!?  I’ve lost everything, over and over again!  I’ve barely built up a life, I’ve finally found something that almost seems peaceful, and I can’t even appreciate it.”

The giant was silent.

“Answer me!” she shouted.  “Answer me!  Tell me!  Tell me, do I lose it all, all over again?  Is that inevitable, like it’s inevitable I keep finding this-”

She almost threw the earring.  She stopped herself before she did.  She had the puzzle bracelet too, but she had to stop herself before she tore it off and flung it down.

She would regret it.  She knew.  She had so few things she was confident she could use.  The bracelet was one.  The earring, if he wasn’t lying or leaving something out, was another.

“-these nightmares,” she spoke softly, eyes down at the blood she was standing in.  “Will I lose it all, and drag the people I love and appreciate down with me?  Who can I make friends with or love, if I might end up killing them by taking the chance?”

“Near everyone who has lost has asked themselves some variant of that question.  How can we love again, if it means we might lose?”

“Don’t give me platitudes.  Don’t give me riddles or evasions.  Tell me.  Explain!”

She glared into the darkness, sword at her throat, but she managed to make her tone fitting for a warning, as if she really did have him at her mercy, at the point of her sword, his existence and hope for true peace, tranquility, and love on the line.

“I’ll give you your answer, Clementine Robertjon.  It is the answer you seek and the true reality you need to absorb and make a part of yourself, but you’ll find it unsatisfying.  You’ll resent me, but as part of my answer, I must set you on your way, and your feelings about me and my answer won’t matter.”

“If it’s really the answer I seek, I don’t see why I’ll be angry.  Unless you’re secretly the reason I’m stuck like this.”

He adjusted his grip on the blade, and the moonlight fell differently in the cave, predominantly on one side of the blade, leaving the other side dark.

He touched her hand, and the touch was so gentle that she didn’t even jump with the surprise she felt.  With a darkness-shrouded hand big enough to wrap around the both of her hands if she clasped them together, he collected one of her hands between pinky and ring finger, then after a second, pulling her hand to one side, collected her other hand between thumb and index finger.

He reversed the sword without turning it around, and laid the handle in her hands, which he held.  When he closed her fingers, he held her ring and middle fingers away from the handle.  The blade became like a faint shaft of moonlight.  He moved his finger enough for her middle finger to come to rest against the handle, and it became brighter.  He let the last finger touch, and it became a blade.

She adjusted her hold on the blade and let it become various kinds of light, from the most diffuse to something solid.

“Don’t turn back around,” he told her.  He touched her shoulder, and turned her to face the cave entrance.  She heard him move, a rustling sound too gentle for how big he had to be.  He loomed directly behind her.

“Just give me my answer,” she told him.  “I have enough weird things.”

“One more thing,” he told her.  He took a piece of paper, folded and tied with a ribbon like it was a parcel, and he folded it, sliding it into her pocket.

“I don’t want this,” she told him.

“It’s not intended for you.”

“Then I definitely don’t want it.”

“This is a world of wonder, Clementine,” he said.  He walked forward, and lightly pushed her from behind, leading her forward, out of the cave.  “It is a world where words matter, deals have a profound meaning to them, and patterns unfold in fascinating ways mankind has yet to fully grasp, but for a select few.”

“Are these more platitudes?” she asked.  “Yes, the world’s beautiful, yes, there’s a lot going on out there.  But I can’t go out to join that world with the rest of humanity because I’m constantly stuck dealing with this.”

“The world,” he murmured, and he was far taller than her, the murmur settling on her like hands at her shoulders, “ks all of these things, and none of them.”

“Please… can you talk straight to me?” she asked.

She was so tempted to turn back to look at him, but there were about a dozen items that she’d run into over the years that had taught her that when someone or something mysterious said something, she should listen.  The ring that let her turn an enemy into a friend, that she was only supposed to use three times.  The automated piggy bank that had warnings about pennies saved on the base.  That one had gone really off the rails after Canada had discontinued the penny.

“For all that we talk of karma and balance, for all we elevate people to a privileged status and then dwell on their sworn oaths, declarations, promises, and deals, and for all that we exclude others from those cutthroat worlds to protect them-”

“These aren’t the answers I want.  I don’t care about politicians or celebrities or rich kids or how cutthroat that is.  I care about these cursed things that keep finding me.”

“They find you because the world is unfair, Clementine.  That is the flip side of what I’m telling you now.  For all that this world is dressed up in fairness and measured words, it is decidedly lopsided.  Some are given everything from money to positions of power from the day they enter this world, and the small minded will laud them and pretend those elevated few have earned what they were so clearly given.  Others are given nothing but pain, struggle, or handicaps.  Sometimes all three.  Sometimes they aren’t given the slightest chance from the beginning, entering the world without the ability to draw a breath or drum their heart.  They are unfairly condemned, or the hundreds of those who struggle are said to be the cost of the handful that get it all.  And you… you struggle.”

Clementine swallowed hard, her one hand clenched tight around the sword in bitter anger.  She might have retorted, or lashed out with the sword, but she couldn’t bring herself to get air up from her lungs to her mouth, and she couldn’t really see past the moisture in her eyes, which left her unsure she could strike true.

“Grieve.  This is your bitter lot.  Harder than most.  Then once you’re finished grieving for the time being, step forward as you’ve been doing so wonderfully, these past two decades.  Advance into this headwind that’s been set perpetually against you.  Step forward into this dark, bloody night, because there is a moment coming where you’re due to laugh harder than you ever have.  To love your hardest.  Or where you’ve found a place with a view that makes it all worth it.  Your moment could be a person, or it could be a milestone reached.  It could be a show or a book you come to hold close to your heart, or a passion for a career or hobby that brings light to inner places you thought would be forever dark.  So long as you persist, there is goodness out there.  There is no way that you, in your beautiful mortality, can stand at a sword’s point and imply you’re willing to give it all up for your answers, when you haven’t even scratched the surface of the experiences out there.  You don’t know what you’d be giving up.  I do.  I have seen enough of those things to know them like I know what that earring is.  I do believe it is worth your time and endurance.”

She was silent.

He continued, “Weather the darkness, Clementine, and bear the weight of the now, keep experiencing, and you will be rewarded.”

She shook her head, ready to retort, dragging in a breath.

He spoke before she could.  “I say you have to, because right now, Daniel needs you, right now he is in darkness and bears a weight.  All I have just said to you applies as easily to him.  He will not make it through tonight if you do not start running now and keep running without hesitation.  On your way, give the paper to a man and woman who are trying to hide their tears, and say nothing to them, for you’ll need that breath to get to Daniel in time.”

He gave her a light push on the back.

She started forward, thought about wheeling on him, about saying something back, but she didn’t know what.

And Daniel needed her.  She believed that.

She adjusted her grip on the sword, and it became a diffuse light that she carried around her.  A moonbeam that didn’t stop focusing on her.  She took the earring, and she hesitated, because she had dearly wanted to pierce her ears as a child, but her parents had told her it had to wait until she was ten.  Then the incident had come up with the homeless man that had wanted something from her, who had made her sick.  With her ongoing condition, her skin sloughing off in places, the doctors hadn’t wanted to risk infection.

By the time she might have been able to convince her parents it was worth the risk, she had figured out something was going on.  After she’d confronted ‘Doug’ Dugal and ‘Elle’ Aurielle and realized it was the choker that drew them to her, she’d gone to juvie, and she hadn’t felt that keen on accessories after that.  She’d tried to get rid of most stuff, but jewelry in particular.

Her ears were unpierced.  Which meant, if she didn’t have a box to put this thing in…

She ran, pressing the point of the earring’s hook against her earlobe, which she pulled tight.  She felt the individual layers it penetrated, external, the meat of the inside, then external again, as it came out.

There was no blood.

She ran through scattered homes, each with large lots, many with trees.  Many homes were dilapidated.  Some were oddly small, considering the space available.  A sign of the era and circumstances they’d been made in.

Many people here had their own struggles.

She made her way back to town, and the light of the moonbeam was eclipsed by a brighter light.  She squinted a little in the face of that light.

“You okay?” a woman called out, through an open window.

Clementine backed away a step, shielding her eyes.

“It’s late to be out running like this.  Everything alright?”

“I’m- sure,” she lied.  “I’m alright.”

“Want a ride?  Seems like you’re in a hurry.”

“If you don’t mind stopping for me to do a quick errand.  Or drop me off there.”

“If it’s in town, I’m happy to take you wherever.”

She warily eyed the sedan, the contents, the hat in the back seat, and the props that were hooked into the dash fans.

Whatever.  If one of those props landed in her lap, she’d deal with it.  Daniel was a friend.

She climbed in.  “North.”

“Just north?  No address?”

She shook her head, looking out the window.

“New in town?”

“Yeah.  Just passing through.”

“Mysterious stranger.”

“Guess I am.  Appreciate this.”

“Being neighborly.  Seen some real creeps out tonight.”

“As have I,” Clementine said, scanning the side of the road with her eyes.  When she looked at the driver, a twenty-something woman with a baseball cap on at night, inside a car, it was with a wary eye.  Just in case.

The car squealed to a stop, alarming her.

A very obese man, naked, with groin, nipples, ears, nose, and lips cut off, was running across the road with arms winging out to the side, his head lolling back, mouth open, laughing.  With the mess, it had been hard to tell where the lack of lips ended and the gums started, but it was evident as he moved his head and mouth that he didn’t have any teeth in his mouth.

“Huh,” the driver said.

“What did you see?” Clementine asked.

“Big guy.  Looked like he was having fun,” the driver reported.

Clementine nodded.  She ran into that a lot.  Like she got a clearer picture than some, but without getting the whole picture.

The car resumed moving, then stopped abruptly.

A teenage girl in a pink dress had run partway across the road, then stopped, dead in the headlights, her eyes open wide enough that the whites were clear above and below the irises, her mouth in a rictus grin.  She put her hand over her mouth and giggled loudly, before resuming running after the man.

“She’s having fun too.”

“Creepy,” the driver said.  “Drugs are a thing around here, sorry.  If you don’t drink or do drugs, you’ll find out there isn’t a lot to do in the way of social activities.  Not that I want to keep someone from coming back…”

“Yeah.  Oh, wait!  Can you stop?”

The car had only progressed a block.  They had just passed a house, and there was a couple on the front porch, sitting on the stairs.  At… two in the morning, it seemed.

Both members of the couple looked lost in thought.  Sharing a cigarette between them.

Clementine climbed out of the passenger seat, and as subtly as possible tried to pass the ‘sword’ to her other hand, even though it was really just a general, faint light.

With her newly freed hand, she pulled the paper out of her pocket.  The bleeding man in the cave had told her to give it to people who looked like they’d been trying not to cry…

As she got closer, she was sure that was the case here.

How had he known?  Or did they do this on the regular?

She ran over and handed them the paper.

“Uhh, thank you?” the mother said.

She ran back.

The ‘answer’ had been garbage.  Meaningless stuff about balance and words meaning stuff, that politicians and celebrities had power and people like Clementine or Daniel got it rough.  Like she hadn’t already known that.

She wouldn’t be coming back, she wouldn’t be pressing him for more answers, if he even survived all that bleeding, and she wouldn’t be coming back to this town, however much it might disappoint her driver.

She wondered if this ride she was getting was a consequence of the earring, or if the way the couple had accepted her arriving and giving them the piece of ribbon-wrapped paper would have gone differently.

Or was the earring a joke?

The driver took her north.  She wondered what she was looking for.

“Where are you, Daniel?”

“Daniel?” the driver asked.  “Boyfriend?”

“No, no.  I’ve got someone else, a… could-be.  I pine, mostly.”

“Kid, then?”

“In a way.  In a lot of ways, more kid than some kids I’ve met.”

“Ahhh.”

Toward what might have been downtown.  Where signs glowed and more of the streetlights were on.  Many were in an old fashioned streetlamp style.

An explosion rocked the car, almost picking it up and lifting it off the ground.  It skidded as the driver tried to get things back on course.

People fled from the direction of the explosion.  More than a few were holding their hands to the back of their pants.

“This is my stop then,” Clementine said.

“What was that?”

Clementine got her wallet out, and she had only a five and two twenties.  She gave the woman a twenty.  “For the gas, time, and kindness.  Be safe out there.”

“Wait-”

Clementine flashed her a smile, then climbed out of the car.

The driver didn’t start driving right away, and it struck Clementine that if the driver was caught on her in the same way the others had been caught on the earring, specifically, then she might not want to leave.

She circled around the car, mindful of the watch and the times people had previously disappeared, and did her best to keep that car and the driver in a position where other things had disappeared before.  Behind her and to the right.

When she looked back, the car was gone.

Good.

She jogged forward, past the people who were running away, and she could hear the singing.

Daniel walked backward down the middle of the street, cars behind him, arms out to his sides, wearing clothes she hadn’t seen before.  He sang at the top of his lungs.

She’d heard him sing- she had to stop to weigh it, and she had a suspicion he’d been humming or singing for at least a third of the time she’d been in his immediate company.  So much of it was tuneless, but there were moments, like back at her apartment with Sharon listening, where it came together for a few moments.

It was all coming together.  Every word, every movement.  A language she didn’t know, intense, sad, and mad.

She could see the girl Daniel had called a deer and another girl facing him down, at a time everyone else was running away.

He retreated toward a dark place.  Most of the illumination came from the headlights of cars that had been stopped on the road.  As he walked back between them and the risk of them running him over diminished, they turned onto other roads, driving off.  Reducing the illumination.

A young woman staggered past Clementine, and she sang like Daniel often sang.  Tuneless, wordless, lost.

“I didn’t think it was going to be that big,” the new girl said.  She was slim, black, and wore a fox mask, cape, and witch’s hat.

“Or have that side effect,” the ‘deer’ said.  “How did you know the fuse would run out when he didn’t have a sword at someone’s throat?”

Sword?

Clementine looked.

He didn’t have a weapon.

“I timed it.  He likes to move his hands when he gets to the crescendo.”

He did flourish with his hands while he sang, which was part of why it was obvious he didn’t have anything.  The girls approached, but cars honked and some got in the way.

Clementine was able to catch up.

“You,” the Deer said, recognizing her.  “I’ve been looking for you all night.”

“Focus,” the Fox cut in.

Daniel was smiling as he sang, his hand extended toward Clementine.

Then he dashed a few steps to the side, and as a car’s headlights blocked Clementine’s vision, she lost sight of him.

“The watch,” the Deer said.  “Gold watch, broken face?”

“I have it, why?”

“Can you give it to me?  It’s- I can’t tell you, but it’s messing things up.  And he knows how to use that to his advantage.”

“I know,” Clementine said.  “I don’t know how to fix it or stop it or turn it off.”

“Give it to me.”

Clementine hesitated, then did.

If the man in the cave had been right, there was no time.

The Deer unfolded a piece of paper with a drawing of a circle and triangle on it, placed the watch in the center, then folded it back up.

“Do you have something weird that… I don’t know, a lot of people are interested in?  Especially creepy people?”

Clementine touched the earring.

“I only have the one piece of paper, to put stuff away, but- do you know how to turn that off?”

“A bleeding man in a cave told me how.  If I’m wearing it, it shouldn’t be a problem.  Wearing it makes people like me or something?”

“Oh,” the Deer said, laughing lightly.  “That explains it.  Whoo.  I- I don’t know if he’s trustworthy, but I don’t think he’d mislead us on something that important.  Not on a night like tonight.”

Clementine nodded quickly, anxious.

“I was just telling myself you were arriving like some badass hero, then wondering why I was thinking that way,” the Fox said.

“Daniel,” Clementine said, hurrying to take advantage of the gap in the conversation.  “He also said Daniel’s nearly out of time.”

Both of the other two nodded.

“Stay back,” the Fox told her.  “We’ll do what we can.”

They immediately began running toward Daniel.  Clementine ignored the instructions and ran after, glad she didn’t need to convince them or say more to get them moving.  The implicit idea was that they wanted to help save Daniel.  She didn’t know if that was the earring, but she wasn’t about to complain.

“Please don’t hurt him!” she called out, just to be safe.  “That explosion-”

“I told you to stay back!”

“Fuck that!” Clementine shouted.  “What was that explosion?”

“Idea was to drop it when he wasn’t looking, time it to shake him up a little and buy us a better chance to get in there and get him away from hostages.  But it blew up the stage and half the scenery,” the Fox said, as she ran.

Clementine looked back the way they’d come, and she couldn’t see any residue or debris of anything that had been blown up.

“Don’t worry!  We don’t want to hurt him too badly if we can help it!” the Deer had to call back at a higher volume, because she was already well ahead of the Fox and Clementine.

The downtown area had a district that had apparently been painted in shades of black, purple, and dark blue.  It was maybe a remodel, but it was a creepy remodel with a heavy focus on design.  There weren’t just alleyways, but archways that fed into corridors between buildings.  Two buildings on opposite sides of the street were connected by a bridge that arched over the road.

And the people…

As Clementine noticed the people, she could see that this wasn’t right.  They were too beautiful, too dressed up, too cold, somehow.  It wasn’t like people from a small town had dressed up for this.  It was more like polished actors had all gotten together, with careful attention to every detail, with clothes picked out or designed by professional fashion designers.  The place itself was more carefully decorated than movie sets.

They looked around as they passed into this neighborhood, and ran far enough through it that Clementine was pretty sure they should have been out of this fancy, dark end of downtown and back in the sleepy ski town instead.

The Deer ran this way and that, looping around a block and then returning.  The Fox ran a straight line.

“I hear it,” the Fox said.

“You’ve got better ears than me,” the Deer said.  “Which way?”

The Fox pointed.

It was all Clementine could do to keep up, despite the fact she was older, her legs a bit longer.

The singing carried.  It seemed to reverberate off of the walls and buildings, and if sounds bounced, then the curvature of arches cupped the sound, let the sound run up and along the arch, and sent it off in a new direction with a different pitch and volume.

They rounded a corner, and slowed.

A building, a spire, stabbed skyward.  And Clementine had no idea if it was five floors tall or fifty, because it was jet black and it was made purely in the colors of the night sky.

Balconies and ramps extended up the length of it, and those balconies and ramps were occupied.  Where they had illumination, it was hard to tell those specks of light from the stars, in similar pale blues and dots of orange.

Running down the center, almost invisible because they reflected the night sky, there were mirrors.  Curved and angled and warped, linked together into a chain like the double helix of DNA or water from a narrow waterfall frozen in time, as the building’s center mass or spine.

People on the balconies danced and partied, writhed in slow motion and moved against and with one another in a way that made it seem like they were one person, not two.  Or one many-armed body, not ten people in close proximity.  The dances were improvised and synchronized at the same time.

“I’ve got one more assblaster,” the Fox said.  “But I don’t think we can use it here.”

“A what?” Clementine asked.

The Fox held up a firework that was bigger around than her arm.

“Stinkbomb?” the Deer asked.

“I’ve got it but the first firework was over the top.  What does the stinkbomb do?”

“Right.  It might peel the wallpaper or make the building melt or something.  If we bring the building down and he’s in there, what happens?”

“What is this?” Clementine asked, looking around.  “Another dimension?”

“Our dimension, dressed up,” the Deer said.  “By Daniel.”

“How?  It’s like a dream, or a nightmare, but it’s so detailed.  More detailed than real life.”

“Try not to focus on it too much,” the Fox told her.

“He lived in a place like this for a long time,” the Deer said.  “He doesn’t talk about it?”

“I don’t know.  He says a lot but he doesn’t make sense a lot of the time.”

“He-”

“Ave,” the Fox interrupted.

The Deer fell silent.

The ramps and balconies formed an almost labyrinthine ascent.  A ramp became stairs became stairs going around both sides of an arch, which passed through to a bridge that led to more stairs.

They moved through a crowd of scarily beautiful people, that only got denser as they progressed.

And there, a man that wasn’t so beautiful, by contrast, with a lean body and deep gouges from acne in his face, especially his nose, and a wiry ginger beard that traced only from the edges of his chin.  He looked bewildered, dancing amid beautiful young women, one of them peeling off his short sleeved flannel shirt, another combing fingers through his hair.  Others touched him, lifted him up, until he was almost surfing the crowd, his back arched, lean chest thrust out.

Where fingers pulled at his hair, it stayed where it was put.  They stroked his beard and shaped it or removed it, touched his face.  It was hard to tell whether they were applying makeup or caressing him, or both.  But the gouges disappeared beneath that touch.

Making him into one of them, almost.  Except even as they changed his skin and made it flawless, changed his hair and turned his beard into a wicked point at the chin.  Even as they dressed him in something that could have been silk and could have been leather, he managed to retain that faint edge of being rugged, that made him stand out in this crowd.

There was a child and a mother, and they were fighting, fighting so hard to maintain a hold on one another’s hands.  Their voices were drowned out by Daniel’s singing, which throbbed through the building, formed its own choruses on the architecture and the town below, and were picked up by the crowd, who sang along.  It wasn’t like a normal crowd, where so many would sing a note before, or sing below. All here played into the sound perfectly, like they knew their parts.

Clementine pushed harder through the crowd.  Hands brushed up against her arms, touched her hair, and fingernails scraped faintly against the fabric of her clothing.  Beckoning.

She had to get to that kid before-

The grip between mother and child broke.  A crowd of four standing on the stairs threw the little girl up, out off and away from the balcony.  The child yelped and called out.

People on the balcony above caught her, but they did it by the hair, fingers in black hair.  As if she were a spool of thread come undone, the hair remained and the young girl tumbled, spinning, almost faster than the eye could follow.  A dozen, two dozen, a hundred feet of hair streamed behind her, catching the wind and making her almost buoyant, floating.

The Deer lunged, reaching, and tried to catch her.  Hands caught her instead, pulling her back.

Other hands caught the child before she could hit the ground or a railing.

Using the child’s hair, some of the slender, beautiful people came down, holding white threads.

White threads hooked on a button on her top, on her ear, on her fingers.

As fast as she’d gone down, she was sent up again.  The Deer lunged again, reaching, and caught the girl’s hand.

A spider crawled out of the white threads and across the girl’s face.  She flinched, and let go of the Deer’s hand.

“Going up!”

“Careful!”

The Deer stepped onto the railing, then leaped, straight up, catching the side of an arch.  She reached for the kid, but the kid was having trouble reaching back.  There were more spiders, and they were winding more threads, which limited movement.  Creating a dress, elaborating on hair, braiding it.

The kid screamed as she realized the extent of what was happening.  At the same time, there were people, beautiful and indeterminate in age, who were running this way and that, winding the hair around the tower, decorating the railing.

Clementine was separated from the Fox as the building shifted and an archway became a stairway.

She kept heading up, one eye on the kid, another, foggier eye kept out for the Fox and Deer.  So long as she kept moving up…

She looked at the mirrors.  The building was more window than wall, and the windows allowed a peek in, at mirrors clearer than looking through a window without glass in it.  Clearer than any television could accomplish.

Daniel, portrayed from various angles, at various magnifications, singing, addressing a crowd.  The song was upbeat, intense, elevating everything…

And slowly, surely, it became something darker.

The little girl screamed, frantic.

Her dress had been given legs like a spider, as long as she was tall, and she was terrified of those legs.  She was terrified of the small spiders that drew out silk in patterns as elaborate as frost on a snowflake, decorating her ears.  Drawing out a chain from nose to ear.

Clementine adjusted her grip on the sword, which she had nearly forgotten.  She could cut that thread, grab that kid-

The light from the sword shone across the balcony.  The people who were dancing and singing went still.  Eyes with narrow pupils fell on her.

She switched from blade to intense light, and she shone that light on everything.  People shielded their eyes, stopped moving, and stopped doing things.  She kept it on the little girl, who had her tongue extended to its fullest length, pinched between two fingers in leather gloves and held there by a woman suspended in the air by near-invisible threads.  The woman held a spider, and the kid’s eyes were wide.

The spider’s legs drew together, spiraling, and became more of a pin.  To pierce and become a piercing.

Clementine shone the light on her, angling it to focus it more.

Momentarily blinded, the woman lost her grip on the threads and spider both, falling until she was caught in the band of hair, five feet across and more lustrous than a shampoo commercial.

People reached through to embrace her, pulling her into the crowd.  The child shrieked as people above began to dance, hands and arms extended, winding the hair and spider silk threads up and pulling the child up toward them.

The Deer, holding onto thread, came down, swinging, and seized the child.  Together they swung around behind a band of black hair.

The thread she’d been holding kept going forward, but the Deer and child were gone.

Saved.  Somehow.

Below, the mother was dressed in black silk, with silver-scaled snakes thinner than a finger weaving in among one another to braid together and become part of her dress, or to be jewelry or something else.  Her attention was purely on Daniel’s image in the mirrors, and on reacting to the singing.

As Clementine made her way up, using the sharp moonbeam to forge a way, the way up became more precarious.  More of the partygoers were perched in precarious places, or hanging from threads and silk.  The railing of the stairwell became the main concourse, a foot wide and branching, with people sitting, lying, and standing on various branches.

The town was so far below them that she couldn’t see the individual lights of the buildings.

She adjusted her puzzle bracelet, turning a few cubes and adjusting a dial, then pushed her way into the main building.  The way things were constructed, every guest at this party or concert or whatever else it could be called were on the outside.  The inside was like a clocktower, but with mirrors instead of gears, all angled to catch and reflect the image of Daniel at the rooftop.  All designed to capture the sound.

She went inside, and it was empty.

Or apparently empty.  The singing echoed around her, she tried to find her way, but the puzzle bracelet didn’t shuffle this space.  There was no way to reorganize it so she could make a fast way to the top.

Someone on a lower floor, or the top floor, somehow?  Or was it not a closed space?

She, with regret, ducked out, back onto the ramps and courses that led in a constant, spiraling climb up the outside of this building, which was an unending spire of glass, obsidian, and mirrors, surrounded by its balconies and partygoers.

The singing was a lament now.  Dancing was slower, a writhing of hundreds if not a thousand or more people that was so controlled it had to have taken years to learn.  Men and women and people of ambiguous gender were dressed in almost universal black.

Her eyes watered, and her breath came short, because they were that high up.  And because the lament demanded it.  She couldn’t draw a firm line between the two ideas.

She could see up past the spire where there was a cave ceiling, riddled with more stalactites than a beach had grains, and each one was carved.  Buildings, pointing down.

Clementine ducked past a woman with silver-framed holes in her body, like ear gauges but abdominal, in the arm and leg.  A set of centipedes, decked out in jewelry, were woven through the bodily gauges.

Out and up, until the pathways were so narrow it was closer to climbing a tree, getting to the point where she might soon start clutching at twigs, instead of standing on branches.  If it swayed, it was meant to fit to the music.

She reached the top, and she found herself standing on the edge of a petal of a black rose, larger than the downtown area of the town had been.  It was obsidian or some other glossy black stone, crafted so the petals were cupped to catch the best of Daniel’s singing.

Each petal had a guest.  A person who somehow dwarfed the others from the way up.  Each was posed like a pretty picture, each more emotive in their stillness than any member of the crowd had been in their movement.

He sang to them, above all else.

The Deer was at the far side, opposite Clem.  The Fox was off to the right.

And a small black bird spiraled around the building before settling, shaking off a cloak and standing straight.  A girl in a cat mask and witch hat.

“How is he this powerful?” the Fox asked.

“He’s getting help now,” the Cat said.

“We need to stop this.  I worry what happens if…”

They were high enough up that the ground wasn’t clearly visible.

But as they looked up, it looked like that ceiling of spikes, of dark citadels that stabbed downward, was advancing on them.

They were rising to meet it.

Clementine held out the moonlight edge and let it shine on the proceedings.  Aiming at Daniel, specifically.  To get his attention, or try and stop whatever he was doing.

He crumpled.  The singing ended, and the building went silent.

The more subdued the song had become, the more dangerous the people below had seemed to be comfortable with being.  When it had started to slow down and become something less exciting, they’d started putting spiders on the little girl.  When it had become sadder, they’d began plotting to pierce her tongue with a living spider ornament.  They’d been intent on something more menacing when the Deer had saved her.

Now it was silent.  Now the apparently important figures were standing, stretching.

Daniel didn’t move, one hand at his face.

“Sharon Griggs is out there,” the Cat said.  “She can’t seem to help deal with Daniel unless she comes in here… which I don’t think she can do, because she can’t see here, or if we get Daniel out there.”

“Ave?” the Fox asked.

The Deer turned her head, then froze.  “Clementine!”

Clementine twisted, looking, and before she realized it, a woman with ash grey skin decorated with detailed silver-leaf scales embraced her from behind.  The woman took a step, the toes of her feet lifting up and carrying Clementine’s heels before Clementine could stop.  Pulling her back.

To the edge.  The woman stood, embracing Clementine from behind, her toes and nothing else at the edge of the rose petal capstone to this building.  Even Clementine’s feet weren’t fully on the roof.  She wasn’t entirely positive, but it was almost like the only thing that kept them from tipping backward was the wind at their backs.

Goosebumps stood out over every inch of Clementine’s body, and she felt that roller-coaster drop of her stomach that came with the swift falling descent.  Except it didn’t stop and it got worse by the second.

Below was only darkness.

Casually, like she wasn’t standing above oblivion, the woman slid her hand inside Clementine’s, and took the sword from her hand.  She tossed it off into the darkness.  It turned end over end, becoming diffuse light, sword, intense light, sword, dark, sword, intense light again.  The flashes struck over and over again in Clementine’s peripheral vision.

The Fox dove in, past people, past everything.

“Don’t use- don’t play his game!” the Cat shouted.  She looked at Clementine.  “Why do you have to be here!?  That makes this way more complicated!”

How?  How was her being here that complicated, when they were in an impossible place, dealing with impossible things?

Clementine stood on a precipice, wondering if she’d die if she spoke.  If that puff of air from her lips would be what propelled her back into darkness.

Fox and Deer went for Daniel.  The people in the way threw out lengths of what might have been rope, or drew out blades.

The Deer changed course.  The Fox charged in.  The Cat drew something from her pocket and it produced a bright, blinding light.  For a moment, Clementine felt like she was actually falling, the light so intense it had pushed her back.  Or her swaying in the wake of it a fatal mistake.

The Fox didn’t seem to mind the light.  She slipped by, the Deer tackled a sword-wielder, and the Fox drew close to Daniel.  A knife in each hand.

Don’t hurt him, Clementine thought.

She didn’t hurt him.  She went to put knife to throat, and the knife clinked against something hard.

Cracks spread, and the mirror shattered.

A reflection of him from another place.  Another part of this impossibly tall building.  Maybe.

Clementine’s eyes widened.  “It’s-”

The woman with ash skin adjusted her center of balance a fraction.  Clementine’s stomach did a terrified quintuple-flip flop as the world tilted out of her view.  The spikes of the cave ceiling high above were what she faced, her back to the distant, dark ground.

The Deer tried to get to her, reaching out, and fell more than twenty feet short.

Clementine plummeted.

Another few floors.  Past balcony and stairwell and arch and everything else architectural, devoid of partygoer.

Just a building and a Daniel reflected by mirror after mirror.

Fingers dug into Clementine’s arm.  She clutched back in instinctive response.

It didn’t stop her fall.  Fingernails dragged against her skin as the Deer tried to hold on, then they were separated again by gravity.  Clementine groped for a railing and found brief purchase.  Nothing.  It only made her swing.  Out toward oblivion, well beyond anyone’s reach.

The third time, the Deer appeared.  A floor below her last appearance, gripping a rail, reaching for Clementine.

A gap of ten feet extended between their reaching hands.  She’d inadvertently swung out too far from the building.

There was a flap of wings, and the Cat caught her.  Feathers flew around the pair of them as they hurtled toward the building.  The Deer was there, but it was primarily an assist.  Clementine caught a railing above a staircase, both hands seizing it, and the Cat did too, one-handed.

The other reaching hand struggled to become a hand.  A wing, wreathed in black feathers.  The feathers rolled and danced around the hand without solidifying, then began spreading down her arm to her chest.

There was a figure down there.  One of the ones from the top of the building.  He had a hand extended at the Cat, and a thin smile on his lips.

Until the Deer caught up with him and hit him, booting him down the stairs.

The Cat, now possessed of two hands, found a handhold, and they climbed down to the stairs.

“You okay?” the Cat asked.

“I’m alive and pretty happy about it,” Clementine said.  “Deer?  Ave?”

“Messed up my arm, and it wasn’t one hundred percent,” the Deer said.  “But alive.  And you’re alive.”

“Thank you both.  Thank you, thank you,” Clementine said.  “This is all insane.”

“Thank you, V,” the Deer said, to the Cat. “I couldn’t have caught her without help.”

“We work best together.”

“Yeah,” the Deer answered.  With a bit of emotion in her voice, she added, “Absolutely.”

The Cat threw an arm around her shoulders.

“Above, before I was pulled off the building, I was going to say something,” Clementine told them.  “When I tried to reshuffle the interior, to see if I could get to a higher floor.  It didn’t work.”

“Because it’s not really real?” the Cat asked.

“It usually doesn’t work if someone else is inside or with me.  I think Daniel is inside.”

“No civilians around?” the Cat asked.

“I don’t think.  Everyone got lowered down or disappeared.”

“Then I’ll tell her.  You guys get downstairs,” the Cat said.  “You’ve got the rope?”

Her?  Rope?

Oh.  The Cat headed up.  Toward the Fox, who was still at the roof.  That was the her.  The rope, though?

The Deer didn’t say anything on the matter.

The Deer and Clementine headed down.

“I’ve got you.  If I say the word, just close your eyes as tight as you can, okay?” the Deer asked.

“Okay.”

There was no reason to distrust them at this point.

The detonation shook the building.

Starting with the top floor, the building began to collapse.  One floor and all of its mirrors, balcony, ramp, and other fixtures crashed into the one below, which shattered and descended.

Well.  One cause for distrust now.  What the fuck?

Each collapse seemed to accelerate the ones that followed.  Solid object struck glass and mirrors.  Mirrors and glass struck solid object with enough force to dislodge architecture.

The entire spire caved in on itself.

And, as they descended a portion without railing, the Deer took Clementine’s hand and jumped, with enough force that she pulled Clementine off balance.  Over the edge.

Clementine closed her eyes as tight as possible, wind whipping at her hair, hand clenching the Deer’s like her life depended on that grip.

They hit the ground.  The Deer landed on her feet.  Clementine sprawled.

They were at the base of the building, and she could see that cascading, beautiful collapse.

“This is all kind of fake,” the Deer said, looking up.  “A real sort of fake.”

“That only confuses me more,” Clementine said.

“I know.  I know, don’t worry.”

The collapse stopped being so staggered, and became something sweeping, instead.  A falling paintbrush, painting a long, clean stroke as it went, but that stroke was shattered glass-like stone and more glass.  Shattered reflections.

It hit the ground and splashed out, in far too small a volume.

At the center of that splash, Daniel knelt.  Not singing anymore.

“Let’s go home,” Clementine said.

He looked up, at the spire that was no more.

The area lacked music like Clementine might lack air if she held her breath.  It felt like it should return, barring more catastrophic event and injury.

But the silence was still a good thing, compared to dangerous singing.

“There are brighter days ahead, Daniel.  A different kind of bright to this,” Clementine said.  She wasn’t sure this could be called bright.

If it really was fake, it was artificially bright.  Unhealthy bright.

But mostly it was dark and shadow, and creepy constructions lit up without enough light sources.

Images were falling away, cascading out now that the building had fallen.  Building faces were shed and crashed to the ground like more sheets of glass, each individual shard breaking again on impact, only for those shards to break down further, until they were like dust.

The crowd, fake, crumbled away.  Some of the victims did.  Others huddled, or stood there, bewildered.

A singular figure remained.  A man, with floor length hair as straight as hair could be, jet black, and so perfect it could be mistaken for the obsidian of the spire’s construction.  He wore black silk that criss-crossed his body and layered, forming a dress at his legs.

He didn’t speak, and barely moved.  His hand turned, palm toward Daniel, and it lifted up.

Daniel ducked his head down, reaching for that hand.

“Daniel,” Clementine said.

He stopped, mid-way through dropping down to kneel.  The posture had to be hell to hold, but he didn’t seem able to keep going, or to back off.

The stranger waited, hand out, offering.  Waiting for Daniel to take the offer.

“You’d lose yourself, Daniel,” the Fox said.

“This isn’t a good place,” the Deer told him.

“Being a slave again?” the Cat asked.  “Screw that.”

He didn’t move, but the stranger did.  Shaking his head.

“Not a slave?” the Fox asked.  “What’s the plan, then?  Free passage?”

“No,” the Cat said.  “Maybe, uhh.  Becoming one of them?  Or another step in that process?”

Daniel looked up at the stranger.

“Your sister will miss you,” Clementine told him.

The last of the images were falling away.  It felt to Clem like they were sands in the hourglass.  From Daniel’s anxiety, it seemed like he sensed that too.

Like if he waited too long, the stranger would leave with that last bit of fake landscape.

“I’m a burden.”

“No,” Clementine said.

“I’m useless, in your world.  I’m a star in this one.”

“I don’t think you give off happy vibes when you’re here,” Clementine said.  “You run, you hide, you… this is amazing and bewildering but it’s also sad.”

“What does happiness matter?” he asked.  “When I can matter?”

“Unhappy?” the Cat asked.

“What’s to say I won’t be unhappy out there?”

“I don’t know,” Clementine jumped in.  “I really don’t, Daniel.  Can you find moments of happiness in this place?”

“It’s not truly about that,” he said, looking at the slender, long-haired man who still stood with hand outstretched.

“So no,” the Fox said.  “No, it’s a dismal place, huh?”

“Do you watch horror films?  For the exhilaration of it?  Or a sad film where the dog dies?” he asked.  “This is like that.  Every moment.  Horror and grief, but more.

“I love horror films,” the Fox told him.  “But I wouldn’t want to live in one.”

“You have a sister,” the Deer said.  “If you’re on the fence, maybe… side with her?”

“And me,” Clementine said.  “And Mrs. Preston, and Natalia, and Potatoface.  We love your singing and company.”

Daniel smiled.

“What do you say?” Clementine asked.

“It’s hard.  Every moment of every day can be hard, some days.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I know you know, cherished Clementine.  My heart regularly breaks for you.  You must find your way to true love.”

“I’ll try.  I’d like your company while I’m trying.”

He went silent.

The image was almost entirely crumbled.

Maybe a minute left to decide.

“If I wished to become a singer, a mundane celebrity in this world.  If I had the talent and I had the dream, and the passion, and I wanted to go… putting the fantastical aside, would you stop me?  Would you say I should lead a normal life, and bag groceries to help my sister with her rent?  Or worse, do nothing with my life except make hers more dreary?”

“She loves you.  She wouldn’t want you to alleviate that burden,” Clementine said.  “She’d hurt, every single day, if you went to live a celebrity life without her.”

His head hung.

“And I don’t know whether it’s right to decide on that alone.  But if it was really between you and your dream, maybe.  Maybe.  But this didn’t feel like your dream.”

He looked up at her.

“I didn’t see or hear anything you in there.  It was like you were doing it for someone else, or for them, all of that.”

He’d straightened a bit to look up.  He straightened a bit more.

The scene dwindled and faded, turning that fantastical, dark place into a drabby downtown street, the heat beating down on them even without the sun in the sky.

The stranger went with the scene, and Daniel looked just a bit defeated as he went.

“Sharon’s waiting,” the Cat said.  To her friends, she said, “We should remove our masks and stuff.”

“Sharon’s waiting, Clementine,” Daniel said, animating a bit.  “What joy, what wonder.  Whoopee, hooray.  This drabby, sad, frustrating world is welcoming me with our favorite person in existence. Sharon!  My heart bursts!  How ever could I have dreamed of that other life when Sharon is here!?”

“I’ve really missed sarcasm,” the Fox said.  “Hearing this really drives that home.”

“You’ve missed it?” Clementine asked.

“Nevermind.”

“But- what-?”

“Nevermind.  Don’t think about it.”

Clementine committed to taking a good long while to think about it and make sense of it when she didn’t have her heart going a mile a minute as a residual effect of what she’d just experienced.

“Sharon!” Daniel exclaimed.  “Where are you?  I must hug you!  I came back to this world from a place of true wonder for you and you alone!”

“She has a head wound!” the Cat called out.  She removed her mask.  She was so young, and she looked so tired, her rather dense, layered bangs plastered to her forehead by sweat.  “Be gentle!”

“Who gave her that head wound?” the Fox asked.

Clementine sighed.  There was something about this resolution that helped a great deal, but… her heart was heavy.

It was as though she had come closer to understanding, only to have it stolen from her.

She took a moment for herself, breathing again, removing the earring, and the Deer remained close.  As if guarding her.

They wanted her and Daniel and Sharon gone.  She knew that much.

“Thank you,” the Deer said.  A young girl with freckles and strawberry blond hair.  “For the help with Daniel.”

“I’m sorry for the trouble.”

“I don’t think you could help it.  You were set up a bit.”

Clementine shrugged, uncomfortable.  “Um, where’s your younger friend?  The blonde-ish girl with circles under her eyes?”

“Babysitting, kind of.”

“Ah.”

They walked, together, in the direction Daniel, the Cat, and the Fox had gone.

She spotted the girl who was apparently ‘babysitting’.  But who was she babysitting?  The middle aged man, or the girl?

“Mari- she’s gone,” the Fox said.  To the Cat, she said, “She was really hurt.”

“My doing,” Daniel said, sad.  “Pass her my apologies?  Even if it was her kind that did this?”

“Will she be okay?” the Deer asked.

“Charles says yes,” the Cat said.

Charles, then, was the middle aged man?

Clementine looked over, and then she paused.

The man, balding, with a scraggly beard, was standing off to the side.  Beside him was a girl, with crimped hair down to the small of her back.  She had her leg in a plastic boot, and a bit of paper with red ribbon still tied to a part of it in her hand.

She looked at Clementine, and Clementine looked back, and there was a moment where they mutually realized they were both looking for one another.

They gathered.

“I was told to give your parents that,” Clementine said.

“I was told to come here,” the girl said, holding up the paper.

“And I can guess why,” the middle aged man said.  He had a rough voice and made a rougher impression.  Like he was a bit unpleasant to be around, in a way she couldn’t pin down.  Was he a creep?

The girl with crimped hair seemed to be uncomfortable enough for that to be the case.  But she asked, “Why?”

“You, Melissa,” he told the girl.  “You stand at the beginning.  You want to be where she is.”

He indicated Clementine.

“Nobody should want to be where I am,” Clementine said.

“That’s the point, isn’t it?” he asked, his voice rougher, his tone biting, like he was calling her stupid.  “And you, Clementine.  You want the answers?”

Please.

“Then take a long, close look.  The answers don’t give you better.  If anything, it’s all worse.  You know what’s about to happen to you, and you’re caught up in it.  I had the answers.  I paid the price.  I would give anything, not that I have much, but I would give anything to be where she stands, again.”

He pointed at Melissa, who cringed away from the finger.

“And to walk away,” he said.

“I want to know so I can walk away,” Clementine said.

Too bad,” he growled at her.

She backed away a step, paced another two steps, then stopped, frustrated.

“What about them?” she asked, pointing at the Cat, Deer, and Fox.

“They have each other.  For better or worse.  They float together, they sink together.  Time will tell.”

“Incoming,” Melissa said.

The Cat approached.

“I talked to your landlord, Clementine,” the Cat said.

“Oh?  I- you guys mentioned the setup.  You think that was him?”

“He wanted to hurt us.  Or hurt someone else through us.  He used you.  He was clear, he thinks you’re his property, in a fashion.  Tools for him to use.”

“It can feel that way.”

“It is that way.  To him, I’m pretty sure.  He talked about a trap.  I can’t get into details, but he makes it hard for you to leave.”

“Low rent, next to no utility, resources…”

“More than that,” the Cat said.  “He makes it hard to leave in the same way you… find things.”

Clementine digested that.

“If we can interrupt that…” the Cat said, trailing off.  “Can we convince you not to go back to that apartment?  Or back to him?  I talked to Sharon about it but she was stubborn.  Daniel will go where his sister is, I’m guessing, and I’m betting she’ll have reasons she doesn’t want to leave.”

“They moved a lot before, most landlords couldn’t handle them as tenants.  Daniel’s sister said a lot of people like him end up in mental hospitals or long term care for most of their lives, and she’d self destruct without him.”

“What’s going on with that?” Melissa asked.

“Wrong question,” Charles rasped.  Melissa cringed a bit.  “Look at her.  Look at the scars, and how tired she is.  She stands transfixed in between these worlds and she’s seen enough to know she wants out.”

Clem didn’t feel great about the scars being pointed out, but she did stand in a way that let this Melissa kid see.

“Clementine,” the Cat said.  “Charles and I were talking for a bit before I caught up with the others.  We’re offering a deal.”

Clementine shrugged.  “What?”

“Walk away from Bristow and the apartment building.  Have your stuff sent to you.  Leave, and we’ll give you what you want.”

“It doesn’t make things better and I doubt there’s a fix,” Charles said.  “But I can explain it to you.  I’ll answer your questions and I’ll pay for answering them.”

Clementine dwelt on it.  She’d fought against this for so long, and now she stood on the opposite end of that fight.

Fighting against what might be someone else’s whole thing?  Keeping people?  Strange people, like Figueroa, who seemed to get ahead in life the more he was an asshole?

She looked over at Daniel.

She thought about Mrs. Preston, and Arlene.

“Can I put a pin in that deal?” she asked.  “I have things to sort out.  People to look after.  Familiar faces I’m not willing to say goodbye to.”

“Really?” the Cat asked.

“I’ve lost so many people… I… it’s a harder ask than you’re making it out to be.  If I know he’s being manipulative, then I need to protect other people from him.  From within.  And I know I’m playing into that thing you’re saying he does.”

“It’s good for you,” Charles told her.  “Walking away, not taking those answers.  It’s good you’re doing that.”

“Bad for us,” the Cat said.  “It’d be nice to knock him down a peg.  Especially after everything here tonight.  That we might never recover from.”

“Not that we want to guilt you,” the Deer said.

We don’t,” the Cat cut in, “Not unanimously.  But I would love to layer on that guilt.  Nice and thick.”

The Fox elbowed her.

“Sorry,” Clementine told them.  “If there’s anything I can do?”

“Take Melissa home?” the Deer asked.

The young girl with circles under her eyes dragged Melissa away.  Melissa used crutches and walked awkwardly with the plastic boot.

“We’ll talk to you another time, if we can,” the Deer called out.

Melissa gave her the finger.

“Magic items,” the Cat said.

“You have the watch.”

“I do,” the Deer said.

“Take it.  I don’t know what to do with it.  Only other things, I’ve got my puzzle bracelet, but I need that.”

“We know,” the Fox said, arms folded.

“There’s the sword, but that was taken from me, at the towertop.  Thrown into the darkness.  Maybe it’s still out there somewhere-”

“No,” Charles said.  “Not in Kennet.”

“Okay,” she said.  “There’s this earring, but… I’m pretty attached to it.  I need to figure out a place to keep it, but having the option of making life easier when it can be so hard?  It’s hard to convince myself to give that up.”

“Keep it,” the Fox said.

The Cat made a noise of protest.

“And that doesn’t leave much.  There are things back at my place but I’ve sold most things that weird people are interested in buying.  Umm.  There’s the cube, but I don’t know where that went.”

“The cube,” the Cat said.  She shrugged.

“I don’t even know what it does.  A bundle of red fur and meat, in trash bags, lashed together with twine or rope or something.  It was in a car.  But the driver hid or ran away.  Uhh, some teenagers had it, last I saw.  Older teens.  Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen.  Three of them.”

“Are you sure they were teenagers?” the Fox asked.

“I see a lot of weirdos.  Or monsters that look human, maybe.  I don’t think they were.  They were just kids.”

“Fucking Christ,” Charles almost spat the words.

Just about everyone from Kennet seemed stunned, or silent, or worried.

“Where did you have it?”

“I didn’t have it.  Um, but I saw it.  I’ve been running around so much I barely know where we are, especially the trip to that weird place, but if you showed me a map or asked Sharon, we could mark the spot.”

“Why did the teenagers have it?  You didn’t take it?” the Fox challenged her.

“I didn’t- I avoid stuff.  I’ve already dealt with a bunch of things in the last day.  It didn’t look convenient to transport, I gave it a pass.”

She saw the three girls wince.  Charles scowled.

“Why?” Clementine asked.

Back Away – 5.5

Verona

Car doors slammed as they climbed out of Sharon’s car and Matthew’s truck.

Verona joined Lucy and Avery in climbing out of the bed of Matthew’s truck, going over the side, stepping on the tire, then hopping down to the road.  She was tired.  She’d probably walked and ran around more tonight than she had most weeks.  With gym class included.

She was tired in other ways.  Nothing was wrong, exactly, they’d come out ahead and Clementine, Daniel, and Sharon were going to leave soon.  There’d been cool practice, cool monsters, and it was all exciting.  And she still felt like… like if she turned on her cell phone to check the time and found the battery was dead, or if she dug into her bag for a granola bar to tide herself over and it was too crumbly, she might cry a bit.

And she didn’t want that, she didn’t want to be a crybaby or be needy.  Verona made a conscious effort to brace herself against those feelings.  Magic school tomorrow, unless something else came up.  Or… technically it was later today, since it was after midnight.  But tomorrow too.

Just hold onto that, she thought.  Magic school tomorrow.

Lucy was holding up, despite having a worse day before this whole thing.  But Lucy didn’t like to show weakness and it took a lot of careful attention to see how she was doing.  Verona committed herself mentally to keep that eye out.

And Avery had sat the entire drive over, between Verona and Lucy, her head resting sideways on Lucy’s shoulder, her gaze on nothing in particular.  Thinking, maybe.

The movies didn’t cover this.  How you only had so much ability to deal with crap before you had to retreat into your Self.  What you knew, your basic ways of functioning and dealing.  It had been dumb, so dumb, to go bird form back there.  To have the Faerie be able to manipulate that.

Sans hat, sans mask, sans cape, Verona walked across the road without cars, beneath a streetlight with a thick spiderweb below it, illuminated bright in a way that probably drew in a lot of food for the spider.

No cars on the road.  Most of Kennet was dark.  The stars were bright overhead.

There was a bit of blood by the side of the road.  Verona turned on her Sight to look around, and saw more.  She pointed.

“Yeah,” Lucy said, quiet.

“It was here,” Clementine said.  She’d climbed out of Sharon’s car and walked over from that distant parking spot, while John had walked over the other way, from Matthew’s truck to the car, guarding Sharon.

Clementine’s hair was short and parted like a schoolboy’s, but she had a lot of feminine affectation in the choice of basic makeup, shirt, shorts, and shoe colors, and a bigger-than-average chest that would make it hard for her to be mistaken as a little boy from any distance.  She had a bead of blood at one earlobe and a heavy, blocky metal bracelet of overlapping and interlocking cubes and prisms at her wrist, but no other jewelry.

She also had scars.  Some were a bruised purple-blue that would always stand out, and others were smaller.  One by her eye, making it perpetually a bit more closed than the other, one at the side of her throat, one bad one inside the crook of her elbow.  It looked like she’d been stabbed at one point, with how straight and short a line it was, on the back of her forearm.

“The car?  The bag of fur?” Lucy asked.

“Bundle, I’d say.  Or package.  It probably took time to put together in that dense way.  I’m surprised it didn’t smell or have maggots.  It had to be fresh.”

“It wasn’t, ” Avery murmured, bending down.  She reached out and the light from the streetlight above caught on a single strand of spider-silk Avery had picked out.  Verona could only see the strand with her Sight.

Avery stood, finger held out, and lifted up the strand.

“It is rare for someone or something to be held in such esteem that even the starving wouldn’t partake of their food,” Daniel said.  He had lain down across the hood of Matthew’s truck, knees bent and feet on the bumper, hands folded on his stomach, eyes on the sky.  “He or she must have been something special.”

“She was,” John intoned.

“She was,” Charles said, a bit begrudging in how he said it.

“There’s a stain around it,” Lucy murmured, to Avery and Verona.  She held up her hand, four fingers extended, and then swept it from a north-y direction down toward the bloodstain.  “Like… badness carried it here.  Or the culprit of the murder brought it here.  And there’s no accompanying stain painting the ground in the direction where it’s carried away.”

Avery held the silk and put her face close to it, looking along it.  She pointed in the same direction.

“Wind’s blowing that ribbon toward the road out of town,” Lucy said, her eyes staring off that way.

“Yeah,” Avery said.  “They left with it?”

“Maybe,” Verona said.  She paced, looking, her Sight active.

The Sight waned, getting less clear and less Sight-y.  She sighed, and looked up at John, waving, then indicating the car he was guarding.

He shifted position, his back to the window, blocking Sharon’s view.  Verona’s sight gradually returned.

“Clementine!” Sharon shouted, top of her lungs.  “Call the police!”

Even the shouting caused Verona’s sight to dim.  It rankled.

“Oh yes, do call the police,” Daniel said.  “We have a dark and mysterious gunman, a bedraggled mess of a man who is clearly in ill health-”

“A much abused, bedraggled mess of a man in bad health,” Charles grumbled.  “Even the boy with dangerous flights of fancy denigrates me.”

“Ah, but you see,” Daniel said, “to denigrate, if you pull the word apart, is to paint something black.  How could I denigrate you if you’re already blackened, through and through?”

“Is he?” Clementine asked.

“Isn’t he?  You don’t see it?  If you’ll trust me, know it’s there.”

“I think I trust you on things like this, Daniel.  Sure,” Clementine said.

“I would be careful with your words, sir,” Daniel told Charles.  “You can’t be careless, or you’ll get yourself into great trouble.  I don’t think denigrate is the word you want.”

“I can say whatever the hell I damn well please,” Charles said.  “I can’t do much.  I don’t have much.  But I have that.”

“I know I didn’t agree to leave the apartment,” Clementine said.  “But you can’t tell me anything?  I’ve tried to be cooperative and helpful here.  I’ll be driving back all night, because Daniel can’t drive and Sharon would probably steer things around to come back here.”

“Telling you would be costly,” Charles said.  “People would know.  I’d be expected to pay a price, and I don’t have much to pay with.  If it meant taking him down a peg, I’d risk it.  Hurt my enemy, sure.  But no.  It’s not easy.  We made our terms clear.”

“So there’s this secret organization, then?” Clementine asked.  “I’ve seen hints of something behind the scenes.  Networks like my landlord, this guy who was in this city Sharon mentioned, and… those kids?  You?”

Charles was silent, chin set.

Verona walked down the road until she found a drain.  She bent down and looked through with her Sight.

An eyeless, noseless face pressed against the underside of the grate, mouth opening and closing.  Its flesh was slick and boiled red-white.

In the background, Daniel was saying, “Officer, officer, those three little girls are especially dangerous.  Arrest them.”

“I’ve been kidnapped, Daniel, and you’re all buddy-buddy with them!” Sharon shrieked the words.

Verona glanced around, but they were near the rest stop, and the nearest house was a minute or two of driving away.

“Teenagers,” Lucy said.  “Not little girls.”

“Well, you’re certainly not large girls, you may be glad of that, or you wouldn’t be so nimble, and you are girls, I think.  Do correct me if I’m wrong.”

“We’re girls,” Avery said. At a nudging from Lucy, she added, “Teenage girls.”

Verona smiled at that, then turned her attention to the grate-meat-thing.

“Hey,” Verona murmured.  She cupped a hand and addressed the thing below. “Hello down there.  You had to notice the big chunk of bloody meat that was pulled out of the car, right?”

The thing’s approximation of a nod was a up-down slap of boneless face against the underside of the grate.

“Was it three teenagers?”

More ‘yes’ slaps.

“Were they from out of town?”

The head turned, like it was looking off to the side or touching cheek to shoulder, then flipped around to the other shoulder, slapping itself like a dead fish against the grate, side to side.  Slap slap for ‘No’.  Then the ‘yes’.

“Two no, one yes?”

Slap.  Yes.

“Cool, umm…”

The face was retreating.

Verona dropped her bag and dug into it.  She found the granola bar she had been considering eating, and then cracked it open.

Yep, most of it was loose oats, floating in the wrapper, with only two intact chunks.  She pinned the chunks down and tipped the oats into the drain.  “Payment for your answers and any answers to come.  Food I was looking forward to, a bit.  May you draw some sustenance from it.”

The face returned.  Most of the oats had settled into the vague hollows where eyes should be, or stuck to fluids on the ‘skin’.

It smiled, toothless, and slapped the grate once.

“Did they say anything about practice?  Or spirits?  Or recognize any spirits?”

Slap slap slap.  No, no, no.

“They weren’t practitioners then.”

Slap.  No.

“Others?”

Slap.  No.

Confirmation, then.

“So a car narrowly avoids a car accident, and this bundle of meat is in a trash bag at the back, right?”

Slap.  Yes.

“Was there a driver?”

Slap.  Yes.

“Alone?”

Slap.  Yes.

“Okay, so the car wasn’t magicked to run on its own.  And this driver, they didn’t stick around?  They let someone else take the meat…”

Slap.  Yes.

“And they were a local?”

Slap.  Yes.

The head retreated down into the darkness a bit.

She tossed down one of the two big chunks.  The face caught it, and mashed it up in a gumless, tongueless mouth.

“Were they hurt?”

Slap.  No.

“Why did they leave?”

The face stared at her.

“Yes no only, huh?  Did they run?”

Slap.  Yes.

“Was this person who drove the car and ran-”

A distant scream cut her off.  The face plummeted into darkness, and she straightened, blinking to try to see as she went blind.  No, it was her Sight failing her, her ability to see in the dark slipping away and letting everything fall into darkness and gloom.

A police car was coming down the road.  Sharon leaned out of her window, shrieking at the top of her lungs.

The car slowed to a stop in the middle of the road.  There was nothing in the way of traffic this late at night, so it didn’t seem to matter.  The officer spoke through the open window.  “Everything okay?”

“All good,” Clementine said.

“This guy’s not giving you trouble?”

“Him?” Clementine looked surprised, turning to Charles.

“He’s very grouchy,” Daniel said.  “When you really dwell on the matter, isn’t a sour disposition a kind of assault as bad as any scar?  We have such limited time on the earth, and spoiling that limited time is really a grave, terrible thing, isn’t it?”

“Are you on something?”

“I find myself wishing I were,” Daniel said.  “Alas.”

“Uh huh.”

“He’s- um, he’s got a mental health issue,” Clementine said.

“I do.  I was mistreated as a child, you see.  I would call it a lifelong heartsickess, stemming from that.”

“Uh huh,” the officer said, unimpressed, even as Daniel affected a pose, head lolling back, back of the hand on his forehead.

“You girls?” the officer raised his voice, making it a question.  His attention was on Lucy.  “It’s late for you to be out.”

“Yes sir,” Lucy said.

“Why?”

“Are we in trouble, sir?  I’m not trying to be rude, just wondering,” Lucy said.

“It depends on what you’re up to.  Three kids out in the middle of the night, with people they don’t seem to be related to?”

“I’m not sure what you want me to say, sir.”

“Are you playing games with me?”

“No sir.”

“We’re with adults, isn’t that all that matters?” Avery asked.

Verona looked back at the absent face, mouthed a swear word, then jogged over.

“You’re with adults.  One with mental issues, and another is…”

The cop trailed off, but he was looking at Charles.  He didn’t seem to have the words for why he didn’t think highly of Charles.

“We’re going to this summer school type thing, sir,” Verona said, faking a bright expression.  “We still have the rest of the trip ahead of us, and it’s a long way away.  Hopefully we get there soon.  This is Clementine, and she was giving us a bit of a ride, then going home with people from her neighborhood.”

Clementine raised a hand as she was identified.

“The person from the neighborhood would be me,” Daniel said

“Your parents know about this?” the officer asked them.

“They gave us the go-ahead to go and gave us a bit of money,” Avery said.

Lucy was getting a bit more tense.  As hard as it was for Verona to figure out how Lucy was doing, she could see that plain and clear.  The cop probably could too.

“ID?” he asked Clementine.

She got it, showing him.

“Clementine.  Manitoba?”

“Yeah.”

“Vision problem noted on your license.  It’s too late to drive with rowdy kids, this guy-”

He indicated Daniel, who was humming loudly, still leaning back against the hood of the truck.

“-who might be rowdy on his own.”

“Oh, I am.  But I can sit quiet when I must,” Daniel said.

The officer looked at Charles, and again, couldn’t seem to articulate his reservations.

“-Kids, strange company, and at night, with a vision problem.  For a long trip?”

“Yes sir.  I’m cleared for night driving but it isn’t fun.  We’ll probably stop at a hotel or motel.”

“There’s two places in town, north end.”  The officer stuck an arm out the window to point.  Verona’s heart sank.  “And a couple more about an hour west.”

“Hour west it is,” she said.

Okay, good.  They didn’t have to worry about these guys staying in town for any longer.

“Drive safe,” he told her.

“Will do, sir,” Clementine said.

They stepped off the road, and he carried on his way.  Verona watched the cop car disappear.

Verona looked over.  John was inside the car, casually leaning out the window Sharon had been at a moment ago.  His arm was around Sharon’s head and mouth.

The officer hadn’t heard the screaming, and she hadn’t been able to scream with John holding her.

“In the future,” Lucy said, to Verona and Avery.  “Maybe don’t volunteer information to the police that you don’t have to?  I know you’re good at-”

Lucy glanced at Clementine.

“Yeah,” Verona said.  “Wording?”

“You’re good at wording, sure, but that could have gone sideways if he was an asshole, or if he was a little more curious.”

“Yeah, but what you were doing wasn’t working.”

“Maybe, maybe not.  But my concern is less about the moment and more about the long-term.  I’m okay with him not being happy with us if it means we’re not giving him ammo to use later.  I’m basing this on stuff that happened to Booker.  Stuff my mom’s said.  Be polite, no sudden moves, don’t volunteer anything, call mom to get a lawyer if they arrest you.”

“We handled it okay, I think?” Avery said.

“This time, sure, but what if he wanted to call our parents and verify what we were up to?  And told them where we were?  They think we’re at camp, and those bindings have taken a beating.”

Verona nodded.  Off to her side, Avery was nodding too.

“I’m not meaning to eavesdrop,” Clementine said.  “But I had my own bad experience.  I made friends with two kids who weren’t… I don’t think they were human.  One very pretty, one ugly, with false faces.  I made some mistakes, but with the way things went, I got in a lot of trouble.  You can do everything right and still get the short end of the stick.”

“Yes,” Lucy said.  She seemed to relax a bit, as Clementine said that.

It was like Lucy was tensed up all the time, and Verona could help with that, in a friend way or a being reliable way, but it only ever really helped a little bit.  Having someone agree with her and tell her she wasn’t crazy was like… part of that tension was wondering if she should be tense or if she was overreacting.

Clementine went on, “And you can do everything right and still get punished.  I don’t know how much you know about me, but it happens to me.  I would love more answers.  But what I do know is you can’t make mistakes.  They’ll use that.”

“Broken systems and bad people will,” Lucy said, her eyes downcast.  She looked up at Verona, and there was something in her eyes.  “Can we talk?”

“Just you and me, or…?”

“Avery too.  This is personal but I don’t want you to feel left out.”

“If it’s personal-”

“Come,” Lucy said.  “Back me up.  Tell me I’m not crazy.”

Avery nodded.

Avery without Snowdrop in tow was a weird thing.  But they’d needed to send Melissa home, and since Clementine needed to show them the way to the car, they’d called Louise.  Snowdrop and Louise were dropping off Melissa, and Louise’s voice was hopefully an easier to digest one compared to a non-local and Charles.

It was just the three of them.  Charles was periodically making gravelly noises at Daniel, talking to Clementine, and looking like he’d rather be somewhere else.  John guarded Sharon.

“Couldn’t say it with Clementine close, but a spiritual type thing in the Drains had some things to say about the car crash,” Verona reported.

“Not what I wanted to talk about,” Lucy said.  “But?  Useful?”

“Two locals and one out of towner, pretty much confirmed not practitioner or Other, arrived on the scene after the near-accident.  The driver ran for it, uninjured, for reasons unknown.  The three teenage boys left.”

“Do we try to chase?” Avery asked.  “Is there any point?”

“It’s… it’s valuable,” Lucy said.  “We should maybe head down that way.  But the cleanup for this whole thing, and chasing this down… we’ll be tight on time.”

“We have the watch,” Avery said.  “That helps.”

“It’s still a lot,” Lucy said.  “And I’m making it worse by asking, but while we were waiting for Matthew and Edith, Ronnie.  You talked about being a cat.  And then Daniel said stuff… and it got me thinking again.”

“Oh,” Verona said.  She opened her mouth to say something, then stopped.

This was pretty close to that territory of what she’d been thinking about earlier, where the wrong thing could make her break down in a stupid way she really didn’t want to.

“I’m a little out of the loop here,” Avery said.

“I thought it was a joke, or random Verona ramblings.  Something like how she could be a cat full time, be a familiar, and hang out with you and me indefinitely,” Lucy said.

Please don’t tip off Lucy that I talked to you first.  It would hurt her more than anything, Verona thought.  She wanted to jump in, say something, or even ask for a… what was it called, when someone postponed- stay of execution.  Putting this off until she could deal with it.

But she ended up clearing her throat, trying to find her voice, failing to, and looked back at Kennet, her Sight on so she could see the town’s pulsing heartbeat.

“Can you explain what you’re thinking, Lucy?” Avery asked.

“Were you serious, Verona?” Lucy asked.

Verona took in a deep breath, then exhaled an iffy “Uhhm,” before pressing her lips together and sighing.

The idea of the nightmare sat heavy in her mind’s eye.  The divide that had happened there.  Was this what pushed Lucy away?

Avery touched her upper arm, rubbing it.  Her hand and Verona’s arm were both cooler than warm.

“Is that the plan, Ronnie?” Lucy asked.  “Escape?  Giving up your life as a human?”

“A,” Verona responded, not making eye contact.  She had to try for what felt like two seconds so she could get out more words without getting emotional.  “A plan.  Just in case.”

“What are the other plans?” Lucy asked.

“I don’t-” Verona started.  She shook her head.

“Maybe we can talk this out later?  Or put it to paper, if talking’s hard?” Avery asked, very quiet.

“Please,” Verona said.  She took in a deep breath.  Still calm.  Still collected.  “Can we deal with the monsters invading our home town, first?  And the missing meat of giant red wolf spirit-judge thing?  And getting back to school?”

“We can try,” Avery said.

“You keep not telling me what’s going on.” Lucy sounded hurt, which hurt Verona.

“If I tell you everything, how do I stop from becoming my dad?” Verona asked.  “Whining all the time, and being nothing but vulnerable, or nothing but a sad sack.”

“I don’t think you would go that far,” Lucy said.

“But what if I did or what if it did happen?  What- it’s… it might be what scares me more than anything.  That I open up and then I can’t close up again and I become my dad.  Or I close up and I become just what he always accuses my mom of being, this distant, awful person.  I can’t win, so why play?  Why- what am I supposed to do?” Verona asked, doing her best to control her voice.

“I don’t think being a cat would solve it,” Lucy said.  “I’m sorry.  It’d have its own problems.”

“But I’d choose it!  I’d be living on my own terms.  It sucks, it sucks so much, because everything I do or don’t do feels like I’m- do you get what I mean?”

“I’m trying to,” Lucy said.

“Every day, you know that, right?  It’s every day even when I try to go away to school, it somehow brings me back and every decision I make is influenced by it.”

“Careful,” Lucy said.

“It is!” Verona raised her voice.  Off to the side, the Aware, Charles, and John looked her way.  She looked away, turning her back to them.  “It is.”

“Maybe, I don’t want to say you’re lying, but just be careful.  Moments like this are when it’s easy to slip up.  Like Charles getting angry at Alexander.”

“Take five seconds?” Avery asked.

Verona did.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

She took another five.  The others didn’t interrupt, except to give each other worried looks.

“It’s my family.  It’s what I go home to when I go home.  It’s deciding the meals I’m eating and when I’m going to sleep, or if I’m staying up late unable to sleep, and it’s when I spend time with you and how much I want to get into the practice and out of all that, back home.  It literally becomes a part of me and it’s not a part of me I like and I don’t want to become that.  I want that out of my life and out of me.”

“How-” Lucy started.  She made eye contact with Avery.  “How much worse have things gotten since I stopped coming over?”

“It’s mostly the same,” Verona answered.  “But it’s const- it’s the repetition of it.  It’s grinding me down and even the good things are getting less good because it’s- how do I enjoy something if in the back of my mind I’m like, uh, but there’s that?”

“I do kind of get it,” Lucy said.  “I’m- I’m really lucky I have the ability to go home.  I can breathe at the end of the day.  And for you it’s almost the opposite.”

Verona nodded.

“At the risk of butting in,” Avery ventured, clearly holding off on the next part of what she was saying.

“No, no, no no,” Verona said.  “Please butt.  All the butt.”

Lucy made a small sniffing sound, and it was close enough to a laugh that it made Verona react.  It took a second or two, each of them contributing or realizing why the others were amused.

They laughed, and it was a tired, exhausted, loopy sort of laugh, Verona’s hand at Avery’s shoulder, fingernails in her sleeve, leaning on Lucy too for balance, until Lucy hugged her and the movement of Lucy’s chest as Lucy laughed helped set off Verona’s own.

Lucy must have pulled Avery into the hug, because Avery didn’t join the hug so much as she crashed into it, her ribs bumping into Verona and Lucy’s sides.

Foreheads touching, arms around one another in an uncomfortable way, Lucy’s one arm squeezing Verona’s ribs so much it hurt, someone’s fingernails between her shoulder blades, the giggles and laughs tapered off.

“I experienced that.  That emotional grind, the worry it would consume me,” Avery murmured.  “Feeling suffocated at home.”

Verona nodded.  Probably messing up her bangs as they rubbed against the others’ heads.  But whatever.

“I got out and I’ll probably keep a space in my heart forever for Ms. Hardy for helping me out of that awful dynamic.  I can’t even imagine being stuck in it for…”

“Too long,” Verona finished the sentence.

“What do we do?” Lucy asked.

“We need to find the bundle of meat and fur, and do something about the perimeter, and maybe help deal with some Others, we’ll have to talk to Matthew and Edith about that,” Verona said.  “Then school, hopefully, in… not that many hours.  Seven?  Eight?”

“I think Lucy meant about your situation,” Avery said.

“I did.”

“Let me pretend,” Verona said.  “Let me pretend you’re entertaining it.  Let me just imagine that hey, maybe, just maybe, if I run out of patience we can sit down and you won’t get mad at me.  And I can be a cat.  Or we can make a demesne and I can run away and stay in it.  Or I can become some Other that isn’t too awful to be.”

“Lucy?” Avery asked.

“Talk to me before you do anything in that department?  Because I want to do high school with you two.  I want to take on adult life with you two.  I know you talk a lot about not having any adults to look to who are doing great, but I- I look at my mom and Aunt Heather, or my mom and her friends, or people around them.  And that’s cool.  I can see that.  Except it’s us, and with magic on the side.”

“Magic smack dab in the middle, please,” Verona said.

“…We’ll try to figure something out.”

“Is pretending enough?” Avery asked.  “Because I got pretty crazy into some fantasizing and building up narratives in my head, during my lonely patch.  I don’t think it made things that much better.”

“I don’t know,” Verona said.  “I have five more years, right?  I don’t get any real choice in that.  Which- which is crazy because we have all these powers and all this freedom to run off to school with connection breaker diagrams and stuff, but I’ve still got to be eighteen before I can go off on my own, right?”

“There’s emancipation,” Avery said.  “I think you can be sixteen?”

“Harder than it sounds.  Gotta prove a steady stream of income and crap,” Verona said.  “Maybe.  I’m just so worried that a few more years will pass and I’ll be so ground down or so tired that- that it becomes easier to stay like that.  And then what?  I’m twenty?  Twenty-five?  Stuck in that.”

Her voice cracked a bit on that last word.

Which- which sucked, because she’d held it together up until now.

“I won’t let you,” Lucy said.  “Provisional on Avery’s a-okay…”

“Wait, wait, what are you doing?” Verona broke the hug.  “Stop.  I have to okay it too.”

“Provisional on Avery saying it’s okay,” Lucy spoke more seriously, meeting Verona’s eyes, her Sight active so the whites of her eyes were red.  Her hair took on a pink tint.  “I will swear to step in before you end up like that.”

“What if I turn out to be the worst person?” Verona asked.  “A miniature version of my dad?  Or an addict?  Or- what if a cursed item or possessing Other turns me evil?”

“I’m okay with this,” Avery told Lucy.  “If you’ll let me swear the same.”

Lucy nodded.

“Go for it,” Avery said.

“I swear,” Lucy said, her eyes fixed on Verona’s.  “I will get you out of there if you get too old.  I will fight to get you out of there if it looks like it’s too much.  I will get a place for you to stay, abduct you, or do whatever else, if it gets you clear.”

“I don’t want to drag you down with me.”

“Too bad,” Avery said.  She smiled.  “What she said?  I’m butting in, with, quote, all the butts.  Lucy’ll have help when it comes down to it, as long as I’ve got two legs and a working brain.”

The gold leaf letters glimmered all over Avery’s skin and around her eyes, accenting the misty look with the stark black pupils and the irises that had everything that wasn’t that steely blue now a deep black that branched out a bit past the usual bounds.

Verona drew in a deep breath, looking up at the sky.  The stars were so clear at this time of night.  She nodded.

“Just promise me, no big changes without asking,” Lucy said.

“I won’t try anything huge and permanent without asking you guys,” Verona said.

A moment passed, where they were breathing a bit harder than necessary, as if they’d been holding breath, or putting double the breath into words that weren’t any louder as a result, just… heavier.  Denser.

A moment where they took it in.  Verona absorbed the deals, promises, and filed them away mentally, thinking about ways it could go wrong and everything she might do to avert it.  Most of the ways were things that would probably destroy them.  Like something happening to Lucy, or Verona being taken somewhere out of reach, somehow.

Inside her chest and her head, it felt like a whole bunch of stuff was stored in boxes, and now those boxes were just a bit bigger.  Stuff needed to be moved around and she in no way had the capacity to do that moving or think about it, so it just felt… bigger.  Like she could breathe a bit more, even if she felt apprehensive about having to sort through all of this.

It wasn’t an ambient, soul-grinding dread, now.  It was something she still didn’t want to face… a long, long tunnel, with freedom at the end.  An escape hatch if she really needed it, one that Lucy accepted.

She didn’t want to cry.  She didn’t want to be a crybaby.  She didn’t want to be a loser.

She had to control the next deep breath and exhalation, to keep from tipping over that line.

Okay.

“Want to try seeing what we can do here?” Avery asked.  She extended a hand back in the direction of the others.

Verona smiled.

“You don’t get away with this, you know.  There are consequences.  Legal ones.  For you too, Clem!  I thought we were friends!”

“This is going to be a long drive,” Clementine said.

“Hold up a bit?” Lucy asked.  “In case we need something?”

Clementine obliged.  She bent down, a finger extended.

She had a hair that was resting on her finger, or two hairs spliced together.  According to her, each of the two ends of the hair pulled toward the Faerie.  One to Guilherme, one to Maricica.

They’d checked, putting bits of glamour close.  The hairs were drawn to it.

Clementine approached the crashed car.  It was a sedan, and that was about where her interest and knowledge about cars ended.

Fifteen minutes west from Kennet, it had driven off into a ditch.  There was a note on the windshield asking the owners to call some number for what might have been a tow company.

They tried the doors.

“It’s strange,” Clementine said.  “I haven’t had many instances where I could really get into the history of a thing.”

“This is not the time to talk about antique collecting,” Sharon said.  “They assaulted and kidnapped me.  They’re clearly out of their minds.  Why are we playing along?”

“Can you get her to be quiet?” Avery asked.

John adjusted his stance and his grip on the rifle.

Sharon shut up.

Avery, Verona, and Lucy moved around to the back of the car.  Verona pulled the Ratfink Key out of her pocket, then slid it into the lock of the trunk.

The trunk popped open.  It wouldn’t close again without a bungee cord to hold it that way, or a change-out of the lock.  That was the drawback of the Ratfink Key.

The interior was dark, and Sharon was too close for Verona to use her Sight.  She used the flashlight function on her smartphone, instead.

Blood.  Verona reached in and she felt clumps of coarse hair rolling and dragging in the blood as she ran her fingers over it.  She picked it up and held it out.

The blood was still fresh, but it looked like it didn’t clot or it clotted in the order of months, not seconds.  The hair was the same color as the blood, which made it hard to tell where one ended and the other began.

“This was the car the teenagers were driving?” Avery asked.

“Yes,” Daniel said.  “I remember seeing it and thinking the color matched a dress one of my audience members wore, once.  It matched her eyes and hair, to great effect.”

“It’s magenta,” Verona said.

“She was very extra, even for her kind.”

“So,” Lucy murmured.  “Seems like, around the same time we’re coming into town using the Ruins, they decide to move the Carmine Beast’s remains.”

“Yes,” Verona confirmed.

“This person or people then carry it from the Ruins to the bridge, where things enter back into our world.  They pack it up into a car.  A lone driver goes to take it somewhere else, possibly aiming to take it out of town.”

“They were on a straight course to leave town,” Avery said.

“There’s a near accident with Clementine.  It’s standard Gilded Lily stuff,” Lucy noted.  “The driver can’t stick around because… either concerns about Sharon, likely, or something about Daniel or Clementine.”

“Daniel may trip up one of the Faerie,” Avery said.  “I can’t imagine them running though.  Or driving a car.  Clementine… maybe Alpy wouldn’t want to get involved because she hates getting involved?”

Verona shook her head.  “The way she acted around Matthew’s truck and nearly scared him into crashing, I don’t think she could even get a car moving, let alone drive it.”

“Could it be acting?” Lucy asked.

“Pretty sure it’s not.”

“This was a risky move to make,” Avery noted, her arms folded.  It was chilly out, and they’d pulled on jackets.  Dead of night.  “Moving the stuff now.  They had to be worried we’d find it.”

“Maybe the plan was to move it before we got back, and when we declared we were on our way, their hand was forced?  Maybe they couldn’t risk that we’d learned a new, simple trick and now we had the ability to find it?” Verona suggested.

“This is a lot of maybes and supposition,” Lucy said.

“But it’s- it’s good to think of the roads they might have taken,” Avery said.

Lucy nodded.  “For whatever reason, they decide to move it.  They have to leave it.  Clem’s dynamic helps.  Maybe Sharon’s.”

“If it was Matthew and-or Edith, then being near Sharon would be dangerous.  Losing the spirit or losing the bindings that keep the Doom contained,” Verona noted.

“Teenagers take the furs.  Probably figure it’s worth money, or they want to ask someone, and so they load it into their trunk, on top of newspapers and plastic bags, looks like, and drive off.  They don’t make it far.”

“Once they’re far enough from Sharon, maybe, the driver can come for them?”

“Clem?” Lucy asked.

“What?”

“When Daniel and my friend who wears the deer mask seemed to disappear, was the car you nearly hit still there?”

“It was gone.”

“So it might have driven after these guys,” Lucy said.

“Who disappeared,” Avery murmured.  “No connections, so I don’t think there’s any bodies in the woods that are close by… eesh.  I get shivers just saying that.”

Verona walked around the magenta sedan.  “No car damage, but they get scared off the road.  They disappear, and this meat…”

“Stains are heavy and streaked.  Same kind of streak as there was before,” Lucy noted.  “I think the same people who went after the Beast moved the meat, then chased these guys and took the meat back.”

“It’s too clean,” Avery said.

“What do you mean?” Lucy asked.

“There’s this area around the car without handprints.  Do you guys see anything?”

Avery indicated.

They walked around.  Searching.

There was an area around the car where the Sight didn’t offer anything.  They had to get Clementine to drive Sharon’s car further away to check the one end, because Sharon was watching it.

“They covered their tracks,” Verona said, bending down.  She touched the road.  Nothing obvious.  Just grit.  She tasted it.

“Eww, Verona.”

“Salt, but I don’t know if that’s salt from the de-icing last winter or something they did.”

She checked the ground further away.

“Not as salty in this spot.”

“So they threw down salt?” Lucy asked.

“They know enough about the practice to do that,” Verona mused.  “I wonder if salt helps keep echoes from springing up, off the three boys.”

“Eesh,” Avery muttered.

“The way they did this narrows some things down,” Lucy said.  “Probably not a culprit who can drive.  Hey, Clem?”

Clem walked closer.

“Still have that hair?  The one the man in the cave gave you?”

Clementine held out her finger.  The hair stuck to her fingernail, strands blowing in the wind, pointing toward Avery and Lucy.

Lucy backed up, pulling on Avery’s shoulder.

After they got about five paces away, the strands shifted direction, pointing back toward Kennet.

“This is how I knew to go north, to where you were,” Clementine said.

“Can you move over to the trunk?”

Clementine did, then stopped.  “Oh, wow, that’s- that’s a lot of blood.”

“Can you put your finger close to it?”

Clementine did.  Verona shone the flashlight for a better view, being careful not to get too close, out of concern it might burn away the glamour.

“Nothing,” Clementine said.  The strands were blowing in a way that still pointed at Kennet, which meant they laid pretty much flat against her arm.  She moved this way and that, and they remained consistent, up until Avery walked closer.

“I figured if they were the cuprits,” Lucy mused, “maybe there’d be fingerprints or dust or something we could track.  But it didn’t fit them anyway.  Driving, handling meat.”

“That could be what they want us to think,” Verona pointed out.

“Good.  Good thinking.  Yes.  But it’s still a weird fit.”

Verona nodded.

“Thank you, Clementine,” Avery said.

Clementine nodded, frowning.

“We must be going, dear Clementine,” Daniel proclaimed.  “Sharon will blow a fuse and that is a very macabre thing when it’s a human.  People leak everywhere.”

Clementine gave him a smile.  “Get situated?”

Daniel did, climbing into the car.  He began to sing.  Sharon had rolled down the window to shout at them earlier and to scream to the police, but John had fixed the doors and the way her wrists were bound to the middle seatbelt to keep her from doing so.  Even with all the doors and windows shut, and the car parked a good distance away, Daniel’s singing and Sharon’s voice were both audible.  The louder she got, the louder he got.

“I don’t know if I can see him the same way again,” Clementine said.  “It’s like a crazy nightmare.”

“Daniel?” Avery asked.

“He’s always had his head in the clouds, but I never thought those clouds were so dark.  Or… I’ve seen things like he described.  It’s how we connected at first.  But I didn’t think it would be so tangible.”

“I’m sorry,” Verona said.  “That sucks.”

“I want to find a way forward that doesn’t mean I lose people.  I had what may be a once-in-a-lifetime sort of moment, meeting someone very special, and if I take too long, I may not be able to reconnect with them again.”

“I’m pretty sure Bristow isn’t the way to that person,” Lucy said.

Sharon screamed, shrill.

Daniel sang, a tremulous high note.

“I’d better go keep Sharon from blowing a messy fuse,” Clementine said.

“Give me… five minutes?” Verona asked.

“What’s one more?”

Verona hurried back to the truck.

She sorted out the stuff she’d left there, and that included Sharon’s phone and laptop.

“Luce!?” she called out.

“Shush!  Names!”

“I’m pretty sure Sharon can’t hear.”

“What do you need?”

“Centipede card.”

Lucy pulled out her wallet, found the card they’d gotten from Zed back when they’d confiscated things, and handed it over.

There were no disc drives or slots big enough for the card, so she ran it through the seam along the side of the lower section.  The screen fritzed, and she did it again.

Everything glitched up, with scrambled characters and spots of color across the thing.  Tapping the touchpad got her past the password.  Into the desktop.

Clicking through, she found the online stream as the homepage.  She had to fiddle to find the right video file.  She deleted the footage from earlier in the night.

Video file, open as notepad.  Taking out her quill, she dragged it across the screen and moved some characters around, saved, then tried to open it.

Error.

She did that with everything she could find from the last twenty-four hours.

The centipede offered everything up.  It was a little arcane in how it presented that everything, but that was fine.

Map program.  Kennet was saved as a location.  She swapped its name with an island just inside the lake.  She checked that a few times, and every time she re-searched Kennet using the program, it took her to the same location.  She did the same thing for the browser, and a few other common map programs.

Avery pulled out her phone, frowning.

“What?” Verona asked.

“Checking it didn’t do that on everything on the internet.  Doesn’t look like it.”

“Good,” Verona said.  “I guess if she borrows someone’s phone, she can find us.  Otherwise… this’ll slow her down.”

“It’s been five minutes,” Lucy noted.

“I made it a question, not a statement, right?” Verona asked.

“Yeah.”

“It’s possible all this gets undone when she gets her hands on it,” Avery said.

“I think if she can accept it as normal, she can’t push back against it.”

“Don’t overdo it then,” Lucy said.  “Don’t get too weird.”

“She’s the type who’ll come back, you know.  She’s dangerous.  She was picking on Mr. Lai, getting cops to go bother him, and he’s a good teacher.”

“I’m not saying no,” Lucy said.  “But whatever we’re doing here, do it right, keep it simple and effective.”

“I vote for dropping the laptop into deep water,” Avery said.  “That’s both simple and effective.”

“She’d push back against that.  But if we send her to the wrong place, and give her enough misdirection and distractions… maybe?”

Verona found the other streaming site, and scrolled through the two hundred videos that had been posted.

“Ew,” Avery said.

“Ronnie,” Lucy said.

Verona looked over at her friend.

“I hate to say this.  I really, really, really hate to say this.  But she invaded our home, hurt people we -I- swore to protect.  I think we’re clear to misdirect her and delete the stuff about Kennet.  She pointed a gun at you and you and John knocked her out.  Cool.  But if you do something here, to her livelihood, as awful as that livelihood is?  That’s probably a karmic hit.  It might mean stuff doesn’t go our way for a while, maybe a good while.  It hurts us as much as it hurts her.”

Verona was silent, clicking through a bit.  She found the social media.  Comments left on other people’s videos.  Messages sent in private.

“Ew,” Avery said.

Verona stepped away, stretching.

“Almost done?” Clementine asked.

“Think so,” Verona asked.

Lucy took over, scrolling.  Her expression darkened a bit with every passing moment.

“She’s hurt enough people,” Avery said.

“Yeah,” Lucy said.

She clicked through the three pages of warnings and information.  Deleted.

The ghost hunting site was on fire with the heated discussion of the ‘hoax’ and, Verona saw, a lot of speculation about who she was.  A lot of that was working to figure out who she was, looking at class rolls for her school.

That was, uh, spooky.  Even with the mask on…

Lucy interrupted the ongoing conversation, deleting that archive too.

“Quill?”

Verona handed it over.

Lucy transposed characters in the password, then closed the laptop up.  They gathered everything, then handed it over.

They kept the rifle.  Or John did.

“Any anger on her part should be directed at Bristow,” Verona said.  “I don’t know how he’ll handle it.  He’ll probably have a way, from the way our phone conversation went.”

Clementine nodded.

“Good luck finding what you’re looking for.”

Clementine looked over at Charles, who was having a smoke.  He turned to look back.

“The way out isn’t to get in deeper,” Charles growled.

“Then how?”

He shrugged.  “It started off not as bad, didn’t it?”

Clementine nodded.

“You had a lot of friends then?  Big family?”

“Decent sized family.  A neighbor I got along with.  But the stuff… the items took it all.”

“And as they went away, the issue got worse?”

“I can’t bring them back.  I don’t think so, anyway.”

“Find some more.  Build a new family.”

“A found family,” Avery said.

Clementine sighed.

“And get away from Lawrence.  I knew him a long time ago.”  Charles managed to both growl his words and make an expression like someone had just put a daub of dog crap on the tip of his nose, and he couldn’t do anything but move his face.

“It feels like you’re all connected.”

“Not commenting on that.  But I knew the man back before the mustache and tweed.  Before he collected people.  He was always an asshole who thought clever and pretty words hid the repulsive parts.  Always bullish, always ambitious.  Because he wants to collect titles.  Landlord, professor, lawyer, other ones.”

“I’ll figure something out,” Clementine said.

“Nothing would be better for you than walking away.  Nothing would hurt his ambitions more than losing you, and anyone else who might leave after you go.  Fight every instinct you have,” Charles said.  “I’m too beaten and battered to have much goodwill to spare for others… but I told these three girls to walk away from this.  I’m telling you the same.  You, walk away from that man.  That’s coming from the best parts of me, and I know there’s no use to it.”

“I’ll figure something out,” Clementine said, repeating herself, but in a very different, more thoughtful tone.

She shut the door and started up the car.

The three of them watched as she drove off.

“Does being forsworn mean people don’t listen to you?  That stuff goes wrong?” Avery asked.

“Can,” Charles said, watching the carload of people go.

“Does you arguing for something possibly make it less likely they do that something?”

“The deal for me in Kennet is they protect me from most of it.  That includes the strife, doom, whatever else that might flock to me to twist what I try.”

“The protections are pretty weak right now,” Verona observed.

“You’re not wrong.  I think we’re fine.”

“Clem’s a tough cookie,” Avery said.  “That’s a long car ride with those two.  Talk about being ground down.”

John, largely quiet up to this point, opened the driver’s door of the truck.

“Want to go?” Lucy asked.

“The perimeter is down.  Dangerous Others are inside Kennet.  There’s work to do.”

They climbed into the back.  Charles took the passenger seat.

It was Avery who pulled open the window at the back.  “Charles?”

“Yes?”

“You knew the faculty of the Blue Heron?”

“I wasn’t part of their inner circle, but I worked with most now and then.  I did custom work for custom jobs.”

“Any association with the actual Blue Heron?  The god they bound for their big power boost at the start of things?”

“No.  No, they protected that well, early on.  I really was your practitioner equivalent of a… let’s call me an animal trainer.  If they needed a monkey to crawl through the vents and pick a lock or a dog to work alongside a specific person, I could do that.  I made Others.”

Like you maybe made the Hungry Choir?

Or someone else used your tools to make it?

Charles went on, “I preferred being on my own.  They were known names in their field.  I was labor.  A niche specialist.  Then Alexander seemed to decide it would be less work if he could forswear me and take everything I had, to do that work himself.”

“What were they like, then?”

“Durocher was… she wasn’t anything exceedingly remarkable in the looks department, but she was so driven and excited by what she did that I think they all took turns falling in love with her.  I did, even.  But being beside her means having your feet held to the fire.  The fire in this case is monsters most practitioners won’t get within miles of.  She’s teaching?”

“Yeah.  I want to take a class with her,” Verona said.

“So would I,” Charles said.

They couldn’t see his face, but Verona could hear his voice, and it was warm.  Harkening back to older times.

“There was Raymond.  He was bright, goofy, cheerful.  Hard exterior to penetrate on your first few meetings, have to learn how he ticks and work with it.  But the brightness in him… the silence from him that followed my being forsworn stung.  Durocher works big, but Raymond thinks big, and he does it so casually.”

“He’s teaching too,” Avery volunteered.

“I figured.  He’s well?”

“He’s not so bright, colors-wise, not anymore,” Lucy said.  “Bit of a dick.  Not so goofy, not so cheerful.”

“I can’t imagine that.”

“He passed some of that brightness onto his apprentice, maybe,” Avery said.  “Zed.”

“I heard about him.  Hmm.  I wonder how much of that is his being in Alexander’s orbit.”

“His son died,” Lucy said.

“Ah,” Charles said, from the front seat.  There was a long pause.  “That would do it.”

“Tell us about Alexander?” Avery asked.

“Alexander was a scoundrel.  The kind you keep in your friend group but have to warn newcomers about, because he could be so biting, he’d seize on a subject or puzzle and wouldn’t let it go.  If he couldn’t unravel something, it’d eat at him.  It made him a great private investigator and crook at the same time.  He liked the ladies but didn’t have the patience or time to date, so he’d leave a trail of broken or bitter hearts in his wake.  Durocher was the only one who kept talking to him after their fling, but she was intense enough she left her own trail of upset partners behind her.  More intimidated than bitter, mind.”

“Seems like you kept the company of a lot of people who were jerks or hard to get along with,” Verona said.  “Sounds exhausting.”

“It wasn’t,” Charles said, his voice rough.  He sighed.  “That was the problem, I suppose, looking back, that it was so easy to work with them and match their pace.  It should have been harder.  It should have been harder to accept their troubling personalities, it should have been hard because I was spending so much time being careful and watching my back.”

There was something in his tone.  Defeat maybe.  They didn’t pry or ask more questions.

Too much more to do.

The watch ticked audibly, sitting within a partial circle drawn with chalk powder on dirt.

They’d tested, they’d checked, and they’d deciphered some of the individual facets of the watch.  The one to three o’clock positions and the eleven o’clock through midnight positions were slivers of space that it cast out, where things were more efficient.  Standing on the outside, looking in, the people within were fast.  The environment made it hard to watch for any prolonged period of time, so they helped the environment, in hopes of assisting the watch.

It gave them a good field within which they could work and do more.

Charles had showed them how to make some charms.  They made the trinkets and charms until their hands got sore, and then they ducked away, doing a quick loop of the northern end of forest above Kennet.

Others were covering other avenues of approach, or roving through the city to find the problems.

“No, no, no, no, please!” a skinny man screamed.  “No!  I’ve never hurt anyone!  I didn’t ask to be this!”

Edith advanced on him, unfolding into her spirit form, which slowed how fast she could walk, as her human body flopped forward, hands touching ground, while that feminine, wax-coated body and the candle it held rose high, stretching.

“I’ll obey your rules, I’ll bow to your leadership, I’ll do whatever you say!”

The spirit touched him.

His chest melted like wax.  A heart, burning, was mounted within.

She took it.

“Please, please, please.  I need that.”

“Edith?” Verona asked.  It was her asking because Lucy and Avery were busy weaving strips of bark into lashes to keep twigs stuck to rocks in specific patterns.  “Can you explain him to me?”

“Look at him with the Sight,” the Girl by Candlelight ordered.

Verona was already using the Sight, but she looked closer.

He was marked, the number ‘3135’ etched onto his back.  Something black and twisted pulsed behind that etching.

“There are Others who allow their nature to be corrupted, for strength, sustenance, tools they need to survive in this world,” the Girl by Candlelight intoned.  “They bend to powers that are better left sealed away, because they are bad for Other and mankind alike.  John has had to gun down some of this one’s ilk.  They would like to dwell here in Kennet, safe, free to have children with human women and mark them with the same corruption, as they have been told to do.  Then, on the day there are seven thousand, nine hundred-”

“-And nineteen,” the man finished.  “It’s not likely to happen.  It won’t be the case.  That’s the gamble, isn’t it?  I’m a harmless creature.  I’m like a man, but I swim well, I breathe underwater.  It’s hard, being this weak, when the draconian rules meant to restrain the biggest and most violent Others also apply to something like me.  I had to, I had to gamble.”

“What happens?” Verona asked.  “When there are seven thousand nine hundred and nineteen?”

“When there are enough of them, they all die in that moment, and that old, ugly power comes to earth and millions of mankind and millions of Other all perish.  As that parent Other slithers from this to its home in some dark world between two adjacent realms, it will cause things that your news will excuse as natural disasters or plague.”

“Geez.  Gotta kill your own buddies then huh?  Or be killed?” Verona asked.

“Forbidden,” the man said, shooting her an apologetic look.  “The mark gives us so much, but it binds us to do certain things.  To carry on our lines.  To abstain from harm or acting against her.  Abstain from taking our own lives.  Abstain from taking the lives of other marked.  Say a pledge daily.”

“They make themselves someone else’s problem,” Edith said.  “Benefits for themselves today, at a risk to the people tomorrow.”

“We estimate there are a mere four thousand and twelve of us now.  Only four thousand.  There’s no reason to panic or take measures just yet…”

“You should revise your estimate to four thousand and eleven,” Edith said.  She crushed the heart she held.

The man ignited, head to toe, in a smokeless flame.

He flailed, staggering, shrieking.

Verona backed away as he reached for her.  Edith, meanwhile, marched forward.  She tossed the wax heart, now unlit, onto a pile of other, very similar hearts.  Some goblin, some strong echoes.

Edith didn’t make it twenty paces into the forest before she touched a spirit that was floating through the trees.  It was a faint shape of a woman with a tangle of wood for a head, crowned in a mane of thorns, translucent and legless, and her touch ignited it.

The first man was still burning.  He collapsed, but crawled.

“Will you stay?” the Girl by Candlelight asked.

“I don’t know,” Verona told her, watching the man stop moving.

“If you go, know that we’ll do what we can here, to protect this town and our territory.  Matthew and I discussed it, and we think we may have to bring more Others in.  We’ll have to be very careful with who and what we select.”

“That swimmy dude that’s supposed to help kill millions is probably not great.”

The Girl by Candlelight’s head turned, tracking someone as they made a mad dash through the trees.

“So many, even without the earring,” Verona noted.

“Some lurked, waiting, hoping to ambush the one with the earring as they made their escape from this town.  Others smell the Carmine Beast’s blood.”

That Other in the trees was surrounded by a growing number of papers attached to the trees.

Papers ignited.  Sparks flew everywhere, but didn’t set fires.  There was only heat.

The heat radiating off the papered tree closest to Verona, about fifty paces away, was enough that she took a step back.

That Other kept going, with twenty or more trees within ten feet of him each radiating that heat.

He tipped over, collapsing.

“Faking,” the Girl by Candlelight said.

She snapped her fingers.

Fire erupted around him.  He rose to his feet in a flash, then started running again, but this time he was on fire.  A dog-faced man, lower jaw ajar, naked and covered in sores.

He seemed intent on toughing out the fire, or maybe charging in ahead enough he could dive into the river.  But the fire crawled all over him, apparently blinding him, and he bounced off of tree after tree, tripped over branches, and lost all momentum.  The fire eventually consumed him, and he burned like hot slag, not flesh, with impurities boiling to the surface by the second.

“Verona,” Lucy said.

Verona turned.

“It’s dawn.  You said you wanted to do this at the crack of dawn.  When he’d be awake.”

Verona looked around.

“Want backup?”

Verona shook her head.

“We’ll catch up with you in a bit, then.  Then we decide what we’re doing.”

She had only one transformation left, and she used it.  It made it easier not to think too hard.

His car was in the driveway.  There was a ding in the door, a bit of rust by the wheel well.

It felt more like a stranger’s house than her own.  She’d only been away for one overnight.

She let herself in without noise.  Shoes off, again without noise.

She climbed the stairs.  As she got toward the top of the stairs, she could look down the length of the hallway to her dad’s room.  The television was on, and it was five forty-five in the morning.

She silently made her way to the doorway, where she leaned half in, half out.

He was in bed, and he was awake, drinking from a plastic cup with a cap and a straw.  His expression twisted in pain as he drank.  His breaths, as she watched, were short and pained, one hand at the left side of his stomach, pressing in.

“Verona.”

She jumped a little.  He was looking at her.

“Jes- jesus,” he said.  He winced.  “When did you get in?”

“Are you okay?”

He shook his head.

He didn’t look okay.

“Are you getting the surgery?”

“No.  They’re saying it’s improving, I’m supposed to go in again today, to make sure it keeps going that way.”

“Oh.  How long until you’re better?”

“Up to eight weeks, depending on if they need to intervene.  I’m going to need help, Verona.  I know- I know this isn’t what you wanted for your summer.  I promise you, as awful as it is for you, and I do know it’s awful, it’s worse for me.”

He flinched all of a sudden, making a face.  “Agh.”

“What do you need?” she asked.

“Water.  I’m trying to keep a pitcher filled.  Um, I’ve got to wait another hour and twenty minutes before I can take the pain meds again.  I barely slept all night because of the cramps and vomiting.  When I get up to do that, I want you to change my sheets.  I’m sweating enough it’s probably soaked through to the mattress.  At the current rate, it’ll be once or twice a day.  So keep the laundry running.”

She didn’t respond, listening.

“I appreciate your coming home, Verona.  More than you will ever know.  I know it’s a sacrifice.  I’ll make it up to you somehow.”

“Mmm,” she made a sound.

“I’d like company on my trip to the doctor.  But company in general- what would you say about a marathon of movies?  You can pick one, I can pick one?  Or if you’re not helping me here, there’s stuff to do in the basement.  If you didn’t go too crazy you could use your artistic talents there.  Run what you’re doing by me, pick some colors and do some painting?  Finish the walls, tear up the old carpet?”

She pressed her lips together.

“Or not,” he said.  “You don’t have to.  It’s enough you’re here.”

“You’re on the mend?” she asked.

“No, Verona.  If I was, they wouldn’t be keeping as close an eye on me as they are.  It could go south and it could go south fast.  I’ve set up reminders about my temperature, because a fever could mean my intestines have ruptured.  But I can handle that.  If you could read the sheet, keep an eye on me, that would help.

She wished he’d given a different answer.  One that wasn’t so convincing.

“Stay within earshot?  You can take the cordless phone when you’re doing laundry.  Just in case?  This can be life threatening and I’m pretty scared.”

She’d come, she realized, primed to be angry.  Bitter.  Frustrated.  To lash out, then to storm away.  Back to the school.

She didn’t know how to handle this.

Eight weeks?  A whole summer?  Of having to be close, run errands?  Of changing sheets and whatever else?

Alpeana, she thought, as she leaned away from the door and walked to her room.  Step up your nightmares, because this has your one from last night beat.

“Verona!” he called out.  “I really do appreciate this.  Could you get me a ginger ale from the kitchen?  And open a second one to let it go flat?”

She went into her room, headed to her desk, and dug into her art supplies.

She didn’t have a compass big enough, so she used a ruler with an L-bend, pressed one tip to the floor, and dragged the other in a big circle.

With white paint, she traced the gouge.

With care, she drew the connection breaker diagram.  She elaborated with the ‘s’ curls instead of straight lines, as Eloise had suggested.

Then she adorned it with cursive script, to match that ‘s’ bend.

‘Imagine Verona was never here.  Think you dreamed she came whilst you were half asleep at the crack of dawn’.

She wanted to add to that, to give some pithy encouragement to think about why.  She worried it was too far out of bounds.

She didn’t know if this was right, but she felt like if he was that sick, he’d be in the hospital.  If there was that much real danger they wouldn’t have sent him home.

But, even as she thought that and used it to ease her conscience, she knew she could have said as much to his face.  She could have.  But there was the risk that if she had, he might have had a good answer as to why.

And then she would have had to stay.  Out of love.  Because family.

She left as quietly as she’d come.

[5.5 Spoilers] Kennet Newsletter

Back Away – 5.d

Interlude

Last Thursday: Kennet Newsletter


The little goblin dug deep, his long ragged fingernail scraping around the folds and corridors of his nasal cavity, which composed roughly half of the interior of his head.  He found what he wanted, in terms of consistency, double checked he had the right nostril, which he had snorted dirt into earlier, and excavated the desired mucus.

He smeared it on the base of a tree trunk, where it joined a dozen other strokes, smears, and gobbets.

“That,” Tatty Bo Jangles purred, “might be a masterpiece, snotty boo.”

Others in their crew made various noises.  Some turned their heads sideways as they looked at it.  One goblin grabbed Tatty, only for her to snarl and claw at him.

It was some of his best work.  A masterpiece?

Was Snotty Boo his name now?

He stared at it, thinking it over, then thrust both fists over his head.

“But it’s not!”

He, belatedly, turned to look at her, but she got a grip on the loose skin at the back of his head and shoved his face into the artwork and the rough bark behind it.  As he flailed, trying to find footing, she dragged his face up and down the wood.

He managed to kick her away, and grabbed the tree for support, his hand sticking there.  Snorting for breath through a nose that was better for air than his beak of a mouth, he tried to get his bearings.  The scraping had torn his lower eyelid, and his one eye could see a bit through the tear when he looked down.  His face and eyelid were stuck to the snot, and he was bleeding, badly.  The sound of goblins yelling insults and calling for more fighting made the disorientation worse.

“Wasting our time, you stupid-”

She kicked him, right in the butt.

“-nose-breathing, skinny-assed, stupid-”

Each insult came with a kick.  She aimed them at the lower body.  Legs, knee, hip.  Goblins jeered.

“You said stupid twice, stupid!” Wangarang jeered.

Tatty gave him one last kick, then snarled and went after Wangarang.

The kick dislodged him, tearing skin from tree.  He collapsed, huffing for breath, then climbed to his feet as two more goblins drew closer.  Willydew and Bumcake.

“What’s that?” Willy asked.  “Wipe yourself and forget a piece?”

The goblin looked down.  A scrap of paper was stuck to his leg, on purpose.

“Give it here.”

Both goblins were larger.  Willy was tall and thin with jowls that rolled down the sides of his neck, and Bumcake was chunky.  The little goblin backed away from both, nearly tripping in his haste to get away and keep his one leg out of their reach.

They came after him.  He scrambled back, turning to run, and Willy got him, twisting his arm.  Bumcake drove a knee into the small of his back, with enough force that his toes burned and felt cold at the same time, then grabbed his leg.

He flailed, winging his arm and kicking, without use, as they stretched him between them.  The hits he did land grazed.

Bumcake pulled the paper away from his leg.

He redoubled his efforts.

“Is this from that picture?” Bumcake asked.  “You kept it?  This isn’t one of the pieces that has any megadick on it, you brainless wad!  It’s white paper!”

Bumcake drove another knee into his side.  He writhed, fighting to kick the knee away next time, even though Bumcake was twice the size, and Willydew smacked him in the face, stunning him long enough that he couldn’t fend off Bumcake again.

For a few seconds, the two took turns.

In the midst of it, making weak attempts at reacting to the hits or twisting away from them to keep the sorest parts out of the way, he saw a bright circle.

The circle reflected moonlight, and there was an eye on the other side.

He reached out, and there was nothing.  Instead, Willy grabbed the outstretched hand, then began to twist his arms together, like he was seeing what would break first.  Bumcake chortled.

No help.

No.  The eye had narrowed.  It was looking at him.

Arching his back, straining his twisted up arms, he put his face closer to Willy’s.  He drew in a breath, hocked, then snorted, violently.  The blood that ran down his face mingled with the reservoir of snot, and dusted Willy’s face.

“Augh.  Little-”

Willy reached up to his face, and his hand stuck where he tried to wipe the snot away.  He used his other hand to try to free that hand, and ended up with both stuck in place.

Bumcake laughed.

He prepared more of the same, as he dangled by one leg.  He looked down at Bumcake’s foot, drew in a breath-

Bumcake threw him, instead.

He landed on all fours, and he couldn’t even think about how hurt he was.  He scrambled into grass and leaves, ducking low, as he went over to Willy, who had freed one hand and was trying to pry a glued-up eye open.

He ducked behind Willy’s legs, and used him as cover as Bumcake came charging over.

Bumcake shoved Willy off to the side, and Willy’s face hit dirt, gluing to it.  The little goblin hurried to get out of the way, but he was small and Bumcake was big and bigger was better for most things goblin-wise.

That circle with the glowing eye emerged from darkness.  It was a bit of glass, round, wedged into a very round face, on a round-ish goblin, who wore fancy clothes.

“That will do, dismal little sir,” the goblin growled.  He pointed at Bumcake.  “Sit.”

Bumcake charged him.

The goblin whipped a tangle of sticks at him.  He hadn’t been holding it a moment ago.  The sticks hit Bumcake in the face and the configuration shattered.  Centipedes swarmed out, sliding into Bumcake’s nose and ears.

Bumcake’s forward charge slowed, feet skidding on damp grass as he got to the new goblin, who had one foot out.  Bumcake was moving slowly enough that he bumped up against the foot and stopped.  What was happening seemed to register, and he began moving backward, crawling on the ground as fast as he was able, like moving backward enough could somehow get the bugs out of his face and head.

“I acquired those gleaming beauties at the edges of a dark place,” the new goblin said.  “They’ll keep masticating, carving out some new ear canals and corridors in that mug of yours, until I say to stop.”

“Stop!” Bumcake yelped.

“You’ll have to agree to my terms before I say it, my boy.  I have terms.”

“Agree, anything!  Stop!”

“You’ll have to hear them out, so we can both be sure.  Now stop with the interruptions.  Term one, you must obey all of my instructions, including the rules of this town.  Point of order number one, no business in town that’ll get noticed.  Minor mischief only.”

“Agree!” Bumcake yelped.

“Oh, beg pardon, before I continue-”

“Auuugh!” Bumcake shrieked.

“Little one, you have a name?  I didn’t hear it.”

The little goblin hesitated, then shook his head.  He wasn’t sure the ‘snotty boo’ counted.

“I’m Toadswallow, and if that one isn’t dealt with by the time I’m done, I’ll deal with you, or I’ll take out one-eyed goblins your size until I’m reasonably confident I’ve handled you.”  He pointed at Willydew.  “Do it.”

The little goblin scrambled over.

“Bumcake, was it?  No bringing outsiders in without my say-so,” Toadswallow said.  “I got permission for this, here.”

“Yes!  Fuckin’ hurry!  Get these out, you ratfuck shitsmear!”

“I’ll take all the time I want, and the more you try to hurry me, the longer I’ll take.”

The little goblin stood by Willydew, who was three times as tall as he was.  Willy was on the ground, still trying to free his face.  One eye was open, but both hands were preoccupied.

“Little shit,” Willydew snarled.

The little goblin hurried forward, ducking out of the way of a kick, and then scrambled up Willydew’s pants leg.  It was a pair of pants meant for a baby, with suspenders, and the suspenders made for the next way to get up.

He stopped halfway, then climbed down, reaching between pants and skin to get the scrap of white paper.  He wiped his nose with it, stuck it to one leg, then resumed climbing.

Willy tried to scrape him off, rubbing up against a tree.  He circled around to the front, climbed up to the neck, and grabbed Willy’s arm, where the hand was glued to the upper face.

“Little shit, you’ll pay for this.”

The little goblin, hanging from the wrist with two hands, feet braced against Willy’s collarbone, hocked, inhaled, and snorted violently over Willy’s lower face.

Off to the side, apparently deciding that he didn’t have time to sit through everything, Bumcake staggered to his feet, then charged off into the woods.  Toadswallow seemed to anticipate it, and intercepted.  Fingers caught on Bumcake’s nipple, then deftly tore it off, along with a strip of skin that went to the armpit.

Bumcake tumbled.

“One asks to be excused, groin-for-brains, it’s only polite,” Toadswallow growled, but he was smiling wide, thoroughly enjoying himself.  He stepped on Bumcake, pinning him.  “Point of order number four.  You’ll owe a debt, for the protection this place gives you, and a debt for my kindness here, for letting your sorry excuse for a name live.  You’ll give power over to this place, to be handed out as we see fit.”

Willy struggled, mouth open, trying to free his hand, and the little goblin returned his focus to his task.  Still hanging from the wrist, he kicked back, swinging his legs back and away, nearly pulling Willy off-balance in the process.

He swung forward, bringing knees up, and swung his shins into Willy’s chin.  Willy’s mouth clacked close, lips gluing together.  Willy fell, and the little goblin fell with him.

Hurting, bloody, glaring with one eye, he clambered over the fallen Willy, with glued-up hands and glued-up mouth.  He dropped down to the ground, picked up a stick, and then climbed up the side of Willy’s face.

“Point of order number five.  Part of owing that debt is you’ll work here, on the perimeter.  Protect the town.  You work six days, you get one day in town and you ask me first to make sure I’m okay with it.  If I have something for you to do, you do that first.”

“Yes!  Fuckin’ hurry!  I can’t-”

“Point of order number six.  You don’t talk about point of order number six or seven.  They’re between me and you.”

The little goblin poised on Willydew’s face, and used the stick to prod.

Pushing one nostril closed.  It glued shut.  Willy realized what he was doing and rolled, trying to shake him off, and he had to jump to avoid getting glued in place.

He darted left, then right, trying to find the opportunity for his next move.

“Point of order number seven.  There’s a fight coming.  I don’t think everyone knows there’s a fight coming, but we’re rounding up help because we can’t do all of this alone.  Two sides are picking their teams but one side doesn’t even know.  You are not on these sides, Bumcake.  You’re on my side, understand?”

“Yes!  Yes!”

“What was rule six?”

“I don’t- I don’t-”

“Should I start from the beginning?”

The little goblin saw an opportunity, and jumped up, jabbing.  Sealing the other nostril with a poke of the stick.  The stick stuck, and he let it go.

Willy rolled over, then began rubbing his face in rough dirt to try to free his nose and mouth.  His arms and hands got in the way.

“I can’t say.  There is no rule six or seven, far as anyone’s concerned!”

“Be cleverer than that, if anyone asks, and be faster,” Toadswallow snarled.

The little goblin crawled up Willy’s face again.  He saw Willy pull lips apart enough to breathe, then snorted on that gap.  Something in Willy shifted with that. One hand on Willy’s nose, one hand on Willy’s eyebrow, the little goblin made his face the entirety of Willy’s field of view.

He hocked and spat, right in the goblin’s eye.

Willy stared, making muffled, angry sounds, until he couldn’t stare anymore.  He blinked, and his eye glued shut.  Nose glued shut.  Mouth glued shut.

The little goblin looked up and back, and saw Toadswallow looming over him.

“You left and came back, did you?”

The little goblin shrugged.  The others had made the call.  He went where he was told.

“You heard the rules?”

The little goblin hesitated, then nodded.

“Accept?”

The little goblin nodded.

“You die if you don’t.”

The little goblin hesitated more, thinking things through, then nodded.

“I need words from you to make this binding, you speak?”

The little goblin had to think for a moment to remember.  He shook his head.

“Open up a fresh wound on your hand.”

The little goblin looked around, then started groping for the branch still stuck to Willy’s face, trying not to get stuck in the mucus.

“You have a beak.  Use it, shitwit.”

The goblin looked down, touched his beak, then raked the back of his hand against the beak.

“Touch your hand to mine,” he said, holding out his fist.

The little goblin did, back of his hand held to the knuckles of the other goblin.

“You swear to accept my terms, sealed by blood?  Nod.”

The little goblin did.

He felt a shiver.

Toadswallow dropped his hand.  He looked down at Willy.

“I don’t want him,” he said, almost sneering as he said it.  “I’d rather have you with one kill to you.  Sit.”

The little goblin sat on Willy’s chest, as it struggled to rise and fall, jerking.

Toadswallow put something on the little goblin’s head.  “Sit, wait.”

The little goblin did.

It was a little while before Tatty came around, tearing her way past a branch.  “Cake!  Willy!  Where the shit are you!?  We’ve been attacked all this while an’…”

She stopped as she saw Bumcake, lying in the dirt, huffing as he bled from his nose and mouth.  Nonverbal.  She looked past him to Willy, dead… and to the little goblin who sat on Willy’s chest, wearing a bloody nipple on his head.

Bangnut and Humpydump caught up, taking in the scene.

They were too distracted to see the large hands reach out, seizing them by their heads and lifting them off the ground.

Toadswallow lunged out of the bush, syringe in hands, and plunged it into Tatty’s chest as she turned.  His weight pressed her back against the tree.

“My fetid little dear,” he said, smiling.  “You’re going to want to listen very carefully as my compatriot Bluntmunch and I make our offer now…”

“Five rules,” Bluntmunch growled.

“It’s not enough,” Edith said.

“It’s the closest approximation we could honestly figure to what our share was,” Zed told her.

Edith shook her head, waving him off.  To Matthew, she said, “It’s not enough.”

“No,” Matthew agreed.

Zed spoke up, “If you’d free me to talk to others, we could come up with something else, like protection, or a more refined barrier.”

“We don’t want others to be a part of this.  Even you returning is concerning,” Matthew said.

“But appreciated,” Edith added.  “Appreciated, but all of this is difficult.”

“I was surprised.  There are a lot of Others around.  The drive in was tricky.”

Matthew bent down and laid a hand on the metal box.  It hummed and chugged as machinery inside worked, and the metal began to glow white hot in response to the touch.  He took his hand away and it cooled.

“The three girls were to get a full share,” Edith said.

“Accounted for.  That’s it, an equivalent in power supply that totals their full shares and thirty percent of the remainder.  With this, our deal should be done.  We get the info and permission to go for the Choir, you get this, on top of getting them gone, plus some odds and ends like the gifts to the girls, a chance to ask some questions.”

Matthew and Edith exchanged a look.

“It’s not what we hoped for, but your obligations appear to be met,” Matthew said.

“Cool.”  Zed yawned.  Edith visibly tensed in reaction, until Matthew touched her arm.

“Sorry.”  Zed uttered the word through the last bit of the yawn.  “I’m wiped.”

“It’s fine.  It’s not your crisis to be worried about,” Matthew said, intending it in part for Edith.

Zed being cavalier enough to yawn when their lives and everything they had built were all at stake was not Zed’s fault.

“The girls are good at school?  They’re fine?” Edith asked, the question a bit of a forced shift of tone and focus.

“Yeah, I think so,” Zed answered.  “I could have driven them back.  I offered and they said no.”

“They took their own route.  They wanted to catch the morning classes,” Edith said.  She looked up at the sky, which was already bright again.  “You won’t make it back in time without a trick up your sleeve.”

“Fair.  Makes sense, I didn’t know they were that excited for it.  That’s the, uh, binding class?  I think?”

“Was it?” Edith asked.  “Hm.”

Matthew put a hand on her shoulder.

“They’re good kids.  I’m trying to do right by them.  Introducing them to the half-decent people, steer them away from the troublesome ones.”

“There’s plenty of the troubling ones,” Matthew said.

“You’re not wrong,” Zed told him.  “You’re a practitioner?  Or were?”

“I can’t help but notice,” Edith mused, interrupting, “that you said there are half decent people, and you said there’s troublesome ones.  No decent ones?”

Zed put his fingers in his pockets, thumbs hooked over the sides.  “That’s a question for the philosophers, isn’t it?  Are any of us truly good?”

“Those girls might be close,” Matthew mused.

“They’re young, that helps,” Zed said.  “But you’re not wrong.  Brie and I are backing them up, for what that’s worth.”

“It’s worth something.  Thank you,” Edith said.  “Brie didn’t come?”

“She wanted sleep more than she wanted my company, apparently,” Zed said, smiling.  “I don’t mind.  She can welcome them as they get back.”

“That’s good.  It’s good to know they’re taken care of,” Matthew said.

Zed yawned again.

“Be safe on the road,” Matthew told him.  “Especially if you’re that tired.”

“It’s a hypnotic drive, too.  So much nothing for such long stretches,” Zed commented.  “Was that you gently suggesting I leave?”

“A bit,” Matthew said.  “There are other reasons.  Four of them are over there.”

Zed turned around, his eyes flashing as he did.

Four figures stood at the clearing’s edge.  At first glance, they could be mistaken for human.  One was a man, smoking, with his partner hugging him from the side- a woman with greasy hair and tired eyes who wore a mask that was connected to an oxygen tank. There was a woman with damp hair, coughing, and a woman with a heavy coat that hid something she was wearing or carrying, her hair shorn short and dyed red.

“Vessels?” Zed asked.

“Three elemental vessels, and one man with something elemental-related in him,” Edith said.  Matthew nodded his agreement, his expression serious.

“Need help?” Zed asked.

“No,” Edith told him.

“Want help?”

“No,” she said.

“Right.  Good luck, then.  Back to school I go.  Might take a nap on the way back.”

“Thank you, for being prompt with the delivery,” Matthew said.

Zed smiled, then he climbed into his station wagon with the paneled sides.  He started it up, turned, and went.

The four at the far side of the clearing straightened.

“No?” Matthew asked.  “Is it so bad to accept his help?”

“It unbalances the scales between us and him.  Means we owe him.  And it ties him more to this place.  That gets more severe if he gets hurt.  I can handle them.”

“Better that I do.  I don’t like the look of that coughing woman.  Too damp.  She’d put you out.”

Edith took a long moment, then nodded.

“Go help elsewhere.”

“I’ll try.  You noticed what Zed said?”

“I noticed a few things.”

“Binding class.  Others won’t be happy about that.”

“That was one of them.”

I’m not especially happy they’re that eager about that.”

“Yeah,” Matthew said.

“They asked Yalda questions.”

“That was one of the other things.  Yeah,” Matthew agreed.

“They didn’t share that.  They’re keeping things close to the chest.”

“Yeah,” Matthew said.  “But so are we.”

Edith sighed.

“You should go before they get too close.”

“It’s frustrating,” Edith said.  “You can’t use your full strength while I’m near, which means that as long as we’re waging this war for Kennet, we’re being pulled apart.”

“From the day the idea of you and I was a mutual consideration, we knew it wouldn’t be easy, Edith.”

“What if this continues, and when it all ends, we can’t find our way back to each other?”

“Let’s make the time later.  Dinner, barbecue if the weather’s nice, then a cuddle and a movie?”

“I’m likely to fall asleep halfway through if my stomach’s full.  Stupid human bodies,” Edith said, yawning.

“If it’s any consolation, you have a very nice human body, Edith James.”

She smiled, beckoning him to bend down.  Then she kissed him.  “Dork.”

“Go,” he said.  “Keep that body safe, keep yourself safe.”

Edith bent over backwards, her ribs opening up, and the Girl by Candlelight emerged, unfolding and stretching out.  She hauled the candle out of the space where her heart should be, as long as she was tall, and rested it against one shoulder, the flames at both ends flaring.  She shot a look back at the four, who were tense.

“Don’t get seen.”

The Girl by Candlelight touched his cheek, then bent down and picked up the power supply.  It wasn’t even close to enough, but it would power a barrier that could slow down the influx and filter out the smaller wildlife.

His connection to Edith was strong, and the power that sat heavy within him fed that connection because it and he were both in alignment in wanting to keep tabs on that.

“Hello!” he called out to the four figures.  Talking would buy some time for Edith to get further away.

They drew closer.  The smoker exhaled a breath of thick smoke that curled in the air.  He had no cigarettes or cigar, his hands in his pockets, his hair an ash grey, lips thin and a bit scarred.  His companion had a dead, blank stare with foggy eyes, her hair similarly pale and rather dull, like the gold had seeped out of the blondeness of it.  With one hand, she dragged the oxygen tank.  With the other, she adjusted her mask.

The girl with the wet hair- her hair wasn’t drying out even a bit, and it hadn’t rained that recently.  At best, there was morning dew on the grass.  She coughed violently, and spewed a quarter-lungful of water onto the dirt of the clearing.  She straightened and spat.

These three were vessels.  Like Edith was, but these ones were too neat, when he looked at them with the Doom’s eyes.  Closer to the space he’d carved out for his Doom, but… a much, much bigger hole.

There were practices that asked for high prices.  Practices like the Heartless practice his father had conducted.  Blood magic, host magic, cultists… and many preyed on innocents, or counted innocents among the collateral damage.  When too much was taken out, there could be vestiges.  Just enough of a person that it could stand, walk, and breathe, but something integral was gone and wouldn’t come back.  A house with an exterior and little in the way of rooms or furniture, if it had anything at all.  A practitioner could put anything in that space, really.

Someone had probably done that to these four.

“Do you want sanctuary?” Matthew asked.  “Protection from people like the one who made you?”

The smoker shook his head.  The leader, it seemed.

The one with the short red hair moved, adjusting her coat.  Matthew watched her with care.

To his Doomsight, there was someone nestled inside her, dark, chafed around the edges and shadowy, like she’d had pale skin before being rinsed in thin black ink that had settled into the creases.  It was a woman, long-haired, human sized and human shaped, curled up and contorted into a space as small as this woman’s upper body.  Her eyes and teeth were too white and bright.

A vessel, but the edges weren’t so neat.  Some were, but it was like a space of a certain size had been measured out, and this figure had forced her way in, breaking and straining some parts of the container.

Her weapon, beneath her coat, was a shard of something reflective, as long as her leg.  She held it, a bit of mirror or treated glass, and her fingers bled where they bit into the edge, the blood running down the length of it.

The woman inside her smiled, rictus, showing more teeth.  As if the long shard of mirror was connected to her, blood began to run into the space she occupied, tinting her progressively more red.

When a hallow or vessel was prepared, care was usually taken to guide the right things to the space created.  Here, something had failed and an elemental Other with an affinity for mirrors or reflections had crawled inside.

Possibly how they had escaped their creator.

“It’s a good deal,” he told them.  “Room to grow, protection from those who would prey on you.  I think my wife would love to have people she can relate to.”

“We don’t like to stay places,” the smoker said, in a raspy voice.

“You could stay here, provided you agree to our terms.”

“No.  We raid.  Take what we need, make our exit.”

“I was taught about Others as a whole, once,” Matthew said.  “That Others were once much more than they are now.  But the brutish and stupid were outwitted.  The weak conquered.  It’s the canny who survive.  Even goblins have figured that out.”

The smoke the smoker was breathing was pooling around him.  Tendrils like the tentacles of some squid curled in the midst of it, thick smoke in a haze of thinner smoke.  He didn’t walk directly at Matthew, but meandered, backed by his group.

“Don’t follow after the terminally stupid Others,” Matthew told them.

“We have to.  Four voracious hungry mouths to feed,” the girl with the red hair and coat said.

They weren’t talking about their human mouths.

“Doom,” Matthew murmured.  “Two min-”

The girl with the oxygen mask pulled her mask off and inhaled.

All the air in the clearing was sucked out.  Matthew staggered on the spot, the air dragged out of his lungs.

He couldn’t form the words without lungs.

The smoker smiled, then exhaled, like he was blowing out a long puff from a cigarette.  The smoke came out in a column of thick smoke that expanded out, limiting visibility.

He voiced the words in his head with as much authority as he could.  Two minutes.  Defeat them first-

The girl with the blade emerged, invisible in the cover of smoke until she was just five feet away.

With his toe, he dragged a line across the ground, backing away.

She hit the line and staggered.  A line could be considered the simplest of diagrams, and that thing that occupied her was more vulnerable to it than she was, and the momentary lack of synchronicity hurt her.

then do as you will, but-

He closed the distance, stepping into a puddle, and he knew full well what that puddle was.  He grabbed her wrist, pushing her back across the line.  Same effect, but this time, he was rattling the bars of the cage his own Other was within.  Testing the metaphorical screws, bolts, and welding.

Not being able to breathe while exerting himself was a strain.  The smoke tickled his nostrils, then invaded them with will, drying up his nose, sinuses, throat, and mouth.

He knew from his studies and work with the Doom that Hosts liked to bind things to key points in the body.  It made sense that a Vessel would have their space carved out starting at one of those.

He slammed his forehead into hers.  The reaction wasn’t anything special.  Which others?  The Crown was one space, very top of the head, but he was pretty sure she’d manifest differently if the Other were housed there.

He punched her in the solar plexus.

She didn’t carry the mirror woman there.  He hit her again, dead center of the stomach.

There. He could see the Other within her react.  It looked like it was housed in two of the seven points.  Stomach and groin.

He wasn’t going to keep hitting her there.  The smoke was too much, he couldn’t breathe, and the drenched woman-

He heaved the girl with the shard around him, anticipating an attack from behind.  The drenched girl was barely visible in the smoke, rising from the puddle she’d formed to sneak around.

-you must return by the deadline, by the terms of your binding.

She grabbed him, and she was strong, water flowing off of her, as if it was propelling her forward.  The force of a wave.

She didn’t have to beat him.  She just had to keep him occupied until the lack of oxygen beat him.

He felt the Doom stir within him.  Agreeing.

With one hand, he touched a spot on the binding.

Best case scenario, you kill it, and you’re scared enough you leave.  Or you hurt it permanently before leaving or succumbing to your injuries, he thought.

In his heart, he knew he wouldn’t be so lucky.

It poured out of him, pale and twisted, fighting to get loose and doing everything it could to hurt him on the way out.  A mass closer to the size of a house than the size of a man, escaping his two hundred pound frame in a matter of seconds.

The four backed off.  The smoke immediately started clearing.

White shot through with inky darkness and veins.  The body was without set form, and for one moment, it was a morass of something between flesh and smoke, its back half like a kraken, the front half like a praying mantis, but with Edith’s face mounted atop it, twisted with emotion and crying darkness. It picked up the red haired woman, not by closing a limb around her, but by sliding one of those scythe-like limbs beneath her and holding her against the hard edge by the force with which it moved her around, instead.

In the next moment, it was closer to a bull, hunched over, muscular, and head low, surging forward, to separate Matthew from the drenched woman.

It reached ahead of where it was pushing her, moving tree branches.  When it slammed her into the tree, the branches of that tree and the branches it had put into place slammed through the seven ‘host’ windows of her body.  Crown, mind’s eye, throat, heart, solar plexus, stomach, and groin.

Matthew stood, dusting himself off.

The other two were running.  He could breathe, and did so with a kind of gratitude, even as a sick worry gripped him.

It hadn’t been fifteen seconds.  Two of the four were dead.

Had he given too much time?

He dropped to one knee, and began drawing in the dirt, scraping up his fingers as he broke the packed ground.  So long as he wasn’t hosting the Doom, he could practice.  He practiced now.  A rune, lines, inviting spirits of the solid earth in…

And with one dirty finger, he drew a line up his boot, pants leg, and, refreshing his material, continued the line up to his stomach.

“Come, spirits of Earth,” he said.

Inviting those spirits into the hallow in the bed of his own stomach.

He felt the weight of them, the grit of them like sand in his mouth.  He could feel strength, but it wasn’t easy strength.  More of an inevitable one, when it could be brought to bear.

He wasn’t looking to bring it to bear in that way, though.

“As I will it,” he told them.

As heavy as those spirits were, they were so much more comfortable within him than the Doom.

Blinking, his eyes dry and stinging from the smoke, he coughed, then touched a hand to the ground.

The spirits flowed easily.  Drawing out lines, erasing others.  They removed and moved plants in the earth at the clearing’s edge, then carried on beyond.

At his will, he drew out a line, roughly a hundred feet in one direction, a hundred feet in the other, then elaborated and braced it.

The Doom returned, depositing the heads of the smoker and the girl who had had the oxygen mask on in the clearing’s center.  It let the woman with red hair drop from a height above the treetops.

Her body broke on the landing.

The bloodstained Mirror Other crawled out, and was speared from above by a belated branch that the falling body had knocked free.

It paused, as if to taunt him, then soared forward, pressing against the barrier he’d erected against the Doom as it turned a hard right, flowing, flying.

He pushed, feeding the earth spirits, drawing on inner reserves he shouldn’t, to lengthen that barrier and extend the effect.

A few more feet, a few more seconds of delay.

He sat down hard as he felt the Doom slip past.  Using the remainder of the time he’d given it.

He could have given it less.  But that was the balance he always had to strike.  If he gave it too little time, it might meander.  It would hurt the enemy, just enough that he had to wrap up the job himself, or else summon it again.  And each time he summoned it, he established a pattern.

Letting it out.

If that pattern ever got stronger than the pattern of his binding, it would be able to choose when it made its exit.  Forcing him to step up what he was doing, make the binding stronger.

A constant struggle.  Edith was right, that it was easier if they were apart.  He could ask the Doom of Edith James to do one thing and return, and it would.  Because that contributed to the pattern.  In situations where she was close, it was less reasonable.  He had to give it a chance.  To trust Edith.

He extracted the earth spirits to make room, then he waited, sitting in the dirt.  Stomach empty, Sight-blind, and weary.

It was good and bad that Brie hadn’t come.  He hadn’t voiced it to Edith, and Edith hadn’t voiced it to him, but there was the possibility of killing Brie and releasing the Choir again.  A horrible thought and a thought he wouldn’t have had a decade ago.  Before this collapse of the perimeter and the fallout he was facing, he wouldn’t have considered it so seriously.

This defense of Kennet wasn’t impossible, but it would be hard.  So, so hard.  They were having to bring in others for the extra strength and each of those Others would pose their own problems, conundrums, and require managing in some fashion.  Some would be traced by Practitioners and that would be its own kit and caboodle.

The Choir, awful as it was, was something stable, a known thing they could manage, and it was stronger than every Other they would recruit in the coming days and weeks.

But it would at least mean he wouldn’t have to do this as often.

This release, followed by the horrible wait, where he had to feel its unwanted presence settle in his stomach once again.

Or, one day, the elapsed time would pass, and the Doom wouldn’t return.  What that meant.

He wasn’t so deluded as to think it would be the Doom that had died.

“Tha lassie said to keek in, ask efter ye.”

The Other blinked.

“Ye’re a timorous yin, aye?  She said to ask that ye be guid, ‘n to nae tae et the wee’uns, whitever that means.”

“It’s sanctuary,” another voice purred.  She kept to shadows, which was easy when the sun was low in the sky.  “Community.  You seem to me like a creature of the divine.”

The Other blinked.  More slender than a human could be, beneath the sagging skin she was draped in, her sleek body was formed entirely of interlinked eyes, their irises yellow and bright in the gloom.

She had found a place to hole up in, a farmhouse that had been left abandoned, the door left open and the elements and animals having left their mark.  She sat without a book to read, or anything to do, relaxed, and didn’t seem any more or less relaxed as the Other looked down at her from the ceiling.  The windows were boarded up, and the surroundings overgrown, which meant relatively little light got in.

“Were you a naive girl who crossed the wrong greater power?  No… you don’t seem like the type.  They’re angrier.”

The purring voice was feminine and pleasant, and very human.  The form wasn’t, all spider legs, insect wings, leather and fur.

“Dinnae intimidate her, Maricica.”

The Other shook her head.

“Not bothered?” Maricica asked.  “Have you seen worse?  Sometimes the divine powers make your kind from scratch.  If they’re feeble or new, those new lives can be haunting and piteous.  Have you cared for brothers and sisters?  Are you the product of a god of little power, trying to figure out how to create a servant on this earth?  No.  That is a curious look.  This is a new story for you.”

“Guid thing, aye?  Ah’ve come by a few of those in my time.  They git a fair share o’ nightmares.”

“Child of a divine power and a human?”

The Other tilted her head to one side and blinked once.

“Close?  Child of two such creatures?  Or one creature and a human.”

The Other blinked slowly.

“A line of such.  Mmm.  It’s a lonely existence.”

“Tha lassie liked yeh.  Verona did.  If ye’d like to be less lonely, an’ if ye’d be good, we’d have yeh.”

The Other looked between them.

“She hesitates,” Maricica said.  “Because of the restrictions on violence, hurting babies?”

The Other shook her head, false skin slapping against the sleek true body, eyes in the location wincing shut at the impact.

“If you’d like to know more, we could tell you about Kennet, and what we’re doing,” Maricica purred.

“Ah’ll say what I can, but it’s efter hours fer me, ah’m ready ta turn in so I won’t be much of a use ta yeh.”

The Other nodded, shifting position.  Listening.

The day loomed bright and heavy around the three Others of the dark, who stayed within the dark farmhouse, talking.

The woman stood with one hand to the wall.

The wall was thick plaster over brick, and had crumbled in places.  This was one such place.  Where it crumbled, the bricks and blocks stood out bold; red clay bricks were intermingled with concrete blocks and blocks from a kids toy set in bright primary colors.

She touched each in turn, and each time she checked, she examined her surroundings.

A hallway of dingy, grime-caked tile, cracked plaster, and old windows with metal framing around the glass, badly rusted.  The lightbulbs flickered and buzzed but never quite went out.  The buzzing had a seductive pattern to it.

On the left side of the hallway, there were rooms.  Within each room, furniture was stacked in impossible configurations. In one, a single plastic chair supported four more chairs, which supported the segments of a metal shelf unit, which caged an emaciated corpse.  Above that was a desk, and on the desk, a radio buzzed in a complement to the lightbulbs, and a coffee cup sat, still hot.

In the next room over, two columns of furniture leaned into one another to form an arch.

Nothing about those rooms changed as she checked the blocks.

On the other side of the hallway, those dusty windows looked out on a vast field, all pale dirt, no green or crop.  Wooden wheels big enough to scrape the atmosphere were turning, halfway embedded in the earth.  No axles, nothing to fix them in place.  Some were slow, and some were fast enough to spit up geysers of soil on the one side.  Many were degraded, like these plaster walls.

When she had taken a day to walk out there, she had checked the slowest wheel and found that within the outer casing of wood, there were bundles of wood that included broomsticks, branches, and collections of pencils.

She’d kept a broomstick that had no broom part to it.  She knew it would carry the motive energies of the wheel.  In the right circumstance, she could refine that, and it would gain a function it could carry with it thereafter.  In another circumstance, much more likely, she would use it to help set something into motion, possibly breaking it in the process.

She found a brick, red clay, that was warm to the touch, compared to the others.  With a bent, bloody nail, that was a bit more coherent than the broomstick was, she scratched a ‘Y’ into the brick.

The arch in the one room was inviting, but this was her third time here, and she’d learned some of the things to watch out for.

This time, they took the shape of dead bugs.  Three dead flies at one windowsill.  One dead beetle sat in an indent, where tile was cracked.  Beneath the arch was a lone dead fly.

There was always something waiting at the window for anyone that ventured close enough to be grabbed.  That beetle amid the broken tile marked an area of the building that waited to collapse.

She didn’t trust the arch.

Further down the hall, papers fluttered in the wind from an open window.  A hazard she didn’t want to risk.  The one time she had made it far enough down the hall to see the pages, it had been what, in this version of the hallway, would be a bee drawn on each page.

Further down the hall was a set of double doors.  They were heavy, metal, and encircled by chains that included the handles and disappeared into the walls.  A single padlock, painted blue, marked a point of startling color that even the dusty bricks set in the walls didn’t manage.

She wasn’t sure, but it didn’t seem to have a keyhole, nor a dial or dials to put in a combination.

These places were woven together.  The weave wasn’t always obvious, but there were ways to work out their design.  She hadn’t seen any writing, even on the papers, which suggested that there wasn’t a specific phrase she needed to unlock something or get something to act differently.  There were no distinct, repeating patterns, only the tile, which was the same thing repeated endlessly, and the bricks in the walls, which were purely random, as far as she could see.  That told her that she wasn’t looking for something in the way of any specific orders or functions.

The sun never moved from its position.  It shone down with an oppressive brightness, bleaching everything it touched.  Where it reached past the windows and hit the wall, it wore down everything it touched.  If she touched the plaster where the window blocked that light and moved that touch further down to the light, she could feel the difference in level between the former and the latter, to the point there was a soft edge.

No time component, then.

But there were hidden things, like bricks in the walls, and sticks in wheels, and a skeleton in a cage.  That told her something.  That if there was a way to open that padlock, it required finding things.  She didn’t want to try to slip past those fluttering papers until she was sure she had a way, or she would have to slip past, check, and return, and that was simply too dangerous.

She could also use context, from her greater explorations.  In terms of where it sat, this place was a trap.  It was as if a dozen other major roads led through here.  She was a pinball in a pinball machine, striving to get out, above, beyond, and past this.  When she failed, she settled back here, like the pinball between the paddles.

Many of the normal escape routes from a place like this didn’t apply.  She knew one escape that required that letters be gathered and assembled from signage and pages, or that she fling herself through a window and say the right words before she hit ground.  But there were no words here.  There was no drop steep enough, when this building was all ground level.  Perhaps if she grabbed a wheel’s spoke… but the odds were just as good she would grievously injure herself, falling before she was high enough.

This was a place where things got trapped.  It matched with the themes she’d seen on past visits.

This particular section of hallway asked people to become familiar with it.

She rapped on windows, listening to the sounds.  She checked several.

One broken window.

She slid it open.  The broken glass remained in place, locked in the air, while the metal moved, and she cut her arm.

Where the window slid open, the view on the other side changed.  It was like looking down at Earth from space, but she wasn’t in space.

She adjusted her view, and as she did, the view zoomed in.

It was like falling, and trying to control the fall, instead of anything precise.  Every movement brought her view closer, and also slid it to one side, or up, or down, or changed the angle.

It was a balancing act, to move in a way that brought her to where she wanted to be, without being too close or too far away.  But she had a lot of experience in positioning herself.

She looked in on Kennet.

From high above, it looked troubled.  For the early hours of a summer day, people moved about like they were wary.

She slid her view past Matthew and Edith’s house, but the truck wasn’t in the driveway.

In that same direction, she went south.  To the Faerie cave where Alpeana slept and the Faerie toyed with one another.

There were no Faerie, and there was a lot of blood.

She turned, looking toward the girls’ houses, but the view drew in too close, until she was staring at the road from a point of view only a foot above it, then closer-

The glass of the window drew closer at the same time.

She moved, cautiously, and the glass reached toward her.  She was so close to the road she could see the grains of sand.

A bit more movement-

Glass broke, and a sliver of it pierced her awareness.  It could not pierce her eye, for she had none, but it left her awareness hampered.

A human would lose an eye.

But she was Other.  She was, much like this place, knit together, like thread or yarn stretching between individual elements.  She had once been human or human-like, but much of that was Lost, so forgotten by history and the Universe that it could not be readily retrieved.  She had no mouth, and as that thread of yarn had been pulled away, so had other, related things, like the need to eat.  The air that connected between the outside world and the open space in her lungs had remained, so she could speak.  It was the same with the light that shone into her eyes, allowing her to see.  That was what had been injured.

Much of her was like this.

She shut the window.

At the other end of the hallway, a door opened.

A young man, who wore an old fashioned pilot’s cap with goggles built in had entered.

Practitioner, not human.  He stiffened as he saw her, shielding his eye. The light shining off the broken glass blocked his view of her face.

“I mean you no harm,” she told him.  “Do you know your way through here?”

He reached into his bomber jacket and pulled out a gun.  She dashed to one side, into the room with the arch, to be out of his way.

“I’m sworn to the seal,” she spoke, letting the sound echo down the hall.

“Any one of you can say that!” he called out.  “I’ll try not to kill you, but I can’t have a strange Other wandering around!  Places like this are too sensitive!”

“Speaking of,” she told him, again letting the echo carry her voice.  “Avoid the window with the houseflies by it.  They signal a trap.”

“Why should I trust you?” he asked. There was a ragged edge of fatigue to his question.  If his voice had five tremors to it, there was one each for hunger, thirst, fatigue, fear, and heartsickness.  He had been betrayed, and recently.

He had been stuck trying to find a way out for a long time.

Still, he drew nearer, and he was near enough that he’d avoided them.  He’d listened.

“Beetle on the tile as well.”

“Shut up!”

“If you’re here, then you’re either on your way to being properly Lost, or you know the way, and I can trade you information for information.”

“I don’t have to give you anything to get information from you.”

Ah.

“I am not inclined to be bound,” she told him.

“Sorry,” he said.

He was armed and she wasn’t.  She had the broomstick pole, but it didn’t really count.  She couldn’t be an armed attacker, really, because she would hurt herself more than she hurt the person she attacked.  It was the sort of thing that unraveled her, or it raveled her in ways she didn’t want.  People tended to put a face to their attackers, masked, imagined, or otherwise.

Besides, she wasn’t strong.  Weaker than an ordinary human.

“The broken window lets you see things if you open it,” she told him.  “It might show you a way out, if you know where to look.”

“Shut up!”

He didn’t open the window.  He drew closer, moving with short footsteps, no doubt with gun ready.

She had one option and she didn’t like it.

She let him come to her.  He stepped in through the door, and she put both hands out, to try and keep him from pointing that gun at her.  Then she brought her face close to his.

Plaster from a bit of broken wall above the door fell in his eyes.  She kept her face close, hands on the weapon, and as he tried to step away, she stepped in close, matching the turn of his body with quick steps.  Doing everything she could to stay to his side, away from the gun.

He tore his hands free of hers, and she ducked.

He wiped at his eyes, taking a step to the side, and she saw an opportunity.

Springing to her feet, reaching, she pushed him.

He staggered back three steps.  Through the arch.

He looked up at her, then pointed the gun at her leg.  He tried to look at her face, then blinked again.

She backed up, watching him clear his eyes, look at her as she edged toward the door, then look beyond.  His eyes widened.

She looked too, and saw that one of the great wheels out in the field had come free, and was tearing their way, chewing up the ground.

He pushed his way past her, out the door, and ran down the hall.

The wheel turned, tracking him as he ran.  It turned as he changed directions.  He stopped in his tracks.

He pulled a ring that was attached to a string on his backpack, like he was deploying a parachute.  Nothing happened.

He looked at her, or as much at her as he was able.

The wheel tore through the building, turning what had been a twenty-foot stretch of hallway and the two accompanying rooms into more dusty outdoors.  The Finder gone.

Everything tilted, sagging, like there was a depression and this end of the hallway was sinking into it.

The papers that were at the end of the hallway by the padlock began to drift her way, caught in a perpetual circle of a breeze that never let them fall to ground or stop.

They each had an entomological drawing on them.  They might as well have been churning buzzsaws, for the danger they posed.  She didn’t trust this room with the arch, or the fact that everything was collapsing, or that a stray paper wouldn’t fly in here after her.

She ran for it.  For the broken window, which she hauled open.  She braced herself, pulling her sweater up around herself, and threw herself through the broken glass.

She fell from what appeared to be the stratosphere.

“I am located at four-one-one-one-one-eight-eight-three-four-five-six-two-four Oak Avenue!” she called out.  “May I please request an operator!?”

The trajectory of her fall shifted to a right angle, plunging her into bright daylight.  The remnants of a neighborhood with brightly painted houses tumbled through the air with her.

She still had the pole.

Splinters flew off it as she used it to steer her fall.  As she moved it, she fell at slight angles.

It was tempting to touch ground, then leap from that ground, but she couldn’t afford to.

She steered her fall, aiming for a window, but the tumbling building turned, the window no longer available.

Another one.  She steered.

A newspaper hit her in the face, and she peeled it away.  It was raining, when it hadn’t been before.

It didn’t matter.

She used the angle of her body and the pole to fly through a door.

The configuration of falling building was an entirely different ‘scene’ on this side, and a bell was ringing, large and brass.

Others were descending around her, expert fallers who drew closer to her.  A ballerina, schoolkids, and a small dog perched on a ball.

The ball hit a hydrant, and the dog was bounced off, flying her way.  She twisted out of the way, then veered closer to the ballerina in a blue tutu, who twisted and spun, but kept her face permanently turned away.

“A long time,” she murmured.

The ballerina touched her shoulder.

“I’m sorry this reunion is so short.  I can’t go back home to the stairwell, and this place only deposits humans on an Earthly Oak Avenue.  It would send me back.  Can you give me a hand?”

The Ballerina took her hands, and guided her fall, until they were hurtling in a tight spin that threatened to pull them apart.  The ballerina kicked away the ball again, and fended off a schoolchild with a knife.

“I’m trying to get out of this Stuck-in Place,” she told the ballerina.  “Would you send me to-”

Miss.

She looked off to the distance.

Miss!

“Some pupils of mine are calling me.”

The ballerina nodded.

Miss are you there?

“Send me their way?”

The spin intensified.

She was released, and momentum sent her far from the falling buildings.  From sunlight, from the Stuck-in Place.  The course she was on paralleled the connection made as she was called.  This was its own pattern.

To a very empty, dark region of the Paths.  A laser show of silver lights shone against a starless sky.  Below, a bridge glimmered with headlights that had no cars, more lights along the suspension cables.

She reached for a beam and found it elastic.

Her momentum was slowing too fast.  She knew why.

Bits of glass and dirt clung to her, and they used that clinging grip to pull at her.  To pull her back.

As if there were elastics of their own stretched tight between those little particles and the Stuck-in Place.

When she stopped, extending one foot, she stood with her body out horizontally, head to one side, one foot to the other, resting balanced on the beam.

In the dark, three girls were running, jumping, and bounding, on the elastic beams.  When they fell, it was in slow motion.

As hazardous as this might have looked, it was easy.  More easy for them than for her, at least right now.

“Whoooo!” Lucy called out, flying through the air.  She caught one beam with the middle of her body, hauled herself up, and found her balance on it.

There was so little out here in this region that it was like the strings of light had their own gravity.

Snowdrop caught one with a foot, and she hung upside down, settling in as the Ballerina in Blue came to rest on Miss’s beam, just beside her, vertical where Miss was horizontal.

“Don’t look!” Snowdrop called out.

Avery, Lucy, and Verona stopped, looking over.

“You’re hurt!” Avery called out.

Cuts from the window.  “I’ll mend.”

“I have first aid things.”

“Save it as a just-in-case.  As I said, I’ll mend.  Tell me, Snowdrop looks older, but you don’t,” Miss noted.  “Has it been weeks?”

“Yeah.  Weeks,” Lucy said.  “Calling you like this works?”

“Temporarily.”

Avery spoke up, “I can’t go back for the coin or I would.  We could send Verona and Lucy but you didn’t want…”

“No.  That would make them Finders, when they need to find their own way.  And the Wolf would be too hard on them, after the way you left.  I’ll manage for the time being.”

Avery shrugged, barely visible in the light shed by the beam she was standing on.  “I wondered if we should even call.  We decided we should try, because things aren’t great.”

“I know.  I’ve seen signs of that.  Some very recently.”

“What do we do?” Verona asked.

“What are you doing at present?”

“Investigating.  Searching.  We’re attending magic school to learn binding and some other stuff.”

“Those are good things to be doing.  Charles could teach you binding if you pressed him, but you’ll learn better things at the school, and you’ll be safer there.”

“Are you saying that because you suspect Charles?” Lucy asked.

“I can’t speak to my suspicions.  There are reasons I picked you.”

“Because we’re children, we’re more likely to not take over?  Because we might fail?”

“If I wanted failure, would I pick such exceptionally talented children as yourselves?” Miss asked.  She looked at the Ballerina.  “I’m quite fond of them.”

The ballerina in blue nodded.

“You picked us because you think we can do it, but the actual culprit is likely to think we can’t,” Lucy said.

“Yes,” Miss told her.

“We have a list of suspects, and it might be all of them,” Lucy said.  “But what we’d really like to do is narrow it down to specific things.  Who has the furs?  Because it seems like they hurt three locals who found them and left town with them.”

“Nobody panicked,” Avery elaborated.  “If it really wasn’t in Kennet anymore, there’d be someone freaking out more.”

“If they can don the furs and claim the throne, you’ll need to know who it is and take swift, decisive action to stop them.”

“Then that’s the goal,” Lucy said.  “And we need to know how to stop them, which means we need the binding class in… not very long.”

“And other stuff.  Ways to beat or slow down whatever they throw at us,” Verona said.

“It sounds like you’re on track,” Miss said.

“You’re really dead set on not giving us any concrete answers?” Verona asked.  “Because that defines you in some bad way?”

“As I told you very early on, the balance of things is maintained by having Practitioner handle the affairs of Others, and having Others like the Carmine and Sable make the final judgments on man.”

“But lesser Others get a bad deal, huh?” Lucy asked.

“To a degree, yes.”

“How?  Why?  That’s the thing that’s getting to me, as I see this.  Others being enslaved. Others being exterminated in large groups.  I’m really having trouble with that last one, because they aren’t the nicest Others.”

“I prefer a world that spares one innocent if it means letting ninety nine guilty go free,” Miss told them.  “But I admit, I am not one of the ones those guilty prey on.”

“But how?  Why?  What the hell did this Solomon dude do?”

“Suleiman bin Daoud.  Solomon, in modern parlance.  I’d like to tell you three stories, if I may?”

“Sure,” Verona said, looking at the others.

“If they’re too long, we might miss morning class,” Lucy noted.

“It’s okay, if it’s for Miss.”

“They’re not long stories,” Miss said.  “To start with… imagine, Verona, that you are a traveler.  In this tale, you have been stranded without transportation, you’re hungry and thirsty, in a strange land.  You have no home to go back to, and no idea when and if you’ll find one.”

“Sure.”

“Imagine, then, that an older couple in poor health stops and offers you rescue, a ride down this desolate road, and they’ll even offer you employ.  This couple offers you food, water, shelter, and everything else you require.  All you must do is labor for them.  And because they are kind, this couple offer you their inheritance, their home, and all the food and drink you could want, on the day they die and the family line ends.”

“How much older are they?”

“A matter of years from death.  You’re young.”

“Sure.  But there’s a catch?” Verona asked.

“There is, but in our story, the traveler accepts the deal.  In a way, they have to.  And for all that we thought they would pass from this world soon, sickly and old, they bear a series of children.”

“Sure?” Verona ventured.

“The couple dies of old age, and the family line continues.  The children inherit, as do the children’s children, the children’s children, and on through thousands of years.  And the traveler is left toiling the fields for those thousands of years, waiting for his due.  In some variations on this tale, he even toils on, keeping to his obligations, even though he’s forgotten the rest.”

“This is an analogy?” Lucy asked.

“We did not think humanity would last nearly as long as it did.  Lucy, imagine, please, that you are a hunter.  You and your family need meat, to survive the winter, but when struck with illness or an especially early and dire winter, you lack enough.  A neighbor offers you what you require, on the provision that you and your family leave him a certain woodland to hunt in, so he may cultivate it without your interference or worrying about a stray arrow from your bow.”

“Another trick?”

“Yes.  Over the generations, his family plants trees from the woodland.  Seeds are carried out, planted in other regions, even, and can be considered ‘his’ trees.”

“Civilization?” Lucy asked.

“The Others that came before did not think humanity would spread as it did.  Many of the predatory Others promised protections and sanctuaries, thinking your civilization would be pockets of light in vast darkness.  Now the light from your world is so bright you must often travel a distance to properly see the stars in the night sky.  Some suffered more than others.  Many have died out or become beggars instead of predators.”

Lucy nodded.

“Avery.  Hearing these things unfold, you must be wary.”

“I suppose.  Rule of three, right?  There’s going to be another catch?”

“How would you avoid it?  What would you do?”

“Not make any more deals?”

“Some went that route.  They detach from humanity, finding their own refuges.  But humanity shapes the world, and everything is soon associated with humanity.  These Others now find the world unfamiliar and hostile, they are ill-equipped to catch up or keep up, and they fall by the wayside.”

“What’s the other option?”

“To try to formalize deals.  To hitch their wagons to that of humanity, by striking deals that would establish them as Patrons.  They teach their secret knowledge and ways of manipulating the world, in exchange for servitude… until mankind begins sharing that knowledge in ways few Others can stay ahead of, on paper and in tomes.  Knowledge, instead of being taught from patron Other to Practitioner, becomes something kept in families.  Others try to formalize a kind of equality, such as the familiar bond, and to make firm agreements about oaths, lies, and declarations, out of fear of being tricked again.  But these things become their own weapon that humans wield.  Humans sprawl, they work with concerted effort, and they establish and mutate patterns.  They subjugate the travelers as in Verona’s story, and crowd out the hunters in Lucy’s, and that becomes a means of establishing a pattern that bends yet more to their desires.  Language changes and new languages emerge, and texts are reinterpreted.”

“And the seal thing?” Verona asked.

“The Seal of Solomon, as it exists now, was essentially intended as one last concession.  Or it was meant to be the last.  A binding that would not be mutated further, that would be universal enough that it could be trusted by the Other, instead of having hooks and more traps attached to it.  And as part of it, there was a deal that practitioners would manage the affairs of Others but select, powerful Others would have some say over the movements and dealings of Practitioners.  Lords and judges.  Roles above all other things.”

“Bringing us full circle,” Lucy said.

“Why Kennet in particular, then?” Avery asked.

“I chose it because it was far enough from any Lords, it had no active practitioners, but for one young man who lived a short travel away, who had no higher aspirations than impressing his friends.  Yet it was civilized enough that there was no risk I would become de-acclimatized from civilization and humanity.”

“And you all seem to have reasons to want to avoid being bound, or to avoid practitioners,” Lucy said.

“So it appeared for a long time.  I wonder at the other motives, now,” Miss mused.

“The fact they moved the furs tells us a lot,” Lucy said.  “Suspiciously a lot.”

“Do tell?”

Lucy hesitated.  She looked at the others.

“They used a car to move stuff around.  That narrows down the suspect pool to people who drive.  Charles has no license or car, and if he had a car it’d probably get taken away or stolen.”

“Possible.  Our protection keeps many things from plaguing him, but it’s more likely than with most.”

“Edith doesn’t seem to drive.  Matthew had to pick her up, on several occasions, including the night of the Carmine Beast’s death and when we interviewed them.  And he’s done all the driving.”

“And Faerie don’t drive, or nightmares,” Avery added.

“They don’t.  Cars are a kind of machination few Fae embrace.”

“Hungry Choir’s dealt with.  We did that, by the way,” Lucy stated.

“I see.  Good.”

“Goblins are… it’s hard to picture them driving.  So we really only have Matthew and John, and Matthew’s looking pretty telling.”

“Especially,” Verona jumped in as soon as Lucy was done, “when John is in a position to take the role anyway.”

“He has the motive, the means, the opportunity.  We know they used summoning stuff to make the Choir.”

“You may know, but this is new information to me.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “Yalda was at the root of it.”

“Ah,” Miss said.  “I thought her dealt with and disposed of.”

“Apparently not,” Avery said.

Lucy nodded.  “Matthew makes the most sense as the central figure.  Then people like Maricica, Edith, the Choir, and maybe Charles as accomplices.  Though that’s based on a coin turning up in a few ways, instead of anything concrete.”

“We should have until the end of summer,” Verona said.  “But that timeline might get compressed if things stay as bad as they are.  And it’s going to be hectic if there’s a civil war at the Institute.”

“I hope to be back by then,” Miss told them.  “I will help you however I can, which is likely to be indirect.  I only have to find my way out.”

“You can’t come with us now?” Avery asked.  “Just follow us out?”

Miss tested the connections to the other places she’d passed through.  To progress risked unraveling her.  Or worse, defining her.

“I cannot.”

“Bummer,” Avery said.

“I don’t miss you at all,” Snowdrop said.  “You’re stupid and uncozy and not mom-ish or good at explaining Lost stuff.  You made the world seem really stupid, weird, and scary when I was already having a bad night.”

“Pretty much what she said,” Verona said.

“I hope to return and tell you everything you want to know, Snowdrop.  To do that, I should carry on, and you should go to your class.”

“Good luck, Miss,” Lucy said.

“To you as well.”

She adjusted her footing.  The connections that pulled at her pulled her back to that gutter of a region that didn’t want to let her go.  She had a glimpse of the girls resuming their journey, jumping and bounding through the low-gravity darkness.

The ballerina in blue followed.  A friend from her prior escape attempt.  A good person to have with her now.  The ballerina had her own tethers, and when called on, would slip into a role.

Miss had to escape that.

She was pulled through dizzying images, past scenes and symbols, and landed hard on dusty tile.

She stood, and she got her bearings.  There was a long hallway, and blue lights shone on a password entry keypad on a door that was bound in seatbelts.

In an indent on the floor, a cast-off shirt button lay within.  Three more were on the windowsill.  She gave those a wide berth.

It was night, and the hallway was dusty, heavy with the smell of drying paint.  The walls were textured white plastic sheets, opaque, but had cracked in places.  Behind them were newspapers without words, only faded pictures.

Within the rooms to her left were configurations of computers, heaping, with everything in the wrong place.  A monitor with keyboard keys filling its ‘screen’, a mouse with a flat pane showing flickering images.  A keyboard with three balls set in it.

To her left, ferris wheels turned against the night sky.

She found the clue she had marked with a ‘Y’, now a tear on a piece of newspaper, and pressed her hand to it.  It felt warm.

Did the papers that blew in the wind from the vents move as she touched it?

She adjusted her touch, stroking, then holding a hand against it.

After fifteen seconds, the papers were sucked into a vent.

One step forward.  A trap put out of the way.

There was the arch of computer parts, with a shirt button on the floor.

She ignored that.  Passing through would bring a Ferris wheel right to her.

She walked down the hall to the cracked window, and she went looking.  For the school and for the girls.

She remained very still, poised, as she watched and waited.

To see them arrive at school.  To find their way to the classroom, exhausted from a night spent away.  Verona collapsed dramatically into Lucy’s lap, feigning that she was falling asleep, and Avery, inaudible to Miss, joked about something.

Lucy picked up Snowdrop, now in opossum form, and placed her over Verona’s face, where she latched on.  Verona laughed, her breath making the fur lift up and drop, but she didn’t remove the animal.

The Ballerina in Blue waited patiently, looking over her shoulder.

“Help me find my way, old friend?” she asked.

The ballerina, facing the other way, nodded.

Miss set to searching, unsure how the girls would do, but confident she’d picked good ones.

In too many places, the fundamental arrangements were breaking down.  The role of Other and Practitioner.  The oversight, the expectations, and the state of the longest-running patterns.  Kennet and the Carmine Beast would not be the straw that broke the camel’s back.  But there had been no such straw with the way Solomon and his ilk had established their precedent.  Kennet’s situation could one day be a parable and precedent both.  It mattered more than those girls could grasp.

She would put that ‘matter’ in their hands.

Cutting Class – 6.1

Lucy

Please let her be a better teacher than Raymond, Lucy thought.

They’d worked so hard to get back in time for this.  Class was still getting settled, and the lucky sons and daughters of bitches who had gotten a good night’s sleep were filtering in, many with damp hair, many smelling like breakfast foods.  Some held tea and coffee, finding seats with shelves and surfaces nearby to rest their drinks on.

Mrs. Durocher was standing on the narrow stairs by the stage, leaning against the wall, one foot on a stair and the other propped up on the stage’s edge. She wore a sleeveless blouse with a folded collar, printed with very colorful… tentacles?  And a knee-length black dress to match.  Charles had been pretty judgmental about her appearance but she was… relatively normal, if a bit on the thin, awkward, not-very-imposing side.

Mrs. Durocher alternated between chatting with Amine and giving him periodic instructions.  He was one of her apprentices, and was being put to work drawing up diagrams on the stage.  Eloise, off to the side, was pulling on ropes.  A mirror mounted on the ceiling was rotated, so the students in the class could look up and see a bird’s eye view of the diagrams being drawn.  Three different ones.

Some girls in the class, Lucy couldn’t place them to name them, were elbowing each other and whispering, their attention so fixed on Amine that they didn’t look away as they leaned in to whisper to one another.  He wasn’t attractive in the same way Ulysse was.  Ulysse was the kind of attractive that took Lucy’s breath away, a bit.  If he said something nice to her, she was pretty sure she’d feel gushy and weak in the middle for a while after.

She hated that because it meant he had this power over her without even trying, but it wasn’t bad either, especially from a distance where that downside wasn’t going to happen.

Amine straightened up, and pushed the long, chin-length locks of hair that framed his face back and out of the way.  The rest of his hair was pulled up into a braid that ran down the middle of his head, down to the nape of his neck, with charms binding it at the end.

Amine was very deliberate, very serious, like he put attention into everything he did.  His expression was stern, as he listened to Durocher.

She decided she liked that more than she liked Ulysse’s careless hair and careless half-smile of an expression.  When she got married she’d want someone who she could trust and carelessness didn’t make her feel trusting.  Not that Amine was even close to being a contender.

But he was nice to look at.  She’d leave it to those whispering girls if they wanted to go after the older boy.  She was betting he’d say no, anyway.

“My mind,” Lucy said the thought aloud, “is wandering all over the place.  I’m so tired.”

“Don’t fall asleep,” Verona said, her head in Lucy’s lap as she waited for class to start.  “I want you to make sure I’m awake when class starts.”

“Why is that my responsibility?” Lucy poked Verona’s cheek with one finger, and Verona puffed out her cheek.  Lucy pried Verona’s eyes open as wide as they would go, and Verona squirmed.

“Where’s your mind wandering?” Avery asked.

“Food,” Verona said, her eyes pried open as she looked up at Lucy.  “I can hear your stomach rumbling.”

Snowdrop, dozing, sneezed.

“Yeah, I hear you, Snow,” Avery said, giving the opossum a pat on the side.

“We’ve got class, no idea how long it’ll be, then we can eat, maybe sneak a nap…”

“We might sleep through afternoon classes if we aren’t careful.”

Lucy scrunched Verona’s face together, pushing eyebrows down, lips up, and cheeks together.

Noo,” Verona protested.

Avery twisted around.  “What are the afternoon classes?”

“Ray teaching Realms, Durocher teaching Practical Language, and Graubard’s still around, doing some tutorials on basic Alchemy.  Not her specialty, but she’s grounded enough to cover the basics, and she’s not a bad teacher.”

Lucy turned, and Verona sat up, wiping at her face with her hands as if it’d still be scrunched up or something, and she had to get it back in order.

The girls sitting behind them were a white girl with chopsticks in her straight blonde hair, a girl with an expensive looking sleeveless top with a high neck, and a brunette with an unironic bowler hat, dense freckles, and wild eye makeup that included sky blue eyeshadow and heavy eyeliner.  A bit Clockwork Orange.  They looked just a bit older.

“This is rough.  I want to take so many of these,” Verona protested.

“Realms for me,” Avery said.

“Of course,” Lucy said.

“Maybe Alchemy,” Verona said.

“I’ll hold off,” Lucy said.  “See how Durocher is as a teacher.  If she’s good, I’ll take that language class.  Then we can share notes.”

“Great,” Verona said.  “You should actually take notes, Avery.  Don’t doodle all over the page.”

“I don’t doodle that much.  Keeping the pen moving when I don’t have notes to take keeps my mind moving.”

“You guys are really close,” the chopsticks girl said.

“Pretty close,” Avery said.  “Is that weird?”

“No, not weird, that’s the wrong word,” the chopsticks girl said.  She had just a bit too perfect of a way of pronouncing words and inflecting that Lucy couldn’t help but notice.

“Some siblings aren’t as close and trusting as you three seem to be,” the girl with the nice top said.

“She’s speaking about herself and her family,” Bowler Hat whispered loudly, hand cupped by her mouth.  The girl with the nice top gave her a push, so she fell sideways onto the bench.

“I’m Lucy,” Lucy said, in hopes of getting names.

“We know.  And Verona and Avery,” Chopsticks said.  “I’m Yadira Kennedy, that’s Kassidy but we call her Kass, and that’s Raquel Musser.”

Kass was the bowler hat girl.  Raquel had the nice top.

“I notice you left my last name out of the introductions.  Classist,” Kass said.

“Is it classist if I’m being practical?  Your family doesn’t matter.”

“Be nice in front of the new practitioners,” Raquel said, closing her eyes for a moment.

“So Yadira Kennedy… the Kennedys are a big family?” Avery asked.

“A good size,” Yadira said, smiling.  “We’re not the Kennedys, but we have a presence.  After the Oni Wars, my family was the apparent first to successfully re-establish a working relationship with the new Others out East.”

“That’s a lot to digest all at once,” Avery commented.

“You’ll learn about it if you read essentially any history at all on practitioner-human relationships,” Yadira said.  “My family’s name gets a passing mention in many of the textbooks.”

“Okay, sidebar,” Kass said.  She leaned over the back of the bench, resting her arm there with enough forward momentum that Verona had to move out of the way of the incoming elbow.  “Yes, the Kennedy family is a big one.  Spread out all over the place.  But Yadira is from a small, forgettable branch of that family.”

“Hey,” Yadira said.

“It’s my job to keep these two from puffing themselves up too much,” Kass said, indicating the other two on her bench with a swish of her thumb.  “They talk fancy and dress nice but they lean too much on the family name.  You aren’t defined by the family you come from.”

“You’re a little bit defined by the family you come from,” Raquel said.  “If you try, you can be the best bits of it.”

“You’re going to have to try awfully hard, Raquel,” Kass said, sitting back against the bench.  “You’re not a boy, and only boys get the best of what the Mussers have to offer.”

“Do you know who get even less than girls born to the Musser family?” Raquel asked.  “Venomous little bitches who attack their friends to try and look cool for strangers.”

“Oookay,” Yadira said, even as Lucy’s mouth opened in a wordless approximation of the very same sentiment.

Kass turned.  “I don’t care about looking cool-”

“Obviously.”

“-Bu- fuck you.  But I do care about keeping you grounded.”

“Okay,” Yadira said.  “I’m getting up, I’m sitting between you two, and you two should stop talking to each other until after class.”

Yadira did as stated.  Both of the other girls scooted over to separate.

“Was it your dad that was a school founder?” Avery asked.

Raquel looked over, still clearly very pissed, and pissed in a way that made her look hostile even as she turned to Avery.  “Uncle.  But he raised me, more or less, after my mother was removed from the family.”

“That’s pretty heavy,” Lucy said.

“You aren’t lying.  And, I’ll say this, there’s way more to things than gender, like me beng a niece, and not his actual kid,” Raquel said.

“Stop.” Yadira put a hand in the way of her face.

“You keep telling yourself that,” Kass said.  “At least twelve times, maybe seventy-seven times.  Maybe you should try gunning for one of the higher magic numbers, like one hundred and forty-four, put a little practice into it, and see if it comes true.”

Yadira pulled Kass’s hat down and pressed it against Kass’s face.  She gave Raquel a dangerous, angry look.  “Don’t talk to each other for a bit,” she said.  “Please.”

Raquel deflated.  Kass just sat there, slumped a bit, arms folded, watching the rest of the room.  The three girls on the other side of the classroom were still ogling Amine.

“You’re a collector?  Two of you are collectors?” Verona asked.

“You studied us, did you?”

“Isn’t that normal?” Verona asked.

“Kass picked up a family practice,” Yadira said, since Kass and Raquel weren’t volunteering anything.  “Collectors pick up magic items and arrange them in tableaus and diagrams, transfer power between them.  But it’s very cutthroat.  A lot of the time, if you need something to complete a set, you have to take it from someone else.  Without getting into details-”

“Oh, why not get into details?” Raquel asked.  “Sparing her feelings?”

“-these two became unlikely friends.”

Kass retorted, “Raquel’s family and their friends made like they wanted a marriage to unite collections, then reneged, took my family’s shit and killed my grandfather when he tried to stop them.”

“He was an abusive scumbag, Kass.  You shouldn’t expect the marriage to go through when that comes to light.”

“Then start from square one, maybe?  Figure out another marriage.  In what reasonable world is the next logical step theft and murder?  Taking everything?”

Yadira seemed to have given up on mediating.

“You shouldn’t hide that stuff about a guy like that when you damn well know what he is.  Why should we figure out a marriage with people when we can’t trust that they’ll offer up a good candidate?”

“Then walk away.”

“We made deals and plans that accounted for objects and effectiveness we’d get in the union.  With your family’s blessing and encouragement.”

“Are they like this all the time?” Lucy asked.

“No,” Yadira said.  “No, this is a new-ish thing.  At least at this intensity.”

“Sorry if we poked the bear,” Avery said.

“Speaking of animals,” Yadira said, leaning forward as Kass and Raquel continued in the background.  “Fox?”

She was looking at Lucy.  For a second, Lucy had to remember if she was still wearing her mask.

“What about it?” Lucy asked.

“Kitsune,” Yadira said, laying a hand over her heart.

“I don’t know… what’s the significance of that?” Lucy asked.

“Fox… spirit… thing?” Verona guessed, halting.

“Ayakashi, or Mamono.  Others of a particular stripe, close to the Oni,” Yadira said.  “You really had no idea?”

“No,” Lucy said.  “I did the fox thing because I like foxes.”

“And here I was hoping I could compare notes.”

“What’s with the Oni stuff?” Verona asked.

At the front of the class, Mrs. Durocher cleared her throat.  Most of the room fell quiet with just that.  The rest followed suit as they realized it was her.

Verona visibly deflated, disappointed, then revived as she remembered she wanted to attend this class.

“We’ll begin in a moment,” Mrs. Durocher announced.  “Please settle.  Notebooks out if you want to take notes.”

Students who weren’t already sitting hurried to do so.

“I have,” Mrs. Durocher addressed the class, walking along the stage’s edge, her voice too loud considering the relative quiet, “bound an Other to the Seal of Solomon.  More than a hundred Others, in fact.  Through this seal, they are stabilized in form and disposition, brought in line with humanity and human civilization, and they are compelled to order and truth.  From that point on, they cannot lie and they are bound to their word.  An Other that is not bound by the Seal is more free, more volatile, but often finds that humanity and civilization are very hard to approach and interact with.  Some get it easier, especially if they maintain appearances that can be explained away, but the costs are steep.  Many unbound avoid mankind and stick to the deep wilderness, deep earth, and hiding places.”

She paced, standing over the class as she walked the stage’s edge, hand moving.  It hadn’t taken long for her volume to feel more normal.

“On the other hand, if they are bound by the Seal, that binding will usually bear provisions about how they may interact with humans.  Unbound, they have difficulty approaching and instinctively sense the karmic danger of breaching order.  Even the dumbest ogre may recognize that mankind is bright and mighty and interconnected, and hunt elsewhere.  Bound, they are restricted from hurting man, and still pay some karmic penalty, if they get caught, not simply for approaching or risking that capture.  And man thrives, the innocent protected on both fronts.”

Amine stood off to the side, book open.

Verona was up and taking notes, so Lucy relaxed a bit, notebook open, more prepared to ask questions or focus on things relating to the Carmine Beast and Kennet.

“I have bound an Other to a certain course of action.  Many, in fact,” Mrs. Durocher addressed the room, with a slightly different tone of voice.  “Bound them to servitude.  Bound them to hunt and kill a threat.  Bound them to refrain from hurting people.  The Seal of Solomon was already in place.  All I had to do was make them promise.  Karma guaranteed that promise.”

She paced all the way from the far right corner of the stage to the far left, looking as though she were lost in thought.  She was halfway back before she paused.  “I’ve bound an Other in rope and tongue.  Mundane, physical bonds, and less mundane, physical bonds.  I’ve had a summoning I controlled nail an Other’s feet to the floor.  That is in fact another sort of binding.  Limiting their movements.”

She walked over to Amine, and he handed her a textbook, blue with a black bar down the cover, embossed with a gold image Lucy couldn’t make out.  She held the book in both hands, as if holding it firmly closed.

“I’ve bound humans in many of these same ways.  To their word.  In chains.  So, let me ask you… what is binding?  What is it to be bound?  Are you bound if I invite you to my office here in the school, other people arrive, and you can’t find a polite moment to leave?  What if you find yourself staying five, fifteen, or thirty minutes longer than expected?  Is it me and my status that binds you?  Social pressure?  Convention?  Is it yourself?”

She slapped the book against her hand as she paced.  Lucy couldn’t shake the feeling that she was seeing someone barely restrained.  She might have described it as a very angry person who was doing a great job of holding back their anger, but it wasn’t.  Anger was the wrong emotion.

A very intense, dangerous restlessness?

Mrs. Durocher didn’t speak.  It was as if, just after citing an awkward social situation, she wanted to create one, letting the silence hang, and challenging a student to break that silence.  To ask if the lesson would continue, or to answer those questions she had posited.  She opened the book and turned pages.

Mrs. Durocher’s voice was quieter, and everyone listened.  “We use the term ‘bind’ in so many ways, but we really mean one thing.  Taking control of another.  And to those ends, when we say we want to bind an Other, we often mean we want to do this.”

Still pacing, book open in one hand, she raised a hand over her head, finger pointing up to the mirror, which was angled to show the three diagrams painted on the stage, as if indicating it.  The three fingers that weren’t pointing struck off the thumb to the meat of the palm in a rapid fire trio of ‘snaps’ as audible as if she had thrown the book down to the floor three times in the span of a second.

With each snap, something came to life in the diagrams.

In the smallest, a man rose to his feet, dressed in a sleek black suit with white gloves and shoes.  It didn’t appear that he had a human head or a human neck, but instead, a mess of yellow flowers with gray leaves and petals spilled up from the neck and chest, a large, coiled black serpent resting on that bed of greenery.  The poise and posture were precise.

In the medium-sized circle, about ten feet across, a chest freezer, old television, and what could have been a computer server rose out of the floor.  They were all gathered together, the freezer left partially open, the television cracked, and the computer server a bit battered.  Within the freezer, dark behind the television screen, and in the gaps of the server, Lucy could see pink, translucent, skinless flesh threaded through with blue and canary yellow wires, periodically with dull illumination, as if a faint, flickering lightbulb had lit up in the recesses.  She could see something curled up within the television, with an exaggerated, outstanding spine that threaded out of the television and into the server, the ridges and points of it exaggerated and tangled up with the blue and yellow wires.  The machine hummed audibly and the organic part of it breathed, a part of the server expanding and contracting, bodily fluids running out of one part to the floor as one gap widened.  A single red light on the server blinked regularly.

Not turning on and off, but blinking as an eye might.

And in the large, exaggerated circle, a young woman stood, smaller than the man in the suit.  Her hair was wild, and the headscarf she wore wasn’t capable of containing it, instead becoming something that exaggerated and complemented it.  Her skin was dark, but it was dark like a thundercloud was, her eyes bright and gold, and her body decorated with lines, like she’d been cracked open but had maintained her shape, more of that bright gold light shining from within.  She didn’t wear clothes so much as she had cloth wrapped around her, decorating her like the headscarf did her hair.

All of her was tense, her head, arms, legs, and upper body unmoving, but for hard breathing.  Her hair, headscarf, and the wrapping that was poised around her body were all in constant motion, whipping around in a wind that didn’t leave the circle.

Lucy took all of that in, and she realized she wasn’t breathing.  She didn’t resume breathing right away, at the realization, taking it in a second time as if to check, before she began.

“With a circle, we can contain.  Our diagrams address the spirits, and spirits relate to all things.  With the right design and message, theoretically, anything can be bound.  Finding the appropriate design and message?  That, students, is the true challenge.  It requires a firm grip in all things I’ve talked about since class started.  What exactly are you doing, and what does it mean if you do that?  It requires that you know beyond a doubt what it is you’re binding.”

As she paced, this time, the man in the fine suit with the snake and flowers instead of a neck and head turned to stay facing her, one hand casually behind his back, the other fiddling with a button on his suit.  He was very still, but for the fact that he gave her his full and unerring attention, turning his body to keep her in his focus.

“Each of these Others would, if unbound and given a matter of minutes, remove the Blue Heron institute and those within it from play.  Dead, gone, worse.  When I-”

The young woman in the big circle had floated up to a point midway between the floor and ceiling, her hair and the cloth that bound her extending in length and twisting in the wind around her.  A blindingly bright flash filled the circle, and a rumble shook the building.  Books fell to the floor.

Lucy had to squint to see, and there were still spots in her vision.  She saw Durocher walk past the fleshy-techy Other and over to the circle where the flashes were coming from.  She bent down and wrote something on the floor, some additions to the diagram.

The flashes lost their painful brightness.  The shaking of the building ceased.  Lucy continued to blink away the spots of light in her vision.

“When I bound them,” Mrs. Durocher spoke, turning away from the diagram, “I didn’t have more than moments.  Every fraction of a second mattered as I sought to close the snare.  Each of you in this room, I would guess, will have at least one such scenario in your lives.  At least one instance where you must bind, or you and everything you have worked for, everything you built, and everything you dreamed of will be gone.  Blasted away in a flash of lightning from a Jannah, absorbed by a Compiler Error and extruded, brain damaged, into the nearest appliance or container…”

As she walked by the techy Other, the freezer jerked, sliding toward her, and cracked open, fluids bubbling from one corner.  Mrs. Durocher reached across the circle and gave it a full-bodied shove, putting it right back where it had been.

Lucy had inadvertently risen up out of her seat at that sudden movement, and hung there, in a sitting position but not sitting.  She sat as Mrs. Durocher resumed talking.

“…Or facing possession by something like Mr. Rudbeck, a snake slithering into you, nestling into a part of you deeper than biology goes, and squeezing you out, because he can occupy the vessel of your body more easily than your Self and Soul can, just as his flowers and grasses will grow through every place and everything nearby, making it his.  There is no mundane defense to this lightning, no easy recovery or being saved from the absorption, and no way to fend off the snake yourself.  With a very quick friend, perhaps, but it could just as easily take them.  What then?”

She stopped pacing, and stood, the appliances that barely encased translucent and leaking biology to her right, the man with the coiled snake and flowers for a head to her left, and the flashing, furious Other poised above her.

“What then?” she asked.  “Except death, wanting to die, or being a lost soul who couldn’t hope to take their body back from the serpent that occupies it.  Most likely it’s you or an echo of you watching as this Other takes people you care about.”

She turned a page in the book she held.

“This is a beginner class.  Your takeaway, however, should not be that this is easy, simple, or boring.  Early in our lives we learn not to touch hot things.  That is a fundamental lesson we carry with us, but sometimes we must learn for ourselves, and it doesn’t matter how much our mothers tell us or warn us.  My problem as a teacher is that to be responsible and kind I must instill upon you that no, this is not something where I can say stay away, do not touch, and let you make your mistakes.  The analogy does not work.  The lesson is difficult to impart in its gravity, even if I introduce you to some terribly dangerous Others and describe what they do.”

“Hey,” Avery leaned in close, whispering.  “Amine is tense.”

Lucy looked.

Amine was tense.  Lips pressed together, hands behind his back as he stood at the far end of the stage.  Like he was ready to spring to action.

“A better analogy than the hot stovetop would be, instead, me trying to convince you that someone will try to set you on fire sometime in your life.  That is the kind of life you are likely to walk, here, where someone or something much stronger than you may come after you.  And it will hurt and it will be terrifying, and you will have seconds to act, if you are lucky, before you suffer lifelong scars and disability or death.  Are you prepared?  Will you take the right actions in that panicked moment?”

Mrs. Durocher stood there, looking at every student in the class in turn.  She made momentary eye contact with Lucy as part of it.

Then the woman smiled for the first time.

“I will let one of the Others on this stage loose toward the lesson’s end.  I will not intervene.  Amine may try and he is very competent, but you should prepare to either help him or protect yourselves.  You will need to pay close attention to what I say next and remember what I have already said, to have a good sense of what to do.  My other apprentice and his Fiancee are taking lessons with Alexander, so it really is up to him and the collective of you.”

“What the fuck?” a guy asked, from the back of the class.

“No interruptions.  I will talk fast, pay attention, and think of everything I say through the lens of how it may apply to these Others.”

There was chatter across the room.

“She’s not allowed to hurt us,” Verona murmured, joining that chatter.

“But we’re responsible for our own well being in practical lessons,” Lucy murmured back.

“I bet she pulls a fast one on us, and one of the Others on the stage is like, that book growing legs and walking at us,” Verona whispered.

Durocher spoke, “Binding is your primary defense against Others and it asserts control.  If the situation is too far out of control, then you have little to no recourse.”

Durocher was tense, hyperfocused.

“Bet not,” Lucy whispered, before she started taking notes.

“Identify the Other you are facing.  If you don’t know you won’t know what to do.  You should know who your enemies are and what they do before they strike.  If you’re facing an enemy this strong and you don’t know what it is, you should question what brought you to this situation.”

I’m questioning why I’m taking this class, Lucy thought.

“This is an unfair setup, so I will tell you, I’ve already identified her, and that should be enough for you to start with, if you’ve been keeping up with your studies.”  She indicated the woman with the glowing cracks running across her blue-black body.

Lucy penned down a note.  ‘Janna?’ and then elbowed Verona.

Verona pulled out her phone.

This is a Compiler Error.  It results from a failed attempt at transplanting or translating an Other or a Self to a system.  There are different kinds in Alchemy, like Seethes and Boils, and there are other kinds in ritual circles gone wrong, like the Dark Design or Umbrage.  Variants on the Compiler Error include the Overflow Error and the Resource Error.  It is material, feral and corrupts.”

She gave the chest freezer a pat in passing.

“Mr. Rudbeck is a Fancy, an old version of a Bugge or Buggane, or an old version of an Urban Legend, though I despise how imprecise that particular term is.  In an era before the printing press, certain ideas or glyphs would take hold, recur in the public consciousness, and find something to latch onto or manifest within.  The recurring story or idea feeds the Fancy, and the Fancy can, on rare occasion, become crafty enough to perpetuate the story that feeds it.  Mr. Rudbeck is one such Fancy, and attained a level of influence approaching that of a lesser divinity.”

Lucy scribbled down notes in short form.  Fancy, divine.  Recurring story.

“When deciphering an Other that you can name or can’t name, it’s good to start at the fundamentals.  Material or immaterial make a fine starting point.  Do they have bodies?  Is that body solid and consistent in form?  I’m not speaking of shapeshifting, but of biology, or if the head remains a head.  If so, they’re material, visceral if you want to use correct terminology.  If they don’t touch ground, their forms are mutable, or they don’t exist primarily in this realm, they may be immaterial.  This can be deceptive.  Our temporary school librarian, for example, is an Anima, and Anima straddle the line in such a way that they can be bound by both the visceral and the immaterial.”

Lucy took notes.  Jannah, immaterial?  Compiler, material.  Rudbeck, ????.

She paused, thinking about John Stiles.

“As a loose rule, you match your diagram to the type of Other.  Either you’re putting something physical down to block a material Other, you’re using symbol or the diffuse to block an immaterial Other, or you’re going to turn to the old standbys.  Fire keeps many things at bay.  Chalk, if you know what to write, is always reliable.  Again, the trick is knowing what to write.”

Verona passed over her phone.  Jannah.  Spirits of the garden, eden, heaven, related to genies.

Lucy penned down some more quick notes.  Heavens/storm/angry.

“Where do they come from?” Mrs. Durocher asked.  “In working out the nature of Others, their point of origin is key.  Do they come from a realm?  Knowing they do immediately hands you a wealth of information, provided you know your way around that realm.  If you know it’s from the Faerie, and I do love this lovely term for a made-up realm, by the by, to refer to it by the plurality of those Others that make it up… if you know, you know you have some basic options, such as iron forged without heat, burning hair or something suitably tainted.  They cannot abide by corruption.  If you know your courts, then you can know what specific items have particular power, for or against.”

Avery had chalk in her bag.  She drew a line across the back of the bench in front of them, which made the guys sitting in front of them twist around, annoyed.  When Avery couldn’t reach any further, she passed it to Verona.  Lucy kept taking notes.

“Which brings us, at long last, to the fundamentals of binding.  You have three primary options.  The positive binding, the negative binding, and the hallow.”

She paused.  Students were paying rapt attention.  The Jannah was muted by her diagram, but the Compiler Error wasn’t, and made wet sounds as it throbbed against the devices that housed it, breathed, and made the machinery strain to work.  Cold air fogged out around the cracked-open lid of the freezer.

“Positive binding.  Surround the Other with something it has an affinity for.  To return to our Fae courts, the Fae of High Spring have an affinity for gold and delicate pieces of art.  They like fine blades and the trappings of aristocracy.  Lay the blade of rapier over the handle of another until you have a circle and you may have something that will keep them in place.  Or gather up jewelry and arrange it so there are no gaps between them.  But be mindful, for the basic principles of diagrams and circles hold.  A lopsided arrangement to your blades or one piece of overvalued jewelry in the set and your circle may fail.  Positive bindings will not be an affront to the Other.  They are, if you’ll remember my earlier hypothetical, much like a case where you’re invited to my office and you cannot find a moment to leave, nor can you easily leave without asking, because of my station.”

She gesticulated with the book in hand.

“Be careful.  Positive bindings do not make effective prisons.  They can be battered down if you are not much stronger than the Other, and if the Other is much stronger than you, the slightest flaw or imperfection may be enough for them to shatter your circle.  They do, however, make good starting points for negotiation.  In essence, we make the Other feel at home.  We surround the Bogeyman with entropy, the Ruins dweller with sentiment, the God with appropriate iconography, the goblin with aggression and damage, the spirit with representative spice, crystal, myrrh, oil, or the tropes of whatever it is that spirit represents.”

Lucy took note of those, deviating from the focus on the three Others as she thought about Kennet Others.

“They will often stay until given cause to leave.  Should you put power into the positive binding, it feeds the Other.  Akin to inviting them to dinner, sparing them from having to find a meal.”

It was hard to imagine something like Alpeana surrounded by tokens of nightmarestuff and being okay with it.  Even if she were invited to dinner.

“Negative bindings are the near opposite.  We surround the Other with unbroken circles or diagrams composed of things opposed to them.  These are the same things that can also take some strength out of the Other if we use them as weapons.  The things a Goblin finds familiar and comfortable are anathema to the Faerie.  Lesser goblins can be bound in circles of flowers, as amusing as the thought is, but most often we use tropes of civilization and refinement.”

Verona had her own notes and showed Lucy.

Goblins: metal with elements in it.  Wires, water pipes.

Lucy nodded and copied down that note.

“For Bogeymen we might use old things in fine condition.  For Ruins dwellers, we want light, clarity, and clear messaging.  Reverse a divinity’s iconography, oppose a spirit’s essence with the contrasting elements or the countering animals or other forces.  If the Other isn’t already hostile, it will be made so by this treatment.  This is, to some, much the same as nailing someone’s feet to the floor.  It is unpleasant, often painful or draining, and it is aggressive.  It is also a good way to ward off the right Other.  You are, essentially, forcing a fish to bash down a door on dry land, or a chimpanzee to bash down a door in deep water.”

Lucy took down notes.  She wasn’t sure how they were supposed to deal with any of the three things, using this information.  This wasn’t like Mr. Lai or Mr. Sitton’s classes, where everything on the test was said out loud in class.  They were expected to listen, take notes, take that information and make a leap in logic for how they were meant to stop one of these things?  It would be hard enough if they knew which of the three it would be.

“Hallows.  Making a place for an Other.  They can occur in nature and may have been the foundation for the very first practitioners to learn how to deal with Others.  Others, like us, need sustenance.  The nature of that sustenance varies wildly, ranging from food, sleep, and drink for the most visceral Others, to specific sentiment or faith for the immaterial.  The Hallow is a shelter that is intended for the long term, and spares most Others the need for sustenance, as the Hallow supplies.  It is, if one dwells on the positive bindings, a place made into a long term home for the Other, within a person, place, or thing.  The place must be hollowed out, treated, and the correct signposts must be set, to guide the right inhabitant to that space.”

Lucy wrote down: Rudbeck, set up a hallow, guide that snake inside?

“Immaterial Others are most inclined to inhabit a hallow.  Spirits, echoes, and incarnations are diffuse enough that they could inhabit anything.  For many visceral others, such as your common goblin or bogeyman, they may require that you break the body first.  The goblin becomes its own hallow.  The bogeyman can be slain, then trapped in an appropriate vessel.  The negative binding, using opposites, then applies to seal the hallow, should you want to trap the Other within.  Put the Bogeyman or echo into a container that suits them and their nature, then seal that container appropriately with something anathema to them, so emerging is harder.  A rusty box surrounded by fine silver chain, an old fashioned syringe of emotional significance, buried in salt.”

“Isn’t Kennet a hallow?” Avery asked, hushed.

“Some of the same ideas,” Lucy whispered back.

“Heads up,” Verona said, sitting up straighter.

Mrs. Durocher was smiling, hands clasping the book in front of her.

Their teacher looked over the room.

“Thus ends the lesson.  Would you like a minute before the practical?” she asked.

Lucy flipped through pages, searching.  What did they have?

She had the weapon ring.

She was pretty sure a good shot would ding the meaty freezer Other.  Would it be contrary to this story Other?  They didn’t know enough.  She didn’t feel like it would do something to the Jannah.

She felt uneasy.  She hadn’t come to this class expecting a disaster.

Some students were moving benches, clearing the way to draw on the floor.

Lucy reached into her bag and dug up a soda can.

“If we use more benches, and extend this diagram…” Verona said.  “Can lightning be fire and light?”

Lucy gripped the can.  Sea Cucumber, which was a carbonated seaweed and cucumber drink in actuality.  Avery had bought it, handing it to Verona in hopes Verona would drink it without checking the brand.  No luck.  Lucy had kept it as a vile thing the goblins might like, or as a possible use of her ring.

She slipped on the weapon ring and ran her hand along the can.

To get closer and see, Kass threw herself at the back of the bench, making it bump into the back of Lucy’s legs.

“I’ve got the hot lead this time around,” Verona said.  “If I’d known you were arming yourself, I’d have got it already.”

“I’m okay.”

“We’re tired, so be careful.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.

“Hot lead?  You’ve got more gun stuff?” Kass asked.

“This is a binding class,” Verona said.  “Not a shoot the thing class.  I think she’s looking for a specific answer, not firepower.”

“Slowing down the monster until Amine can act could be the answer,” Avery said.

“The answer is taking control,” Lucy said.  “I’m too tired.”

She had to slip past Verona to get out to the aisle.  She approached the stage.

Finger off the trigger, she kept the gun pointed a bit off to the side, ready to aim and shoot if she had to.

“What if I say I’ll shoot you if you let any monsters loose?  Does that bind your actions?” Lucy asked.  “Seems a lot more manageable than dealing with a random monster that scares even an expert practitioner.”

A bunch of students had stopped.

“It’s a good thought.  Commendable.”

“Is it the answer?” Lucy asked.

“Blue Heron Institute students signed deals and are forbidden from harming staff or other students, barring some practical and minor cases.  A gunshot isn’t minor.”

Lucy didn’t waver.  She could feel so many eyes at her back.

Someone touched her shoulder, and she flinched.  It was Avery.

“We didn’t sign anything,” Avery murmured.  “We didn’t submit anything.”

“I know,” Lucy replied, quiet.  “I think she knows.”

“I also did say I would release one of the Others on stage toward the end of class,” Mrs. Durocher said.  “Here we are.  I won’t be called a liar.”

She turned the book toward Lucy.  There was an image of a fairy, small and winged, on it.  She gave the book a shake, and the fairy came out.

It traced a lazy, dazed path around the classroom.

“Thought so!” Verona crowed.

Lucy gave the thing a wary eye.  Small didn’t mean it wasn’t dangerous.

A slam made her jump, and she was glad she didn’t have a finger on the trigger.

“Heads up!” one of the boys from the front row shouted, scrambling back to put the diagram others were drawing on the floor between himself and the stage.

The book had been tossed aside, crossing a diagram.

The fridge thing jerked, then dragged itself forward.  It rose up, bulged with flesh, and popped, a printer or something bulging out the side.  Something that looked like intestine with wire running through it spilled out of it, pooling on the floor.

Lucy aimed and shot.

She couldn’t get over how loud the damn gun was.  She hated it.

“My students may never trust me if I don’t follow through,” Durocher said.

What were they supposed to do?

The thing loomed, growing, and touched the wall.  Wires behind the wall were ripped out, veins and wires snaking along their length, flesh expanding around the holes that had been left behind.  The chest freezer had opened, and flesh-tainted computer parts were spilling out on a tide of ambiguous, translucent flesh.

It approached Durocher, reaching.

“No,” she told it, with an edge to her voice.

It backed off, approaching students instead.  Durocher remained on stage, unflinching, watching.

Parts of it were sectioning off, flesh bridging gaps as it grew.

Lucy backed off, bumping into other students.  There were a few flashes of light, and Kass threw some toy at the thing.  It was a wooden helicopter, and spat out an endless stream of tiny, machine-gun gunshots, cutting off one narrow limb.

More limbs were circling around the walls, films of skin reaching over windows.  The door- she looked back and saw it was already sealed, a hand growing out of the flesh, pressing against it.

It smelled, now that it was out of the circle.  Like meat that was a little off, like burning, and like there was metal in the air.

A bright light washed over everything.  Lucy felt her skin tingle.  Bright, but it didn’t blind.

“Remain where you are.  Amine has it paralyzed, and he’ll trap it in a diagram.  The others are unsummoned,” Durocher addressed the students in the midst of the light.  She walked among and between the students now.  “What you’re feeling right now?  What you felt as you saw it surge?  Hold onto that feeling.  Let it motivate you to never feel that way again.  The next time may well be the time you face something like this in reality.”

“This wasn’t fair,” Raquel said.  “No right answer, you wanted to scare us?”

“I told you the right answer early on.  If you face something this big and you’re not certain of what it is and how to deal with it, you should question how you got to that position.  The first rule of self preservation, even if you’re as capable as I, Mr. Belanger, Mr. Sunshine, Mr. Bristow, or Mr. Musser are, is that you should run when outmatched.”

“We should’ve walked out?” Avery asked.

“Why not?  Some of the older students did.  I think I scared them in prior classes, the poor souls sat in the back row as if they expected this.”

The light was fading.  The Error was just a chest freezer now, and it was shut.  Amine wrapped it in a chain, and with each loop he wrapped it, it sank further into the floor.

“Class dismissed.  If you’re interested in any particular aspect of the process of binding, I can point you toward reading material,” Mrs. Durocher addressed them.

Lucy pulled off her ring and carried the can over to her stuff.

“We learned stuff,” Verona said.

“I’m so tired,” Lucy said.

“You used the weapon ring without a power source.  I know you’ve been working on that with your trainer, but that’s a lot,” Avery said.  She scooped up Snowdrop, who was guarding the bags with half-lidded eyes, now that the danger had passed.

“I think I’d be tired without that.  Let’s eat?” Lucy asked.  “And nap?”

“So long as we don’t sleep through classes,” Verona said.  They left class, heading toward their room, looking back at Durocher having a casual conversation with Amine, while he bound the freezer.

“Eating and napping sounds good,” Avery said.  “Oh, hey, Raquel.”

Lucy looked.  Raquel and Yadira were trailing behind.  Kass had left out the other door.

“What’s up?” Raquel asked.  “You guys smell like blood, you know.”

“Maybe eat, nap and shower,” Lucy murmured to Verona.

Avery talked while walking backward, “I wanted to ask, you’re a magic item collector, right?”

“I got some training.”

“Was that training with Bristow?  Or was Kass’s?”

“Uhh… yeah?  I awoke at ten, spent a year with family, got training with him for a year after.  Families as big as mine find it useful to have at least one person with the know-how for magic item handling in-house.  Why?”

“Trying to figure out how things connect here,” Avery said.  “How was it?”

“He rambles, but he’s a good guy.  Knows his stuff.  If you end up studying with him, either as an apprentice or as a student in classes here, be prepared for him to get distracted for chunks of time.  When I was apprenticing, it was new tech, errands, passion projects.  Try to keep asking what you should be working on next, so you’re ready if he forgets about you for a bit.”

“Good to know,” Avery said.  “I think I’ll stick with the Finder stuff, though.”

They were only halfway down the hall, and Raquel indicated a room.  “My stop.”

“Talk to you again, maybe?” Avery asked.

“Cool,” Raquel said.

They continued on to their own room, at the end of the hall.  Lucy gave her arms tentative sniffs.  Did she smell like blood?  Was that from Guilherme’s wound?  Or the Dark Spring Faerie?  Or setting up wards?

“Good line of thought,” Lucy observed, when there were no more other students in earshot.

“Charles said Bristow used to be a collector.  Stuff here’s all interwoven,” Avery said.  They entered their room.

“It’s not just us, then,” Verona said.  “The strife thing?”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “Okay, so… that’s worth looking out for.  Yadira, Kass, and Raquel are in Bristow’s camp, then, and Alexander is messing with them?”

“We could use that,” Verona said.

“Maybe.  But I’d really rather try and stay neutral,” Lucy said.

“You?  Neutral?” Verona asked.

“They’re both jerks.  Alexander and Bristow.  And being on the fence makes us less of a target and gives them reasons to encourage and support us,” Lucy said.  “Let’s get the information we need and work from there.  We have a good starting point on binding.”

“We’ll need to look up the specifics.  And figure out what it takes to bind various Others,” Avery said.  “Cover the bases.”

Dog of War, Goblins, Faerie… we’ll have to look up the Faerie courts…

Matthew and Edith.

Where to even begin with those two?

“And, to throw a wrinkle into things,” Lucy said, stretching out on the bed, “how do you bind something that’s technically already bound?”

“Bind the binding?” Verona asked.

Lucy nodded, but pressed a finger to her lips.

“Want to write down your order?” Avery asked, holding up a piece of paper.

“I’m too tired to get- to want to get up,” Lucy protested.  “Write it down for me?  Make it a deli sandwich.  Roast beef, mustard, fries.”

“Vitamin C,” Verona told Lucy.

“…and salad, I guess.”

“Got it,” Avery said.  “Ronnie?”

“Same.  Why not?  Make it a half sandwich.”

“Cool.  I’m not that into eating meat, so veggie fajita for me and Snowdrop.  Milk for Snow.  Anything else?”

That was a no.  Avery put the slip of paper into the door, then collapsed back into the bed.  Snowdrop unfolded into human shape.

“Hey Ave, did you manage to stop in at home or figure anything out about the situation with your dad?” Lucy asked.

“Nah.”

“I feel like that would eat me alive,” Lucy admitted.  “Wondering.”

“It doesn’t feel great,” Avery said.

“Way to remind her,” Verona bapped Lucy.

“Rip off the bandaid?” Lucy suggested.  “Not trying to boss you around-”

“Nah, you’re fine,” Avery said, turning over onto her belly.  She had her phone out now.  “Hrm.”

“-I just don’t want you getting twisted up over the summer and then having the weight of an entire summer’s wondering hitting you on top of the usual anxiety.”

“Yeah,” Avery said. “Okay.  Okay.  Cool.”

She tapped on her phone for a minute.  Then she placed it on her bedside table.

“Asked Sheridan to put out feelers to dad.”

Sheridan?” Lucy asked.  “Huh.”

“She got a bunch of big sister points before I left.  Depending on how she handles this, it’s sorta double or nothing.”

“Feel better, knowing it’s out of your hands?” Verona asked.

“Yeah.  Yeah.”

“Good luck,” Lucy said.

“I hope I don’t need it.”

Lucy smiled sympathetically, looking over.  Snowdrop was conked out, and Avery fiddled on her phone without much aim, going to the same page three times.  Lucy shut her own eyes.

All four of them were fast asleep when the food arrived.  Lucy dreamed, and the last waking thought that led the way in that dreaming was a riff on what Durocher had tried to instill.

Did they really belong out in front of this imminent disaster with the Carmine Beast?

[6.1 Spoilers] Famulus Text

1: Introduction

Famulus is a result of many years’ teaching in private circles.  As it became vogue to hire tutors around the year 1785, powerful members of the community gained a certain prominence, not-insignificant profits, and found themselves wrestling with a great deal of frustration.  This frustration stemmed from the fact that one tutor would teach one thing, which the next tutor would have to correct or account for.  They exchanged correspondence, to find out what had been taught and why, and opened discussions on how things might be done better.

No subject had quite held much importance or drove more heated discussions than the familiar ritual.  A lifelong bond between a human and an Other, a connection forged between them and fed with power to be made permanent.

The word familiar comes from the Latin famulus, meaning servant.  It came to refer to household and family, and over time, transitioning to the French familier, it came to mean ‘intimate, on a family footing’.  In all of these meanings, description, ritual and word are linked.  The familiar becomes family, the bond is intimate, and there is an implication of servitude.

Even after two hundred years of discussion and refining of this material, several ideologies and approaches stand out.  These details are discussed in separate chapters.  Each chapter that follows is annotated by a set of case studies.

In chapter two, we discuss the familiar itself.  What it is.  The limitations.  The diversity in approaches, which will be expanded on in subsequent chapters.

In chapter three, we discuss the bond.  The key points, early approaches, modern approaches, universal constants in the human-Other relationship, and the shape of the relationship before and after the ritual is enacted.

In chapter four, we look at the social contexts and environment.  Differences in familiars by region, microsocial factors, macrosocial factors, and cultural factors.  Both the practitioner-familiar relationship to the outside world and the outside world’s relationship to the practitioner-familiar relationship will be discussed.

In chapter five, we look at the familiars themselves.  Corporeal and non-corporeal beings, beings from a delineated subtype with a pedigree or subcuture and Others who are unique and standalone.


2: The Familiar Itself

Depending on the practitioner and the practitioner’s ideology, the familiar may be seen as a slave, servant, another party in a long-term business arrangement, a friend, a life partner, their other half, or some combination therein.  These varied factors contribute to some wild misunderstandings and points of contention between families, and even between practitioner and Other.  We hope, in the writing of this text, to reconcile some of these differences of perspective.

The well-chosen familiar is an asset to the practitioner, and sets a practitioner above a peer who is otherwise equal in footing.  In all things a practitioner might do, the familiar can influence the outcomes.  In times of warfare they may be guardians or assistants, and even the weakest familiar may be a reservoir of power that the practitioner can draw on to bolster themselves or suppress the effects of injury.  In dealings with Other, the familiar may be a voice or messenger, and they signal to the Other that the practitioner can work with their kind in some capacity.  Familiars may be assistants in the crafting of magical items, a second set of eyes, a means of travel or accessing realms the practitioner wouldn’t easily be able to access, a repository of information, and a buffer against harm or influences much like those the Other employs.

The familiar gains much the same: protection from those that would hunt it, a reservoir of power that preserves it, a spokesperson when dealing with humanity, standing among Others for its ability to relate to humans, helpers in their tasks, a means of transportation to places of Man that some Others cannot enter, as well as the ability to enjoy some of the graces and protections that mankind does.

As an established relationship, to be covered more in the next chapter, each will bleed into the other by way of the connection that connects one to the other, ceasing to be a closed circle and instead becoming an open figure eight, one open circle threading into the other.

This facet of the relationship is perhaps the primary reason that we do not see all practitioners undertake the Famulus ritual as a matter of course.  To both ends, the bond does diminish the Self and open it up to influences, granting a sum total greater than its individual parts, each entrusting the other with new, open vulnerabilities.

The connection also serves to make the practitioner more Other, and the Other more mortal, often represented by the animal form.  Many turn away from the bond to preserve their self and humanity, keeping these things as a grounded foundation from which to practice, as opposed to plunging into the deeper metaphorical waters and trusting an Other to help them to breathe.

In old traditions, in the post-Solomon reformations, God was arranged above king, who was arranged above lord, above man, who ruled over animal, who were declared above Other.  We know this redefinition of the anno Domini provenance was in part an effort to redefine the realm of man and mark out borders on a cultural and linguistic front.  Put in simpler words, mankind, in order to both survive and thrive, declared a new order of things and placed Other at the lowest point.  The familiar relationship originated in an era where this was the common mindset among men both practitioner and innocent, and the traditions established then include the translation of Other to the nearest step in the chain, in what was often viewed as ‘raising them up’ to be animals, close but still subservient to man.  In this, the tradition of giving them mortality through animal forms was established early on.

As a general rule, the familiar will assume an animal form that suits them, suits the master, and, while not necessarily decided beforehand, seems sensible in retrospect.  Larger animals often correspond with stronger familiars, and there is a strong correlation between the predatory Other and the predatory animal, or attention given to associations, such as the rabbit to the moon, or the cat to darkness.  Some variations do exist, or may even be automatic for certain Other, as detailed in chapter five, but the animal tradition was established early and holds true today.

The human-Other relationship extends further back than those early traditions, of course.  At the same time, such relationships were informal, often driven by times of necessity, and, according to old texts, often ended in the demise or subjugation of the practitioner or the practitioner’s wily escape from Other clutches.

The Calhoun Motte texts are the unfortunately poorly translated -in language and narrative both- diaries of Locke, believed to be a nickname of the Lady Calhoun.  She is, at the opening of the texts, married to a loutish monster of a knight who was given the titular motte for his deeds in battle, a castle on a hill at the edge of deep woods.  For much of the run of the texts, Locke befriends slaves and trades her knowledge of practice for theirs, starting with a charm taught to her by her mother.  She bears her husband two daughters, and the first of the daughters is beaten so badly that she succumbs to the long-term effects of the beating a year and three days after the fact, while the second is strangled by him, left diminished in mental faculties, and later ordered killed when she raises her voice at him, unaware of what she is doing.  She then bears him a son, and he is finally glad, and raises the son to be the same sort of monster he is.

Locke, in the embellished version, engages in flirtation and dalliances with the Forest King, deep in the woods, and must go to great ends to hide her pregnancy and child.  This is, however, believed to be details stolen from another tale, about another woman and Other.  What we do believe is that she, after weeks of daily beatings by her son, fled out to the woods, and struck a deal with the Forest King, marrying him.  Together, they overturned the Motte, freed the slaves and embattled servants, and slew both son and husband.  At the story’s end, the Forest King states that as he spared her life, he must now take it, and she argues valiantly against the end.  But, as Others of old often did, he refuses.  Her last diary entry, allegedly, is written as she prepares to go give over her life.

Depending on the tale, it ends differently, with the rare version saying that this obligation to give over her life is a test.  In others, she says he is no different than her husband was, and either curses the Forest King and his new Motte, or a melancholy settles over him until the end of his days.  In reality, both the embellished version and our own texts suggest that the Motte was managed for a single winter season by the Other, who pretended to be a human noble, then was sacked by allies of the boorish knight in springtime, its inhabitants slain down to the last for consorting with Other.

Locke’s story does include one of the old forms of human-Other relationship, established through another type of bonding we are very familiar with; marriage.  The effects that are described in the texts and various versions of the story lend something to this.  From the time of the marriage, Locke demonstrates some of the Forest King’s native abilities, turning wood aside and going untouched by animal.  Her existing capabilities as a practitioner are stronger, as she uses taught practices with ease, such as the ability to walk among hunting hounds who would otherwise tear her to pieces, cowing them.  Finally, the Forest King gains the ability to enter the Motte through the gates, paving the way for his followers to charge in after.

Some speculation has been directed at the link between the death of Locke and the summary decline of the Forest King, an Other of unknown type.  In virtually all versions of the tale that have been seen in circulation, he dwindles after killing or eating Locke, and finds himself unable to stand up to the knight’s old wartime companions and the armies they lead.  Though they were not strictly master and familiar, some of the same factors may stand:

When one suffers, so does the other.

The mechanism of this suffering varies, and can be temporary or great, depending on a multitude of factors, including the type of Other and the balance of power.  For Locke and her Forest King, however, it seems to hold true, and may well be the intended ‘moral’ of the tale, reflected in Locke’s diary entries, for those who know of Others and practitioners.

Terrence Hegh is not an anecdote drawn from ancient times, but a relatively modern example of the unconventional relationship.  Awakened, Terrence was forbidden from taking a familiar without family approval.  Driven by a fascination with the sea, in part due to his belief that he could reunite with a drowned lover if he could find her body, Terrence met and forged a deal with a Selkie, Graeme.  Every seven days, they met on the shore and mingled blood, each teaching the other one thing.  Functionally, the effect was similar to that of a familiar bond.  Both men carried on this way for some time, slicing their arms and holding the wounds to one another, each answering questions for the other.

Terrence eventually reached the point where he could draw on the Selkie’s power, and took to the water.  Graeme, however, felt he had much more to learn before he could traverse the cities of man, and felt betrayed in the deal.  He found and hid the body of Terrence’s lover, hoping to extort the rest of the information he needed from the young man.  When Terrence found the body, the Selkie guarded it, keeping him from approaching.  Terrence tricked the Selkie, giving him ‘a book with more information than he had shared in all their conversations’, a farmer’s almanac, and told him it had to be kept dry or it would be useless. Stuck with one hand held above water, the Selkie could not swim after Terrence without losing his prize.

Terrence was ultimately interrupted by the Selkie in the midst of the ritual to revive his partner.  Death energies carried him to the edge of death, where he was left suspended, turned into a brine ghoul.  The Selkie, too tired to withstand the onslaught of the loose energies, was slain.  Before he could come to his senses, Terrence devoured the waterlogged corpse of both Selkie and lover, sealing his fate as a lonely undead creature.

It seems that for every tale one might find of these deals ending well, there are fifty or more that ended poorly.  The Famulus relationship is in itself familiar.  It is a tradition-established practice, known to most Others, known among practitioners, and even among some of the general public, including the idea of the witch and her black cat, or Macbeth’s Paddock and Graymalkin.

It is, in practice, best to modify the existing Familiar arrangement than to attempt to construct it from scratch.  Draw on the familiarity and the supports provided by convention, lest the deal be unbalanced and the ending premature and tragic both.

Rest assured, even in holding true to the ritual, there are a great many shapes the ritual may take, and more possible outcomes in dynamic than this text could hope to cover.  Some include:

Tyranny on the part of the practitioner, who holds the power and controls their other half.  The familiar may be feeble, chosen for that reason, but its power is not the goal.  This is the old way, but not the oldest, exactly.  Discussed further in chapter two.

Elevation of the incomplete or weakling familiar.  Familiars who are incomplete, either as a fixed state or because they need something to finish themselves will be able to use the master as scaffolding.  In this process, they often match themselves to the master and build themselves up as a complement to them.  The cost, again, is in power, the benefit not control but a familiar in easy lockstep.
Discussed more in chapter five.

When the practitioner is referred to as Master the implication is that they are the one in control, with the majority of the power, if only by a small amount, and the ability to direct the familiar, deciding on their mutual course in things.  This is the most common modern form of the relationship, to the extent that many practitioners casually refer to the practitioner in the relationship as the Master, rather than the practitioner, and refer to the Other as servant.  While it sounds far from egalitarian, Others are often simpler existences, and often have less in the way of complex motives.  Those that do have complex motives often have the benefit of extended lifespans, and either miss little by maintaining the Famulus relationship because their plots span centuries, or they can carry on with their business in the background, which may resemble…

Loose familiar relationships are ones where the practitioner and familiar may resemble other types of relationship, but will most often resemble the Master/servant, Proportionate, Parallel, or Casual relationships, with one key difference.  In this relationship, the pair are detached, each leading their separate lives, but may make contact or touch base with one another regularly.  The familiar could easily be in another city, working on its own affairs or on goals aligned with the practitioner’s.  Such relationships are often dependent on the Other and the practitioner’s type of practice, using the ability to travel or summon the familiar quickly.  In other cases, the relationship takes this shape because of the practitioner’s needs; the alchemist chooses a familiar comfortable with cauldron and workshop and trusts them to handle things while he is away on business, or the heartless chooses a familiar to procure sacrifices from distant places.  This often sacrifices the ability to quickly exchange power between the two, but if the two are aligned in intent and disposition, it can be akin to having two sets of eyes and hands in two separate places.

Proportionate practitioner-familiar relationships are often carefully managed by necessity, striving to strike the right balance that does not veer too far one way or the other.  A strict relationship, this may come about because of the demands of the recalcitrant Other, or because the Other is of a type that cannot readily keep itself from taking over the practitioner, a reality discussed further in the next chapter.  By striking a balance, one party is typically being protected.  They must make preparation and take extra safeguards with matters that others may ignore or think about once a year at most, such as extended distance from one another, drawing on large amounts of power, or undertaking a major ritual.  Such a relationship, even if not clearly defined at the time of the Famulus ritual, will be very controlled, with keener awareness of where the practitioner and Familiar stand in respect to one another, which can be a benefit.

Parallel relationships are somewhere between proportionate and casual, and strike their balance by having practitioner and Other as opposites or as matched roles, where each has their field of dominion.  A learned practitioner who is poor in a fight may choose an Other that is aggressive and comfortable with killing, or a practitioner comfortable with industry and the urban may choose a familiar of the natural world.  Both can grow with some confidence they will not occlude the other, both gain some familiarity with the other’s ‘world’, and they may cover one another’s weaknesses.  As a drawback, however, translations of power are rarely easy, and even drawing on one another’s power may be costly.  Careful selection of Other is critical, for reasons that should be obvious.  Originally a result of necessity, looked down on by some, the parallel relationship has seen a surge of interest since the early 1800s, redoubled in the mid 1900s, and in many circles today, the selection of an especially good match may be something of a status symbol.  Touched on in chapter four.

Casual practitioner-familiar relationships are dangerous to the point of irresponsibility, but have seen some growing popularity among young practitioners as of the writing of this (2018) edition.  The familiar is chosen not for power or purpose, but for affinity with the practitioner.  The benefit, of course, is that one enjoys an easy friend and bond.  Do not undertake such a relationship with an Other thinking it may be easier or may allow one to ignore some of the warnings and restrictions.  Just the opposite.  If one does not mind the dangers and pitfalls, the Other will, oft to one’s detriment.

Subverted practitioner-familiar relationships are ones where the familiar controls the relationship.  The result of choosing a motivated Other with a great deal of power, the subverted relationship is, essentially, the end of the practitioner’s free life, and any freedom they are granted is at the Other’s whim.  The benefit, if it can be called that, is to have more power at one’s fingertips, but such power isn’t even necessarily at the practitioner’s disposal.  This relationship defined the pre-Famulus era.  Touched on in the next chapter.

Collapsed or Failed practitioner-familiar relationships are something of a worst case scenario.  A result of choosing highest-order Others, a failed proportionate relationship where safeguards are breached or balances tipped over, the Other’s power floods the practitioner and destroys them.  If anything remains of the man, it is a shell.  Touched on in the next chapter.

We hold that if it must be done, it should be done in an orderly, established way, with a clear label and agreement between master and Other.  One should educate themselves on the benefits and costs, including that simple reality that by taking one step closer to being partners, each moves a measured distance from their Self, the world they inhabited, and from the security that comes with being a closed circle.  It can easily go to ruin.

When disaster befalls master and familiar, the problems typically start at the bond.


3: The Ties that Bind

The familiar bond has many parallels to marriage; marriages may be arranged, happenstance, the result of long courtship, or they may be the product of practicality or need.  They may take a number of shapes afterward, as touched on in the previous chapter, including partnership, servitude, or friendship, and the circumstance in which the bond comes about does not always indicate the nature of that bond after, though it can certainly play its part.

In trying to encapsulate this bond, we find it difficult to impossible to sidestep these clear and sometimes uncomfortable parallels to marriage.  While such a ‘marriage’ to an Other may be distasteful, depending on the Other and practitioner, it still behooves the practitioner to keep this parallel in mind.  Many if not all questions about the possibilities, arrangements, and consequences of the familiar bond can be quickly answered with a comparison to common betrothal.

For example, one of the first considerations and dangers one faces in forging a relationship with an Other is the question of what happens with a vast power differential.  If one chooses a very powerful Other, then what unfolds?  To answer this, we can compare it to a marriage: would you wish to marry someone who had all of the resources and influence in the relationship?  Even a good relationship can go sour over time, and that is doubly true when that relationship is with something that isn’t human, with a different mindset, priorities, and perspective on the world.  Once it sours, the practitioner in an unbalanced relationship that does not favor them has little to no recourse.  Their familiar holds the pursestrings, has the final say in all decisions, and through the familiar bond, is permanently bound to the practitioner.

What’s more, the disproportionate relationship means that when the Other passes from this world, or is bound, rendered powerless, or taken to pieces, the practitioner suffers the full weight of that defeat, and will be extinguished in kind.

A healthy connection between master and familiar is, most often, an equitable one, where power is exchanged both ways, in a constant negotiation, overt or unsaid.  In a working relationship, the connection becomes a conduit by which powers, ability, and even Self can be lent from one to the other.  Through this, the practitioner may access talents, use the familiar as a battery, or use the familiar as a means of turning power of one sort to the familiar’s power.

Aloysius takes a Champion for a familiar, Adonis Johnson, a moderate-tier Animus that had spent his prior existence wandering the world to find the best people to fight with.  Johnson’s roots are in the incarnate, serving Battle, but he himself is essentially physical and could be mistaken for human.  His expression of power is through his innate awarenesses and talents, and should Aloysius feed Johnson with power, the familiar would exaggerate his ability to assess enemies, sense raw fighting potential, would fight better, and would be better able to rise to any challenges.  That same conduit of power can flow the other way, serving Johnson’s power by assisting him in his duties even though he is ‘free’ of those duties so long as he is a familiar will give the Animus power.  His underlying purpose is to remind the great fighters that anyone can lose, so defeating the powerful will serve to fill the well of power that both Aloysius and Johnson draw on.  Should Aloysius require it, he may draw on the connection and express a few Champion powers and abilities like those described above, albeit through the lens of Aloysius as a person.

Following the ritual, both are tied together, their assets pooled.  Power can be withdrawn from their joint pool of power, and equilibrium will be found over time.  If both are at full capacity and the master draws a third of the familiar’s power for a specific effect, the familiar will be weakened, but in the hours and days after, the balances will automatically settle until both are missing a sixth of their power, not accounting for natural replenishment or other expenditures.

The effectiveness of this power draw and translation of power can vary, depending on the familiar.  Aloysius’ familiar is focused on battle, combat, competition, and aggression.  Drawing power to do something in the midst of a fight, to do something aggressive, or for the immediate purposes of a duel would be very efficient.  Doing so to power and draw up an illusion or for the avoidance of combat entirely would be an expenditure with a very poor exchange rate.

The nature of the familiar impacts this, as well.  A spirit, for example, would care more about subject matter than the circumstances of a situation that an incarnate-related Animus would dwell on.  For a complex spirit knit together of deer, owl, and rabbit, for example, an illusion of any of those animals would be very efficient, but an illusion of fire would be a steep payment, if the familiar were paying the tab.

The translation of Self can itself be an advantage, but may just as easily be something negotiated or ruled against as the relationship is established.

Walter knew from an early point in his studies that he would be interacting with the Faerie court of Dark Summer.  While many practitioners who deal with the Fae will have some protection from inveiglement and traps, Walter’s situation was a poor one: a deceased father gainsaid in former deals, the family’s assets stripped and deals outstanding.  He had no means to get those conventional protections of a practitioner of Faerie arts.  He ended up taking a glamour-cursed partner, a girl enslaved by Dark Summer, doomed to become a monster every evening, so she could be slain time and again by her endless pursuers.  While she was not especially strong, and her power was limited to some transformation and translation of normal power into Glamour, her experience with the Fae enabled Walter to either use her as liaison, or to draw on the connection and alter his self to be temporarily Fae-like.  By becoming more like one of them, he was able to assume some protections.  Should all else fail, he could adjust his Self with that temporary monstrous visage and strength.  His partner, in turn, gained a reprieve from being hunted, and could hold onto enough of Walter’s humanity that she could avoid transforming on some evenings.

For much of human history, the benefits that Aloysius and Walter now enjoy were not possible, and most relationships between practitioner and Other were patronage, with the Other handing out limited power at a disproportionate cost, or subverted bonds, where the Other tied themselves to the practitioner in what was ultimately a parasitic or domineering role.

Parallels can be drawn to possession, where there is a link, albeit a very short one, and the Other occupies the body of a practitioner, an aware, or an innocent.  This was the closest convention, and many deals with Others were seen as doomed ones.  The earliest relationships were made between strong practitioners and the weakest Others, and served to insulate the practitioner against the possibility of being strongarmed into other deals.

As civilization sprawled and the most dangerous Others were dealt with, the nature of a master-familiar relationship took comfortable hold, and other possibilities arose, such as the parallel arrangement, or the careful proportionate dynamic.  These would often happen out of necessity, knowledge was handed down, and they saw more common use.

Catherine was forced to establish a careful relationship with a Bedlam Belle, otherwise known as a Moonstruck or the unsavory term Lunatic, in 1690.  Infected with contagious madness that could spread if conditions were met, the Belle was prone to disturbing the construction of levies, dams, and bridges.  As her influence spread across their small town, she bid others to do the same, and had some effects on reality.  Catherine lacked the knowledge to bind the Belle, got little help from Other and practitioner, and could not convince the Belle to be bound, nor could she slay the girl that had been taken in by the church, using its protection.  The familiar relationship was a compromise, and Catherine bound the Belle to herself, in a proportionate dynamic.

Catherine’s life from that point on was an ordeal, as the Belle jockeyed with her for power in their dynamic.  She moved inland, which distressed the Belle and turned it hostile, and whenever it rained or if she spent too long looking into water, her own sanity would slip.  With her passing of pneumonia at 46, the Belle was freed, and bid three families to drown themselves before passing herself, as a carriage was driven off a bridge and she died in the crash.

Catherine Gresham served the practitioner community admirably by telling others what she had learned and how to tailor the proportionate relationship to be easier to manage, but her contributions and sacrifice went unnoticed in her time.  She is but one example among countless, that have contributed to this ever-evolving arrangement and bond.

Today, constants have taken hold, and the established structures of the relationship allow for easy application of the parallel, proportionate, casual, and the loose relationship.  The division of assets, transfers of power, the dynamics when one is strong and the other weak, the nuances of the deal, and the protections afforded are secure in a ritual many families perform with gravity and significance.  The bond cannot easily be broken, and when it can, it remains easier to simply slay both master and familiar.

The biggest danger one faces is the collapse of the relationship through the bond.  Know that Others who spread or extend their influence may naturally extend their influence across the bond, corrupting or taking over the practitioner.  Others that possess are much the same, and the bridge between master and familiar may easily become an elastic band, snapping possessing Other to practitioner, giving them the easiest of avenues.  Indeed, some Dark Riders, Dark Passengers, or Jockeys specialize in tricking hosts and potential masters into establishing a connection or creating an avenue, only to seize firm and permanent control.  Know what Other you are dealing with.

See chapter five for more discussion of the dangerous Others.


4: Familiar and Unfamiliar Dynamics

The Familiar is primarily a Western convention, originating in English speaking areas, but as in many things Western, cultures spread and bleed into one another.

Within modern, Western culture, the current attitudes toward Familiars are in a reasonably healthy place.  Families of standing will often choose the Master-servant relationship, and may arrange familiars for youth, but many others have some free choice, leaning on comfortable establishment.  There are some hazards to watch for, but it is largely the fault of the practitioner when things go wrong.

On an individual level, practitioner to Other, the choice of familiar may bias certain Others to or against the practitioner.  The Fae-goblin dynamic is an easy one to cite, but certain Others may be so comfortable with chaos that a practitioner tied to a familiar of Karmic Law and associated influences may disturb or unsettle them.

In practice and in Practice, this makes negotiation harder.  Summonings may be resisted, Others may sense the practitioner coming from further away, as senses tuned against certain opposition are alerted, and even mundane magic items may squirm, after a fashion, in the practitioner’s possession, slipping from their ownership more easily or refusing to function properly.

In the broader, subtler sense, power among practitioners is expressed in several subtle ways, including standing, karma, strength of Self, and connections.  When the familiar relationship is poor, these things are tested, and this can impact one’s place in broader society.  If the familiar is a fish out of water, metaphorically speaking, then they are tested and both suffer.  Demesne, appropriate accommodations, and attention to the Other’s needs or means of interacting with the world can bolster this.  Having any familiar at all removes one from conventional society by a certain measure, and the scale of that measure depends in part on how acclimated the Other is with humanity.  To take an Other who knows nothing of cars into society will have its influence.

Again, in conventional, non-practitioner society, having an animal with you for the long-term can raise questions, especially if people notice the Other’s long lifespan relative to its assumed mortal species.  A practitioner without a familiar can potentially hide their practice from their partner or colleagues, but one who has a familiar risks hurting the bond through neglect if they attend to mundane life, and vice versa.  It becomes inevitable that some things must be shared.

Culturally, outside of the West, the state of the Familiar arrangement has strong relationships to how ordered that society is and the state of the relationship with existing Others.  Russia, for example, has a population of dangerous Others and a strong authoritarian streak when it comes to management of familiars, and Tanzania once had a strong Other-practitioner relationship but has seen a stark shift toward an approach akin to Russia’s.

Danya is a cousin from one of the larger Volgograd families, and agreed to talk to us about his approach while he visited.  He describes a dynamic where he jockeys for position among peers of roughly the same age.  One individual can rise meteorically or fall from grace with a single action or mistake, akin to a crime family, but their work is largely in support of Volgograd’s health and assisting its poor.  They maintain a degree of peace between families by being a ‘bigger stick’, as Danya describes, picking out hostile Others from Norilsk and its environs, and capturing dangerous Others from the wilderness.

Danya took a familiar for the status and chose a goblin, but has made it a point of pride to ‘tame’ the goblin, renaming it Cagehead (translated), and exerting control over every aspect of its behavior and appearance until it no longer resembles a goblin.

Senegal and Namibia are more progressive and could be argued to have led the way in casual Other-human partnerships, with young practitioners courting familiars in a very casual manner that includes long-term bindings before they settle on a Familiar, if they don’t outright reject the practice of taking Familiars for cultural reasons.

Nadiesta is a student at UNAM, and awakened as a limited Binder.  While she has not taken a familiar, she has established a bond with the community of Others that imparts some of the benefits, a factor she has strengthened over time.  She hails from an area in the rural countryside where more were Aware than innocent, and where Others are predominantly open and positive in their relationships with humans.  In her grandfather’s time, colonialism reigned, and even in the wake of that colonialism, Namibia saw a great deal of legal argument and contention over who should rule it, only partially resolving during her parent’s childhoods.  Coinciding with this was the status of Others, which was volatile and ranged from the aggressive binding of even minor Others to trickery, and even being driven from areas en masse by broad-area effects.

In the end, many Others and Nadiesta’s family found a kind of agreement and sympathy.  The region had never had many hostile Others, and the ones it did have were bound in her grandfather’s day.  Nadiesta grew up with Other friends and they formalized their friendship in mutual bindings.  The precedent established there manages to shirk the dynamics established in chapter two, possibly by being strictly temporary, and has carried forward with Nadiesta as she attends University.  As she meets new Others, each prior binding paves the way for her relationships with them.  Others find her and work with her as a matter of course, and she can draw on the circle of Others keeping close to her in a similar manner to how a Master might draw on his Familiar, albeit to a far smaller scale.

In some places, such as eastern Russia, there is a tendency to adjust the relationship, binding the Other to the form of an object, in a grand and formal ritual that blurs the line between the Implementum and the Famulus rituals.  It remains a measure that offers a wealth of control, but does without the companionship or easy negotiation.  As a practice it may have its roots in the same sorts of binding that occur among goblins, but the process was spearheaded by elite families who have not shared the particulars, mimed thereafter by others.

In western Russia and scattered places in Europe, the Other may be translated to a place, in a hybridization of the Demesne ritual and the Famulus ritual.  As a process, this instills that place with its own awareness and power, at the cost of it having less of an intuitive link to the practitioner.

These two forms of binding are not established and are far weaker together than the archetypical Familiar and Implement or the archetypical Familiar and Demesne would be, if both were taken apart.  The established approach does offer simplicity, as well as minor benefits such as not needing to manage or talk to one’s familiar, or having a demesne that can withstand and fight back against intrusion, in a practitioner community where such invasions may be common.

In Japan, relationships range from the Casual to a standardized variant on the familiar, where the practitioner opens up several spaces and binds two or three familiars at once.  This dynamic is tyrannical on the part of the practitioner, who assumes shrewd control, but among the Others it is often parallel or complementary, with Others balancing one another out and absorbing the brunt of effects for one another.  The process is somewhat fragile, and the nature of the practitioner’s relationship to the familiars resembles a chess player with his pieces; if he topples, all tied to him suffer.  Even a single blow can be telling in the outcome of contests.

This careful arrangement of Familiar to self can change in different cultural contexts.  What a Familiar connects to or what things symbolically represent what may swiftly change for the world traveling practitioner, as they run into new spirits with different ideas.  For those maintaining Parallel relationships, this can be a sudden and drastic shift.  An example, from a tale shared for dark amusement:

Jason maintained a long relationship with his familiar, Anna, a twisted Wraith with the form of a haphazardly tattooed girl of twelve or so, who chronically smoked and drank.  By the terms of their loose, parallel arrangement, she wears a human form, sometimes without the tattoos, but carries on in her own way.  He benefits from her raw strength, and endures the occasional hangover that leaks over from her binge drinking.  They are parallel to one another, as he works for law and order, chasing down international criminals and Others, and she has a connection to the underbelly of society, a rebellious, criminal, and streetwise bent to her.

As they travel through Norway, however, they are forced to cut through the Undercity in Oslo.  A neighborhood the unawakened cannot enter, rife with Others, and a large population of hundreds of the dangerously Aware.  There, murders are a daily occurrence that do not even shut down affected businesses for the full day, most dogs are strays or attack dogs, and, pertinent to this anecdote, the lion’s share of children smoke and drink, with some doing hard drugs casually.  Jason’s partner Anna exists as a rebel, and in an instinctive effort to be a rebellious kid instead of following the status quo, she went above and beyond in finding a way to exceed the local youth in her extreme behavior.  Jason was forced to try and find her as she abandoned her usual habits and tracked down drugs and questionable drinks that would give even the local residents pause, passing on the residual effects to him through their connection.

Other things as simple as what a color means to a culture can skew a parallel arrangement or upset a sensitive balance between master and familiar.  Travel with care.

Variations on the Familiar ritual are numerous, and complicating factors abundant, but few boast the degree of establishment the Famulus ritual offers.  When new arrangements are seen, we know we must wait to see the long term outcomes, as there may be traps evident in even happy arrangements such as Nadiesta’s.

Further variations are expected to arise as attitudes toward Other change across the world.


5: Expectations and Labels

Others are too varied to label easily, but certain trends stand out among broad types.

Corporeal and Incorporeal Others:
Corporeal Others have a shorter road to travel when it comes to mortal form, and when they take animal form, may be more dangerous or comfortable with attacking a threat.  They heal quickly, can and do switch forms readily, and exhibit an easy resilience that does not test the bond.  Many are effective batteries and repositories for power.  The transfers of power, however, may be more limited, slower, or narrowed to specific subjects or courses.

Incorporeal Others, by contrast, tend to have a facility with the transfer of power, influence, and Self.  They may impart their strengths as an Other with ease, as a general beneficial effect for the practitioner, specific functions, or even as an offensive tool.  They are fragile, and make poor vessels for power, as their mortal form tends to be busy housing their incorporeal bodies.  The incorporeal Other as a familiar may be vulnerable to harm, crumpling or falling when struck and taking some time to draw the power necessary to return.  The degree to which this occurs depends heavily on their type, of course.

Elevated Others
When an Other is incomplete, it may be elevated:

The Single White Female type doppleganger seeks to mirror somebody in dress, behavior, and key facets of their lives, stealing romantic interests and even families.  She thrives through the established connection until ending her hunt in a climactic event where she destroys her target’s ego and body before stepping into her shoes, sometimes literally.  Most become restless or degrade over time without a ‘mirror’ to copy, becoming drab, neurotic, and detached, eventually pulling away to hunt a new victim.

Such a doppleganger is in an ‘incomplete’ state without her mirror.  Elevated, she fills in the blanks using the Familiar connection.  Depending on the terms of the deal, she could copy the practitioner, or fill in the blanks to complement them as an individual, becoming a perfect fit to them.

Elevated Others can include vestiges, dull echoes, creatures from the dreaming places, and the varied Hounds of War.  Some like the echo are stable in how unfinished they are, while others like the Hounds of War or dopplegangers will gain faces and names as they take lives.  The shape or nature an Other takes as it is elevated to something ‘complete’ can be controlled, but this kind of control requires more power, and may make the familiar weaker in the end.  Incomplete Others that have been Elevated tend to be decent repositories for power.

Detached Others, Summoned Others
Others who bear no concrete attachment to our world, including ones who may appear and disappear casually, those who exist rooted around a general place rather than where their feet are planted, and those who lurk around specific kinds of events will become familiars of a similar stripe.  Others who do not exist without being summoned, such as the typical Bloody Mary, will need to be summoned and held in place for the ritual’s duration.

They may be more fragile, with some banished for a time if wounded, but their ability to move from place to place will typically allow them to move to the practitioner’s side as they are needed.  A popular choice for the practitioner who seeks a loose master-familiar dynamic.

Others of Deals
Others with a facility for deals and facility with words will be reflected in a strong connection to the practitioner’s Self, and exchanges of Self.  Faerie are a common example.  They may grant some rhetorical ability, the ability to charm, or otherwise influence people.

Others of a Specific Line
Others of a consistent appearance, nature, and function will pick the same animals where possible.  This can be preferable to practitioners who wish to know what to expect, but they often have limited opportunities for growth in character or adaptation outside of their comfort zone, and this may lead to less affable Others for those who want friendly companionship or a Casual practitioner-Familiar relationship.  An example of this may be the Komainu, or the ‘stone lion’, a mass-manufactured guardian Other who protects and karmically benefits households.  Most are similar, though they may vary in size and shape, and a male Komainu will have a similar personality to another male Komainu.

Anti-Establishment Others
Some Others may inherently violate the Established expectations of the Famulus ritual due to their inherent natures.  This can include those parasitic Others touched on in chapter two, but also includes those who take object form by default, or Others who take no mortal form at all.  Others that exist as writing on a page may translate to become tattoos when not in their Other form, for example.

The aforementioned Komainu are often created in matched pairs, and one could pick such a pair as their familiar.  In the same way, any set of linked Others that exists as an established trio could be included as three.  Such Others have a tendency to be very ordered, and the more chaotic, matched Others may be too dangerous to bind, taking over the connection to the practitioner easily.

In short, nearly every expectation and rule within this text has its exceptions, as Others are varied and subversive.

Divine Others
A loose category, encompassing those Others who come from a higher power, which may or may not be a god.  In this category, they may be Karmic Others, related to great spirits, or even be primevals.  Often tied to an imposing power source, the Other acts as a filter to control that power, and may be a wellspring of power, either legitimate (with permission from the deity) or illegitimate (a cultist tapping a volatile power through a cooperating familiar).  As a benefit, if Other and practitioner are depleted, the Other may draw steady power, helping both to recover faster.

The cost of this power is that there are often either expectations, or the need to avoid the consequences of being caught drawing on this power.  Such connections are often but not always an arrangement from the higher power, a powerful Other granted as a gift.

Practitioners who tap into these higher powers will often choose an Other that is a filter in this manner, or a sliver of their deity’s power, rather than risk a familiar relationship with something grander that is likely to collapse.

Familiars of Higher Orders
In chapter two we discussed Others who may prey on the connection formed by the Familiar relationship.  Others of great power are similar.  Should they have a significant enough power source, the differential between Other and practitioner may be the equivalent of a small room underground and below a sizeable lake, with the smallest hole drilled between them.  Pressure and the natural movement of water, our analogy for power, ensures that the spray will be violent and inevitable.

At the highest order are those Others who have few peers.  God, Great Spirit, Primeval, the heads of Fae courts, and the Architects or Devourers of Creation require great power and the firmest of hands to manage, and one mistake, even a scratch on the skin, may be the opening that collapses the Self under their effective weight.  Practitioners of Solomon’s peerage may manage this, but they are rare at best, and even they may only postpone the collapse of the bond.  For most, the ritual will not even be finished before the Other washes out and through them, turning them into a mere foothold into our world of Man.

Cutting Class – 6.2

Avery

Last Thursday: Famulus


Avery had woken up before Lucy and Verona, and had spent a while deciding if she should wake them up.  She checked her phone, considered, debated the fact that the classes could be over soon anyway, and that they’d be waltzing in late.

“Verona,” she called over to the other bed.

“Mmrph.”

“We’re late for class.  Did you want to attend?”

“Which ones was it again?” Verona asked.

“Uhhh.  Realms, Alchemy, and Language.”

She waited for a response for a minute, then propped herself up for a better look.  It looked like Verona had fallen asleep again while she was answering, or didn’t care enough to really stay awake.  Not that it was easy to tell, as Verona lay with her back to Avery.

Right.

No afternoon class then.  Probably for the best.

Avery shifted position, and Snowdrop’s four legs went out, bracing against her stomach, claws pricking through her shirt.  She picked Snowdrop up and as she adjusted position, settled Snowdrop on her stomach.

“You’re getting heavier,” she whispered.

Snowdrop tried to bury her nose and eyes beneath the bottom edge of Avery’s shirt.  Avery pulled the sheet up around her, blocking out the light, and Snowdrop went still.

She checked her phone again, then, anxieties stirring a bit, checked social media.

No messages from Sheridan.  Sheridan’s page was desolate, with a quote from when Sheridan had been Avery’s age, and dead links to music on woobtube. The message from lunchtime was still there, from Sheridan: I’ll try to find a moment to ask.  Mom’s back from the work thing and took Dad shopping.

Nothing on mom and dad’s pages except some thumbs-ups fired off at a colleague’s vacation photos and a picture of a watercolor-y Canadian flag shirt bought for Kerry, forty-five minutes ago.

Rowan had hit the beach with Laurie and wasn’t going to be home much for Summer.  There were pictures of Laurie rocking a bikini and then Rowan with a sunburn that had turned him red-pink everywhere but where his swim trunks covered him.  Dumb.  Avery wasn’t really sure why they were together, when Laurie seemed really cool, nice, and pretty, with a lot of interests and passions.  When they spent a lot of time together they got snippy with one another, and when they were apart, it was like Rowan didn’t even miss her that much.

Declan’s Gamecouch page was more active.  It looked like Amber, their neighbor from three houses down and Declan’s friend from early childhood, had been ghosted by Declan.  There had already been a bunch of incidents in the past year or two where Declan, Declan, and Declan had been this tight-knit group and the dickishness ramped up to eleven when a girl was in the picture.  They’d had the one group member who was nice to a girl and got kicked out of the quartet, and Declans Two and Three had been caught checking out porn on Declan Two’s computer after not clearing the internet history.  Declan had been teased a lot about his friendship with Amber for a while now, and apparently dropped her as summer started.

Sucked.  Amber and Cal were decent, as far as Declan’s friends went, and Avery was left hoping it was a phase and not a long-term thing.  With luck he’d probably regret it in a couple of years.  With bad luck, he’d stick with the other Declans over the long term.

Avery weighed the risk of screwing with the already fragile connection break to Kennet, and sent Amber a message: Sorry my brother’s being dumb about stuff.  I’ll give him a hard time over it when I’m back in town.

The reply came back, just a heart emoji.  Avery smiled.  At least it looked like Declan’s now-ex-friend Cal was sticking by Amber.

Touching all the bases at least told Avery that the thing with dad’s coworker hadn’t upended her whole life, and that Sheridan was being cool.

Avery wasn’t sure what else could screw up her life at home as badly as mom and dad not taking it well.  Maybe if the magic stuff was found?  Maybe?  She wasn’t sure what the policy for that was, but it was the same kind of grey area where she could imagine them being relatively cool about it, maybe really worried.  Probably really worried, now that she remembered her mom talking to her in the parking lot about Verona’s dad… and she could also imagine a scenario where they handled it badly.

Was that weird?  That she didn’t get her parents?  If she really thought about it she felt like they were tired a lot of the time because they had so much going on, and mom had some awful friends and dad had the coworkers who she knew nothing about, and they were a bit religious but not in a way where they went to church.  She could imagine a situation where the wrong person in their immediate circle talked to them or took a stance and it wouldn’t matter what she said.

The two extreme options were her parents being worried about her and her parents being not okay about her, and she had no idea if she was thinking about practice or about being gay, anymore.  But whatever it was and whatever happened it probably changed how they treated her and that sucked.  The more she thought about it, the more it sucked, from the big to the small, like holidays and stuff that had nothing to do with anything getting tainted or changed by the big and little changes in attitude.

“Ugggh,” she muttered, under her breath.

Snowdrop, eyes half-lidded, nuzzled at the bottom of Avery’s shirt until she found bare skin, then gave Avery some licks, prompting a stifled laugh from Avery.  She whispered, “What are you doing?  Stop.”

Snowdrop gave her one more lick, then closed her eyes again.

“What was she doing?” Lucy asked, from the other bed, Verona blocking Avery’s view of her.

“Licking me.”

“Mm.  What time is it?”

“Four fifteen.  Haven’t heard anyone walking around so classes might still be in session.  It’s late enough I don’t think there’s any point to trying to go.”

“I’m not the most upset person in the world, after hearing that,” Lucy said.  “Probably not the most upset person in the room.”

Verona mumbled something inarticulate.

Avery started to check social media, seeing if Sheridan had replied, then made herself stop.  She fired her mental starting gun, swung her feet over to the edge of the bed, and got going, as she had for many early morning practices, and on days she hadn’t had practice, so she’d have a shot at getting time in the shower.

Cradling Snowdrop, she walked over to the other bed.  “Want an opossum to snuggle?”

Lucy lifted up a hand.

Avery, looking down at Verona and Lucy, saw them lying over the covers, foreheads touching, eyes closed, though Lucy was semi-awake.  She felt very conscious of the fact those two were best friends, seeing that.  Her mom had a similar picture with Kerry and Kerry’s friend that had gone to St. Victors.

She deposited Snowdrop between the two.  Lucy dropped her hand down to give Snowdrop a scratch.

“Don’t sleep too long or you won’t sleep tonight.”

“Mm.  Right,” Lucy said, without making any motion to get up.

Avery went to the door, and found the tray there.  Lifting the cover, expecting cold food and moist bread, she found three empty plates, an empty bowl, and two empty glasses, with a third only partially filled.

Huh.

Did the Brownies take it back?  Why leave part of the drink, then?  There was zero way that Verona would eat that much, and Lucy didn’t seem like the type.  Which left…

Avery walked over to the other bed, and looked down at Snowdrop, who lay on her back, stomach distended.

“I thought you seemed heavier, Snowdrop.”

The little opossum began to sort of laugh, mouth open, punctuated by sneezes.

Three meals?”

Snowdrop turned human, which elicited noises of protest from Lucy and Verona, as they were pushed aside.  Snowdrop pulled the bottom edge of her oversized t-shirt down, to make the image clear.  It read: “Apex Scavenger” and had a trash can with a little opossum paw extended out the top, giving a thumbs up.  “I’m fighting my nature, I swear!”

“You’re going to risk losing snuggle rights if you do stuff like this,” Lucy said, working her way to sitting up as she extricated herself from a position between the wall and Snowdrop.

Lucy scooted over to the bottom edge of the bed, and sat up.  She hadn’t wrapped up her hair, and it was a bit of a mess, with strands having pulled out of the ponytail. Many held their shape, arcing along the sides and top of her head.

“I like the hair,” Avery said.

Lucy fumbled for her case of toiletries at the top of the chest at the foot of the bed, and got a mirror, looking.  “Mmm.  Frig.”

“I do like it, though.”

“It won’t stay like this, and it’s going to be a pain to untangle,” Lucy grumbled, looking grumpier than her usual.

“Could use glamour,” Avery suggested.  “Faerie magic like a really good hair product.”

“Verona suggested that before.  I’m worried that if I do that and then something goes wrong, it could shatter the glamour and shatter my hair with it, giving me bald patches or something.”

“That’s scary, don’t even say that,” Avery said, eyes widening.  “I’ve been putting it on my skin.”

“If you talk about it, it’s more likely to happen!” Verona called out, a bit sing-song, still lying down.

“Ugh, ugh.” Avery gave her arms a shake, skin crawling a bit.  “Um, speaking of hair and skin… we’re long overdue for showers, I think.  And since we missed class, and we need to research stuff… library after?”

“Let’s find books that teach about the classes we missed,” Verona said, sitting up, eyes now wide, like she was forcing herself awake.  She had strands of hair sticking out sideways.

“We can do that,” Lucy said.  “Plus stuff we need to research.”

Verona gave a thumbs up.

“Come on, Snow, I know this is like, your five in the morning, but your hair is a mess.  Shower.”

“I love human showers,” Snowdrop said, not moving.  “Way better than standing out in the rain like I’m used to.”

“Come on, brat.”

“I’m a civilized animal, all domestic and crap.”

They managed to get sorted, grabbing everything they needed, and hit the showers.  It was nice, not having to worry about holding other people up or navigating the crowds and the awkwardness that they’d run into yesterday.

Avery washed Snowdrop’s hair, and for all that Snowdrop had protested, the kid did seem happy to be preened over by Lucy and Avery both, as they took care of super-basic hygiene at the sink.

They dressed, dried off as best as they could, ordered snacks that they wolfed down quickly, to tide them over until dinner, and then made their way to the library.

“Love this place,” Snowdrop said.  “Cozy, welcoming, very nice, not-terrifying librarian.”

“I’d let you ride in my pocket,” Avery said, “But I think you’re a touch too big, and you’d pull my shorts down.  Maybe it’d work if I was wearing winter clothes.”

“Your pig-out is coming back to haunt you,” Verona teased.

“I have so many regrets,” Snowdrop said.

“I’ve got a sweatshirt pocket, kinda,” Lucy said.  Lucy wore a super lightweight, sleeveless, moisture-wicking top with a pocket at the stomach and a hood.

“Mmm.  Maybe,” Snowdrop said.

They entered the library.  Nina was there, sitting in the corner, cutting leather, looking happy as a clam.  She gave them a smile as they entered.

Lucy pointed a finger at Verona.  Quietly, she asked, “Ronnie, want to track down some textbooks about today’s classes?”

“Cool,” Verona replied, matching her volume.

“Avery?  We need stuff on possible things we might end up binding.”

“Are we going to give too much away if we do that?” Verona asked.

Avery rocked back and forth on her heels, thinking as she talked aloud, “I can grab some extra stuff to throw people off the trail.  But they might know anyway.”

“Let’s make it as hard as possible,” Lucy said.

“What are you getting?” Verona asked.

“Stuff.”

“Cagey.”

“We might be monitored,” Lucy said.

Avery, looking around the library, could hear the quiet murmur of conversation.  She walked through the shelves, looked over, and saw that an impromptu class was in session at the bottom end of the library.  Quietly, she told the others, “I think Alexander is teaching.  That’s his voice.”

“He wasn’t scheduled,” Lucy said.

“Maybe he just likes teaching?” Verona suggested.

“If he’s teaching he can’t watch us.”

“But his cronies can,” Lucy replied.  She pressed a finger to her lips.

They took up residence at one of the big tables in the library, and found a rhythm as they worked out what was where and how things were organized.  Avery found some stuff on Alchemy, picked out one book, then handed it to Verona, pointing and giving her a light push to put her on course for the rest of the books in that department.  She went to the table to drop off the books: Fae Courts Across History, A Circle of Cold Iron, and Dark Somnambulism. While there, she investigated what Lucy was collecting.

A minute later, she found some books with menacing looking eyes on the cover and directed Lucy to them, to better sort through it.  Apotropaic Protections.

She found more for the Kennet Others.  Vessels, The Rusty Nail, Anima and Animus, Other Soldiers.  To throw any observers off the trail, Avery gathered some more books on different kinds of Other: Dying Giants, Divine Hands: Servants and Messengers, Hardest Bargains: Envoys, and At the Threshold of Death.  They covered giants, divine servants and messengers, envoy incarnates, and the undead, respectively.

The process of just finding the books was taking a while, but there was a kind of security blanket feel to it.  It felt good to know the information was out there.  It just had to be found in the midst of all the other stuff.

There were sounds out in the hallway, and it sounded like at least one class had ended.  Nobody was coming into the library, though.  Good.

The librarian came over to look.

“Is it okay if we chat a bit about what we read?” Avery asked.  “It’s empty, right?”

“Don’t disturb Mr. Belanger’s class, and be silent if and when students come in to browse and study,” Nina told them.  She placed a Garbage-Man comic in front of Snowdrop, then looked over the books.

“Can you not disclose what we’re reading to others, too?” Lucy asked.  “Obviously, you’d record what we take out…”

“The ledgers do the recording on their own, for what you take out of the library and tracking the books.  I can’t imagine they track what you’ve brought to this table, and I wouldn’t dream of telling others about what you’re reading, myself.  Your reading is about your relationship to the written word.  I don’t feel others should interfere with that.”

“Thank you,” Lucy said.

Verona had found the Alchemy, Realms, and Rhetoric texts, organizing them into three stacks.  Avery had found various books on Others.  And Lucy… Avery looked over the books, to verify what she’d suspected once she’d seen Lucy’s initial picks.

Deft Deflection, Apotropaic Protections, A Practitioner Alone, Walls of Chalk, Blinded Eye, Curse Lifted…

Avery paged through the initial stuff there.  Counter-practice, countering the evil eye, dealing with large numbers and forces, warding diagrams, counter-augury, counter-curses.

She had to walk around the table to Lucy’s other pile.

Famulus: The Familiar Bond, Implementum: The Practitioner’s Tool, Demesnes: A Place of One’s Own.

“Essentials?” Verona suggested.

“In our class with Ray, about general Practice, he said we could skip ahead a lot because the class was sufficiently grounded in the basics,” Lucy said.

“Makes sense.”

“Even if we each read a book a night, this is a lot of reading,” Avery said.  Some of the texts were hundreds of pages.

“You have to skim,” Verona said.

“What Ronnie said.  Like, for yours…” Lucy said.  “Check the table of contents…?”

Avery opened the book on undead.  She found the table of contents, sandwiched between some woodcut prints of skeletons and echoes.  Lucy joined her, standing beside her, and ran a finger down the list.

“Summoning and Binding.”

“And for this one…” Lucy grabbed the Dark Somnambulism one.  “Nightmares… just the table of contents tells us there are a lot of types.”

“Yeah,” Avery said.  “And again, summoning and binding, except there’s a chapter for each.  Chapter five, summoning.  Chapter six, dangers.  Chapter seven, binding.  They split them up and stuck a big warning chapter in there, it looks like.”

Verona plunked herself down in a seat.  “Probably because each subtype or whatever has to be explained on its own.  And some summonings are really dangerous, if they’re slippery and stuff.”

“Looks like,” Avery said.  She sat down too.

“We can do deeper research as needed,” Lucy said.  “But for now, we can work out the basics.”

“Do we each do our own thing with the books we grabbed?” Verona asked.  “I do new practice stuff, Avery figures out the Others, and you… work on countermeasures?”

“Maybe not permanently,” Lucy said.  “But it really bothers me that someone came after us with the strife thing, that they might be watching us now, and we can’t even talk in our room without worrying about being overheard.  We can focus later, when we can talk in our room at full volume.”

“Follow our instincts for now?” Avery asked.

“Boo, instincts,” Snowdrop said, not looking up from her comic book.

“Follow your instincts,” Lucy told them.

“Cool, cool,” Verona said, already hunched over the Alchemy text.

“And take notes?” Avery asked.  “I’m curious.”

Verona gave her a thumbs-up.

Avery kept reading the book on the Others that were related to bad dreams.  Nightmare seemed to be a really broad category that covered a lot of things.

Tadra Ikati, or Night Echoes.  Echoes, often driven by the unresolved, could find connection to dreaming friends and family who shared some similar unanswered questions or needs.  Some, broken, would be incomprehensible, and drove their targets mad.  Others found resolution, disappeared, sometimes leaving their targets gifted as they imparted something, or otherwise Aware.  In yet other cases, they used the connection to invade the sleeper.  In those cases, the best scenarios led to sleepwalking, the Echo acting every night to try to achieve something, often doing as Echoes did and repeating actions or getting caught in loops.  In the worst cases, they invaded and set up shop permanently, a little mad and broken.

Night Slashers were Bogeymen who acted within dreams, gaining enough momentum and power to transition into reality.  Simple enough.

Dark Riders were Others, sometimes Fae, who found the displaced with a minimum of connections protecting them, like orphans and refugees, and ‘rode’ them while they were still asleep.  The afflicted would have vivid nightmares and then wake in a strange place, hurt and exhausted.  The Dark Rider would then take them further and further each night, unless the afflicted found connection or found the right superstition to scare them off.  Given a chance, the Dark Rider or group of Riders would steer them from this world to another, to be sold or given to an Other.  Only those without connections could be preyed on, because a secure and connected home would ‘tie them down’ for all of the Rider’s intents and purposes.

Night Hags were Others, sometimes Aware or Innocent, but most often Practitioners, who subsisted off of nightmares, prolonging their own life and well being.  Hags of other types subsisted on different things, but they tended to be Heartless to start and became Other.  As the Night Hag got stronger, it got better at crafting and magnifying nightmares, and more thoroughly destroying the victim to get a bigger meal.

Avery was penning down some limited notes, mainly names and five word descriptions.  But before she could pen out the full Night Hag thing, she had to look over at Verona, who was busy reading, and wonder what Verona would think of that.

She moved on.  Majnūn Jinn were one of a variety of Jinn, which were some really powerful Others that were once ‘architects of creation’ or angels, but were theorized to have been brought ‘down to Earth’, or they finished their work, started to fade, and ended up bolstered with elementals or other forces.  Then they continued indefinitely, so long as they could keep sustaining themselves on spirits, elementals, incarnate stuff, or whatever.  The Majnūn type were an angry variety that stirred up nightmares and psychosis.  When they worked, they affected whole regions.

There were Nightmare Incarnates, and a variety of subtypes.  ‘Nightmare’ as an outright Incarnate, a human-shaped figure who represented Nightmare itself, and furthered the spread and effect of Nightmares in the world, built a personal kingdom of Nightmares, and surrounded itself with Nightmare-related Others.  Then there were subtypes, like the Envoy of Nightmares, which was a sliver of Nightmare that made bargains and deals, in what looked like a Ritual Incarnate, but more of a one-on-one deal with the devil, always around a theme.

Design a fate for your worst enemy.  Endure variations on that fate in nightmares for a year and a day, asking for it each night without breaking or failing to ask for a night, and it will be so.  Change yourself or your life however you desire, but for the rest of your life, the inverse will hold true in vivid and dark dreams; gain beauty for soul-crushing ugliness when you would rest, wealth in exchange for dehumanizing, humiliating poverty when your eyes close at night.  Gain the person you love, but in your sleep, they will be your nemesis, hating you from the bottom of their soul.

Creepy.

Incubi and Succubi, Others of shadow that corrupted their targets by changing their dreams and using those dreams to alter the Self.  Some did dark things to turn the Self evil, or devoured the Self and weakened or eventually killed the victim, and victims wouldn’t fight the process because the dreams were, um, really pleasant.  Others edited the brain through nightmares to corrupt the Self to be salacious, wanton, or just corrupt in a way that had the wantonness and lack of inhibition as a consequence, which apparently created a sex-focused label that might have shaped the Succubi and Incubi that came after.  Once confused with demons, because they were so insidious.

Avery continued to flip through.  She was looking for something that screamed ‘Alpy’ to her, but as she thought on the particular things she’d be looking for, she ended up going back a bit, reading more.

Night Hags had an initial uphill climb with their practice of consuming dreams, because it involved preying on innocents.  They had to pick carefully, and once they started they had to continue, or they got sickly and died.  As they continued, the universe came to accommodate them, which was said to be a common thing with Hags, especially when those Hags were disciplined about their patterns.  They left their humanity further and further behind as they carried on.

She placed her pencil so it rested on the book, then pushed it over to Lucy.

Lucy read it, nodded, then pushed it over to Verona.

“It’s hard to imagine,” Verona said.

“Maybe she doesn’t know what she is?” Avery asked.

“Maybe,” Lucy said.  “Wouldn’t she be, what’s the word?  Flesh and blood?”

“Visceral,” Verona said.

“They leave humanity behind as they go,” Avery said.  “Maybe to the point there’s no solid form?”

“Is there anything on summoning and binding one?” Lucy asked.

Avery stood and walked around the table, reading over Verona’s shoulder, now that Verona had the book.

“It requires a lot of specifics to summon,” Avery noted.  “Like, each one has a name you need to call, and specific objects in a specific order in a circle.”

“Because they start as an individual with a soul, that’s a lot of complexity and individual things you need,” Verona said.

“Take out that book,” Lucy said.  “Good find.”

“I’m still not convinced,” Verona said.  “I get the vibe it’s similar, but she skipped the predatory, hurting people part.”

“Could be,” Avery said.  “Some Others start out as someone who’s missing something, and the Other stuff fills them up, then takes over.  If someone’s lonely or hungry or sick then-”

“Yeah,” Lucy cut in. She pressed a finger to her lips.  “Good line of thinking.  We’ll talk about it later.”

Avery nodded, taking a piece of paper and putting it in as a bookmark.

There was a way to bind Alpy, if this was the right track.  It was hard to say for sure if it was the right track or not, when she had some doubts too, and she wasn’t sure if Alpeana wasn’t like, an accidental hag, who was hollowed out by being ignored and who just learned to take what was there, instead of stealing or hurting people to take it.  Maybe?

She really, really hoped they wouldn’t have to bind Alpy.

She read about Others of War.  There was something about Dogs of War.  Mostly it was things Charles had told them.  There were details on how they evolved as they got kills… they started out without names or faces, and got both gradually as they took lives.  That suggested John had killed a lot of people.  She’d kind of known that, but it felt different in black text on a white page.

There were other details.  A Dog of War like John got stronger and more focused as the conflict got worse and more intense.  There were details on binding them, and it was scarily easy.  Name them, either giving them a name or stating the name on their tag, while there was a closed circle around them.  There was no mention of how the circle was harder to draw as the source conflict got stronger, but it did say that the binding automatically broke after a set time, if the Dog of War and the binder were both on the battlefield after.  Other dog-types complicated binding further.

She paged through the rest.  Red Swords were Others who were derived from Incarnations of Battle and War, and were complex, nuanced weapons with souls, carried by faceless Others that wielded them.  Warborne were those born into places where war held more sway than life, death, or any of the other pillars of creation, and if they could hold onto that precedent, they could gainsay the other forces that might have sway over them.  Through fighting, they could find love, wealth, and other things.  Mortally wounded, they could fight on for a while, and if they could kill before they expired, they would survive.

There was a note attached to that entry that Avery found interesting.  She showed the others.

“I’m pretty sure we already know what-” Verona started.

Avery leaned forward and tapped the page.

“Ah.”

Gore-streaked.  It had come up in the student handbook, that four of their classmates were from the ‘Gore-Streaked’ Hennigar family.  Practitioners who emulated the Warborne, or artificially created that Warborne state.

“I wonder if there’s any that aren’t War,” Lucy mused.  “There are other pillars too, right?”

“War’s a big one,” Verona said, leaning back.  “Maybe the other big ones?  What are they?  Time?  Nature?  Fate?”

“I’m thinking of that thriller movie where the woman lives her life backwards,” Lucy said.

“Works.  Or someone caught up in a big prophecy from birth?” Verona guessed.

“Part of the reason I pointed this out, is if someone’s slinging Strife around, some of our classmates feel like they’d be good targets,” Avery murmured.

Lucy nodded at that.  She puffed out her cheeks for a second.  “That’s good.  It’s good we’re thinking about who we might need to plan around.”

“Same idea as a Dog of War, maybe?” Verona suggested.  She tapped the page.  “De-escalate?  End the source conflict if possible?”

“I don’t think they’d make it that easy,” Avery said.

“Good find, there,” Lucy said.  “Put it with the ones we want to take out of the library.  Do you want to move on to the Undead one?  See if there’s anything about vampires?”

“Ghouls,” Verona cut in.  “Vampires aren’t a thing. But there was concerning stuff with the ghoul last night…”

Lucy put a finger to her lip.  She made eye contact with Avery, and it felt like it had intent behind it.

Playing up appearances.

Avery opened the text, and it was a tough read.  It was better written than the last one had been, the art was higher quality, with illustrations for everything.  In one woodcut, a pair of vampires were weedy, emaciated things with bat features and wings and other stuff all mixed in, huddled in a nook while an onlooker held a lantern, shining it into the alcove.

There were ghouls, far more common, who could thrive because unlike Vampires, they could eat the dead, who were plentiful and not innocent.

There were Banes, Revenants, Widows, Dirge-things, Dirge-beasts and…

…And that was the point she realized her eyes were starting to glaze over and she wasn’t digesting what she was reading.

It wasn’t just the fact that it was irrelevant, but she was tired, and she was tired in a way that felt like she hadn’t slept enough and she’d just napped too long.

“I’m not sure I’m up for too much of this,” Avery admitted.  “I like the idea but I’m pretty wiped, still.”

“Do you want to switch books?” Verona asked.  “Read about the fascinating world of flame colors and what they mean in the transmutation of materials?”

“Not really,” Avery admitted.

“There’s a cool trick you can do where instead of using a certain material to turn something into something else, with the light blue flame telling you it’s working, you use practices to turn the flame blue and kick start the process,” Verona said.  “Except, bummer, the book doesn’t actually explain that.  It’s a secret held back by many families.”

“Like the binding of Night Hags,” Lucy said.  “It requires specific steps but I don’t think the book names them?”

“Nope,” Avery said, “Not unless I missed something.”

“The good knowledge is going to be family secrets.”

“And stuff taught in some classes, maybe,” Verona said.  “Maybe not stuff on this level.”

“What else is in there?” Lucy asked.

“Solids to liquid, liquid to gas, gas to solid, and so on, at the beginner level.  Basic potions and mixtures.  Want to make an acid that can eat through metal?  It costs about two thousand dollars in materials.”

“Really glad we aren’t being forced down that road,” Avery said.

“And you can’t do it where innocents will see, because it uses spirits and the karmic backlash can make the thing explode in your face.  At the upper level you get into transmutation that’s less solid to gas, and more like… flesh to spirit, and changing the spirit to change the flesh, or stones you can make that have really, really condensed powers in them, like healing energies or slowing time to slow your metabolism, or not needing to sleep anymore.  And chemicals you drink to try to form those stones in your body for more intensified effects that don’t wear out after two weeks.”

“Is it stuff you’re going to dive into?” Lucy asked.

“Too expensive, I think.  And really exacting.”

“Then maybe move on to another book?” Lucy suggested.  “It’s good to figure out you’re not keen early, but…”

“In a minute,” Verona said.  “Even if I’m not going to use it, it can teach me things about how this all works.”

“Pretty much anything you read can teach you that,” Lucy said.  “So why not read something you’re willing to get more into?”

“Because if I’m not going to come back to this, probably, then I should make sure I’m not looking back a few months from now, wondering about something I read but never got my head around.”

“I’m going to stretch a bit,” Avery said, standing and stretching.  “I might be done.”

“Can you just skim the books, pick out the ones that are relevant?” Lucy asked.

“I don’t think there’s a limit.  Let’s take them all back.”

“That’ll be heavy.”

“I’d rather figure out heavy than tire my head and eyes out,” Avery said.

“Okay,” Lucy said, shrugging.  “Okay.  Good.”

Avery walked away, leaving Lucy and Verona to their resumed debate over Verona reading a text she wasn’t all that interested in.  It looked like Nina was chafing a bit at the ongoing debate, but there wasn’t anyone else present, and she had given permission.

She found herself wandering toward the bottom end of the library.

“It’s an amazing investigative tool, when you can find the right time and place,” Alexander was saying, on the other side of the glass door.  He sounded animated.  “Not looking forward, but back.  Many of the Sight-focused practices, the research-rooted practices, and the practices focused around awareness have some form of it because… it’s all there.  Spirits remember, the forces of this world leave tracks where they tread.  Trace back those tracks, put in the right power, and you can ask.”

“It’s not that easy, though,” a guy said.

Lucy and Verona joined Avery, standing by the glass door.  They seemed to have noticed she was paying attention to Alexander’s class and came looking.

It was good to have backup.  Which made her think of Snowdrop.  She looked back-

Lucy nudged her, then pointed to her sweatshirt pocket.  There was an opossum-sized lump in there.

Alexander was already midway through his answer.  “It’s not easy, Zed, no.  If you want a clear, focused picture, with details, or any kind of control, then you need a lot of preparation and a steady hand.  You also need to account for the power you’re putting into it.  How are you doing it?  Is it casting your sight out, with power driving it further back?  Are you opening a door?  Recreating the scene by having spirits and other forces re-enact?  Each has its strengths and drawbacks.”

“My instinct would be to use tools.  Technomancy, ideally.”

“You’d need the right machine.  I know Raymond has dabbled in that.  I feel like I’d be belaboring the obvious in saying you could ask him-”

“I’ve asked.  He said to ask you about the Seeing part of it.”

“-Of course.  Then it would depend.  There are some where you outright seek out a signal.  Turn the dial, focus the image.  But it can fight you.  Scenes with emotional weight, a deep meaning or significance to them might make that fight harder.  You may end up with the device wrenching the dial one way, plunging sound and audio into incomprehensible static at the most critical moments you most wanted to see.”

“Does it hurt to try?” Zed asked.

“It can.  Echoes can come roaring through the static.  But I know you have Mister Kurtz’s radio, and you’ve run into that very thing.  But more important-”

“More important than murderous echoes and vestiges?” Nicolette asked.

Alexander stepped into sight, right by the glass door.  For a second, Avery thought he was going to shut the blinds.

He popped the door open, giving it a push.  Avery and her friends backed off a bit, to let the door swing in.

Alexander beckoned for them to come in.  To Nicolette, he said, “When you go back, you tread over what’s there.  The patterns and muddled images overwrite, as memories do.  Welcome, you three.  Did the other classes end?  I know Raymond said he might run late.”

“We don’t know for sure,” Lucy said, obviously wary.  “We were studying our own stuff.”

“Well, you’re welcome to join us,” Alexander said.

Avery looked around.  A few of Alexander’s apprentices were here.  Seth, the guy who was either Tanner or Wye, Nicolette, Zed, Brie, and Jessica.  Mostly senior students, with Brie being a weird case who was both older and new to the school.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Avery said.

“It’s a thrown-together thing,” Zed said.  “I had a question, it became a study group.”

“My favorite kind of exercise,” Alexander said, smiling.  “Zed asked how one might turn the Sight toward the past.  To recap, briefly, there are many, many ways, and it helps to know as many as possible, so you can choose the one that works best.  If you choose the wrong one, you can end up hurting all future attempts to look back.  This does, by the way, complicate looks at very distant history.  Too many practitioners have tried Seeing, astrally projected, opened Ways, or whatever else, and tracked mud over the great tapestry of history.  But Zed, I believe, was asking about something in our lifetimes.”

“My lifetime,” Zed answered.  “If it’s associated with echoes it’s probably too volatile for a turn-the-dial type machine, then?”

“Yes.  You would want something crystal-clear.  Something you can arrange to target a specific place and date.  I do believe Raymond had something.  I don’t know if he’s lost or sold it.  How hostile is the echo?”

“Not very.”

“Good.  That would be a worry.  Again, as in many things to do with Augury, if you look, things may look back, or even form a connection to you and act.  Personalities great enough to remain intact through decades or centuries can reach through and possess you, even if it’s only for a brief moment.”

Lucy’s hand touched Avery’s back.  Avery looked at Lucy, then followed Lucy’s gaze to the Belangers.  Seth, and the other one.

Someone had sent Strife after them.  Those two were possible culprits.

“Can you intentionally muck up the picture?” Lucy asked.

“You can.  But that, I feel, gets away from the original question Zed wanted to ask.”

It was Jessica who spoke up, “I want to find the echoes that fled from that point.”

“I guess we’re doing away with the charade of it being me asking,” Zed said.

Alexander smiled. “It wasn’t a masterful sort of charade, Zed. Jessica, if you want to pursue an echo using a view into the past as your starting point, then you’ll want an approach that is driven by connections.  A personal appeal, using personal objects.  The more information you have about the moment, the better.  It’ll anchor what you’re looking for.”

There was some noise elsewhere in the library. Lucy broke away to head to the table where their stuff was.

Avery hesitated, in part because she was curious, and because she liked Jessica as a person.

“It looks like all classes of the day have ended, and we’re not so far away from dinner,” Alexander said.  “Would you like to make this a project, tomorrow?  Bring Eloise.  She’s quite adept at connections.  And bring Zed.  Zed?  The machines we talked about.  If we’re going to do this, we should do this well.  We can discuss over dinner, if you like, but I’m picturing three devices, each one something that can look into the past.  Then Eloise for connections, Zed for the visceral, and yourself, Jessica, for the immaterial.”

“What’s your price?” Jessica asked.  “Nothing’s free.”

“Goodwill,” Alexander said.  “You paid tuition to be here, as one of my students.  Acknowledge that, be glad of that, and that will be all I ask.”

Jessica gave him a wary look.  It almost looked like she was going to say no.

“Come on,” Zed nudged her.

“Okay,” Jessica said.  “Fine.  I need to bring things?”

“We’ll talk about it after dinner.  Meet me in my study.  I’ll draw up some notes, refresh myself on psychometric practices, and we’ll go from there.  But for now, go, eat, rest, enjoy each other’s company.  It’s been a long day.”

That was leave to go and get ready.  It looked like a lot of students were wandering around now.

“Avery, Verona.  I see Lucy’s disappeared. A word?” Alexander asked.

They waited, as the rest filtered out.  Avery tried not to direct too much suspicion at the Belangers.

Then it was just him, Avery, and Verona.

“I heard you attended morning class.  You can tell Lucy Durocher was impressed with her.  A high compliment.”

“It’s been a long twenty-whatever hours,” Avery said.

“I can imagine.  And you handled the situation with Bristow and his Aware?”

“We’re aiming to take a neutral position,” Verona said.  “It might be better if we don’t comment.”

“Ah, I see.  I won’t argue that, then.  What do you think?  Any interest in psychometry?  Seeing past events?”

“I’m not not interested,” Avery said.

“Speaking for myself,” Verona cut in, “I’m interested in virtually everything practice-related.”

“You’re welcome to look in if you want, tomorrow.  I do hope you’re well.  It must have been a long night.  Zed was tired and he didn’t have his day or night disrupted to nearly the same extent you three did.”

“Are you fishing for information after we drew a boundary?” Lucy asked, rejoining them.  She had two books under each arm.  Snowdrop held three more, as a stack.

“I may be, I’m a curious personality and I’m probably seeking information, whatever I do.  But it wasn’t my intent.  I’m thoroughly enjoying your presence at my school.  I do enjoy my refined pet students, but there’s something fun about three young ladies stomping through and challenging convention, threatening Mrs. Durocher with a gun, brazenly visiting the library in the company of an Other that set the building on fire.”

“I’m innocent,” Snowdrop said.  “No idea what he’s talking about.”

“You don’t even seem slightly worried, Alexander,” Avery said.

“I’m confident.”

“Bristow was too,” Verona said.

Lucy elbowed Verona, as best as she could, while carrying her books.  “Let’s go.  Nina was kind enough to bag the other books, but this is heavy.”

“You can find me if you want something,” Alexander said.

They left, Avery collecting the extra big bag of books and slinging it over her back.

“Seeing the past is interesting,” Verona said.

“But there are people who can see back,” Lucy pointed out.  “There’s a chance that we could go looking, see something, and then they know we know.  Then what?  And don’t answer that.”

“Yeah,” Avery said.

“But on that note-” Lucy said.  The library wasn’t far from their room, and they were already at the door.  She had her arms less full than Verona or Avery, so she struggled to open the door.  “-Did see some stuff in reading.  There are very few ways of far-seeing that don’t have some tells.  If you know what to look for, it could be a shadow of a reflection peering through the mirror, a mark on the wall, or an eye in a painting following you.  In the tricky cases, they might hide it or do it in a way you can only see with the Sight, but it’s really obvious then.  I don’t think we’re being watched all the time.  So we just have to figure out what it looks like when they are looking.”

“We could split it up,” Avery said.

“If we did, one of us might need to use their Sight a lot,” Verona said.  “A lot a lot.  And if that someone just happened to be naturally talented with the practice, and figuring stuff out-”

“We can do shifts,” Lucy said.  “Let’s not break your Sight by making it an all-the-time thing.”

“Fifty-percent-of-the-time thing?” Verona asked.

“Maybe,” Lucy said.

They dumped the books on the beds, then arranged them.

“Nettlewisp?” Verona asked.  “So people don’t go looking at what we borrowed from the library?  Protecting Kennet?”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “Okay.”

She began to gather the glamour, while Avery turned the books cover down, setting them so the spines weren’t easily visible.

“Nettlewisp, nettlewisp, nettlewisp,” Lucy murmured, tracing the rune into place.  “Should we be away and others pry, could you put something sharp in their eye?  A little prick for the good-intentioned snoops, a gouging for menacing nincompoops.”

Verona jumped in, “Stain their skin and stain their hand, if they trespass, do as we command.”

Avery struggled to think of something to add, but she had to complete the set of three.  “And fill the air with a choking mist.  Cover the details until you’re dismissed.”

A trail of glamour from the stash Lucy had pulled from to make the charm extended out, feeding the diagram they’d just grown.

Seemed like Lucy had been too conservative, so the charm took more glamour.

Avery rubbed her arms, aware that in another situation, that could mean it’d take the glamour off her skin.  Right.

Lucy withdrew her hand with care from the rune etched in dust.  Then she moved the sheet, gently moving it so it was over the charm without touching it.

“Food,” Verona said, once they were done.  “Can we get an early dinner?”

“Finally hungry?  Are you going to eat more than a half portion?” Lucy asked.

“I- I was going to say something snarky, but maybe, yeah.”

“I’m not hungry,” Snowdrop said.

“How?” Avery asked.  “How?  You ate one and a half deli sandwiches, and I- they were pretty big, weren’t they?”

“Nah.”

“And you ate my wrap, and you ate Lucy’s salad and fries, and two and a half drinks, and you’re hungry again?”

“I’m saving up for winter.”

“That- exactly!  It’s the furthest time from winter.”

They got sorted out, dropped off some things, put all their things they might need over dinner, like notebooks, into the one bag, and then headed out.  Students were mixing and mingling, talking.  The hallway was about as crowded as it got.

“I wanted to ask Zed who was our age that we could get along with,” Avery said.  “Like… okay, trust and friendship between practitioners clearly gets weird, but it’d be nice to talk to someone who isn’t four years older than us.”

“I liked Yadira.  Seemed like a peacekeeper,” Lucy said.

“That whole deal seemed exhausting,” Verona said, looking back over her shoulder, to make sure the people they were talking about weren’t right there.

“It’d be nice to do something tonight that isn’t crazy and practice-heavy.  Like sitting around a fire or whatever.  Like a swim?”

“For me, that depends how bad the bugs are,” Lucy said.  “I think the campus has some protection but once we get out that far…”

“Fair,” Avery said.  “I think bugs like the taste of me.  I always seem to get it worse than others.”

“I hate bugs,” Snowdrop said.  “They’re so unsatisfying to snack on.”

“Gross,” Avery said.

“I know, right?” Snowdrop asked.

“Contributing member of society,” Verona pointed out.  “Keeping us tick-free.”

“I’m so bad at that,” Snowdrop said.  “And when they get blood-engorged that’s just the absolute worst.  Nothing like those shrunken head candies Verona eats.”

“I might never look at those candies the same way,” Lucy muttered.

“I love it,” Verona said, smiling.

The crowd seemed to thicken, people pressed closer together.  It took Avery a minute to realize why.  Too many students were older and taller than her, and they were protecting the smaller, younger ones.  In particular, Talos and Tymon were guarding their little sister Jorja and her friend Talia.

A fight.

It was two girls their age, and Avery didn’t know their names, but she recognized one of them as the annoying and demanding Fernanda’s friend.  Fernanda had loudly demanded that Mrs. Graubard help her with the doll across class yesterday, and her friend had seemed to be on a similar wavelength.  It looked, at least from a distance, like Fernanda was the queen bee, and this girl her lackey.

“Laila and… Melody?” Verona murmured.

Laila was the lackey then.  Who wasn’t acting lackey-like.  Intense, stalking forward, she pushed Melody up against the wall.  Laila’s eyes glowed and her breath fogged.

Except it wasn’t fog.

“You’re misinterpreting me,” Melody said, holding the back of her hand over her nose and mouth.

“You’re always playing the victim, Melody,” Laila said.  The wisps that escaped her mouth took shapes, like clawed hands, and snaking tendrils.  “Stop.  Stop playing up the act where you’re the nice girl, oh you’re so cute and nonthreatening, you’re the victim so much of the time, you’re helpless, you’re ignorant.  You’ve been studying here for two years.  You’re not that much less educated or weaker than the rest of us.  But you pretend to be because it lets you be sneaky about stuff.  People underestimate you and you use that.  Undercutting me behind my back?  To my parents?”

“You’re misinterpreting!”

“How!?” Laila raised her voice, pushing Melody back harder.  “Tell me!”

“You’re-” Melody hesitated.  A moment later, she choked, as a wisp of something snaked into her nose.  When her mouth opened, more traces of whatever got into her mouth.

She doubled over, and Laila pushed her to the ground, putting a knee on her chest and leaning over.  Now the wisps cascaded down over and around her face and head.

“Mel!  Let her go!” a boy shouted.  Fernanda got in his way.

“Let them hash it out,” Fernanda said.

“She’s using practice on her!  What the hell is she doing!?”

“Shut up!” Laila snapped at them, before turning to Melody and gripping her collar.  “And answer me, ‘Mel’!  Tell me, how am I misinterpreting?”

“I can’t-” Melody managed, struggling and failing to cover her mouth.

“You’re having to think about it.  But I have zero interest in that.  Don’t construct a clever bit of wording.  Say it.  If it’s honest you can just say it!” Laila said.  “You’ve been nipping at my heels for the last year, you talk crap about me and Fernanda, and I’m done with it!  If I’m wrong then tell me, simple, straight, and without thinking about it!”

Every word was punctuated by more ghostly things spilling out of her mouth and nose, swamping Melody.

“Should we step in?” Avery asked.

“I have no idea,” Lucy said.

“Teacher’s coming,” Verona said.

It was Raymond, jogging over.  The students parted to let him through.

Laila released Melody, backing off.  Melody, coughing, sat up, then immediately faltered.  She tried to speak and couldn’t.  Her brother went to her side, crouching by her.

Raymond stopped, looming over the scene.

“This is the kind of thing that results in expulsion for both parties,” Raymond said.

“It was a spat,” Laila said.  “Stuff was simmering for a while.”

“You cursed her.  Withdraw it.”

“I-”

“Now.  Or there’ll be no further discussion and you’ll be treated as a hostile entity.”

Laila opened her mouth wide, tongue out and extended toward her chin.  The wisps came as a surge that made Melody gag as it emerged, thick around as Avery’s leg, smokey, and winding through the air before returning to Laila’s throat.  Laila’s eyes glowed briefly.

“We’re fine.  We dealt with it ourselves,” Laila said, after swallowing.

Melody looked up, coughed, then nodded.  “We’re fine.”

“We’re not.  This isn’t acceptable conduct for this school.  Let’s go to my office, and we’ll call your parents about picking you up.”

“No.”

Avery had to crane her head to look and see, one hand on the wall for balance as she got on her tip-toes.  Lucy put a hand on her for balance while doing the same, and both Verona and Snowdrop didn’t even try.

It was Alexander, near the library entrance, far side of the crowd.

“Disperse,” Alexander told the assembled students.  “I’m not impressed, seeing students gawking at a common brawl.  I’ll be less impressed if you’re spreading rumors or gossip about it tonight or late this week.  Raymond, I hate to undercut you, but there’s more to this.  Girls, Raymond, my study, please.  We’ll talk it over.”

The students reluctantly scattered.  Avery, Lucy, and Verona waited until there was an avenue to travel, then headed outside, halting as the crowd started and stopped, or students entering their rooms made people have to take detours, choking up the flow of people leaving.

“What was that about?” Verona asked.

“Lots of stuff beneath the surface.  More strife?” Lucy asked.

“Or… kind of the opposite,” Avery said.

At the far table, where the teachers had sat on Sunday night, Bristow was sitting, wearing a polo shirt and khaki shorts, a bit sweaty and red faced by default, with a walrus-y mustache.  He laughed at his companion saying something.  But as goofy as he looked, he had narrow eyes that were watching everything.

One of the men who sat with him looked disinterested in the conversation.  Tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a t-shirt and jeans, with a bad scar up one arm.

And the other, narrow, with a longer chin, and old fashioned medium-length blond hair where his hair was gelled or hairsprayed to the point of rigidity, had very very green eyes, and a smile like he was proud of himself.

He spoke, and Bristow laughed.

Avery pushed the others, and when they didn’t move fast enough, carried on and tugged them.  Once Lucy and Verona realized what Avery wanted, they cooperated, walking away from the tables and everything, out toward the woods.

The fact the bugs got worse as they got away from the school’s protections was a good hint that they were further from the observation and watching eyes.  Clear to talk.

“You think he-?” Verona started, struggled for a term, and settled on, “Evil-eyed them?”

“Fernanda is Chase’s little sister and Chase is Alexander’s apprentice and Nicolette’s superior, right?  So is it sorta reasonable to think Laila’s in Alexander Belanger’s camp?” Avery asked.

“That’s a lot of steps you’re taking to get there.”

“But?” Avery pressed.

“Maybe, yeah.”

“So this is two people who want this place, each using students as their pawns, destabilizing the others?” Lucy asked.  “Or is Alexander not even using strife?”

“Could be, right?  Either way?” Avery asked.  She looked around.  “We should have a game plan.”

“We didn’t want to take sides, remember?” Lucy asked.

“I know,” Avery said. “But someone came after us, strifed us, right?  So… at the very least we should know what’s going on and keep an eye out for them.  If this keep going this way, there’s a chance we could find them.”

“If things keep going this way, the school could become a warzone,” Verona protested.  “We’re supposed to take classes in the middle of this?”

“We have to,” Lucy said.  “The Others are protecting the perimeter at home and we’re here, learning what we need to, to put up a better perimeter and carry out our duties.”

“They’re doing that for us, we do this for them,” Avery said.

Cutting Class – 6.3

Verona

They walked back from their private discussion spot to the rows of picnic tables and benches, many of them beneath the startling blue canopy, with a few scattered elsewhere for those who wanted to eat in the sun.

Verona squinted, hand shielding her eyes from the light.  “Can we sit in the shade?”

“Nah,” Snowdrop said.  “We’re creatures of the daytime.”

Verona gave Snowdrop a little high five.

“Where?” Avery asked.  “Because that’s a question.”

Verona looked from Snowdrop to the growing crowd of students.

She wasn’t someone who considered herself very in tune with these sorts of things, but it was pretty evident that there were some tensions.  Students could have sat, but they hovered, gathered in huddles and groups.  Mrs. Durocher was pacing through the groups so the students moved apart from one another to give her some extra space, it really did feel like things would have devolved into another incident without them.  Graubard and two other parents were also present.

It was more like a prison yard from the movies, The individual gangs gathering.  The possibility that something could erupt at any moment.  The lone but powerful guard stalking the grounds, giving some warning looks and throwing her weight around.

And at the same time, Bristow sat at the ‘teacher’s table’, looking carefree.

Probably, Verona thought to herself, he liked that Alexander was busy elsewhere and he was left to reign.

“This is like it felt on day one of high school, but worse,” Avery said.  “Everyone has this history and breaking into that is really scary.  Except these people can summon monsters and curse you and stuff.”

“Upside,” Lucy murmured, almost like she was talking to herself, “Is we’re not part of that history, really.”

“We’re a bit a part of it,” Verona pointed out.  “Nicolette, and Zed, and Alexander, and Bristow, and the Aware as part of Bristow.”

“Not the brownies, though,” Snowdrop said.  “And we didn’t mess with that Belanger dweeb.”

“I’m not imagining that we’re not some unique case,” Lucy said.  “And that sort of thing happens all over, and this is what happens after generations.”

The prison yard.  The tension.

“So we stay out of the way,” Avery said, almost fake in how upbeat she sounded.  “Don’t get between two enemies, if we can help it.”

Verona kept one eye on Bristow and his guys.  No Shellie.  Had she left?

They ventured forward, into the groupings of students, navigating the narrow and winding paths that were available, where they weren’t invading any one group’s space or treading too close to Bristow, or too close to Durocher.

“Yadira, hey!” Lucy called out.  She looked back at Avery and Verona, as if to double check.  Too late, really.

Yadira was with Raquel.  Kass was nowhere in sight.  Yadira had changed tops, to a simple tee.  Verona preferred the mad hatter look that Kass had been sporting.

“Hi,” Yadira said, as they walked over.  She looked wary.

“There’s a lot of tension,” Lucy observed.

“Yeah, well… some kids have been throwing casual practices around.  Apparently these things boil up every once in a while.  They did in my first year,” Yadira said.

“This is a regular thing?” Avery asked.

“Every two years, maybe?” Yadira suggested.  She looked at Raquel.

“Why are you looking at me?”

“Your cousin goes here.”

“I don’t really talk to him much.”

“I’d have thought a Musser would be better at the politics angle,” Yadira said.

“I’m fine at politics, thank you.  I’m bad at certain personal interactions, and I won’t go into detail on that.”

“I just-” Lucy cut in.

“I’m not asking you to go into detail, Raquel,” Yadira said.

“I figured,” Lucy said, stepping closer, which got their attention, as Lucy invaded their personal bubble.  Lucy stepped back again.  “Maybe we could chat.  About stuff that isn’t our families and rivalries and stuff.”

It struck Verona that as much as she’d never really had a lot of friends that weren’t Lucy, the same was true for Lucy.

“I’m glad our last mess of a conversation didn’t scare you off,” Yadira said.  “But why us?”

“I dunno,” Lucy floundered.  “Why not?  You were going to tell us about Oni and I know Verona would be interested-”

Verona exaggerated perking up, but that didn’t take a lot of effort when she was already suddenly interested again.

“-and you seemed level-headed, I guess.”

Raquel snorted.  “Yadira, level-headed?  Even Kass would laugh.”

Yadira looked bothered by that statement.

“Maybe this was a bad idea,” Lucy said.  “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.  Really,” Yadira said.  “Uhh, your familiar, I didn’t catch her name?”

“Snowdrop,” Avery said.  “Not a familiar, exactly.  Boon companion.”

Snowdrop, hands in her pockets, bit her lower lip.

“If you want, Snowdrop, there’s a table of Others around the corner,” Yadira said.

“I’m happy having her stick around.  It wasn’t a problem on the first night,” Avery protested.

“It’s not an obligation.  Just… some find it nice, catching up with other Others, after a day of kids.”

“I haven’t met any,” Snowdrop said.  “And I’m brimming with energy, all set to make friends.”

“Come on,” Avery said, steering Snowdrop.  “Hang out with us then.”

“What’s going on there?” Yadira asked, indicating Snowdrop.

“Special rule of discourse,” Lucy said.

“Ahhh.  Some Oni are like that.”

“Like how?” Verona asked.

“Come, sit… over there.”

“Why not here?” Lucy asked.

“Because most of us kids don’t want to sit where the staff can see or hear.  The senior students and youngest students are the ones who end up sitting there.”

They walked over and settled at a table that was only in partial shade.  Verona made a face, but didn’t complain.  It gave them a bit of privacy, at least, with no students lurking especially nearby.  The staff was in view, but they were pretty far down and off to the side.  Avery, Verona, and Lucy sat on the one side, Snowdrop sitting at the end, flopping forward to rest her upper body and head on the table’s surface.  Raquel and Yadira sat on the other side.

Verona kept watching Bristow, thinking of the conversation.  From what Yadira’s group had said after class, they seemed to be fans of Bristow, and possible targets of Alexander.

She saw Ted raise his head, looking over, and followed his gaze.  At the side of the building, two women had emerged.  One of them had fine wire threaded in and out of her skin, harp-like arrangements of string worked through the wire down one arm, designs burned into skin and surrounded with tattoo work, and dangling charms hooked into flesh or other piercings, that included bells and glittering ornaments.  Her hair was long, more of a mane than anything else, and it looked like she’d emptied a can of silver spray paint into it, making it stiff and prone to sticking up.

She walked with a slouch, and even though her eyes were light blue, they looked dark, like a storm was simmering.  She wore a black t-shirt with cuts in it, and a stick figure on the front in silver glitter, which Verona liked.  The other part, which she put less in the ‘like’ bucket, was only what she could make out from a distance, a braided black leather belt threaded through belt loops… where the loops were extended loops in her jeans that could reach up an inch, and a matching set of slits in her skin that the belt could disappear into and emerge from, for her very slow slung jeans.

Avery elbowed Verona.

“What?”

Avery indicated the pair of women.

“I saw already.”

“Point out anything you see,” Lucy said.  “We have to stay on our toes, remember?”

Yadira twisted around.  “Oh, them?  I wouldn’t worry much.  They’re with Bristow.”

“Shellie and…?”

“No idea.  Which one’s Shellie?” Yadira asked.

“The decorated one,” Lucy said.

Shellie turned to glance at them, scratched at her head with fingernails that had silver nail-like decorations sticking out of them, then settled in at the bench.

Verona looked at the woman, who was… it was weird.  She was pretty, feature-wise, figure-wise, but dull.  Dull, light brown, jaw-length hair with a wave to it, dull skin, muted dark green shirt and black shorts.  She looked lost in thought as she exchanged words with Shellie.

Then she looked out at the students, including some of the older girls, and her expression changed for a moment.  There were lines around her eyes, including pronounced ones running from the inside corners of her eyes along her nose, accented by the way the shade from the canopy hit her face.  She looked at students who weren’t even facing her direction with contempt, with anger, maybe even hate.

Verona hadn’t seen much hate in her life.  Not like that.

“Who is she?” Verona asked, leaning forward.

“Part of Bristow’s group,” Raquel said.  “I don’t know much else.”

“I have a guess,” Lucy said.

The woman circled around the table, and sat next to Bristow.

Kevin Noone, with the gelled up hair and the startling green eyes put an arm around her shoulders.  She smiled at him, then dropped the smile like a lead weight as she looked out over the crowd again, her expression the same as before.

“Kevin’s girlfriend?” Verona asked.

“Looks like,” Lucy said, seeming satisfied.

“You guys have the dirt,” Yadira said, leaning forward.  “You know we’re not supposed to show off any major practice around them, right?  Some students are annoyed by that.”

“Figured,” Verona said.  Shellie and Kevin’s girlfriend were talking.  Kevin and Bristow chatted, and Ted remained pretty quiet, looking off in the direction, toward tree and mountain in the distance.

“Want to share?” Yadira asked.

“Trade info for info?” Lucy tried.

“What do you want to know?  Oni stuff?”

“Yes,” Verona said, giving Yadira her full attention.

Lucy put her hand in Verona’s face.  “Yes, but really, we can research that on our own.  There’s other stuff we could learn.”

“We were just at the library, Verona.  There have to be books on it there.” Avery reminded her.

“We were catching up on class and stuff,” Verona protested.  “Not that.”

“You still could’ve taken out books on Oni.”

“If I took out books on everything I was interested in, the library would be mostly empty.”

“I- fair,” Avery conceded.

“What’s your deal, then?” Yadira asked, “What’s their deal, with Bristow?”

“You said you liked Bristow,” Lucy said.  “But you don’t know who he surrounds himself with?”

“I’ve seen some of them.  He’s come over for dinner a few times.  The one time I really remember him, he brought three of the students from the school he was setting up,” Yadira said.  “You know what the Aware are, right?”

“Yeah,” Verona said.

“So there were these three kids that came with him, right?  Roberto.  I can’t remember his last name, started with F.  F for ‘F this guy’.”

“Or you could just remember their names without tricks,” Raquel said.  “I’ve had to remember tons.”

“Yeah yeah, fancy Mussers, high society, blah blah…”

“I didn’t say any of that.  You did.”

“Anyway, both of the boys were from juvie.  Bristow has the connections, the person running the facility tips him off, right?  And all three have their gimmick.  They don’t practice, but they’re weird.  Roberto, he’s like this calculating error in the karmic calculations of the universe.  The more he’s an asshole, the better off he is, karmically.  He steals a car, cops come, he bails, turns out the house he left the car at is this kid he doesn’t like, who doesn’t know what’s going on, says the wrong thing, is wearing the wrong color shirt, and the kid gets in trouble instead.  Acts like a jerk, gets the girl.”

“Including you?” Avery asked.

“I was like, half his age, and not really.  But I can remember the confident bad boy thing working for him, so… maybe.  But he also locked me in a closet.”

“So it’s almost the opposite of karma?” Lucy asked.

“Karma’s not exactly about being nice and getting rewarded for nice.  It’s about keeping the systems running smoothly.  But that’s a whole tangent I don’t want to get into.  Point is, for him, it’s about being the jerk.  He lies, gets reward money, picks a fight, the kid he punched gets in trouble.”

“I already don’t like him,” Lucy said.

“Give him a hug, win him over with the power of friendship,” Snowdrop mumbled, face buried in her folded arms, and pulled her hand out to hit the table with the pointy end of her rusty fork, “like my goblin friends taught me.”

“Only if he gave me an excuse,” Lucy said.

“But he was in juvie,” Verona pointed out.  “How?”

“More on that in a second.  Other boy, Seb, was also from juvie, but his whole deal was that anyone who he spent a lot of time around would lose it.”

“Going insane?” Verona asked.

“Emotionally.  Center of a personal soap opera.  Drama, heightened emotions, love triangles, jealousy, rivalries, addictions…”

“Pregnancies?” Raquel asked.

“Probably.  The more he paid attention to someone, the more they got swept up in his thing.  Which included his parents.  He ended up an orphan early on.”

“Kind of ran into someone like that,” Lucy said.  “Wasn’t that straightforward, though.”

Yadira nodded.  “He got into a lot of trouble, legally.  And so he went to Juvie.  Roberto ended up his nemesis.  Then Bristow comes in and pulls some strings politically and they’re out.  Bristow keeps them from killing each other, picks up kid number three, a girl.  Miss popularity.  Which, you know, kind of says it all.  Trendsetter, parents and teachers love her, the girls want to be her, the boys want her.  She realized something was off, I don’t know how or why, and she freaked, shaved her head in an effort to break the pattern.  Half the kids in her grade shaved their heads in solidarity.  Right?”

“And of course, a certain school founder hears about it and collects her,” Verona said, glancing at the table.

“Funny you say ‘collects’,” Raquel said.  “It’s not something he advertises a lot, that he’s a Collector.  Why do you know so much about him?”

“We ran into some of his people,” Lucy said.  “You were saying, Yadira?  Kids shaved their heads.”

“What do you imagine it was like, those three in my house, at my dining room table, my prim and proper aunt, uncle, and cousins sitting there?”

“Chaos?” Avery asked.

“They were, if I’m remembering right, really, really well behaved.  Roberto locked me in a closet and made me eat a centipede he caught and kept in his pocket, Seb might have been why my dad drank too much, and Angie, the girl, asked to be excused and went outside to smoke instead of having dessert, and I heard her crying, but mostly they were on their best behavior.  Probably better than I was,” Yadira said.  “Because of him.”

Verona looked again at Bristow and his entourage.  She blinked a few times as she spotted Melody, who had been part of the fight in the hallway with the curse girl.  Twisting around, she saw that Alexander and Raymond were doing their part to guide and handle students, keeping the student groups who didn’t get along separated.

More prison guards in the yard.  Only a few tables had settled, and the politics of which group sat next to which group seemed to leave some unwilling to actually settle.  Instead, huddles intensified.

That it was necessary enough to require Raymond, Alexander, and Mrs. Durocher was a good clue there was something up.

“Their lives were in shambles.  Roberto fell in love with Angie and tried to be better for her, and ended up in kid jail.  A lot of the time, these weird cases will pop up where Aware will cause a ton of problems, including problems for themselves, and because they face problems when it comes to actually doing stuff… this is a whole complicated concept-”

“The Aware run into resistance if they try to climb the rungs and become a politician or make a billion dollars with their talents,” Lucy said.

“Yeahhh,” Yadira said.  “So you know that much.  But not even top rung stuff.  Even like… if Roberto became a car salesman and he used his asshole power to become the top seller at the biggest car dealership in his city, wherever he is, that’d draw too much attention.  So he becomes the top seller at a place where there’s enough other crap going on people don’t pay him a lot of attention, and he doesn’t make that much money.  So a lot of Aware will find themselves in similar places on the social ladder, and in the same neighborhood in a town or whatever, and then they crash into one another.  And they may not survive those crashes.”

Verona counted on three fingers.  “Roberto meeting Angie and nearly losing everything, then running into…”

“Seb.  Yep.  Bristow is a good Samaritan, saving them.  And he’s really good at managing that chaos.  Making them work together instead of against one another.”

“He’s a huge, huge dork,” Raquel said.  “Serious logorrhea, distracted, and I don’t know what’s up with his personal style.  But there’s serious brain in there.  I mean, Mrs. Durocher and Mr. Sunshine considered him more or less on their level and they aren’t exactly small potatoes.”

“He still lost that school he was setting up, right?” Lucy asked.

“Yeah.  But you know why?”

“Tanner went with Alexander instead.”

“Dick move on Mr. Belanger’s part, yeah,” Yadira said.  “Apparently Bristow set up the school, but managing that many Aware takes time and attention.  So he arranged it so Tanner could tip him off about the big incidents and keep an eye on things.  Tanner gets scooped up, Bristow can’t give the school the attention it needs without losing everything else… and he loses more than half the students in the aftermath.  People like Angie drift off, and they don’t always survive long.  Pretty sure Angie died.”

“Died?” Avery asked, surprised.

“Pretty sure.  My parents were evasive about what happened to her, but from what I picked up, she wound up struggling to make it on that weird level Aware end up, just barely a part of society, and an Other got her.  Seb ran into another Aware and it ended in a four-way shootout.”

“Aware are common, then?” Verona asked.

“Nah.  But like I said, they find each other.  It’s a small world, when you’re out on the fringes.  Tell me, who are the people with him today?”

“I don’t think we have to keep it secret, but if this ends up getting used against him, it could blow back on us.”

“Nah, you’re okay.  Raquel and I like Bristow.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “Ted Havens.  Got caught in some time loop.  Relived his life a bunch.  To fight some massive monster.  Ended the loop, walked out with a few centuries of life experience.”

“Hmm,” Yadira made a sound.  “He has that vibe.  You see it with some Others.  Wise, old.”

“Kevin Noone.  Evil eye.  Kind of sketchy, from the info we got.”

“What about the girl with him?”

“His victim, maybe.  I’m not sure what happens when a person gets hit by the Evil Eye a lot but doesn’t die or whatever.”

“I can think of a few things,” Raquel said, twisting around to look over at the other table.  “Vestige.  Lost something essential?  Like a hollow shell without the filling, or you lose a bit of soul and something else takes its place and plugs into the stuff the soul would.”

“Doesn’t really have that look to me,” Yadira said.

“She looks a little flat.  Not chestwise, but…” Raquel observed.

Yadira gave her another look.  “Mmm, yeah.  Flat in other ways.  Kind of.”

Raquel looked interested now.  “If you push at someone hard enough, they can get knocked out of the place they’re meant to hold in life.  Equal and opposite reaction?”

“What’s the type of eye?” Yadira asked, looking back in their direction.

“Jealousy, I guess?” Lucy said.  “Brings people down.”

“She doesn’t give me anti-jealousy or anti-ruin vibes.”

Verona privately agreed.

“Established pattern?” Raquel suggested.  “He used his eye on her a lot?”

“Apparently.”

Raquel looked at Yadira.  “Maybe it’s like Ray was saying in the Realms class today…”

“The what huh?” Avery asked.

Raquel’s eyebrows went up.  “Oh, you missed that one.  Uhhh, so like, the biggest, most serious Others, including Incarnations, gods, great spirits, and whatever.  They have a weight to them.  He had this visual demonstration.  Put something heavy down on a sheet of fabric, and it creates this dip.  I might be explaining this badly.”

“Finish explaining and we can tell you if it’s a bad explanation,” Lucy said.

Yadira jumped in.  “Big things, metaphysically, can create their own realms, just by being.”

“Like gravity?” Avery asked.

“More like the world’s a plastic bed,” Raquel said, “and you sit on it and it makes a dip, and if you pour water onto the bed it’ll settle in around your butt where the dip is.”

“You’re really bad at explaining things,” Yadira said.

“It works,” Lucy said.  “Does this tie to this woman?”

Yadira nodded.  “Push enough times, hard enough, with enough power, maybe there’s a crater that forms.  Or a depression.  Could be she’s surrounded by bad mojo and so there’s a buildup around her.”

“Or she’s something like a designated victim for the universe, because the universe knows there’s a precedent for being crummy to her, or-”

“What if she’s not a sad little victim?” Verona asked.

“Hm?”

Verona glanced at the table, and Shellie was looking at them.  She looked away.  “She was glaring at people.  What if there’s someone in there, being treated like shit, looking for a way out without having all the resources, and flailing for answers?”

“There’s possibilities for that too.  Like, if something’s meant to happen or if someone’s supposed to be somewhere, and you keep putting it off… it gets more intense.  So she could become some personification of backlash.  Or something.

Verona thought about the passing mention of Matthew and Edith and the Doom.  The fighting off of the Doom, the way it had come back bigger and stronger.  He’d eventually had to bind it in himself.

“I guess without knowing more, we can’t know what she does.  Maybe she doesn’t do anything,” Yadira said.  “Or maybe she’s mostly Other.”

“Who’s the one with silver hair?” Raquel asked.

“Shellie Alitzer.  Bright-eyed.”

“Scary,” Raquel said.  “I was thinking goblin related, but it’s too pretty for that.  Bright-eyed makes sense.”

“It’s all silver,” Avery noted.  “Silver paint, silver wire running down her arm…”

Raquel’s eyes flashed.  “Silver studs beneath her skin, silver belt buckle, silver nails sticking out of her nailbeds.”

“Did you read up on Faerie?” Verona asked Avery.  “Weaknesses and strengths?”

Avery shook her head.

Verona looked at Lucy, who shook her head as well.

“Silver’s a solid anti-Faerie measure,” Yadira said.  “Most courts are opposed by silver in some fashion.  Except Winter.  If you raise silver against Winter, you’re as good as finished.  That’s the gamble.  It makes sense, as default wear for a Bright Eyed.  I wonder if she changes it out depending on the Faerie she’s up against.”

“Freaky,” Raquel murmured.  “Goes back to what we were saying about the kids at your family’s dinner table, Yadira.”

Yadira nodded, then saw that the three of them and even Snowdrop were watching her.  She explained, “He has her under his thumb, and Bright Eyed are… pretty notorious for how hard they are to keep under thumbs.”

“Bright Eyed are common lingo?” Verona asked.  “Common issues?  I’m weirded out that this is a bigger deal than the centuries or millenia-old guy.”

“One of you’s got a Faerie thing, right?” Raquel asked.  “It was in the student guide.”

“Kind of.  Bit of a misrepresentation or guess,” Lucy said.  “Why?”

“I don’t know anyone or any family that deals with the Faerie in any serious capacity who hasn’t heard of or had to deal with the Bright Eyed.  You’d be the first.”

“Again, bit of a misrepresentation.”

“But not totally wrong.  We have had to deal with them,” Verona noted.

“Mm,” Lucy grunted  She scratched at her nose, and for a second, her finger was over her lips.

Which wasn’t lost on Yadira and Raquel.

“What’s this?” Yadira asked.  “What’s the secret?  Spill.  I shared a lot.”

“Or be karmically uneven!” Raquel said, in a spooky voice, her fingers waving.

“We met Shellie’s brother,” Avery said.  “And we contacted Shellie as part of that.”

“Helping out Bristow?” Yadira asked.

Avery made a face, looking at Lucy and Verona.

“It’s complicated,” Verona said.

Not helping out Bristow?” Yadira asked, in a completely different tone of voice.  “Are you pumping us for information on him?  Are you against him?”

“We are very emphatically not wanting to be on one side or the other,” Lucy said.  “We’ve discussed it.  We want to be neutral as possible, but to do that, we have to know what’s going on.”

“Okay, now I’m bothered.  What’s your deal?” Yadira asked.  “Who are you guys?  What’s the arrangement?  Who sponsored you into the school?  And who’s your patron, since Mr. Belanger said you’re wild practitioners.  And I had to go look that up.  I know they’re powerful, because there have been a few times you guys showed off some casual power.  Not Mrs. Durocher power, obviously, but power like I know Raquel’s cousin has, or like the Vanderwerfs.”

Verona exchanged looks with Lucy and Avery.

“It me,” Snowdrop mumbled, face buried in her arm, other hand raised.  “I’m the all powerful sponsor.”

“Somehow I don’t believe that.”

“I’m a top tier Other.  Very menacing.  Apex, like my shirt says.”

Verona saw Lucy’s expression.  Saw the exhaustion.

In virtually every conversation to date, rescuing Avery, dealing with the Aware, and facing down the Kennet Others when they’d gotten paranoid, it had been Lucy front and center.

“I’ll take point on this,” Verona said, quiet.

Lucy looked at her, then shrugged.

“Yeah?” Verona asked Avery.

“I trust you.”

Verona cleared her throat.  “We awoke together.”

“Explaining why you’re so coordinated.  Groups that awaken together rise and fall together.”

“We can’t tell you about the patronage, because of deals, but if it’s not on the up-and-up, I don’t think it’s the sort of not-up-and-up that people at this school need to worry about.”

“I’ve been trying to pin down where you’re at, in terms of know-how,” Yadira said.  “Which is a huge tell that disappears once you get some book learning here.  Or run-ins with people like Mr. Bristow and his Aware.”

“Faerie stuff but apparently you don’t like the label, Finder stuff but you haven’t protested the label, they didn’t freak about the goblin stuff the Tedds pulled in dollmaking,” Raquel said.

“Feeling a bit paranoid now, with you guys reading this much into us,” Lucy said.

“My working guess is you found a trapped practitioner,” Raquel ventured.

“Interesting,” Yadira said.

“Maybe we should bail,” Lucy said.

“Was I close to the mark?” Raquel asked.

“If you bail, you lose out,” Yadira said.  “We shared.”

“So did we,” Lucy said.

“We shared more.”

“I think Bristow did the same thing, on the phone,” Verona told Lucy.  “Talked a lot, took over the conversation.  Then claimed a victory because the conversation was his, unbalanced in his favor.  Kind of.”

And these two are in Bristow’s circle.

“Trapped practitioner,” Raquel guessed.  “Some powerful guy gets stuck in his demesnes or in some pocket realm.  Maybe the Paths, since you have some link to the far realms, and maybe you found a way there as a group.  You’d meet the guy, you awaken together, he could summons the occasional Other he’s bound himself, like the Faerie, to teach and hand out power.  The goblins that Snowdrop here mentioned, maybe.”

“We do not intend to confirm nor deny,” Verona said.  She remembered she’d just said she would take point.  If they took over the conversation, would that make her gainsaid?  “What I can tell you is that we have not been at this for long, but I think we’ve done pretty well.  We have way more power and tricks to tap into than we’ve showed off.  Several people have tried to find out what we’d rather keep secret.  We handled them.”

“Handled as in?”

“Handled,” Verona said, letting the emotion drop out her expression and posture.  Then, as if to squeeze out a bit more of that emotion and sell it a bit, or because that deadness of emotion was linked so closely to the idea, she thought of early that morning.  Twelve hours and change ago.  Leaving her dad.

Except it kind of didn’t work.  Like, instead of being dead and cold she felt the emotion of that moment catch her off guard, and she ended up looking sad.

Lucy straightened.  Avery stood from her seat, while Snowdrop looked up to smile, showing off her teeth.

Not that it mattered what either of those two were doing.  Yadira and Raquel didn’t look away from Verona.

Someone in the distance laughed.  It ended the moment.

“Is that a threat?” Yadira asked,

“Only if you keep digging at what we’d rather keep secret,” Verona said.

“We’d rather get along,” Avery said.  “We’re here to learn.  It’d be nice to have people to hang out with, instead of enemies to deal with.”

“To handle,” Verona murmured, barely audible, intending it for Avery, but the other girls paid attention.

“There’s a thing brewing in this school right now,” Lucy said, indicating the rest of the students, some of whom still hadn’t found seats.  “We’re not taking sides, but I guess if you end up telling people what you know about us-”

“Which wouldn’t be the friendliest thing, when the alternative is keeping it to yourselves and we keep having chats like this one,” Avery interjected.

“-You might have an enemy on another front,” Verona finished.  “Press, if we find you’re still digging for our private stuff, and you’d definitely have opposition.”

Yadira nodded, glancing at Raquel, who wasn’t saying or doing anything, just observing.

“Dinner’s served,” Avery said.

Lucy stood.  Verona remained sitting until their side of the table was vacated, Snowdrop rising to join Avery.

“I enjoyed chatting,” Verona said.  “It’s nice to learn stuff and hang out.  It’d be nice to do it again.”

Yadira nodded again, silent.

“Cool,” Verona said.

There were still some clusters of students who were lingering, and they had to walk around them on their way to the serving table, where the senior students had wheeled out the carts to line them up along the path.

“Wasn’t sure what to expect there,” Lucy said.  “I definitely didn’t expect that approach.”

“If we’re coy, they seem to get curious.  We can’t really negotiate,” Verona said.  “I wanted to make it so it’s not always you standing up there and putting on the brave face.”

“I wouldn’t call that a brave face,” Avery said.

“Scary face,” Lucy said.

“I can live with scary face,” Verona decided.  “Can you guys?  Was I way off base?  Because if so, I could try backpedaling it.”

“Don’t,” Lucy said.  “I wish we could talk more with the Others back home, or with Miss.”

“How cool would it be if we could just call her, right here?” Avery asked.

“It’d suck,” Snowdrop said.

“I think there’s no right answers,” Lucy said.  “This is an answer.  Let’s let the rumor mill circulate a bit, see if they talk about us, and we stand up for ourselves.”

“While keeping an eye out for trouble,” Verona said.  “Including whoever strifed us, and made Ray treat you like crap.”

“Ideally,” Lucy said, dropping her voice a bit as they’d gotten closer to people.

They joined the line for the food.

“What is it?” Avery called out.

“Gourmet burgers with bacon and cheese on toasted challah buns, grilled veg on the side,” Nicolette answered.  She was manning the table from the back, putting burgers together on order.

“Is there a vegetarian option?” Avery asked.

“Marinated portobello.”

“Cool.”

The strife situation was a tricky one.  All of the Belangers were present, with Chase leaning against the wall behind the table and serving the occasional drink, but mostly just lounging while Nicolette did stuff.

Verona looked the other way, and spotted the eighteen-ish Seth talking up America Tedd, who was… about as old as students got without being senior students.  Verona couldn’t recall her exact age.  She wasn’t sure if she was uncomfortable seeing it because Seth was a bit older and in a position here, or if she was uncomfortable because America Tedd seemed like the kind of girl who’d bite a boy’s tongue off mid-kiss.

Chase wasn’t ruled out, but there were two other Augurs who could pull that kind of Augur trickery.  Tanner was Bristow’s almost-recruit, stolen by Alexander, and was talking with a pretty, twenty-something girl in a shimmery dress.  Vanderwerf?  They were doing some of the walking around that the teaching staff was doing, talking to groups and distracting them from the lingering feuds.  Tanner was pretty good looking, and so, Verona figured, was the Vanderwerf girl.  That helped a bit, probably.

Verona thought of Jeremy and checked her phone.

There was a picture of him, airborne, spread-eagled, and shirtless, about fifteen feet up in the air.  The lighting of the picture made details hard to make out.

A subsequent picture showed Jeremy in a swimsuit, cheering for what might have been his dad, who was midway down the ramp.

A finger darted across her screen.

No,” Verona gasped.  She turned to face the finger’s source, Avery, who grinned.  Verona looked back to the screen, seeing the heart pop up.  “No!”

Snowdrop cackled.

Verona looked at Lucy.  “No.”

“She got you.”

Verona looked back to Avery, then back at the screen.

She stared at it until Avery had to nudge her to keep her moving with the line.

A message popped up from Jeremy: “Did a test run.  Five seconds of excitement. Rest of summer is really dull here. Hope your having a good time

“No,” Verona said, to Avery.  She showed her the phone.  “This isn’t what I wanted.”

“It’s-” Avery started to reply.  Verona shoved the phone closer to Avery’s face, until Avery had to duck her head down.  Avery managed to say, “It’s a bit funny.”

“It’s the furthest thing from funny,” Snowdrop said, frowning and shaking her head.

“It is the furthest thing from funny, right now.  He’s messaging me now.  I don’t like this.”

“I give his reply a B,” Lucy said, leaning in.  “Pretty good for how fast it came out.  He’s a good guy.”

“I give it an F because I don’t want it.  He is a good guy-”

“So date him,” Avery said.

“-But no.  Serious no.  Now he’s got his hopes up and that sucks.”

“I mean, he got a like from you.  Can’t blame him,” Lucy said.

“From her, through me.  On a shirtless picture.”

“Why were you browsing shirtless pictures of Jeremy in the first place?” Avery asked.

“I wasn’t browsing shirtless pictures, I was browsing general pictures, in part because I wanted to know what was going on back home without having to check on my dad again, and one picture happened to be shirtless, and then you liked it for me.”

“And in part because you’re interested?” Avery asked.

Verona struggled to find words and was caught between an invective and a hiss, and ended up with an “Ack” sound.

“You seem more freaked about this than the dad scare, or anything else last night.”

Verona flipped around a hundred and eighty degrees to face Lucy.  Dead serious, she said, “This is worse, on a number of levels.”

“I don’t get you, Ronnie,” Lucy said.  “I really don’t.”

“Gimme your phone.  Let me heart a dozen of Wallace’s pictures, and then maybe you’d feel a fraction of what I feel, right now,” Verona said.

“I’m not going to give you my phone.  If you’re going to get revenge, it should be against Avery.

Verona wheeled another a one-eighty to turn on Avery.  Avery, unflinching, gave her a light push, to keep her moving with the line.

“I won’t defend her against you,” Snowdrop said, brandishing her fork.

“I can’t tell if I’d do this again, based on your reaction,” Avery said.  “It’s funny and a bit unsettling.”

“Unsettling is good,” Verona told her, giving Avery her best glare.  “Be unsettled.  Be very unsettled.”

“Burger with bacon, cheese, onion…. ketchup, mustard,” Lucy told Nicolette.

“You guys made it back pretty fast.”

“No comment,” Lucy said.  “Not in earshot of others.”

“I’m supposed to pass on that we haven’t found any leads.”

Lucy nodded.  “Figured we’d have already been told if you did.”

“Pretty much.  Verona.  What do you want?” Nicolette asked.

“Revenge.  Also, can you cut a burger in half?”

“That’s a pain.  We do have sliders.”

Verona judged the slider size, then held up two fingers.  “Just mustard.”

Nicolette served the dish, handed over the plate, and Verona used the tongs to help herself to a heap of grilled vegetables.

“And portobello mushroom?” Nicolette asked.  “Do you mind the buns?”

“Buns are fine.”

“Be careful out there.  I think some of the more easygoing practitioners ducked off around the back.  Just don’t leave any trash or dishes back there.”

“Thanks,” Lucy said.  “Good to know, since it looks like our bench got taken.”

Verona looked.  Some of the other girls from their age group had taken up seats.  They were talking all together.

Raquel looked back their way, saw Verona looking, and went momentarily still.

Then she resumed the conversation, sitting sideways so she could keep an eye out.

They walked away from the serving line to make room for the other waiting students.

“We could go reclaim our seats,” Lucy said.

“If I wasn’t as tired as I am right now, I might say yes,” Avery said.  “I probably wouldn’t, though.  I don’t like that kind of confrontation or awkwardness.”

“It’s a bit lonely,” Lucy said.

“It’s not lonely as long as we’ve got each other,” Verona said.  “And can I really complain if I’ve got a a bonus heaping of warm, cozy thoughts of revenge?”

“Isn’t Lucy the dangerous one when it comes to revenge?” Avery asked.

“I’m trying to chill out a bit,” Lucy said.  “I’ll save the revenge and cursing for those who really deserve it, so I don’t worry my mom.”

“Or us,” Verona said.

“Or you, I guess.”

They walked around the side of the school.  A bunch of students, a lot of them older boys, were running around in the practice field, with lacrosse sticks, whipping a ball around.

Verona bit into a slider.  She closed her eyes, disappearing into the taste.

There was food that came from the supermarket, refrigerated, that hit the grill immediately, one meal right after her dad’s shopping trips, maybe.  Then if there was more, it came out of the freezer, and stuff that had come from the freezer was worse.

This was like… never refrigerated.  Tender and juicy and exploding with flavor to the point her eyes watered a bit.

How was she going to go back to frozen dinners after this?

How was she going to go back after this?

“Corbin!” one of the boys shouted.  “Come on!”

“I want to freaking eat!  Give me a minute!”

“You keep holding us up!”

“Because you won’t let me eat!”

Corbin sat down by Melody, his sister and his near-twin, taking the plate from her and holding it where it almost touched his chin as he bit into his burger.

“Can I take over while he eats?” Avery called out.

“Have you played Lacrosse?” a boy asked.

“Maybe three or four times in gym.”

“You’re a bit small, and if you’re inexperienced too… maybe someone else?  Zachariah?”

Zach was on the sidelines, leaning against a slope.  He shook his head.

He was a bit padded to be an athletic type.  Which Verona could respect, because people who enjoyed exercise were a bit kooky, as far as she was concerned.

“Give Avery a shot!” Lucy called across the field.

The boy waved Avery in.

Avery handed her partially eaten mushroom burger over to Lucy, giving Verona a warning look, and then almost took off.  Lucy’s hand stopped her.

“What?” Avery asked.

“At the picnic table, we pitched ourselves as not to be messed with.  This is the time to show off.”

“I’d say no pressure, but… pressure,” Verona said, eyes widening.

“Not a problem,” Avery said.  She ran off, collecting Corbin’s stick on her way onto the field.

Verona reached for Avery’s burger.  Snowdrop caught her arm just in time.  Lucy saw, realized what Verona was doing, and pulled it out of her reach.

“What would you even do?” Lucy asked.

“Nettlewisp, nettlewisp, nettlewisp… I want her to have a gas.  Make this burger taste like dirty-”

“No,” Lucy cut her off.

Verona sagged.

“I kind of don’t want to see that,” Snowdrop said, gravely.

“What she said,” Verona told Lucy.

“I kind of do though,” Snowdrop decided.

“Did you reply to him?” Lucy asked.

“Don’t change the subject.”

“She needs to eat.  We all do.  Don’t mess with her food.  Did you reply to Jeremy?”

Verona backed off, took an aggressive bite of slider, and looked at her phone.

“He likes you.  He’s got good taste, considering you’re pretty cool, some of the time,” Lucy said.  She thought, then amended.  “A lot of the time.”

“Nah,” Verona said.  She closed the tab and flicked over.

In the flicking, she ended up on her dad’s feed.  Lucy looked over her shoulder to see.

“You never really communicated about him and how it went,” Lucy said.  “Were you angry, that it wasn’t as bad as he made it out to be?”

“Hey!” Corbin called out.  “Avery!”

Avery stopped in her tracks.

“No practice!”

“I’m not!”

Corbin looked back at Lucy and Verona.  “No helping her.”

“We’re not.”

Avery, still waiting for more input or comments, seemed to decide she was good to go.  She took off again, intercepting the ball a few seconds later.

“She’s fast,” Corbin said.

“Oh yeah,” Lucy said.

“You suck, Avery!” Snowdrop jeered.

Avery gave Snowdrop a wave.

They watched Avery run.

“Her stick handling needs a bit of work,” Lucy said.  “But she’s doing good.”

“Yeah.”

“Were you angry?” Lucy asked.

“I’m… he was pretty not great,” Verona said, still watching Avery.  “Go, Ave!”

“It was serious?”

“I don’t know what the right answer was,” Verona said, her eyes on the field, the ball, and the players.

“Is this like… he needed help but was going to recover serious?  Or a possibility he’s not there at the end of the summer serious?”

“Probably more the former.”

“Probably?” Lucy asked.

“I know what the moral, truly ‘right’ answer probably was.  Probably the answer most people would give.  Staying.  Giving up on magic school.  Showing I love him.  But for me, me specifically, I couldn’t.”

Avery intercepted the ball again.  She passed in a way that was more than a bit high, but her teammate sprinted a bit and managed to catch it.

They scored a bit later.

“How’re you handling it?”

“Didn’t start really thinking about it until just now, seeing the picture on his page.”

“And now that you are thinking about it?”

“Feeling not hungry.”

“Eat,” Lucy said.

Dutifully, Verona finished her sliders, then ate the grilled veg.  It took a minute of steady eating before the taste overwhelmed her preoccupation and reminded her of how good this food was.

“I offered before to call my mom and have her check in on him,” Lucy said.  “What do you think?”

Verona gave it a good think.

“Please?  I hate to hassle her, because your mom is great, but…”

“You’re worried?” Lucy asked.

Verona nodded.

Lucy gave her a one-armed hug.

Verona reached for the plate again, only for Snowdrop to catch her wrist.  Darn.

“Her food’s going to get cold,” Verona noted.

“I don’t think she cares.”

There were a few more exchanges. Avery whooped.

A tug on Verona’s shirt, simultaneous with a tug on Lucy’s, made the two of them look down at Snowdrop, then take her cue, looking back.

It was Ted.  Bristow’s man.

Big, intense, graceful.  Medium length brown hair, a puckered scar up one arm that didn’t look like it had been stitched up at any point before the scar tissue had solidified, tan skin, he was middle-aged-ish but looked simultaneously like one of those older guys who worked out to the point their physiques didn’t match their age, and like a kid far wiser than his years.

“We don’t want trouble,” Zachariah said.

“Nope,” Ted told them.  “No trouble intended.”

He was focused on Lucy and Verona.

“What’s up?” Verona asked.  She reached for her back pocket.

“If I were in your shoes, knowing what I know, I wouldn’t use whatever it is you’re reaching for,” Ted told her, his forehead creased with a line.  “It doesn’t end well.”

Verona returned her hand to its regular position.

“What do you want?” Lucy asked.

“I’m passing on a message.”

“Okay?” Lucy asked.  “Pass it on, then.”

“Lawrence Bristow wants you to know he has no regrets about last night, as of right now.”

Oh.  That.  The little contest between them.

“I didn’t say when he’d regret it,” Verona said.

“I know.  But he’ll keep reminding you.  It’ll count for a little more each time.”

Verona frowned.  “Not quite how it’s intended to work, but-”

“It’s how it works,” Ted said.

Verona shook her head.  She didn’t want to acknowledge it, in case she gave it power.

“Why are you his lackey?” Lucy asked.

“That’s a loaded question.”

“One you’re not going to answer?” Verona asked, taking up Lucy’s slack.

“I can answer,” Ted said, voice soft.  “If I hadn’t come, he would have sent Kevin Noone.  You know who that is.”

“No comment on whether we know or not.”

Forehead still bearing that crease, Ted told them, “Kevin would have hurt you a little, using a glance.  By being here, I can stop that sort of thing.  Lawrence, Kevin, Shellie, and Rae have to be better while I’m here with them.”

“He gets to use you in the meantime,” Lucy said.

“Oh, I know.”

“When we talked to Clem, she came up with all kinds of excuse why she had to go back to him.”

Ted smiled for the first time.  “I do like Clem.  Yes.  I’ve seen what you describe happening many times now.”

“I bet you’re strong enough to break this cycle,” Verona said.  “Trying to get out, getting sucked back into his orbit.”

“It’s very possible.  Consider the possibility that I don’t want to,” Ted said.

“Escaping one cycle to find yourself in another?” Verona asked.  “We all have our comfort zones, huh?”

Ted shrugged.  “In our individual ways.  But it isn’t what you’re implying.  Being where I am puts me in the best position to help the most people.”

“You think it does,” Verona said.

“I do think it does.  And it does,” he clarified, with no snark or real reaction to the statement.

“Can you pass on a message?” Lucy asked.

“I could.”

“To Shellie.  Tell her we did our best with Daniel.  He seemed to be in good shape when we sent him off with Clementine.”

“They already talked.  He said as much.  It still took some extensive work for me to talk her down.”

“Talk her down from what?” Lucy asked.

“Aggression.  This is yet another thing that would have been much worse if I hadn’t been present, because I can’t be everywhere and I can’t promise I’ll successfully talk her down every time.  You’re a threat to Daniel’s existence and you’re associated with the Faerie.  Tread very carefully, while she’s near.  Or while Kevin and Rae are near, for that matter, and for very different, more obvious reasons.”

“You’re sticking around?” Lucy asked.

“For part of the week, at least.  Would you like for me to gently express to Shellie that you’re glad all is well with Daniel?  I can do it in a way that won’t see her storming off to attack you.”

“Sure.  Please,” Lucy said.

“Enjoy your game,” he told them, before he strolled off, back the way he’d come.

Verona and Lucy watched him until he was all the way gone, then turned uneasily back to watching Avery run around winging her stick around.  She was doing a half decent job of it, by the reactions.

“I hate feeling weak,” Lucy murmured.

“You’re thinking about the big guy?”

“I hate it.  I hate being on the back foot, I hate second guessing everything.  And you made us out to be strong, which isn’t wrong, but…”

Verona nodded.  She could kind of relate, when she thought of her dad and the uncertainty she’d wrestled with there.  Having a single decisive action like Lucy calling her mom made her feel better.  For this though…

“Do we try and get stronger?” Verona asked, as she finished the thought.  “You got those books.  The major rituals.”

Lucy took a bite out the burger.  It looked too big to finish, so Verona reached for it.  Lucy pulled away, protecting Avery’s burger, until she saw what Verona was doing.  Verona tore what was left in half and took a bite of her half.

“Seems like Implement’s easiest,” Lucy said, watching the game.

Snowdrop held up the fork.  Lucy took it, turned it around in her hands, then handed it back, shaking her head.

Verona mulled it over.

“Okay,” Verona told Lucy.  “Need to run it by Avery, but I think it’s a solid starting point.”

[6.3 Spoilers] Implementum Text

Introduction

For as long as there has been practice there have been tools to hone that practice.  Of the three defining rituals of the Western practitioner, the Ritual Implementum dates back the furthest and is the most frequently carried out.

Think, if you will, of the implement as a segment of a diagram.  The arrow pointing outward with an epithet written within, the symbol for life with spokes radiating outward, the attached figures and circles drawn as an adjunct to tie the effect to the practitioner, or the barrier raised against outside harm with a symbol for fire inscribed on it.  In actuality, of course, these are material objects the practitioner bears, that they may channel practice through.

Once chosen, this segment of diagram is with the practitioner always.  The ritual, from the point it is performed, will influence the practitioner’s practice in subtle ways.  When the implement is wielded, worn, or borne, that influence is far stronger.  Just as the forces of our world react to a diagram that points outward, they will react to the presence of a sword that does the same.  They will recognize the sword’s guard as they do a barrier, and they will recognize everything about that sword’s history, culture, and appearance as they would the writing within and around a chalk circle.

In actuality, there is no fixed diagram, but the parallels and effects are much the same.  When the practitioner wishes to do something aggressive or direct a force forward, the sword is a boon, a way to lay down that outward-pointing effect with scarcely any effort, or it may augment a complementary effect they do put effort into.

At the same time, however, some other practices may be negatively affected, just as they would be if they were close to or connected to an inappropriate, outwardly-pointing segment of diagram.  They may be destabilized, weaker, or the practitioner may end up putting some extra notations down to divorce their work from the sword’s influence.

In the current context, many practitioners are provided with a clear course to follow, or they are encouraged to decide on a course early by their teachers or families.  This does make sense, when the nature of practice makes commitment so essential.  The earlier you start, the young practitioner is told, the sooner you will come into power.  Then, making their decision, the beginner practitioner is often faced with a wall.  Power can be hard to come by and the master of the apprentice or the head of the family may see fit to take the better sources of power because they can more efficiently render it.

To take the implement, for many, seems like the next natural step, raising the beginner to the point that they can start to participate in this handling of power.  For the master or the family head, the clear definition of the student allows that student to be used and positioned.  Even if the student is an inexperienced handler of loose power, the fact they bear an implement makes them easy to fit into the master’s work.  They may be slotted into proceedings as any piece of diagram work would be.

However, this is a decision made for life, and it is a decision that will affect how the practitioner faces and addresses the world of Other and practitioner.  It has been said that there are no explicitly wrong choices, because when one chooses an implement, they match themselves to it, as much as it connects to them.  Choose the stone or the technological doo-dad, and the practitioner will be weak as a consequence but they will -must- adapt and come to terms with it, for it will be a part of them in the same way one’s hand or eye would be.

Let us discuss, to inform the choice.  In this work, we will discuss the implements, their utilization in combination with make and appearance, their relationship to Others, some variant cases, and the meaning of the object on a broader level.

This text is written with the understanding and expectation that young practitioners will be reading it with the assistance of teachers or mentors, with an eye to performing the ritual, be it early or late.  Some exercises and details are listed, where appropriate.


Chapter One: Sorting out Implements

The implement has a few essential requirements: it must be a material, solid object.  It must be easy to carry or wear.  It should not be magical, or its nature should be well accepted and understood before the practitioner ties themselves to it.  Objects with mechanical functionality and/or many moving parts may lack functionality due to the way the separation between parts or outside momentum interrupt their functionality as an effective piece of diagram.

Once the ritual is conducted, the implement is preserved, tied to the owner.  If damaged, the owner can put some of their Self into the implement to repair it.  If emptied, spent, or partially lost, for those implements that may be part of a complete set (as with a handful of dice, for example, or a pack of cigarettes), the Self will be tapped to replenish what is spent.

The practitioner will maintain a great deal of claim to the item, and this operates on a cosmic level; if lost or stolen, it will find its way back to the practitioner.  If given away, loaned, or taken hostage, it will remain gone, but those Others much weaker than the practitioner may find it slips their grasp and finds its way back to the owner in short order.  Loans with a binding word on the owner’s part or loans to very powerful Others will be lasting.  While without the object, the practitioner will be lessened, their Self reduced by as much as a third.  A permanent destruction of the implement, while rare, may be akin to losing an arm or a leg.

The number of objects that could be implements are too numerous to mention, and thus, instead of collecting the information on all of these implements, this text will work with twenty-two objects, selected with care from among those objects that are most commonly chosen as implements, and those that are best for illustrative purposes.

Exercises are listed for each entry, but the beginner practitioner may not know enough to answer every one.  These exercises are optional, of course.  If one option appeals, one might consider doing the exercise and then revisiting it after each subsequent section.  If many appeal, then perhaps make an attempt at answering now, then revisit the answers once finished familiarizing oneself with the Implementum text.

The Stone is one of our illustrative examples in addition to being our first example implement. An unadorned, uncarved raw stone, such as that which is found in nature, presumed to be heavy.  It is our sole ‘undesirable choice’ that can be considered a virtual non-implement.  The stone gives us some opportunity to address some pitfalls of a bad choice of implement.  It is heavy, impractical to hold and to wield, and it harbors little appeal or history.  So how does this matter?

Consider that the implement, through the ritual, is tied to the practitioner.  What, then, is the effect of a practitioner chaining themselves to a rock for life?  One’s effective mobility is hampered, and this will act as a symbolic and functional impedance in the practitioner’s life.  As spirits take note and start to act in accordance with this badge of office, the practitioner will find that travel becomes hard.  It represents the practitioner’s handling of practice, and it is hard to deftly handle; practice then becomes cumbersome, heavy, and slow.  It may have more impact and longevity, but the cost is not worth it.  Finally, there is the social impact; with an audience Other and practitioner, and in subtle ways even mundane people, what would the collective thought be about the man who is chained to a rock?  That he is a fool.

As a part of diagrams, to return to the analogy given in the introduction, the stone is heavy and has little functionality as anything but an impedance, and not an especially nuanced one.

Exercise: What might be the difference between a square granite slab and a smooth igneous rock?

The Wand, a thin, wooden or metal pointing instrument that may be carved or decorated, is a common choice for practitioners, and is rooted in a long history and tradition among practitioners.  It is the tool of practitioners who intend to deal with other practitioners and the practice, and this can be its strength and its biggest caveat.  It dwells on practice and little else, and because of this, much of its functionality is as a flexible, light, and nuanced tool, a stark opposite to the stone’s cumbersome nature in that it is so easy to handle and flourish that it can be applied after the fact or in the moment.  A tool for the subtle and the expert, used to redirect, and to make small changes to ongoing practice.  It can be used on one’s own practice, or used to target, alter, or deflect another’s.  A fine choice for many, closing few doors and harboring next to no drawbacks, outside of its tendency to work primarily with practice and practitioners rather than on the powers of Others or on the mundane.

An exercise: what are two objects that are not on this list that you might consider a close relative of the wand?  How might they differ in use?

The Talisman is, for our purposes, an inscribed gemstone, ring, piece of jewelry, or other ornament.  The choice of what is carved and the choice of inscription will define the talisman and its ultimate effect.  When used with practice, the Talisman is linked to the wearer, and allows its fundamental symbolism to be easily inserted or augmented.  Where other implements discussed thus far are akin to the ornamentation of a diagram, pointing its forces outward or making adjustments here and there, the Talisman is better likened to a specific word or symbol that one wishes to regularly insert into their work.  A talisman of water can allow one to assume water by default, filling in the blanks by impressing the talisman on the practice at hand, or to force water into an ongoing practice.

An exercise: consider the effects if the item inscribed was a dismembered finger.

The Scepter is a symbol of authority, and for our purposes, is assumed to be a stick, heavy and heavily decorated and imbued with some ceremonial significance.  Weightier than the wand on every front, the scepter can be considered some of the other options combined; the wand without the subtlety, a talisman, a standard, and jewelry.  It draws on many of these things at the cost of being hard to use casually or carry in easy display.  Consider the scepter to be an especially elaborate segment of diagram.

Exercise: Consider an early ritual you learned.  How could you decorate a scepter to create a similar effect on a regular basis?

The Sword is an aggressive choice, and a more common choice in older eras.  It is a blade, covered earlier, the sword points, has some limited defensiveness to it, and can be decorated.  When applied to practice, it can act as an outward-pointing segment of diagram.  It may penetrate defenses and provide the owner with an easier time of defending themselves, albeit not in a way that easily extends to nearby others.  Others of a hostile bent tend to respect the sword, but it is hard to carry in the course of daily life, and does not tend to reflect the habits or approaches of the modern practitioner.

Exercise: In a brief writing exercise, explore what the spear might be like, compared to the sword.  What might the axe be like?  What would one gain and what would one lose?

The Chalice is a cup, ornate and decorated, once a common implement.  It can be a symbol or a limited means of taking action in a diagram, but more than anything, it is a repository for holding power and then partaking of or distributing that power.  Favored by practitioners dealing with the divine and the management of power.  The Chalice is less adroit when it comes to dealing with those who are not practitioner or Other, as it is often gaudy or out of place in a mundane setting, but the symbolic sharing of drinks extends to its significance as a social implement elsewise.

Exercise: What is an object not on this list that might have a similar social meaning to the chalice’s?  What’s an object not on this list that might have a similar ability to hold onto or manage power?

The Tome is a book, which may or may not have writing in it.  A second illustrative example about the breadth of possibilities in implements.  As tomes take time to read or write in, the practices with the book as a part of them will be extended out.  The contents of the tome, if any, will play a strong role in determining the effects on a practice.  Cumbersome, but not in the same way a scepter or stone might be, choosing the Tome may make all of the practitioner’s practices slower, but it can be considered a repository of ideas or symbols, and as one might page through a book, they can set it as part of a practice they intend to do, and page through until they find what they want to add to the diagram.  Some may even lay that down, putting the book down, paging through it, then deciding on something to add, transferring something from the page to the chalk.  In other cases, it could be the opposite, storing learned information or memories, or it could be a way of holding onto a collection of bound Others.  Knowledgeable Others may respect the tome as a choice.  For all its merits, however, many eschew this choice because of the costs in one’s quality of life.

Exercise: What might the effect of a book filled with poetry be?  A book of names?

The Ring is a very symbolic choice, akin to the talisman, but with no overt inscription.  Instead, the design of the ring often imparts some quality.  Worn on the hand, the ring applies itself to the manual handling of practice and Others, its design and its closeness to the wearer imparting some benefit or effect.  In short, by having the ring of a specific design, it becomes its own closed diagram (as the ring itself is closed).  This can be a way for a practitioner to attain a lasting effect such as the ability to ward off heat or the ability to hold one’s breath for longer underwater.  In other cases, tying to the idea of the wedding ring or other symbols of engagement, the ring may connect to an Other or another practitioner, linking them.

Exercise: Go look up or find three rings, as different from one another as possible.  From their designs, infer what benefits they might offer.

The Chakram is a close cousin of the ring, but is symbolic and aggressive at the same time.  A metal ring as large or larger around than a dinner plate, often with a sharpened outer edge and heavily decorated, it forms its own closed diagram and houses its own effect.  The chakram can be worn as jewelry with turbans or as bracelets, be thrown as a weapon, or be held and used to slash in close quarters.  Because it houses its effect and is aggressive, it can sometimes impart an effect like a curse or element to the one struck.  The claim one has to their implement helps ensure it bounces back to the owner.

Exercise: The last two implements were closed circles.  What might another closed circle be that you could use as an implement.  Can you think of any other objects with distinct shapes that are related to shapes you know from elementary diagrams?

The Plate is a very old type of implement, seeing virtually no modern use.  Traditionally a decorative plate, individually crafted and painted or tiled to serve as a very large symbol and/or a periodic means of delivering an offering to the gods.  At a time when art was expensive, the plate was a means of carrying and displaying images, often held during formal events, when posing for portraits, or they were mounted on the walls and above doors.  More modern interpretations or replacements have been discussed, including the mirror, but we include the plate for illustrative purposes; its tie is specifically to the past and avoids the present, and because of this, it carries a great deal of weight when dealing with old Others.  The quality and nature of the art may make the plate a good vessel for transforming an area; should it depict a region of the Faerie it could be held up to transform the immediate surroundings, or if it is tied to subservient service to a god, it may reflect that god’s influence.

Exercise: Can you think of another very old object that sees almost no use now?

The Staff is a flexible instrument, with staffs in history being used as symbols of office, weapons, a means of self defense, and a means of steadying or helping oneself while walking.  Comparisons are often drawn to the wand, which is subtle and versatile, to the staff, which is hard to ignore or put away but equally or more versatile, and to the sword, which has its balance of offense, defense, and ability to point.  Unlike the sword, however, the staff is more balanced, and has its relationships to the tower, the fencepost, and is more often carried upright than extended.  It bears strong links to ground and heaven, and can help with altering or traversing the environment.  The staff’s variants can include the shepherd’s crook, the cane, and the rod, each with their nuance.

Exercise: The staff is comparable to the wand and sword.  Can you think of another object that could be a close cousin of two other things on this list?

The Coin is a small token, subtle, and tied heavily into the notion of fortune, fate, and exchange.  A typically metal, stamped disc that can be held in the palm.  Rarely the centerpiece of a practice, though it may act as a very weak talisman if marked, or as a token of power that can be easily handed away, replaced with Self over time.  The coin is instead a sign of one’s relationship to power, marking them as a broker, gambler, or hoarder, depending.  The specific coin and one’s handling of it are big determinants of its ultimate effect and what it attracts; consider the defective print, the rare coin from a faraway place, the handful of coins dating to a series of specific years, or the shaved coin.  More common among those who deal with Others or dwell on the contests of Faerie or Other.

Exercise: a practitioner flips a wooden nickel, his implement.  What does this tell you about him?

The Emblem is a cousin of the talisman, but it is specifically a symbol of a particular organization, person, or force, including national symbols, flags, or signs of membership to a group.  The shape of it or the material it is on does matter, but for our purposes, in outlining what it is, we care only that it centers around the emblem itself, often front and center, in cloth, leather, metal, or some other form.  The emblem does not lend itself to practice, but it does pay special mind to relationships, to kin and to enemy.  While its effect on practice may not be anything special, those who bear the emblem often find their practice and Sight are better attuned to enemy and ally; for offensive uses the power may slip past those who ascribe to the emblem, leaving them untouched by the harmful, and drive harder against those who are longstanding enemies of the group.  Sometimes made part of a closed circle, such as a ring or a scarf forming a loop at the neck, to impart an effect appropriate to the role.

Exercise: A member of a secretive group chooses an implement with an emblem of a flower that represents their resistance group, but in their case, the emblem is hidden by default.  What might be the effect of this?

The Chain binds the wearer if wound around them and can be turned around to bind another.  The chain may be a fine silver chain or a rusty steel one with a hook on it, meant for towing cars, or it may be something in between.  The nature of the chain determines its focus, and the fine silver chain could be stronger for binding than the heavy steel one, if what one wants to bind are specific ethereal Others.  Versatile, strong, and sometimes used by those who would bind themselves more than anything else, to restrain that which dwells within them.  As a part of a diagram the chain can be likened to the border, warding off or containing.  A favored choice of binders, wardens, and sealers.

Exercise: Consider how the rope might differ.  Conversely, the thread is very different from the chain, but how might they be similar?

The Skull is a stark symbol, linked closely to Death.  Just what it is a skull of will influence the outcome, but like the talisman, the skull will often functionally serve in the place of a rune or bit of guiding text.  Outside of immediate and active practice, its link to Death connects the bearer to undead and to the Incarnate forces of the world.  Certain Others will find an affinity toward the one who bears a skull, but practitioners and the innocent may find themselves subtly unsettled, as the skull influences things around the practitioner.

Exercise: the skull is linked to Death incarnate.  What sort of object might be intrinsically linked to Nature?  To Adoration?  To Mourning?

The Knife is akin to the sword, but more subtle.  Deft, aggressive, and easier to use as a tool than the sword is, at the cost of defense.  Knives have a long and storied history that extends further back than the sword.  We can look at the knife and say there’s less reach, and thus, in the ‘diagram’ analogy, the effects of practice may not extend as far as they did with the sword.  Consider also that the sword is threatening, but a brandished sword can be something noble, proud, and impressive, while a brandished knife rarely is.

Exercise: Think of an ignoble version of another implement on this list.

The Standard is an old fashioned banner or flag, mounted so it can be held high above, in plain view.  Akin to the emblem, the standard is rooted in battle and in command of large numbers, which influences how it becomes a ‘diagram’ and what it does.  It is hard to bring out in public without drawing attention, more than even a sword or scepter, but it can also be mounted on a wall, much as standards of old could be raised or flown on captured ground, marking it as one’s own.  Assists the bearer in commanding larger numbers, managing those they command, and may have its own influences as an emblem or talisman, among other possibilities.  Not a common choice, but used by some summoners and managers of goblins, echoes, or other common Others.

Exercise: When using one’s own national flag as a standard, what sorts of Others might be drawn to it?

The Lens may be a monocle, spyglass, or spectacles, but could include a gemcutter’s lapidary.  Enables one to see what they otherwise could not.  Ties in directly to the Sight, and may enable the blind or hard of seeing to not see better, but to See better.  Does not often exaggerate or benefit a given practice, unless that practice is centered around information gathering or Sight, but can provide additional insights that help with all practice.

Exercise: Thought experiment: what materials or design would one use if they wanted to make a lens that would help keep an eye on Death?  What about War?

The Mask serves to conceal one’s identity, while acting as a symbol or second face.  Subtle, but in very different ways from the knife or wand, the mask may allow one to adopt a certain role or even alter one’s own Self in a pinch.  Used in practice, the mask may be a substitute for oneself, or a deflection or barrier when the Self might be at risk.  Masks have long been used by Summoners to hide their identity from the Others they call, who might seek revenge once released, and there is some measure of protection afforded by the mask here.  Some masks have ceremonial or symbolic meaning, and others may be more whimsical, but virtually every mask has some Others with whom it connects with more.

Exercise: Give some thought to what a mask of one’s own face would represent or mean.

The Lantern takes power and radiates it outward, and in its default function of pushing light out, it overrides darkness.  In other types of power, it may drive away other forces or effects.  Were one to put heat and fire out with the lantern, for example, they could ward off cold and certain cold-related Others, among other effects. By contrast, a ‘lantern’ could be Abyssal, and would let one express some abyss into their immediate surroundings, translating everything close by to an Abyssal alternate.  Other realms can be cast out into the immediate environment in this manner.  Less directed than the sword, wand, or even staff, it keeps effects closer to the user, with some types of lantern allowing their effect to be narrowed to a cone or line.  Tends to be power hungry.

Exercise: Consider the differences between lantern and candle.  What other object might ‘cast out’ an effect into the immediate environment?

The Trumpet requires careful attention and skill to use, but can influence the mood of an area very quickly, while also being a call to battle or entertainment.  Focused largely on others, the trumpet tends to require one’s breath and attention, but can be tied to nearby effects or diagrams and express their intent out to the spirits or other forces.  Other instruments are possible, but have their nuances.  The trumpet is far from subtle, but at the same time, can be carried out among the Innocent without much undue attention.  Variants date back into early history, including the conch and the horn.

Exercise: What might the flute or pipes do, as an instrument?  Can you think of other instruments with a long history of association with magic or fairy tale?

The Coffer is a box, often wood, that may hold items or may be empty, but whichever it is, that property is typically decided when it becomes an Implement and carries forward therefater.  The empty coffer can be a storehouse for things or for power, while the full coffer may eat power while providing an unusual amount of things relating to one’s Self and practice, be it weapons or coin.  Use of the coffer in a ritual may be an extra measure of security when seeking to trap an Other, with the coffer serving as a temporary ‘cell’ for that Other, or it may be the opposite, with the box unleashing minor Others.  If the Stone can be considered the filled-in circle, the coffer is the open circle.

Exercise: the coffer has a lid.  What might be the properties of a handheld, cast-iron cauldron with an open top?

The quality and make of an object will exaggerate and improve its effects, as will the practitioner’s power, at the time of the Ritual Implementum and as they grow.


Chapter Two: The Implement Borne

Once the ritual is done, the implement, while carried, can be used.  The various uses have been detailed in the extensive list of twenty-two example implements, but there are some other facets.

Know first that the implement reflects the Self.  If the practitioner’s tool is hidden, transformed, or kept locked away, the Self will be diminished.  In practice, this will make the practitioner less effective at what they seek to do, more vulnerable, and less capable of expressing power.

Conversely, while held, the implement augments the Self.  The specific things it reinforces are subtle, but over time, the individual will grow to match the implement.  Some examples:

The Tome-bearing practitioner will find that reading comes more naturally, as does memorization and facility with language or art.

The Knife-bearing practitioner will become more skilled with the blade, and more able to use the knife in a fight.

The Crown-wearing practitioner will have an easier time with leadership, being comfortable with being looked up to, and appearing noble.

These aspects of personal growth are not usually above and beyond what the individual could do or learn, but are best described as the effect of spending one’s days with a book, or spending one’s days handling the knife or bearing the crown.  Because the implement is an extension of the practitioner, use of it and related things become very natural.

By a similar token, the material and make of the implement do have their influences.  An item of gouged steel, torn leather, and sharp edges will impart familiarity with places, people, and things in a similar state.  Something crudely made will appeal to the crude, and something expensive will appeal to better Others.

Items made by the practitioner, by contrast, may not have the same value to them, but afford a greater connection between item and owner.  This influences one’s claim over the item, and the flows of power or the effects like the growth and natural ability with the object, noted above.

Items with a bloody history will impart familiarity with the bloody, so care should be paid to whether an object was used to kill at any point.  Longer histories mean the practitioner must spend longer with the ritual and may take longer to become intimate with the item, but allow for far more depth and nuance.

It is here that the implement, if it was magical prior to the Ritual Implementum, may have a strong effect on the practitioner. An item with strong divine influence, for example, will have a deep and everlasting effect on the practitioner’s Self.  What that influence is can vary, but it can be akin to a curse in the worst circumstances.  Take for example, the example of Archie Meadows, the youngest of four who were born to a family that dealt with goblins.  The four children were made to compete, with four objects up for grabs, of varying power and use.  Archie lost, and was made to take the worst item, a doll made of meat that included one blood-filled lung that would vomit out blood and goblins of the smallest caliber on command.  Once he took it as an implement, he found that every morning and night, he would mimic the doll’s effect, vomiting out gallons of blood along with a dozen of the smallest goblins.

In another example, a practitioner named Sadie Coy took a canopy jar holding a Revenant’s ashes, thinking the Revenant done and the jar simply empowered but unoccupied.  The revenant stirred in residual ashes, and she was bound to the Revenant’s revenge.

This isn’t to say that an item with magical influences is a poor choice; an item with a ‘dead’ or sufficiently controlled force within it can be easier to manage and is less likely to find a malicious outlet through the owner, but the best choice of item is one that is fully understood and researched, to the extent that the person performing the ritual knows the full extent of what will happen after the ritual.

All of these things impact the item’s casual use and the relationship between owner and item.

In active use, the item can be used to shortcut practices: a staff striking ground to replace the active portions of a diagram, while the associated elements are held, or personal power being pushed through a talisman while a line is drawn in the dirt, directing it.

In some specific cases, where the item is sufficiently elaborate or, conversely, one-note, a simple thought and some expression of power can achieve that one-note or prescribed effect.  This could be the scepter which is in itself a complex diagram with lines, emblem, and meaning ascribed to it from creation, or the cheater’s coin with its specific function.

Most often, however, the effect is a minor to moderate influence.  To range, to the lasting power of a practice, to its ability to harm the unclean, or taint the refined.  In this, the materials and nature of the item matter.  Some example properties:

Weight is the heft of the base object, but also the denser materials and its comparative weight to the practitioner’s strength.  Weight imparts more ability to achieve results, including penetrating defenses or covering more ground, but can make a practice slower.  The stone and the scepter are weighty.  The wand and coin are the inverse, quick enough to deploy they can meet a practice while it is taking effect.

Durability is the base object’s ability to resist harm.  A durable object is not only good when the object could see wear and tear, because it costs the practitioner to mend it, but it also lends longevity to practices.  Those items that last longer influence one’s practices to endure, taking longer to wear off, and making them harder to break.  Steel chain and sword are durable, while plate and wand are not.

Value, touched on above, is the cost of materials and the objective monetary value it might return if sold.  Items of value hold more sway over Others, including the spirits as a whole, and the elaboration or decoration that accompanies some added value can add more to the effective ‘diagram’, or add more weight.  Items of high value include the scepter, plate, or chalice.  Refined items that can hold a sharp edge or are especially good at what they do, like the blades or lenses will draw on value for raw effectiveness that isn’t necessarily impact, which implies added scope or ability to penetrate defenses.  Items of low value include those things which are simple, like the staff, or natural, like the skull or stone.  Simplicity does have its virtues, touched on in the paragraph below.  Another way that an item can be opposed to value is if it is consumable, such as a cigarette pack or torch.  Consumable items may be easily ‘spent’ for a benefit, but tend to lack value by equal measure.  Items like a deck of cards can be somewhat consumable, with cards thrown or lost, while still having some value, but the cost to replace a card may be high.

Versatility is a property of the item that reflects its ability to serve multiple functions.  A versatile item can serve multiple types of practice or situations.  The tome, chakram, and chain are versatile items, while the ring and emblem are not.  This said, simple items with clear-cut uses tend to impart a straightforwardness to practice, making the practices one does perform harder for others to turn aside or manipulate.

Reach and Scope are largely drawn from the item and how far it extends from the hand.  Items that are worn tend to bias the practitioner’s natural abilities toward those practices that are personal, such as worn lenses, rings, or talismans.  By contrast, the knife points outward and extends out, the sword extends further, and a spear or staff would extend further yet.  Items have a comfort zone for use and impart that comfort zone onto the practitioner.

History, the age and number of events relating to the item, and aesthetic, which is the particular material or style of the item compared to its baseline, are discussed earlier in this chapter, but cannot be easily quantified.  They should nonetheless be minded, as they affect one’s relationship to the item and their own practice, and how other individuals and practices interact with them and the item.

In effect, the variables will change for every practice the practitioner undertakes, after the ritual.  This can be somewhat shocking initially but a practitioner will adapt or be adapted in time.


Chapter Three.  Other Items

Others with extraordinary or nonhuman senses and practitioners who have keen Sight will be able to see one’s relationship to their implement.  In many cases, this is a benefit, as such Others are often face-blind when it comes to telling one human apart from the next, but will recognize the individual by their implement.

Much ado has been made about the allegorical ‘diagram’ fragment that an item may represent.  Here, we can return to that notion and say that for these Others, the implement and the associated diagram may be placed around, over, on, or through the practitioner.  It may be a mark on the forehead, a reflection of one’s sword in their eyes, or a framework surrounding them.

Sighted artist’s depiction of Irena, who bears a lantern.

There are some Others that can affect or touch these diagrams, but they are rare, and are often able to affect one’s Self by similar measures.  In some cases, these Others may be beneficial, for addressing or diagnosing issues in the object.

In contrast to these very powerful Others, it should be noted that implements, should they have a concrete enough identity, may act as tools to repel the weakest Other.  If one’s Self is strong and the item appropriate, Others of low tiers can be driven back or scared away by the expression of power through the implement.  This is, in its own way, an extension or exaggeration of the motif that the powerful Other may see around the practitioner.  The lowest tier goblin, the common Echo, and the dull spirit can be driven back or given pause by such a thing, which requires only that the practitioner channel power through their implement.  Items meant for display and items of value are better at this.

In other cases, objects may come with an associated Other or they may develop their own identities.  In the former case, this could and should be treated like one might treat an item that is inherently magical and tainted.  The ability for the Other to affect the practitioner is high, and none of the implicit protections of a familiar ritual are in place.

In the latter case, where items develop their own identities, the effect is often the result of either an excess of power, where the practitioner has power to spare or spends a great deal of time in an area where power is latent and compatible with them, or less power is applied, but the power being handled has a great deal of motive energy to it.

In either case, the item will either form an immaterial body or voice, largely unable to affect the world but capable of communicating with the practitioner and possibly offering a limited set of eyes or help with the metaphysical, or the item will contrive to form a material body.

The latter case is especially common in the event of motive energies running wild.  In an example case, we have Windsor, an alchemist who is busy creating life, their workshop filled with homunculi charged with spiritual and natural energies.  Windor makes regular use of their personal cauldron, an implement like the coffer, but in a period where they are focused on paperwork, the waste material of dead homunculi is gathered by the cauldron according to its natural flows and influences and formed into a crude body.  Over time, this body consolidates and forms an identity, becoming a limited workshop helper.

Such bodies may disintegrate as soon as the practitioner picks up the item, they may be permanently attached, remaining close to the item at all times, or some combination therein.

Living items cannot and should not be mistaken for familiars.  This said, there is some room for intermingling the familiar and implement, discussed in the next chapter, though this is not readily recommended given the costs in opportunity and effect.  Practically, the living item knows what the item does, which is often limited, and tends to reflect one facet of the practitioner’s personality, appropriate to the item.  An axe could take on a personality matching the practitioner’s most combat-ready mindset, while the aforementioned cauldron could reflect Windsor’s diligence.  Such items are very single minded, shallow, and often hard for anyone but the source practitioner to get along with.

Some, such as those who do most of their practice in workshops or in particular areas, may intentionally seek these things out.


Chapter Four: Substitutions and Variations

To begin with, let us discuss some of the edge cases of implements.

The Heavy Implement is one that cannot be carried in the hands, or one that weighs twenty pounds or more.  One’s power is rooted in the implement, and the further the individual is from the chosen implement, the more the Self diminishes, with strength of Self and practice fading swiftly if they are more than a hundred and fifty feet from the object.  This is an extension of what is described with the stone as an implement, carried further.

As an advantage, the power tends to be fairly well-rooted in the location, and may spread to the immediate vicinity, provided there isn’t any prior claim by lord, practitioner, or innocent.  Impact tends to be higher within the affected area, and with the right arrangements, may extend further.

The Digital Implement is any device normally in the Technomancer’s province, including blackberries, handheld televisions, and radios.  Too unfamiliar to spirits to have a ‘diagram’, the digital implement foregoes the upsides and uses of an implement for a material means of connecting one’s Self to the digital reaches and better extend that self through those spaces.  The item’s value can be expected to sit at middling to low values and then plummet when the item falls out of common use, dragging one’s Self with it.  Technomancer families may have the means by which to extend this ‘shelf life’ and protect the Self when using such devices, but many choose conventional implements regardless.

Certain rituals have parallels to the Ritual Implementum, and to outline these, we’ll begin with the closest, including the ascetic ritual and the non-solid implement.

In the Ascetic Ritual, the practitioner not only doesn’t choose a specific implement, but eschews item ownership and claim to material possessions altogether.  Favored by evangelists, martial practitioners styled after the world rhythms, and those who wish to maintain immaculate bindings within their own bodies, the ascetic ritual has a resemblance to the implement ritual but leaves the spot blank and includes declarations to abandon all things of material worth.

The benefit of the ascetic ritual is that the practitioner puts all spiritual focus into their own bodies.  The body becomes even more of a closed circle, and can better resist outside influences and practices.  For the evangelist, this is a way to weather cosmic forces, while the rhythm practitioner can draw elemental or spiritual forces through their body without damaging it to the same degree.  Practice is narrowed and solidified, and even simple movements of the body may readily evoke certain effects, such as a gesture to produce fire, in much the same way the implement could be used in place of certain components or aspects of practice.  This does require a strong Self, however, as that power must come from somewhere.

While largely an inverse of choosing an implement, the ascetic ritual does share similarities in how it is carried out and in the effect on standing, one’s appearance and relationship to Others, and the finality of the decision.

The non-solid implement is a choice made by some elementalists, as well as some divine practitioners and visceral practitioners.  In the elementalist’s case, water, smoke, sand, or some other quantity of fine material may be gathered up and be made one’s own.  What it lacks in value (typically) it grants in affinity to elements or specific forces.  One can expect to become more Other than with an implement choice, and some attention must be paid to the management of the material, which may be kept in a vessel, released, and then brought back.  Amorphous or wild material like smoke or blue flame can be harder and more expensive to manage, but the practitioner may benefit from not needing something extant to work with.

For the divine practitioner, the gathered up essence may be divine light, the divine word, or a vibration.  While we say ‘divine’, there are some greater powers that trespass into the realm of divinity, such as great spirits.  When bound up and given some material form, this power tends to take some form that is not explicitly physical.  It may be lines of light on skin, resembling a tattoo, a shuddering godscream contained in a music player, or a spike of glass that, should it touch anything, will turn that thing to glass.

These exceptional cases are anecdote only and we unfortunately lack a full and rich understanding of their operation, and can only acknowledge they exist.  The more mundane, visceral cases may be our closest analogue and our best hope of understanding: art and music or their inverse, corruption and noise, can be treated much as elements are, given a vessel.  Still restricted and kept secret by prominent families, we can testify, with their agreement, that the courses taken to codify one’s link to these elements (in our examples, a piece of oil painting that creeps along one’s immediate vicinity or a consolidation of trypophilic ooze that creates thousands of holes in whatever it wets) closely resemble that of the implement.  We have been asked not to release the limited information we have on these practices.

The Familiar-Implement Link sacrifices the net strength of a standalone familiar or implement and plays up the ‘living item’ aspect explained in the last chapter, knitting familiar and implement together.  Touched on in other texts in more detail, know that one’s own connection to the item is weakened, the costs made exorbitant if the living item or item are damaged or broken, and the item itself is rendered ineffectual.

To perform the ritual, one would secure and thoroughly bind the Other to the item before conducting the implement ritual, with responses given by the other at every step along the process.

The benefits of a familiar-implement link are the close connection of the implement to the practitioner.  Once the practitioner and the item are properly connected, the familiar part of the arrangement can access the practitioner’s needs, wants, and knowledge, at the practitioner’s desire.  As such, this course is favored by those practitioners who need a manager or close eyes on something close to their Self.  It also allows alchemists and enchanters to set the familiar to work without needing to micromanage, and if the familiar grows difficult, they can be bound further into the item, restraining them and shortening their leash without necessitating that the short leash be held to the practitioner.

The Implement-Demesnes connection turns a vehicle into a flexible but low-power hybrid of demesnes and implement.  It requires several concessions, as the implement must be a heavy one, with all the downsides this entails.  As a practice, it also foregoes the advantages of a demesnes, keeping the space small and making it slow to customize.  The advantage of a demesnes that has an interior larger than it would seem from the outside does not apply to the van, boat, or other vehicle chosen, and the spread of influence to unclaimed territory is slow when one is implicitly making little claim by, essentially, choosing ‘forever on the move’ as their approach to life.  As an advantage, one can secure basic comfort and protection from common externalities such as weather.  Further, there is the assurance that as long as the Self can provide power, there will be shelter and a means of getting to the next location.

Now, let us return to discussion of the conventional, before we move on to the ritual itself, and the lesser practices and techniques one may employ after the fact…

Cutting Class – 6.4

Lucy

Last Thursday: Implementum Text


Lucy made her way back from the showers, her hair bound up in a t-shirt, her towel at her shoulders, and her kit in hand.  Students were making their way out for the morning run to jump off the rickety bridge.

The group was smaller than it had been at the start of the week.  She wondered how much of that was because it was crazy to jump from that high up, and how much was because of the current social climate around the school.

She stepped out of the way as a few guys came tearing through on their way back to their rooms, shirtless and wearing swimsuits or wet shorts.  They left trails and puddles of water all along the hall.

She slipped into her room, secretly glad to be away from the chaos.  Avery was awake.  Saying Verona was working on it might have hurt her, karmically.

“Hey,” Avery said.  She’d started showering when Lucy had, and her hair was already mostly dry.

“Welcome back,” Verona mumbled, from her cocoon of sheets.

“Having a nice vacation, V?” Lucy asked.

“Mmmyeh.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said, taking a seat at the desk and unwinding the shirt from her wet hair.  She began combing her fingers through it to detangle. “It’s chaos out there.”

Avery nodded.  “I saw two girls nearly walk into one another just outside the showers, and I had a very vivid mental picture of a shower stabbing.”

“That seems a little extreme,” Lucy said.

“It was Sawyer Hennigar and Liberty Tedd.”

One of the gore-streaked kids and the younger goblin princess whatever.

That seems less extreme a possibility, then.”

“Sorry I missed it,” Verona said, curling up around a pillow.

“You do need to shower, or are you going to sit beside me for half the day, smelling of B.O.?”

“Soon.”

“You’ll miss the start of class if you get caught in the rush of students having last-minute showers,” Avery said.

“Sooner.”

“While you’re here, then, did you manage to look over my notes?”

Verona patted her hand on the bedside table.  Avery reached across and picked it up, then went to hand it to Lucy.  Seeing Lucy was busy, Avery put it flat on the desk.

“Thank you,” Lucy said.

She had slept too many hours in the last day, with the long nap from eleven until four yesterday, then the three of them had crashed last night and slept most of the night.  Lucy had woken up early and done some self-care.  Avery had been right after her.

The paper was a brainstorming sheet.  They had put down notes, including highlights from the Implementum text and a preliminary read of Famulus, about implements and familiars, and then notes about themselves, as they’d taken turns reading aloud.

On the reverse side were their names.  Beneath each were keywords, key traits, and random thoughts that each of them had had about themselves.  They’d dozed off in the middle of the process, Lucy pulling a sheet around herself while Avery read aloud and Verona took notes, then promptly falling asleep.

“Is it me, then?” Lucy asked.

“I don’t want to lock myself into anything until I decide what I want to do,” Verona said.  “And Avery…”

“I have Snowdrop, and the Paths, and I’m patient.  Not that Snowdrop’s mine as a possession, and she’s helpful to all of us but-”

“But she’s closest to you,” Lucy said.

“I want her close to me,” Verona said, stretching beneath the sheets.  “Hand her over?  Let me snuggle her.”

“She’s out,” Avery said.  “Has been for most of the night.”

Verona groaned, burying her face in a pillow.

Lucy used a super-wide-toothed comb to go through her hair once more for good measure, then picked up a thing of spray-on refresher.  She leaned away from the others and turned around to spray her hair so she didn’t catch them with the mist.

To Lucy, Avery said, “I want to try some more paths and figure out what I need to improve on before I decide.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “Someone said something last night about maybe balancing it out.  We could do one thing each, each of us doing one of the big rituals.”

“I want to do two or three,” Verona mumbled.

“It was me who suggested it,” Avery said.  “We could each do one, then each of us do a second.  Balance out our group like we balanced out the Awakening ritual.”

“I like that,” Lucy said, taking a seat.  She started doing her hair up into a ponytail.  “We should read the demesne text later.”

“Later,” Avery said.  “It seems like it locks you to one place, which doesn’t seem super fantastic to me…”

Verona groaned, stretching.  “But how are you going to round out the implement-familiar-demesne balancing act if Lucy takes an implement and I take Alpeana as a familiar?  You gotta-”

Avery threw her pillow at Verona’s face, prompting a grunt.  The pillow remained where it was, over Verona’s head, and Verona didn’t move or move it.

Lucy looked over the brainstorming list.  In Avery’s handwriting, which was more terrible than Lucy’s, was ‘Sense of Justice’, but Verona had crossed out Justice and written, in her own cursive script, ‘Injustice’.

Which she had to consider for a second, debating internally if she should feel bothered by that or not.  Sense of injustice.

Conscious, which she hoped meant alert and aware of stuff, and not just awake.  Protective.  Frustrated.  ‘More clearheaded when upset than anyone I know‘ – Verona’s handwriting.

Verona hadn’t seen the Paul thing.  But Avery had and Avery hadn’t scratched out that line like Verona had with the ‘justice’.

About the student guide: I don’t think faerie swordfighter fits, but it feels like the right direction.‘  Avery’s thought.

“You wrote you don’t think faerie-style swordfighting thing fits,” Lucy mused.

“Am I wrong?  Sorry if that’s unfair.”

“No,” Lucy said.  “No, not unfair.  I feel the same way, about it not fitting but being the right direction.  Can you expand on it?  It might help me figure it out.”

“I, uh…” Avery floundered.

“Was it Miss who said that you mixed Faerie stuff with goblin stuff in a neat way?” Verona asked.

“Yeah, think so.”

“That’s kind of it.  Gotta make your own style.”

Sort of,” Avery said.  “I feel like using Faerie stuff requires you to be really loose, free in how you interpret stuff, and willing to let stuff wash over and around you.  Think of Daniel.  And goblin stuff…”

“It’s ugly,” Verona chimed in.  “You’re not ugly.  But you fit in the good aspects of both and it really works.”

“Huh,” Lucy said.

“The coolest moments I’ve seen with you and the practice is when you shine through,” Avery told her.  “It’s great when you… I don’t know the term.  Illustrate yourself?  Exaggerate yourself?  With the duels you’ve been doing with Guilherme.  Even when you’re not actually using the practice, you’ll do this thing where you seem to decide ‘oh, it’s on’, like with Sheridan and my family at dinner.  A lot of people who aren’t used to it would run away screaming or get stuck.  I go quiet with all that.  And you just tackled it. Or the party.”

“I loved seeing you at the party,” Verona said, sitting up, looking interested now.

“If you could do the faerie swordfighter thing but more ‘Lucy’ than faerie, that’d be cool,” Avery told her.

“Now I’m even more stuck,” Lucy said.  “Because my issue wasn’t with the Faerie thing-”

“Oops,” Avery said.

“Wait, wait,” Verona said.  “Do you feel like the Faerie stuff is your vibe?”

“No,” Lucy said.  “But I feel like the ‘swordfighting’ part of it isn’t me.”

“Non-sword?” Avery suggested.  “Spear?”

“That was a whole conversation with Guilherme,” Lucy said, “and no.  I mean… I think I definitely don’t want a weapon.  I don’t regret using it for awakening, but like… if I used it for awakening, and then I used it in the Paul thing, and I choose it as my path for the future…?  Is that me?  I don’t want that to be me.  Does that make sense practice-wise?  Based on what we read in the book?”

“I think so,” Verona said.

“Whether it does or not, you should follow your instincts,” Avery said.

“Speaking of instincts, food?” Verona asked.  “Breakfast.”

“You need to shower.”

“And come back to food.”

“Write it down,” Lucy said.  She got a spare piece of paper.

Verona wrote some stuff down, grabbed her basic toiletries and towel from the foot of the bed, and then hurried out.  “Back soon.”

The door didn’t close all the way behind Verona.  Out in the hallway, Jorja was with Tymon.  The Drug-spirit callers.  Jorja inched behind Tymon, using her big brother for cover as a herd of loud students speed-walked past.

Lucy nudged the door closed with her toe without rising from her chair.

She looked at the other stuff on the sheet.  A lot of it was random.  Likes: music, horror movies, weird movies, swimming, the color red, family.

This whole thing was asking her to do a lot of introspection.  At the same time, she was opening herself up for the analysis of her friends.

Touchy ground.  She was secretly grateful that they hadn’t said anything that would stick with her.

“Words,” she murmured, putting something down in the word cloud next to her name.

“Hm?” Avery asked.

“Words.  Good or bad, they matter to me.  Yours, Verona’s, Booker’s, my mom’s.  Paul’s, and the other shitty people.”

“Pen?”

“I could see Verona taking the pen.  But with my handwriting, I’d worry taking the pen would be like someone choosing the sword when they can’t lift a regular one.”

“Hmm.”

“I’m not like… crafty in the same way Verona is, rattling off sentences while telling technical truths.  But I can think of all the most important moments in recent memory, and… I put a lot of stock in what people say.  The promises, the awfulness, the whatever.”

“Hm.”

“Sorry if I’m boring you.”

“No, no.  This is cool.  Just… thinking.”

Lucy dropped the pen, gesturing without anything clear.  Then, thinking again, she picked it up, wrote down her breakfast order, and passed the paper to Avery.

Avery talked while writing down her breakfast order, “I remember, I think it was the first weekend we knew the practice, we were at the back of Matthew’s car, and we debated ways to protect ourselves.  Deals we could make.  So like… along those lines, can we take a step back?”

“Definitely,” Lucy said turning the chair and leaning back, putting her feet up on the foot of Avery’s bed.  “Step back is good.”

“Then do you really want to do this?  Or are you doing it because you feel you have to?”

Lucy thought about it.  Avery rose to her feet and walked to the door, dropping the breakfast order into the slot at the front.

“I do,” Lucy said.

“Verona wants to wait to figure out her practice.  You haven’t one hundred percent figured out yours.”

“I think Verona…” Lucy paused, letting the sentence hang while she tried to frame it in her head.  “…Verona can figure out the practice, no problem, and she’ll figure the other stuff out later.  She holds it close to her heart, I guess, and was always going to.”

Avery nodded.

“I’d rather figure myself out first, then do the practice stuff that serves that.  This feels right.”

“Cool,” Avery said.

The door swung open, and Lucy rose to her feet, reaching for her bag at the foot of her bed.  It meant getting closer to the door, but-

It was Snowdrop.  Lucy relaxed, withdrawing her hand from her bag.

Some students in the background were exchanging some heated words.  Heated enough that if it had been them talking like that while in the doorway, Lucy might have felt better with the knife close by.

“I’m dangerous and horrendous,” Snowdrop said, standing in the doorway.  “Here to kick your ass and take your stuff.  I don’t have any interest in that food just outside the door, though.”

“You can order your own food, you know,” Avery said.

“Ahem,” Snowdrop said, turning her back to Avery, showing the print on the jacket.  It read ‘Leftover’, with ‘-vore’ printed below the last five letters.  Leftover-vore.

“It’s not really leftovers if you eat my stuff before I’m done.”

“And I’m not cunning or deceitful like that, so there.”

“Do us a favor and bring the food in while you’re standing there, and you can have some,” Avery said.

“Bah,” Snowdrop almost spat the word, before going to get the tray.

Lucy cut into the thick-cut french toast, which was one sizeable slice of homemade bread, with faint spirals of cinnamon and icing sugar on it, neither spiral touching the other.  Real maple syrup, some bacon, an arrangement of sliced fruits in a half-flower arrangement, and a glass of O.J..

She gave Snowdrop some of her bacon.  “Productive night?”

“Sorta,” Snowdrop said.  “Are we okay to talk?”

“As okay as we can hope for.  Close the door?” Lucy asked.

Snowdrop did.  A second later, Verona came through, hair wet, wrapped in a towel she hadn’t even used to fully dry off.  There were beads of water on her shoulders and arms.  Verona closed the door behind her.

Lucy pushed the plate in Verona’s direction, glancing at the drawing they’d put on the floor.  It was supposed to ward off prying eyes, and if that didn’t work, it would at least ‘go off’ in a way that would let them notice.  She’d thought about linking it to Nettlewisp, but they sort of had to ration out their glamour until they swung by home again.

Which would only be if things got especially disastrous back home.

“What’s the dirt?” Avery asked.

“I jumped right into the middle of things,” Snowdrop said.  “Stayed away from a few of the student’s familiars and helpers and stuff, hung out.”

“Who?” Lucy asked.  “It’s not super important, but I’d like to know before we talk to any of those students.”

“Everyone except Dreg, Talia’s doll, and Lallie.”

“Lallie?” Verona asked.

“She’s very human, with no antlers, fangs, claws, fur, or bloody screamy bits.  She’s so cute, and small, and very chill.  Which isn’t the best pun, considering who her master is.”

“Uhhh…” Verona started moving books, “Student directory, where did I put you?”

“Get dressed,” Lucy said, taking a bite and rising to her feet.  She took over for Verona, grabbing the little pamphlet with the room numbers and names.  She checked the female students.  “That was a cold pun?  Vanderwerf?  Winter Faerie person?”

“Yeah!”

“Scobie, then.  Snowfall elementalist?”

“Nah,” Snowdrop said, blatantly stealing from Lucy’s plate.

“Were you getting along with the familiars?” Avery asked.

“Nah,” Snowdrop said, around a mouthful of food.  Lucy gently moved her aside to take her seat by her plate again, and Snowdrop progressed to taking food from Verona’s plate before she’d even swallowed the food from Lucy’s.  “They’re jerks.  Anyway, after that, I got right into the middle of things.”

“From the familiar hangout to… keeping an eye on people?”

“So Bristow’s not staying in that building they’re putting up, right?  He doesn’t have any practice or whatever to make it comfortable.  He doesn’t get along with people like Graubard or his Aware, so he’s alone and I can’t really see what he’s doing.”

Bristow’s strategizing, meeting people.

“And?” Avery asked.  She was sitting at the foot of her bed, her food on the little dresser there, using it as a very low table.  Verona was pulling on clothes, watching the ongoing conversation.

“And he met with all the Belangers except Seth and Tanner.”

“Both at the same time?”

“Nah.”

“Anyone else?” Lucy asked.

“One of the other Familiars that wasn’t Blackhorne.”

“Hmm.”

“Blackhorne is the scary guy, right?” Verona asked.  She was dressed, and the water she hadn’t dried off was bleeding into the fabric of her shirt, making wet spots from the inside.

“He’s a cuddlebunny,” Snowdrop said, dead serious.  “Weak and dumb and fluffy.”

“And he’s the familiar of Reid Musser,” Lucy said.

“Makes sense,” Avery said.  “Musser was one of the school founders, wasn’t he?  But he sorta isn’t a part of things anymore.  Which makes it sound like he was pushed out by Alexander.”

Lucy nodded.

“Hey,” Verona said, picking up her cinnamon bun,which had lost about a quarter of its spiral to their leftover-vore.  “Did you decide while I was gone?  Implement?”

Lucy shook her head.

“Sorta glad I didn’t miss that moment.  If it’s cool, can I try something?  I’ll run it by you closer to dinnertime.  We’re not in a rush, right?  And you’d want to do that ritual on the weekend, since it takes three days.”

“No objection,” Lucy said.

Verona smiled.

“You have an idea?” Avery asked.

“I’ll need your help.”

“Glad to help,” Avery said.

“I don’t think Mr. Bristow took anything from the boys or gave anything to Blackhorne,” Snowdrop said.

“You could have mentioned that,” Verona said.

“You’re right, I could have.  I definitely didn’t have my mouth full of stupidly delicious food.”

“Are you going to sleep after your all-nighter, or are you coming to class?” Avery asked.

“I can’t do both, right?”

“I’ll wear something with a pocket so you can hang with me, then,” Avery said.

They wrapped up their meal, gathered up their stuff, then ventured out into the hallway.  The earlier argument had ended, but there was a trickle of students, and they looked like they were trickling because they were distracted.  Melody and Corbin were among them.  Melody had been attacked by the curse friend of Fernanda yesterday afternoon, just before dinner, and she didn’t look great today.

“Hey,” Corbin said.

“Heya,” Avery said.  “I wanted to ask, is the sports thing from yesterday a regular thing?”

“It could be.  Usually we pick it up if we have nervous energy to burn,” he said.

“Cool.  I’d like to do more of that.  I’m missing soccer camp this summer.”

“Huh.  What’s that like?”

“Like?  Uhh.  Ever do soccer after school?  Or hockey or anything?” Avery asked.

“No, never.  We have obligations after school,” Melody said.  “And our school isn’t the type that has that stuff.  We have sports teams, but if you’re going to our school and you’re in the sports team, it’s because you’re really good.  Going-to-be-a-professional good.”

“Do you have gym class, then?”

Corbin shook his head.  “Not really.  I don’t think our school thinks we should do that stuff if we can use that time to study”

“What the hell kind of school is that?” Avery asked.

“The kind that runs six days a week, eight to five, with study sessions in the evenings and on Sundays.  If you aren’t part of a study group the teachers will give you very disappointed talks and call your parents until you focus appropriately on your studies.”

“Unless your parents need you to learn the ropes for the family business.  Or, y’know, practice,” Melody added.

“That sounds so miserable,” Verona said.  “This must be a heck of a vacation.”

“It’s not feeling much like a vacation right now,” Melody said, looking back over her shoulder.  Off in that direction was where she had been attacked.

“Sorry,” Lucy said.  “That didn’t look fun.”

Melody shook her head.  “It wasn’t.  Apparently there was a whole crisis two years ago, sort of like this, but we were overseas and weren’t around to see.”

“What happened?” Lucy asked.

“One student forswore another.  It was pretty controversial.”

“How?  Why?” Verona asked.

“Uhhh, I won’t name names, because the teachers might have magical ears set out to keep us from dredging up too much of that stuff, but student A asked student B to look after a fragile and really important dryad.  Student A’s dad offered access to some places that are warded off to anyone that isn’t from A’s family, if B would complete the job.”

“What made the dryad so special?” Verona asked.

Corbin answered, “The tree was used in the killing of a lot of people, and all of them became strong Others who could sort of practice.  But it was a lot of death energies, the tree had its own intelligence and a feminine body that acted separate and she got sick with the death energies.    Anyway, that’s beside the point.  Student B got a better offer than A’s dad was giving them, and took the dryad and her tree apart for materials and raw power, gave the materials to the rival of A, took the raw power, got a bunch of favors and stuff.”

“That’s got to be a big hit to karma, at least, right?” Lucy asked.

They’d stopped short of joining the main classroom, where things had yet to start, and remained where nobody was in direct earshot.

“Apparently the offer B got was way way better.  Anyway,” Corbin said, shrugging.  “B collected.  Then they claimed A couldn’t forswear them because they were a student at school and school rules forbid that.”

Verona whistled.

“Yep,” Corbin said.  “Which, you know, normally wouldn’t be a huge issue, because you can wait until the school year ends, except B stayed for three semesters and started making claims that since A hadn’t taken action, they weren’t claiming their right to forswear and it was only a mere gainsaying.”

“A forswore B, and then A got expelled,” Melody said.  “And friends of A and B were up in arms, fighting over who was right.  This feels like that.”

“Sounds like B was playing with fire,” Lucy noted.

“I think if I were to draw an analogy,” Corbin said, “it’s as if if you were living in poverty, and someone offered you ten million dollars and a position in Hollywood with the ability to get a say in the movies that get made for the next twenty years.”

“This is worse though,” Melody said.  “Because you know what’s happening, right?”

“It’s about the leadership of the school,” Lucy said.

Melody nodded.  “Some are thinking if they side with the right people they’ll be positioned way better further on.  Kind of like that made-up deal with Hollywood.  But it’s with Durocher, or Alexander, or Musser.”

Lucy nodded.

“For others, they already have that position and they don’t want to lose it.  Or they’re friends, or any number of things.”

“Class is starting soon,” Corbin said.

“Which class are you taking?” Verona asked.  “It’s supposed to be a choice of Bristow’s class on Visceral Knots or Alexander’s Possession class.”

“Visceral Knots,” Corbin said.  “We’ve never had a class with Bristow.”

“And we overheard Fernanda talking about taking the possession class so we’d rather avoid it,” Melody added.

“I’m going to be in that one,” Verona said.  “I’d say I’d keep an ear out for them, but we sorta want to be neutral.”

“Friendly but neutral,” Avery said.

“We wanted that too,” Melody said.  “We didn’t get the chance.”

“If you want us to get lost so you don’t get the backsplash of whatever gets thrown at us…” Corbin suggested.

Lucy shook her head.  She glanced at Avery and Verona.  “We’re not that careful.”

“It’d suck to avoid all friendships for the whole summer just because things are hairy,” Avery said.

Corbin nodded, and indicated the classroom.

They walked the rest of the way.  There was a clamor of students talking over one another.  No ‘homeroom’ like there had been on day one, with other teachers lurking nearby to offer their presence.

Bristow was up on stage, wearing a tweed vest with matching pants, with a shiny silk tie done up properly.  His only apparent recognition of the fact it was summer were the short sleeves of the shirt he wore under the vest, and a faint sheen of sweat on his forehead.

Corbin went to go talk to a friend, while Melody sat with Avery and Lucy.  Melody smiled at Snowdrop, who took the possum form to curl up in Avery’s lap.

Verona bailed, off to learn about possession.  It wasn’t exactly the right topic to cover stuff like Matthew’s doom, but they figured it was best if they got some grounding in stuff like that.  Just in case.

“My dad says I can’t get a familiar until I’m older,” Melody said, scratching Snowdrop.  “I have to turn sixteen, then live with it for two years before I seal it with the ritual.”

“Strict,” Avery said.

“Little does he know, I already have one in mind.  He’s a gentleman habiliment.”

“I have no idea what that is, aside from possibly the gentleman part,” Lucy said.

“He’s an outfit, without the person to occupy it.  Walks, does stuff, smokes a pipe and the smoke sorta… it fills in where his head and hands would be.  I love the smell of pipe smoke.”

“I suppose if he’s always smoking, you’d better love it,” Lucy noted.

Avery elbowed her, and Lucy fell silent.

“He’s been looking after me since I was nine.  The posh boarding school Corbin and I go to was pretty scary at first, especially when I was younger and half a country away from my parents.”

“Is that still a thing?” Avery asked.

“No, my mom is fussy.  She likes to micromanage us.  So she moved to the school.  She comes over every afternoon and either takes us out or makes sure we’re doing our work.  I don’t think she’s seen my dad for more than a few weeks at a time in the last two years.”

“Oh wow,” Lucy said.  “That sounds hellish.”

“It’s nice!” Melody said, protesting.  “It’s nice to know she loves us that much.”

Avery elbowed Lucy for a second time.  Lucy gave up, letting Avery take over, and scratched Snowdrop’s body while Melody scratched her head.

“What does your family do, practice-wise?” Avery asked.  “My friend Verona would’ve wanted to ask, she’s curious about all that.”

“We do a bit of everything, and we research the various ways to explore and improve practices as a whole.  So for me, I have a good instinct for practices that hold up well against attacks, or against time, which, really is the same thing as an attack… and there are a bunch of different factors you can draw on to support that idea.”

Lucy listened, but tuned it out in part.  She eyed Shellie, who had waltzed into the room from the side door, and through the window she could see Ted, who was outside, exercising in a Tai chi type style.  He had a big mess of gouges on his back that looked like they had puckered and maybe even gotten infected before scarring over.  He didn’t seem bothered by it.

Shellie took a seat at the stage’s edge, lit up a cigarette, and began smoking, which prompted some students to relocate.  She was all agitation, leg bouncing, hand gripping the stage’s edge, looking around at everything and nothing.

Bristow walked over, dabbing at his forehead, and said something to her.

She didn’t even respond, acting as if he didn’t exist.

Is that our chance?  Is that a possible regret Verona can call on?

Problem was, using that might poke the silver-laden, skinny, agitated bear that was Shellie.

Corbin was talking to his friends, and he was largely drowned out by the noise of the room.

Largely, not entirely.

“…the wild practitioners,” he told his friend.  “But I don’t know how dangerous they are.”

“They’re showoffs,” one of the friends said.  “You could use them…”

He said something else, but the sound of a girl laughing at the back of the room made it impossible to make out.  Someone moved a bench and the leg of the bench squealed audibly against the floor.

Lucy fixed her eyes on the stage and Ted, visible through the blue-tinted windows at the far end, but she listened as best as she could.

“…they’re new to this.  Rescue them after, you have an ally,” the friend finished.

“I don’t want to be a dick,” Corbin said.  “But I get more of a Hennigar vibe from them.  Half-cocked, moving forward.  Not that I have anything against Hennigars, but those three…”

The front doors banged closed as some students rushed from the east hallway to the door, making their exit.  Kids who’d put off their showers to the last minute.

“…d new,” Corbin said.

“If you got any information about them…” one friend said.  He lowered his voice and Lucy couldn’t hear the rest.

“Again,” Corbin said, voice clear.  “I don’t want to be a dick.  They’re talking to Mel and that’s great but…”

Bristow clapped his hands.

“…just worry,” Corbin finished.

“If you want to learn about implements, then you should talk to Mr. Sunshine,” Melody said.  “There’s Mr. Musser, but he’s rarely around and Mr. Sunshine is way more approachable-”

“We’re ready to begin,” Mr. Bristow raised his voice.  He stood at the foremost part of the stage’s curve, close to the students.

“-and he knows a lot about material things, enchanting, tools, and stuff,” Melody finished.

Lucy wished Avery hadn’t mentioned the implement.  They’d have to work out ground rules.  There was too much room for sabotage, and too many things being said behind their backs, like Corbin’s friends.

She bent down, digging into the bag she’d deposited by her feet for her notebook and pen, then leaned back, folding one ankle over her knee to use her leg as a surface to write on.

It took another minute for the classroom to quiet.

Bristow seemed to wait until there was silence.  Even the rustling of bags got a glance from him, his mouth remaining shut beneath that thick mustache.

“Visceral Knots,” Bristow spoke.  “Visceral, meaning our material practices, tangible, rooted in our world, in solid things, in meat, in stone, soil, nature, and construction.  Items, men, and things like men are visceral.  Bogeymen, goblins.  If it bleeds, it is often in this category.  You, student, are visceral.”

He didn’t really move from his spot, and he wasn’t especially animated.  He spoke clearly, theatrically, but it felt somehow more like a monologue than a lecture.

Shellie’s unending agitation off to the side was visually distracting, compared to Bristow’s stillness.

“The Knot, then, is what happens when this visceral thing or process is twisted.  When incarnations such as time, death, violence, or dream run through the visceral, they have processes.  Twist the process in an unnatural way, and you twist that which is solid.  When you twist it enough, you get the Knots.  These can be people, Others, places, and things.  Isolation from the rest of the world is often a prerequisite, or the things that would knot them would be tied down by outside connections.”

Lucy nodded a bit to herself, at the same time she studied Bristow and his mannerisms.  Did his confidence slip at any point?  Not really.  Did he have any tells?  Not really.

“Twist bloodlines enough, and you get subhumans.  I’ve met three of these groups.  A little island close to Greenland, the population center small.  Toothless, wide-eyed devout worshipers of an opportunist Other they were unwittingly elevating to godhood. This is remarkably common, mind.  They are often Aware, which can be fascinating, and they may resemble early practitioners.  In this case, it was early worship.”

He nodded, as if he were pausing to agree with himself.

Lucy took a brief note, one word.

He resumed.  “The second was a family living in a dilapidated tenement in Europe.  Afraid of the outside world, they inbred, moved in and out of various apartments, and subsisted on rats, their sickly, and their rooftop and balcony gardens.  Their language had mutated as much as their features- all of them appeared eerily similar, chinless, wide-hipped, and small-eyed, their language a nonsense mishmash of nouns.  Civilization found its way to them, they were split up and given care, their existence was hidden by practitioners and a city council that had ignored too many warnings about their existence.  I was invited to help at a late stage, but damage had been done, their world unraveled as they were taken from one another, and they died soon after they were separated.”

Lucy made another one word note.  This wasn’t the kind of thing she needed much notes to keep tabs on, really.  It’d stick with her.

“The third, I won’t elaborate much on.  A group of miners found something dangerous underground.  Fossils relating to practices we do not teach about at the Blue Heron Institute.  They coveted them, they occupied the mine and its immediate area, contrived to hide it, and invited families to come to them.  They never left.  They were twisted by those fossils and by their bloodlines.  The reality is that few categories we give Others are tidy.  Knotted-up societies do not fit among those few.  Whatever drives the knot tends to loom large and influence them.  You almost never get a subhuman that is only subhuman.”

He held up one finger.

She scribbled a bit more onto her page.

“That’s the first case.  For the second, you can twist diet and environment enough, and you can get feral subspecies.  Men with spirits and bodies changed by time and need.  Eyeless men deep underground, those who live in shallow water.  I know of a group of Russian offshoots who lived above the arctic circle.  Gross distortions in sleep and isolation from society saw them sleeping for weeks at a time, waking to hunt with ravenous hunger.  Again, whatever forces create the isolation needed for these things to happen without self-correcting, they will taint this rapid or distorted evolution.  We rarely find feral variants on humanity who aren’t touched by other categories or other ways of becoming Other.”

He held up two fingers.

“That would be our second case.  Third?  We have the altered.  Others target humans.  Some powerful ones target groups of human.  It is far less common today than it once was, but some succeed or succeeded.  They take a distant or hard to reach village.  On the rare occasion, they take a city.  I was personally involved in one case where an Apsasû, a divine servant and protector of humanity, took it on herself to shelter a group of humans.  She kept them in what you could describe as a Garden of Eden, curing all that ailed.  Faith, physiology, and mind twisted and knotted despite or because of her efforts.”

Mr. Bristow smiled, and his mustache was big enough that most of that smile was visible as a turning up of the leftmost and rightmost ends of the mustache than any lip.

You threatened my family and my hometown, and you’re messing with Verona over that stupid contest over regret, Lucy thought.  Don’t smile. 

“Balance is often maintained here.  The knotted variations of humanity still use the same amount of material, but it is exaggerated in places, stretched thin in others.  This can be messy, with subhuman groups having a large number of the weak, slow, stupid, and lesser in every respect, dotted with the periodic child who is incredible in one facet, strong or fleet of foot or keen in intelligence.  It can also be ordered.  The tenement group I mentioned had found an equilibrium, to the point they could be called something entirely different than the other.”

Mr. Bristow worked his way to a sitting position, then sat on the stage’s edge.  He wasn’t so stiff anymore, and he looked like he was getting comfortable.  “Places.  A place, through isolation and these same factors, can be twisted.  Through these twists and knots, they become harder to find with a map.  Specific routes may be needed.  The tenement I described was one such place, standing tall in the middle of the city, visible from a distance, but no postal worker or checker of electric meters found their way there for over a century.  There are twisted places where the natural things a place needs are upended.  There are places where things are inverted, undercities and mirror cities.  Which reminds me of a story I don’t think I’ve shared in this school, as it only happened two years ago…”

He leaned to one side, mustache turning up again.  His head turned as Shellie rose to her feet, stalking off to the back of the stage and away, presumably to see Ted.

“…I was in one place in America, if I remember the facts right, Ontario California.  I have no idea how it came to be, but it refracted, mirroring to six locations around the world, with echoes of the same layouts, tied to this city through contracts, trade, and promotion.  Six locations, but if you go looking, you’ll struggle to find the sixth.  It is a Knotted place, a countersink and trap for some forces of the other locations, and a residence for many Others and less reputable practitioners.  The things I saw walking down the street there, I couldn’t even say without issue when so many of you are minors.  A woman threw a baby at me so my hands would be preoccupied, while she and some children rifled through my pockets and stole away with my luggage, haha!  They didn’t get much, and I could have sold that baby for more than they earned if I had less conscience.”

“And he’s gone,” a student two rows behind Lucy murmured.  There were some faint sounds from annoyed and amused students.

Gone?

Wait, was he not going to get back on topic?

“But the reason I share this anecdote, aside from the illustrative aspect of it, is that while there, I found a man, dweller of this undercity, who resembled me!  Same outfit, but in different colors, a similar mustache, but his hair and mustache were black, and he wore glasses.  So naturally I invited him for drinks, curious about what he thought… and he pulled a gun on me.  I had to tell him I’d already been taken for everything I had, and I was on my way to do a spot of work to pay my way for shelter for the night.  He demanded my clothes, from my tie to my shoelaces.  I was able to manage, but I do wish I could have had that drink with him, to find out if there was any great connection…”

He chuckled to himself, shaking his head.

“But I digress.  I’ll share more once we’ve covered more of the lesson…”

Lucy penned down an ‘He’s going to share more?  oh no’ on her notebook, before moving it to where Avery could see.

Avery looked.

Lucy’s notes consisted largely of ‘yikes’ ‘frigging yikes’ ‘huge yikes’ ‘yikes and yikes’… and ended with the ‘oh no’ line.

Subhumans?  Wow and yikes.

Avery underlined the first yikes twice, and then the ‘oh no’ once.

There was some small satisfaction to be had in heckling their teacher and enemy in note form as they followed along.

Class ended, and Lucy was left with a confused combination of pity for the man, frustration with him, and a deep-seated dislike.

Lucy waited for other students to get sorted out, remaining on the padded bench for a minute.  She watched as Bristow made his exit, seeming as happy as she’d seen him after a lesson that had zig-zagged from the dense to the rambling anecdote, with the lengthier ramblings seeming to make him more prone to condensing the information, squeezing it in to catch up with where he wanted to be and what he wanted to cover.

Verona appeared.

“Lunch?” Lucy asked.

“Actually, I wanted to borrow Avery.”

“Why?” Lucy and Avery asked, in near unison.

“Because I want to talk to her about stuff.”

“About my implement?  Without my input?”

“About your implement, yes.  But we won’t do any big steps on this without consulting.  Do you trust me?” Verona asked.

Lucy made a face, making a show of having to consider it.

“Really,” Verona said, serious.

“I do.  Melody suggested I go talk to Mr. Sunshine though, and I’m very on the fence about that.”

“Understandable,” Avery said.  “You’d want backup.”

“It’d be nice,” Lucy said.

“There’s a bunch of students doing projects, so time slots are limited,” Verona said.  “I’ve got fifteen minutes at the workshop, so I figured we could go over some basic stuff, talk about plans and possibilities, then come back to you.”

Lucy made a face.

“What if you took Snowdrop for backup?” Avery asked.

Lucy looked down at the sleeping opossum.

She did have to learn to stand on her own.  If she did this ritual, she would be doing it alone.  And she didn’t want to run from Raymond.

“Okay.”

“Awesome.  Ave, let’s hurry, we don’t have that long.”

Avery handed over Snowdrop, who was blinking her way to awakeness.

The two girls hurried out the front door.

Lucy puffed up her cheeks, then made a bit of a raspberry.

Snowdrop clambered around her hands, gripping Lucy’s fingers with weird opossum toes, dangled, and then turned human, shoes slapping floor.

“You’re my backup, apparently.”

“Darn.”

“I don’t suppose you have any insights on where Mr. Sunshine is?”

“Yep.  Got all that info stored up in this noggin of mine.”

“Let’s try his office?”

“Just what I was thinking.”

They left the classroom, and Lucy had a glimpse of Bristow, outside the window, talking to Shellie and Ted.

Setting up a building, teaching a class, and going on post-midnight walks that saw him meeting up with students in private, getting stuff he was handing off to a familiar of another prominent student.

Did Alexander see that stuff?  Miss had said Alexander had protections against the normal weaknesses of Augury.  But was it possible that Bristow was good enough to penetrate those protections?  Or were Ted or Kevin or Kevin’s girlfriend Rae somehow a defense against Alexander’s attention?

Alexander seemed to be letting Bristow do an awful lot, without really fighting it.

Lucy wished Verona hadn’t fucked off like she had, so she could ask how Alexander’s class had been.

“Do you like it here?” Lucy asked Snowdrop.

“I hate it.  It’s so stifling, being around Avery all the time.  You too.”

“I’m homesick,” Lucy said, speaking the thought aloud as she had it.  The dwelling on who she was and all the things she liked made her miss her room.  Having been in Kennet but unable to go home… it drove that home.  “I miss my mom, as horribly lame as that sounds.”

“I don’t miss my mom.”

Lucy put a hand on Snowdrop’s shoulder, giving the kid a rub.

“I think… I feel most at home when I’m at home.  And I know that sounds obvious, but if you pressed them, I think Verona never feels at home when she’s at home.  I wonder if she even has a place she feels at home.”

“I don’t know,” Snowdrop said.  “It’s any random patch of reality that she happens to stumble on.”

“Any…” Lucy had to filter that a bit, and as she worked to interpret it, she compared it against her image of Verona.  “…Imagination?”

“Any random patch of reality, yeah.”

Finding ‘home’ in her head.

“Avery likes being on the sports field, but I think that’s only part of it.”

“I don’t think I agree,” Snowdrop said.

“Yeah.  But anyway… I feel at home when I’m at home and it feels like it’s going to be a while before I can go back.  Depending on what happens with everything Bristow and Alexander have done… will it look different?”

“I hope so.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.

They had to walk down to almost the furthest end of the west wing of the school.  Raymond’s area wasn’t especially large.

She hesitated to intrude or knock, but…

She rapped her knuckles on the door.

The door slid open.

The interior dimensions were larger than the rest. There was a bookshelf along one wall, but instead of books, it looked like an arrangement of hard drives and tablet computers.  A few of the shelves were reserved for some limited paperwork, a few others for wires and computer parts.

Lucy ventured inside.

“Sorry to intrude,” she said.

“I’m at the disposal of my students,” Mr. Sunshine said, stepping around the corner, his eyes on a tablet.  His red sunglasses were pushed up to his forehead, for the first time Lucy had ever seen.  He looked at her.  “Lucille Ellingson?”

“Lucy.”

“My apologies.  I remember we got off on the wrong foot the other day.  I’ve wanted to apologize about that, but you were absent, or there were other things.  I know that sounds weak, as excuses go.”

“Super weak,” Snowdrop chimed in.

Raymond raised an eyebrow.

“There might have been interference, causing that,” she said.  “Strife.  Maybe making it harder to, uh, apologize.”

It felt weird, just taking for granted that he’d said he wanted to apologize.

“I ran a diagnostic yesterday, and noticed something resembling that had caught on me and hit my perimeter.  I took it to be students making mischief or a sloppy ritual’s aftermath.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s more than that.”

“Yes, it is.  I’ve found that out since, and I was looking into it before you arrived.”

“Ah.”

“It could only capitalize on what was already there.  Zed talked to me about it, and I really should be better, so I can’t be exploited like that.  I’m sorry for what happened.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it, shaking her head.  “Thanks.  It’s not even the most intense thing that’s happened this week.”

“No violence at least, or crazyness, or fire, or blood, or super-firecrackers,” Snowdrop said.

“I know the feeling, even if I don’t think I’ve run into super-firecrackers yet.  Did you come about the earlier incident, or for something else?”

“Something else.”

“Okay.  Do you want to sit?” he asked, gesturing.

She turned, and she saw two armchairs that hadn’t been there a minute ago.

“Is this a demesne?” she asked.  She sat.  Snowdrop sat in the chair next to her.

“An extension of it,” he said.  “Those who specialize in the various realms practices can tap into their knowledge of spaces to extend the demesne through those spaces.  I come here often enough that it’s worth having a bridge to my place of power, here.  Are you interested in demesnes?”

“In implements.”

“I see.  That’s a big decision.”

“I read the book.  I like the idea.  I just don’t know how to go about it.  I was brainstorming but I didn’t figure out anything specific.”

“This is the place to do it, if you want to.  We have the materials, equipment, and while the workshop spaces are busy, the sub-buildings and ritual materials are all top quality, protected against the minor pollutants that would make a ritual harder or messier.”

“How do I decide?”

“I think if I could answer that for you, I wouldn’t have mishandled our prior situation.  That’s really for you.  I can answer any questions you have that the book didn’t, if you’d like.”

“I want a way to express me.”

“Unfortunately, the ways a Self can be expressed are as varied as the number of implements that can be matched to that Self.  I’d need more information.  When have you felt the most ‘you’?”

“My friends said it was when I was at a party.  Uh, times I’ve challenged people.  Including Alexander Belanger.”

“Were you wearing or doing anything particular?”

“I don’t think so.”

“If you were to draw a picture of yourself, no context, in the utmost quality, meant to hang in a gallery, what would you be doing?”

“Arguing, probably.”

“Would you be dressed up?  Like the party?  Ready for a confrontation, like what you faced with Alexander?”

“I don’t know.  Maybe.  I like red, and I was wearing a killer red dress I borrowed.  I did my hair nice.  But I wouldn’t want one dress that’s my implement forever.  And I don’t want to mix my hair and practice.  I don’t know what I’d even do there.  A hairpin?  Ugh.”

“The implement is the hardest to decide.”

Lucy raised her head a bit at that.  “Really?”

“The people who find us and the places we find ourselves in tend to come more naturally.  The implement requires a deep search.  Your friend’s boon companion is helping, I see.”

“I’m a big help,” Snowdrop declared.

“More than you’d imagine, I’d think,” Ray said, folding one knee over the other.

“My other friends are helping too,” Lucy said.  “They’re working on a secret project.  I told Verona I trust them.  So maybe I wait and see what she comes up with.  Sorry, if I’m wasting your time.”

“No.  If I’m honest, I prefer this to the classroom.  One on one, puzzles and problem solving.  Groups are my weakness, as is my need for control.”

“If-” Lucy started.  Sensitive ground.  “Do you remember Charles Abrams?”

“I do.”

“I know him.”

“Alexander mentioned seeing him in passing.”

“While running afoul of us, or we ran afoul of Alexander and Nicolette, depending on how you say it.”

Raymond Sunshine nodded, but he didn’t speak.

“It seems like he was an acquaintance of yours, and considered a lot of your group to be his friends.”

“There are many kinds of friend,” Raymond said.  “Some who would help you move.  Some who would save your life.  Others are good for a memorable conversation once every few months.  Charles and I were friends, yes, but Charles was someone who kept to his own, and I’ve always been bad at keeping in touch with people.  Especially people like him.”

“People like him?  How?”

“Those who are in and out of prison.  If you think to reach out once in a blue moon, only to find they’re out of easy reach, then it’s easy to drift apart.”

“Prison,” Lucy said.  She looked at Snowdrop.

“We knew that,” Snowdrop said.

“What did he do?” she asked.

“Theft, some violent crime.  He dealt with some criminal groups as a youth, only a few years older than you are now.  To them, he was a lucky charm, a ‘fixer’.  He did very well for himself, until he didn’t.  It caught up with him.  He went to prison for two years, turned eighteen, and had his record wiped clean.  They didn’t let him stay on the straight and narrow.  They maintained the expectations and no longer treated him as unabashedly ‘lucky’.”

“He didn’t mention that.”

“He told me, years on, that he was embarrassed of it.  He tried to turn his life around and fix his karmic debts.  He moved to a rural area to steer away from his old clientele, and started to dabble in being a ‘fixer’ for the sorts of people who could make a difference.  I remember it was hard for him, because one task didn’t easily lead to the next, the way it had when he’d worked alongside organized crime.”

“Oof,” Lucy murmured.

“He worked on projects, protecting areas, creating watchdogs, and creating sendings.  He still helped us, but it was hard for him.  It made it easy to backslide.”

“Were you criminal?” Lucy asked.

“Me?  Technically.”

“And the others?”

“At times.  Unavoidable.  I’m sure you, your actions all put together, have done something very criminal, or aided and abetted in it.”

“All clear,” Snowdrop said.  “Absolutely nothing.”

Lucy poked Snowdrop.

“But about Charles, from what I remember, he was doing good work, and he would have been easier to reach, then, but I was preoccupied.  I was the one who was hard to reach.  Then he was forsworn, and I thought I could call or visit, but… what then?  All we ever talked about was the work, problem solving.  But he couldn’t work and we couldn’t solve his problem.  If I offered support alone, without the old working friendship, then that seemed like it would make things worse.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.

“It’s a strange thing, Ms. Ellingson, to have a lot of regret and have no idea what you could have done different.”

“He says it was Alexander who forswore him.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

“The fact I’m here suggests I am.”

“Why, how?” Lucy asked.

“That’s not an easy question to answer.”

“Well, yeah.  It seems indefensible.  Ruining a life for personal gain?”

“For one thing, Alexander saved my life during my darkest period.  I may owe him a lifetime debt.”

“Does that include letting him get away with Charles’s life?  Or his fate or fortune or whatever karma is?”

“No.  Charles, with his past, played a part in keeping criminals free and many lives were ruined that way.  Charles was desperate, frustrated at his inability to render any real help, and at risk of backsliding.”

“But he hadn’t backslid yet?” Lucy asked.

“The answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how they knew him.  People have varied memories and feelings about the subject.  In the end, near the start of our acquaintance, I had come to terms with Charles and his past and looked past it as I helped him do better things.  It’s the same when I forgive Alexander for his actions against Charles.  It would be ugly to forgive Charles but not Alexander, simply because I know Alexander’s victim but Charles’s were anonymous.  It would be even uglier if you count that he saved my life.”

“I can’t say I agree with that take,” Lucy said.  “Sorry.”

“I can’t agree with it either.  Not completely.  I think about it a lot, and I wrestle with it, but I don’t know.  I took a good few years off from staying in touch with Alexander, then watched him, and then decided to re-establish that contact.  I think, like with your implement question, there are no easy answers.”

“Except maybe I trust my friends to handle it,” Lucy said.  “My brother said, a few weeks back, that if I was stuck on something, I should ask myself what he or my mom would say, if they had all the facts.  Maybe you could take that approach?”

“What would my family say?  I don’t have any blood family left.”

“If they were around.  Or… I dunno.  Does Zed count as family?”

“Closer to family than not.  I don’t know what he’d say, because he might support me no matter what happened.  As for my family member by blood, I thought I knew what they thought and what they valued in right and wrong.  I was the furthest thing from correct.”

Ray’s expression darkened, and his eyes, without the sunglasses over them, were very sad.

His voice had a bit of a creak in it that it hadn’t had earlier in the conversation, as he said, “Maybe that’s why the question about Alexander is so hard to answer.  I don’t know anymore.  I just don’t know.”

Lucy looked across the sitting room at Mr. Sunshine, heard that last sentence, and felt a bit rocked.

She’d seen her mom, sitting on the edge of her bed, devastated.

She’d seen Verona’s dad, so deflated as a human being in that one moment that she almost couldn’t believe he’d ever stood fully upright and actually functioned as a human.

But she hadn’t ever seen a human being, especially an adult, who was so far off from having any clue at all about the stuff that should really matter.

“I’ve- I really appreciate this conversation,” Lucy said.  “And I know this sounds awful, but maybe if it’s that hard to tell right from wrong, maybe you shouldn’t be teaching?”

“I took a lot of time off.  It’s a struggle, and I’m having to relearn how to teach, but I’m glad I chose now to do it.”

“I’m betting it’s not because you get to meet awesome opossums,” Snowdrop chimed in.

“Because things are in a bad way?” Lucy asked.

“They may end up that way.  Alexander and Lawrence can’t be objective, and Mrs. Durocher has many great and impressive qualities, but calm and a level head are not readily found among them.  I can at least try to give this school that.”

“Ah.  Okay,” she said.  She nodded.  “Thank you for your time.  Sorry to spitball aimlessly like I did, and to quiz you about tough stuff.”

“No.  You’re welcome to come back if it would be more of the same.  I appreciate it more than you might know.”

“I should go, before there’s no time for lunch.”

“Is it that time already?” he asked.  “Of course.  Yes, I should prepare for this afternoon.”

She nodded.  “C’mon, Snow.”

Snowdrop, dozing a bit, rose to her feet, stumbled into Lucy, and clutched her arm.  She became opossum sized and climbed up her arm with needle claws.  Lucy gave her a helping hand up to the shoulder.

“Bye,” Lucy said.

“Goodbye, Lucy.  Sorry again.”

She gave him a momentary smile before the door closed between them.

She picked up her pace, hurrying to catch up with the others.

If you’re the most level head among the staff here, and you can’t even say it’s wrong to ruin a man’s life, where does that leave us? Lucy thought.

Cutting Class – 6.5

Avery

Avery walked laps around the table as Verona laid down the papers she’d scribbled on and illustrated, even throwing the occasional paper so it would settle in an empty spot.

“Here’s what I’m thinking,” Verona said.  “My thoughts about Lucy’s implement.”

“Scissors?” Avery asked.

“No,” Verona said.  “Ugh.  Look.

Avery did, pausing midway through her circuit around the table to read closer.

She looked up as Verona put some music on, using her phone speaker.  It wasn’t a high quality phone, and the music suffered a good bit for that.  She reached into her bag, got a little case, and popped it open to retrieve a bit of glamour.  Avery was thoroughly distracted from what was in the notes as she watched Verona draw a circle of ‘c’ shapes around the phone, elaborating at eight points with flourishing, symmetrical, radiating lines.

The sound quality of the music improved.  It sounded like indie rock or alternative or something.

“Here I walked out from the waves…” the singer sang, amid the synthesized droplet sounds of the opening.

“It’s a playlist Lucy gave me,” Verona said.  “I figured it makes sense to have in the background.”

Into this soundless, frozen rave…

“When did you learn how to draw that diagram?”

“B.S.’ed it.”

Avery shook her head.

“This world tells me I should behave…

“The practice tends to trust you if you trust it.  What’s the worst that happens, with this?”

“I dunno.  Break your phone?”

“Cold and shaking, I feel brave…  brave…

The instrumentals took over.

“It’s all lines pointing out.  Nothing directed at the phone.  I’m betting that the worst that happens is the battery gets drained.  But I did these squiggly lines like Eloise said to do connection stuff, and I used glamour because it’s more about aesthetic, see?  Bam.  Works.”

“Was this during possession class, Verona?”

“Some.  I kept an ear out, don’t worry.  I wouldn’t let myself get too distracted from a class about magic.”

Faceless crowds and concrete facades…

“Buried anger and arrogant frauds…

I walk among it all at odds…!”

“You didn’t decide on a shape?”

“Three big ideas, based on this morning’s notes.”

Avery moved papers to where she could see the writing right-side up.

Human seas to empty cities, when does it even end?

I’m so at odds, does this even… end?

The first was a lantern.  The second was a bracelet, or a bangle.

Considering she had an older sister and a fashionable ex-best friend, Avery didn’t know a lot about jewelry or any of that.

More instrumentals played from the phone, augmented by the circle.

“Why the bracelet?”

“I thought, uh, like if you undid it, there could be a hinge, right?  And she could throw it down like we can do with certain summons, speed up that transmutation of herself to this badass glamour fighter.  Or whatever she wants to be.”

“I would worry about the implications of two white girls giving a black girl a shackle.”

“Not a shackle, a torc.  Or a bracelet.”

“Keep in mind, Ronnie,” Avery said, “she has this for the rest of her life.  If it’s the sort of thing you have to explain, she has to explain it over and over…

“I was lost and scarcely found…

“It was my least favorite idea anyway, and I’ll defer to either of you on questions of discrimination and stuff,” Ronnie said.  “Which brings us to my third idea.”

I was home but hardly ’round…

Verona pushed some papers in the middle of the table toward Avery.  There were multiple pages, breaking it down in design, components…

“I was free yet tightly bound…

“Scissors?” Avery asked.

Verona reached into her collar and pulled out the scissors.  She put them on the table.  “As a material.”

The music picked up, intense now.

“I won’t be led this astray…!
“I’m not gonna go your way…!
“I’m not gonna go your way…!
“I won’t be led this astray…!

“I don’t know how you can carry those like that.”

“It’s not so bad.  So what we’d do is take out the pin in the center.  That leaves us with the handle and blade.  Which we then reshape into the handles for the lantern, the length of the bangle, or the upper length.”

“In this lonely crowd and silence loud…!
“I won’t be going your way…!
“I’m not gonna be led astray…!

“And using your thing.  And Lucy gets something from each of us, that helps her be her.”

“I’m not gonna go your way…!
“I won’t be led this astray…!

“What do I give her?” Avery asked.  “You have the scissors, I just have a photo.”

“I have ideas,” Verona said.

“In this lonely crowd and silence loud!

“Are there issues with the use of the stuff from awakening?”

“I asked Mrs. Graubard about it, and it’s not like using the scissors in awakening make them some huge weakpoint in me.  You can do just about whatever with your photo and it’s not going to have a huge impact on your practice.”

“Hmmm.”

“My feet are battered from these lonesome roads…

“But it’s symbolic, and I like the idea of using our stuff to make something for her,” Verona said.

My heart is tattered from these ancient codes…

“How do I give her something like that from a photo?  You need… glass for the lantern?”

“And gemstones, studs, or some other decoration, and/or wire.”

You are our future, sayeth the old…

“How?”

As the young are left out in the cold…

“Some possibilities came up in enchantment class.  Want to make a night of it?”

“Night?”

“I’m not gonna go your way…!
“I won’t be led this astray…!

“Workshop slots are taken up for most of the day.  But if you’re interested, we could try for one of the time slots later this week.  There are some restrictions on noise, because some students sleep nearby, but…”

“What do you want to do?” Avery asked, nervous.

“Alcazar.”

“That magic thing where some girl got turned into a repeatedly murdered bunny?”

“I bet we’re way more awesome than she is.”

“I…” Avery started.  She shook her head.

“Consider it?” Verona asked.

“Sure.  It’s worth checking with Lucy about the process.  Maybe she talked to Ray and figured out what implement she wants.”

“Could be.  I can’t think of many things where we couldn’t incorporate something fundamental from us into it.”

“I’m not gonna go your way…!

Avery nodded, thinking about it.  She pulled the photo out of her wallet.  A bit worse for wear.

“I won’t be led this astray…!

“We have, like, five minutes.  I’m thinking,” Verona said.  “Want to give it a light tempering?  Get rid of some of the crap, clear the way for later?”

“In this lonely crowd and silence loud!

Avery rubbed the photo with her thumb.

“It’ll make it more durable.”

I’m so at odds, does this even… end?

Avery nodded.  “Walk me through it.”

“For sure.  We’ll check to see we have the tools and stuff we need, if we have time.”

“Possession class was a lot of what we already knew, but there were some good fundamentals,” Verona said.  “Everything takes up space.  Where it gets tricky is that there are a lot of things where Others will get their hooks into major parts of you.  They can take your body, sometimes, but not your face.  So their face will change over time.”

“There’s that Single White Female doppleganger,” Avery noted.

“I looked it up.  That’s an old movie.  Single white female seeks same,” Lucy said.

“Yeahhh, like that.  Taking over your life and then getting rid of you, but I don’t think their face and hair change,” Verona said.  “Then you have the Jockeys, which we heard about before, from a person I won’t name…”

“And in Famulus,” Lucy said.  “It’s a danger you have to take into consideration if you’re going to tie yourself to Others or invite them in.”

“I wonder if there’s a house jockey,” Verona mused.  “A ‘failure to launch’ Other who moves in and doesn’t move out.”

“There is,” Tymon said, walking behind them.  “There’s a whole group of Others who invade human spaces like that.  We’ve got a group of ’em at home, they’re a quote-unquote ‘family’ that finds ways into people’s houses and live in the walls, back of closets, and vents.  Thin, twisted people, creep out at night and silently eat food, use toothbrushes, wash themselves at the sink.  The Other kid would be awake under the bed while the house’s kid slept, creep out to play with the human kid’s toys in silence, then finish the night by urinating on the bed to make the kid think they’d done it.  I won’t get into details, but we had to bind one that nearly killed an old guy by being really unhygenic about it, to protect people.”

“Why?” Lucy asked.   “Just… why?”

“Because monsters reflect our anxieties.  Anxiety creates vulnerability, and with all the varied, basic types of Other out there, something’s going to find it’s a near-enough fit for that point of weakness.  Then they evolve to fit further.”

“Bweh,” Lucy made a sound.

“What do you even do about that sort of thing?” Avery asked.

“Embrace it,” Snowdrop said.  “Strip naked, go live in the walls, eat food like a proper scavenger.”

“I didn’t say they were naked,” Tymon said.

“I did, though,” Snowdrop told him.

“Some were naked, but… beside the point.  Sorry to interrupt, just wanted to throw in that ‘yep, it’s a thing’.”

“Which class are you taking?” Lucy asked.

“Coup.  You?”

“We were thinking one of us should go catch the Scourging class, maybe we’ll rock-paper-scissors for it,” Lucy told him.

“You’re sharing notes?” Tymon asked.

“Yeah.  For sure,” Lucy told him.

“You know, you don’t have to be in a rush.  There’s four more years.  A lot of students take the same class twice, because it’ll get taught by different teachers.”

“Feels like there’s a bit of a rush,” Avery told him.  “Catching up, being ready in case something happens.”

“Something?” Tymon asked.

“This?  What’s happening at this school?”

“I don’t think it’s that bad.”

“You might have just jinxed it, Leos,” one of Tymon’s friends said.

Some students were still eating the last of their lunches or brought drinks with them as they got settled in the big classroom.

Another class with Mr. Bristow.  Avery winced.  But this class was about coup and claim.  Their ability to deal with Bristow, ironically, depended on what he was now teaching.

A faint murmur made Avery turn her head.

Alexander walked down the aisle between the rows of benches.  With more agility than a middle-aged guy typically displayed, he stepped up onto the wooden lip at the front of the stage, then onto the stage, all in one smooth motion.  He turned, facing them.

“Where’s Mr. Bristow?” a girl asked.

“Mr. Bristow is preoccupied.  He ran into a spot of trouble on the road,” Alexander said, standing there with hands in his pockets.  He’d rolled up the sleeves of his linen shirt, which he wore without a tie, and wore business slacks with nice shoes.  A bit of his hair had fallen across his forehead.  Almost a polar opposite to the huffing, sweating Bristow.  He smiled.  “I’ll take over his class, this afternoon.”

There was some more murmuring.  It was more than Avery might have expected.

She turned, watching, as benches squeaked.  Some students stood.  It wasn’t many, but it was a few.

Kass, Jarvis, Silas, Maddox, and Daniella.

“In our school rules, we do ask you not leave a class once it’s started.”

“It hasn’t started,” Jarvis said.

“It has, from the moment I stood up here and the class fell silent, listening.”

“Nah,” Jarvis said, but he didn’t sound sure.

The group of five passed through the front door of the school.  The room was deathly silent as they went.  They’d chosen their team and they were committed to it.

“What did I tell you?” Tymon’s friend whispered, and the whisper sounded weirdly loud, considering the mood.  Tymon scoffed, barely audible.

The door swung closed behind them.  It didn’t bang, but there was a bit of wind that rolled across the room.

Mr. Belanger titled his head to one side, apparently looking out the window at the departing students, who made their way to the other classroom.  There was some shuffling as students turned.

“Stay seated,” Alexander said.

Students that were rising from their benches to move to a better vantage point sat back down.

“Mr. Sunshine doesn’t like late arrivals and locked the door.  More’s the pity,” Alexander said, smiling like he was enjoying himself.  “Now, class had begun, and we’ll continue.  Let’s quickly go over the terms.  Coup, claim, ownership, inheritance, all things rooted in possessions.  If you took the possession class this morning, you’ll have heard some of this come up.  They matter if you care about keeping ownership of your body, and these are things you’ll use regularly, even if you aren’t-”

The front door rattled as the five students tried to get in.

“Oh, is it locked?  If the side doors to the school are locked as well, they’ll have to occupy themselves outside all afternoon.”

There were some light laughs from the assembled class.

“It’s petty, isn’t it?  Counting coup.  If you have a claim to something, it finds its way to you because you have more right to it.  In contested ownership, two or more people have a claim and they play their game of tug of war.  If you count coup against someone, you find those petty moments, or the subtle ways you can undermine their claim to something, and effectively increase your own claim.  Each win a tug in your direction.  Even if you simply attack their character, if you score any wins at all, well… life rewards winners.”

Avery looked back.  One of the students was peering in the window.  Nicolette, Chase, Seth, and Wye were at the back, near the entrances to the hallways.  She guessed they’d locked the other doors.

“This is practitioner fundamentals, but not in the same way learning about spirits might be.  We all want things.  We, practitioners and Others, tend to find ourselves at odds.  Consciously or not, we start noticing these trends and we start using this.  But if you learn about it you can protect yourself and you can hurt your enemies.  Now…”

Alexander reached into a pocket, and withdrew a slip of paper.  It had gold tracing at the edges, catching in the blue-ish light from the windows.

“…Our prize for today’s lesson.  The holder of this slip may decide which of the seven Faerie courts we visit in next week’s field trip.  Please remain seated, don’t disrupt the class, and refrain from any practice.  Earning this slip is a practical exercise in claim.  Coup?  Well, don’t disrupt the class.”

“That would be useful if we wanted insights into certain Faerie courts,” Avery whispered to Lucy.  Lucy nodded.

“Tell me, what are some fundamental ways one could count coup?” Alexander asked, holding the slip.  “Yes, Tymon?”

“Gainsaying,” Tymon said.

“Good,” Alexander said, pointing the slip of paper at him.

Lucy’s hand went up.  Alexander pointed the slip at her.

“Forswearing,” Lucy said.

“That, Ms. Ellingson, is a winner take all situation.  But the unwary can just as easily lose it all,” Alexander said, maintaining a slight smile.  “Be very careful.”

Avery held back from saying ‘drop a demesne on it’.  Which would have been really unwise.

As if he was reading her mind, he smiled, a bit lopsided, in a way that almost made a wink, waving the ticket their way.

Like he was saying ‘good, point for staying silent’.

“Punch them in the nose?” Hadley Hennigar called out.

“Do raise your hand, but yes.”

“And punching them in the throat?”

“I’m only going to count the one case of physical violence.  Anyone else?”

A hand went up.  “You said undercutting them verbally.”

“Yes.  Verbal attacks as well as physical.  Attacks on reputation, finances, family, connections,” Alexander said.  “But these things can be subtle.  You may be left wondering how much of a difference it really made.  So tell me, how can you secure it, or better tie them together?”

Hands were going up all over the room, now.

“Rule of three,” Verona said.  “Driving it in three times.”

“Good.”

“Declare your intentions.”

“Very good, yes.  Swear you’ll get something and the spirits will be watching closer for each punch in the throat, verbal retort, and gainsaying.  Each will land with more emphasis.  Of course, there’s a risk there.  What if I have something, such as this ticket?  How do I keep it?  Fernanda.”

“Don’t engage?” Fernanda asked.

“You jumped straight to the example I was going to use to lead into my next part.  Okay, what happens if I don’t engage?  What if I walked out of the classroom now, went to my office, and took a nap?  Anyone?”

There weren’t a lot of eager answers.

“You’d ask, wouldn’t you?” he asked.  “Who wins?  What happens?  And there would be sentiments that one person or another would deserve it, with pressure for me to deliver.  You can hold off.  You can protect your possessions and hoard them away.  You can hide, withdraw, and your opponent can try to count coup or build up a claim in your absence.  It won’t do them much good.”

He hopped down to the floor below the stage and then walked down the aisle.  “There’s a drawback to this.  A weakness.  Anyone?  Any guesses?  Phrase it as a question if you’re not sure, but even a wrong answer is worth some credit.  To try and to fail is worth more than not trying at all.  If nothing else, it reminds the spirits you exist and you’re relevant.”

A boy’s hand went up.

“Yes.  Erasmus.”

The chubby boy leaned out into the aisle to be seen.  “Is it that you can’t hide forever?”

“Theoretically, you could hide indefinitely, in many cases.  But it’s not a bad answer.”

Avery tried to picture it.  Having something she wanted, holding onto it, hiding…

Playing keep-away.  She knew of a relevant example.  Her hand went up at the same time Fernanda’s did.

“Avery Kelly,” Alexander said.  “I saw your hand too, Fernanda, hold on.”

“Is it that when you take your shot, it might be for nothing if they’ve cornered you?”

“Alright, and Fernanda?”

“Same answer, different wording.”

“Then credit to you both.  Yes, when you emerge from hiding or when you want to use what you’ve claimed, that may be the pivotal moment that claim matters.  Everything can slip from your grasp at once.  The spirits do like their drama.”

Avery sketched on her notebook, scribbling out a square, then ‘end of summer’.  She nudged Lucy, who looked over.

Lucy nodded.

If they wanted that collection of the Carmine Beast’s fur and meat, then maybe there was a way to it.  Little wins, counted up, reinforced, then put into effect.

She paused, as she wrote.

Then she added another note: ‘Works both ways’.

Whether it was Matthew or Maricica, or even Charles, the culprit had to know about some of this stuff.  Matthew and Charles had been practitioners, and Maricica had been around long enough.

Were they slowly building up that claim and coup even now, while Avery and her friends were busy trying to catch up?

“Let us pause for a second,” Alexander said, as his pacing took him back to the stage.  He leaned back against it, holding the ticket high.  “Take stock.  Who’s winning?  Who has more claim, now?”

There were some murmurs.

“Me,” Fernanda said.

“Being bold and clear counts for something,” Alexander said, twinkle in his eye.  “What about our three wild practitioners, hm?”

“Wait wait wait,” Erasmus said, standing.  “Why-?”

“Sit sit sit,” Alexander said.  “Manners.  And raise your hands.

Erasmus raised his hand.  Alexander nodded.

“Why do they get counted together?”

“Why indeed?  Because groups can claim more easily than individuals can, if those groups are unified, and those three are,” Alexander said, looking like he was having too much fun.

There were murmurs across the room as students started whispering alliances.

Avery was very aware that they’d had some vague plans to send one of them to Mr. Sunshine’s class to learn some of that stuff.  But they’d stayed, because Alexander had had their attention from the get-go, and they’d wanted to see what happened next.

Claimed them.

A bit spooky.

“Which court are you going with?” Fernanda asked.

“I’m thinking of three courts,” Verona said, holding the ticket.  “We could be swayed.”

“Or you could sell it,” Fernanda said.

“To you?” Lucy asked.

“To whoever.  That’s what I was going to do.  I’ve seen a lot of the Faerie Courts myself, already.”

“Well, we’ll consider it.  I think we have until next week.”

“Until the end of the weekend, please!” Alexander raised his voice at the back of the group, as they filed away.  “We have to reach out and make arrangements.”

Avery, walking backwards so she could face Lucy, Verona, and Fernanda while they talked, met his eyes and nodded.

The class had ended and they were all going their separate ways.  The five kids who’d been shut out of classes were gone, and others were off to relax, get food, use the washrooms, with the washrooms closest to the main classroom getting claimed first, and just stretching their legs.

Lucy unnecessarily steered Avery around to keep her from bumping into Talos and make sure she knew where she was stepping as she reached the stairs.  Snowdrop was already watching her back, for one thing, and she did have the Zoomtown boon, which was a minor thing that made it easier to steer clear of the masses.

“I think I’m going to go put on a swimsuit and swim in the river until it’s time to eat,” Fernanda declared, loud.  “Who’s with me?”

“I am,” Laila said.

It looked like a lot of boys were making sudden, silent changes of plan, too.

Which was fair, considering it was a dry heat right now, and it felt twice as hot since they’d been inside.  Avery’s skin prickled, and she closed her eyes for a second, thinking about a hard swim.  It would be so nice.  Except for the Fernanda part.

“You’re into it,” Verona whispered, bumping her shoulder into Avery’s arm.

“What?”

Fernanda?  Really?”

“No,” Avery said.  “A swim would be great though.”

“A swim with Fernanda.  I thought Lucy was giving you a hard time about your taste in girls-”

“Well, like, Avery’s big, older crush,” Lucy protested.  “That was a little weird.”

“But Fernanda?” Verona asked, crowding Avery.

“Fuck off, Verona.”

“So you weren’t thinking about Fernanda?”

“I was, but-”

“Ah ha!”

“But not-”

“Ha ha!”

“-Not that way.  The opposite of that way.”

“I think Fernanda and Avery would make a good pair,” Snowdrop said, looking off to the side, as Fernanda flounced off with Laila and a few other girls and boys trailing after.

“Snowdrop, honey,” Avery said.  “I know you’ve got your rule about how you talk, but no.  Don’t take Verona seriously.”

“We’ve got other plans, anyway.”

“Thank you, yes,” Avery said.  “When I was thinking about swimming, it was with regret that we have those other plans.  And also regret that Fernanda would be swimming too.”

“We’ll have to figure out which workshop Jessica’s ritual is being held in.  I think Alexander’s showing up, so once he’s done answering questions, we can go with,” Lucy said.

“Yeah,” Avery agreed, craning her head to see, as they stood in front of the stairs to the school.  Students were spreading out, some heading to workshops, others to the field and picnic tables.  More were inside, weirdly, on this nice summer day.  “This’ll be interesting, at least.”

“Still a bummer you won’t get your swim with Fernanda,” Lucy said.

“Uuuuuuugh,” Avery said, clutching Lucy’s shirt, shaking her a bit.

“You kinda deserve worse, after messing with Jer,” Verona told her.

“I did message him.”

‘You did.  And it bummed him out a bit, I think, even if it helped.  And that sucks,” Verona said.  There was no humor in her voice, now.  “I don’t have a ton of people I don’t mind being around.  You pulling that stunt with my phone, that made it harder with him, not better.”

“That wasn’t what I intended.’

“Sure,” Verona said.  She seemed to get less emotional as she talked.  “I know.  But it sucked and it sucks, really.  I just want to say… I’m joking with you now and I’m trying not to think about it while I keep things light, but I’m just getting more… it sucks, Ave.”

“Maybe take five?” Lucy asked.  “I can talk to Avery.  Or I can keep you company.”

“Nah,” Verona said.  “I don’t want to miss anything.”

Avery sighed.  She looked between Verona and Lucy, and digested that, before giving her most sincere, insufficient, “Sorry.”

She wished she was better with words, to be able to elaborate on that.

“Good,” Verona said.  “Then apology accepted.”

“I only wanted to-” Avery started, but Verona scrunched up her face.

Verona shook her head, already messy hair getting a bit messier with the motion.  “Let’s not keep talking about it.  You apologized, I accepted.  Now I want to forget it happened.”

Avery was a little caught off guard by the sudden change in direction, and floundered silent.

“We know these buildings are occupied, right?  They have projects ongoing.  And then this one gets some use, and Ray taught in this one?” Verona asked, speaking aloud as she walked off.

“Only one of the buildings doesn’t smell like meat,” Snowdrop declared, following Verona.  “There weren’t a lot of animals around.”

“Which one?” Verona asked.  “I would’ve thought the wards that kept bugs out would keep bears from wandering on campus.”

“Yeah!” Snowdrop said, “They use wards to screen out the little stuff and then catch the occasional bear for sacrifices and junk.”

The two walked off a bit.

Avery turned to Lucy.

“Just go with it,” Lucy said.

“I really didn’t mean anything bad.”

“I know.  Me either, and she let me off the hook when I joked about it too.  But… go with it.”

“Ugh.”

“You’ve got your semi-secretive thing with Verona later this week, right?”

“Ugh.”

“Don’t worry about it.  Verona’s weirdly easygoing about some big stuff, and intense about little stuff.  But she said she accepts your apology.”

“I don’t, though, I’m not sure I’m over feeling bad about it,” Avery said.  “It’s like, you’ve got your thing going, and you’re so close, and…”

She lifted her hands and dropped them.

Lucy started to say something.

“Am I intruding?” Nicolette interrupted, as she approached.

Avery tried to decide, then shook her head.

“A bit,” Lucy said.  “But we can go over it later.”

“Seems like Durocher is a bit pleased with you three, Alexander finds you amusing, and Raymond likes you in his odd way,” Nicolette said.  “Some of the more ambitious students might pick up on it, if you keep going this route.”

Lucy frowned.  “We wanted to remain neutral.  Getting too much into their good books isn’t great.”

“Neutral?  You mean Alexander and Bristow?”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.

“I don’t think such a thing exists.”

“We can try to get close, right?”

“You can try.”

Jessica, Zed, and Brie were on their way over too.  Alexander was at the door, surrounded by students who were vying for his favor.  He seemed to be happy with it.

“Hi,” Avery greeted the other three, as they got closer.

Jessica ignored her, walking past.

It felt like getting punched, smack dab in the middle of the chest.

“She’s preoccupied,” Brie said, gently, as she stopped at Avery’s side.  “This is huge for her, her head’s somewhere else entirely.”

Avery shook her head a bit.

She’d had some nightmares, long enough ago she couldn’t remember the particulars, but it had been something like her finally trying to reach out to classmates and get outside her bubble, and they’d just ignored her, and things had gotten darker and more and more like she was drowning with every attempt.

“We did some of the setup while you guys were in class,” Zed said.  “Machines, used lasers to map out the diagram.  It’s pretty great.  Just watch your step as you get inside.”

“Verona will be psyched,” Lucy said.

“I think if you put her and Alexander in a room for long enough, they’d end up great friends,” Nicolette said.

“That’s spooky,” Avery said.

“Alexander’s-” Nicolette started, glancing back.  She shook her head.  “Well, my intention was to say they’d appeal to their best parts of each other.  Let’s ignore the negatives.”

“That’s your mentor’s mentor you’re talking about,” Zed said, mock stern.

“You’re one to talk, Zed,” Nicolette said.

“What are you talking about?  Raymond’s great,” Zed retorted.

Nicolette made a rolling hand gesture.

“…With caveats.  You have to get over some initial hurdles.”

“We had a good conversation earlier,” Lucy said.

“He mentioned it.  Didn’t say what about.”

“Good,” Lucy answered.

“You’re so secretive, you three,” Nicolette said.  “If you were a little more boring, you might be able to fly under the radar.  Instead, students keep asking about you.”

“Who’s asking?” Avery asked.

“I should keep confidentiality, but they’re technically Bristow’s.  Yadira’s lot.”

“Huh.”

Alexander joined them.  He pushed his hair back out of his face.  “How was the setup?”

“All set up.  Happy with how it came together.  Jessica’s a bundle of nerves.  Not that she’d admit it,” Zed said.

“We should balance the room, placing observers evenly throughout.  Is there space at the perimeter?” Alexander asked.

“Just a bit.”

“Good.  It would be awkward to integrate everyone if they were placed within.  Shall we look?”

“We shall,” Zed said, looking pleased.

Avery felt a touch at one arm.

It was Brie, wearing a white top and pale jeans.  Avery flicked on her Sight, and she could see the crimson lines traced all over her.  Brie’s tattoos were marked out like fingerpaint smudges, all in blood.  Some beaded through her top.  Both of Brie’s legs and one of her hands were soaked crimson, the blood there clotting.

“I wanted to say thank you,” Brie said.

Avery put the Sight away.

“I’m really glad you’re getting along with Zed now,” Brie told her.  “It felt so bad, taking his side when I really did appreciate you saving me that night.  You went all out.”

Avery wasn’t sure how to respond to that sort of thing.

“You’re welcome?” she tried.  Sounded lame.  She looked to Lucy for help, but Lucy was paying attention to things.  Verona and Snowdrop ran over.

“I know we did our end of the deal,” Brie said.  “We sent you power packaged up that’s technically equivalent to your share from the Choir.  But I personally owe you more than that.  I talked to Verona that night, but you- I feel like if I tell you this, I can trust you with it more.”

“Tell me what?”

“That I owe you one, still.  For not letting those- they were goblins?”

Avery nodded.

“For not letting them kill me or whatever they were going to do.  For getting me out, for saving me that night.  I owe you.  So you can call that in and I’ll do my best.  And I think you’re good enough kids you won’t abuse that.”

“That’s dangerous, I think, in this world,” Avery said, quiet.

“Probably.  But… if we’re going to make this world less dangerous, less awful, doesn’t it start with stuff like this?”

“Maybe.”

“I’ve got such a long way to go, still,” Brie said, staring at Zed’s back.  Zed was laughing with Nicolette.  “I took too many lives, making it through.  How do you ever fix that?”

“I dunno.  That’s a little crazy heavy for me right now.”

“Me too,” Brie said.  “Right now and every now.”

“Sorry.”

“Let’s go look after our important people.  Give Jessica some support, how’s that?”

“Let’s,” Avery said.

They approached the isolated building.  It was a nice looking building, if a little chunky, like the big room and adjacent building had been placed down and then they’d conformed the nice looking exterior around it.

Lucy was waiting for her.  She gave Avery a one-armed hug.

“It might be too warm for physical contact,” Avery said.  “Not that I don’t appreciate it.”

“Want me to quit it?”

Avery shook her head.

Snowdrop came around the building and gave her a hug too.

“Want to change to a more convenient size, kid?” Avery asked.

Snowdrop did.  Avery lifted Snowdrop to her shoulder.  A furry opossum that needed to lose weight was its own source of heat, though.  A bit of an issue.

Lucy went inside.

Avery, for her part, hung back.  She pulled out her phone.

She’d asked Sheridan yesterday.

The message on her phone was still Sheridan saying she’d try to find an opportunity to talk to their mom and dad.

That was it.  No explanation, no follow-up, no resolution.

She was really afraid that Sheridan had backed out or gotten bored with the entire thing, returning to being the lazy big sister who didn’t pay attention to the middle child.  Then she’d have to sit on this for the entire summer.

She was even more afraid, in a way so big and intense that she couldn’t articulate it or even wrap her head or gut feeling around it, that Sheridan did care, at least a little.  That it had gone badly, and she didn’t know how to tell Avery.

Snowdrop licked the side of her neck.

“If you tickle me and make me do a full-body shiver I might drop you.”

Snowdrop stuck her claws in just a bit tighter.  Avery poked Snowdrop in the side of the stomach.  “Watch it.”

She took a deep breath, then ascended the stairs.

“Watch your step,” Zed said.

Avery did.  She at least trusted her footing.  She took Lucy’s hand as she made her way around the floor.  Then Nicolette’s.

It was a big room.  The diagram took the shape of an eye set in a circle, backed by a triangle, with a series of spirals radiating out.  At three points, large machines were set within circles, their wires strung straight up through the ceiling.  Within the circle were notations for time.  It looked like two sides of the triangle formed the ‘hands’ for the clock part of the diagram.

Some of the other students from yesterday’s impromptu class in the library showed up.  Fernanda’s older brother Chase was one, crossing the diagram with a casual ease that suggested he’d done it a few times, his arms folded.  There was also Dom’s older sister, Elizabeth.  The Historian.

Jessica, wearing her raincoat, was in the center, kneeling.  Surrounding her were small objects.  A notebook, a bag of rainbow-colored chips, a board with a pattern painted on it, a folded up swimsuit or something.

A ritual to look into the past.

Eloise entered, and took up a spot at one point of the triangle.  She looked around, and Schartzmugel rose up out of her skin to look around, before leaning in close to whisper in her ear.

“Zed?” Alexander asked.

Zed was talking to Nicolette and Brie.  He looked up.

“Take the console?”

The console was another point of the triangle.  One of the three machines.

Eloise at one, Zed at another, and Jessica at the center.

Seth was a late arrival, and had to travel a three-quarter circle around the room, squeezing past Avery on his way to the open spot.

Avery was more worried about the possibility he might mess with the chalk than she was bothered by the weird and possibly unnecessary squeeze.

“One step to the left, Lucy.  Careful,” Alexander said.

Lucy took a step.

“Good,” Alexander intoned.

The two doors in opposite corners of the square room were open, and light filtered in through the curtains.  A lot of the people present, Alexander included, had a faint shininess to their skin where the light caught it.  Fine beading of sweat.

Avery could only see a bit of Jessica’s face, but it was drawn and tense.  Jessica wasn’t looking at anyone or anything in particular as she sat in the central circle, head hanging, breathing deep.

“Ms. Casabien?” Alexander asked.

“We only get to do this once?” she asked.

“We only need the once.”

“Talk me through it again,” she said.

“You are seeking an echo of your lost cousin.  The echo has strayed, and we want to bring it here.  Three possibilities exist, the first being that it has wandered, the second is that it has been lured away by something or someone, and the third is that it was tainted.  It may be a wraith, specter, or complex spirit now.  We won’t know which it is until it’s here.”

Jessica nodded.

“The ritual looks to the past and conjures up a detail-perfect representation of the moment the echo came to be.  Zed is handling that work, with three machines that can detect various aspects of the past as major structural points to build on.  To the echo, whatever form it takes, this scene will be home.  I’ve known of echoes that were caught up in wraithstorms in the Ruins, caught in orbit around the drain to oblivion and knit together with countless other wraiths.  A grouping too big to be swallowed up.”

“I’ve seen those.”

“And Rituals weaker than this pulled them free.  In the first case, if he’s wandered too far in, he should find his way here.  Eloise will see to it that the connection is established, regardless.”

“Reeling him in,” Eloise said, from her position.

“If he’s claimed by another, a necromancer or an enemy of yours, Mrs. Casabien, Eloise will handle that as well.  If you’d attended this afternoon’s class on claim-”

“I didn’t fall asleep until six in the morning.  I thought I should sleep if I could and be sharp,” Jessica said.  “I slept through it.”

“Not to worry,” Alexander said.  “If you’d attended you’d know what I mean when I say Eloise will use this ritual to make a claim that is almost certainly stronger than what the person holding onto him is using.”

“And if it’s not, I’ll ask nicely,” Eloise said.  “If they still say no, dear Schartzmugel will reach out along that connection and give them a bit of cancer of the soul, and I’ll mark them so we can find them.  Then we rally up a posse, find them, and get your echo for you.”

Avery looked around, wondering if anyone else was as bothered by that ‘cancer of the soul’ line.  She was glad to see Lucy was frowning.

Jessica was just nodding.

“I would be very surprised if it came to that,” Alexander said.  “I’ve seen nothing to indicate it as a possibility.”

“Reassuring Jessica that the bases are covered,” Eloise said.

“The circle you’re standing within, Ms. Casabien, will bring him to you, once he’s here.  In the event that the echo is not healthy and pristine, Zed will make an adjustment and the dividing line in the middle of the circle will become a barrier.  This is to protect you from him.  Do not panic.  Maintain eye contact.  I and my apprentices will handle the analysis and clarification.”

“We’re good with immaterial things,” Nicolette said.

“Seth?  Chase?  The barrier?”

“Simple barrier around the building,” Chase said.  “Keeping anyone from waltzing in.”

“This is a lot,” Jessica said.

“It is,” Alexander said.  “Best to do it right.”

“I mean… what do I do?  Talk me through that.”

“Stay where you are.  Watch.  Don’t move, don’t panic.  Trust that we have it handled.”

“I don’t- that kind of trust doesn’t come easy.”

“Then try to put us out of your mind.  Focus on your cousin.  Make eye contact, where possible.  Stand firm.  If the barrier divides you, wait.  If not, he’ll come straight to you.  You know how to handle echoes.”

Jessica nodded.

“Are you ready?” Alexander asked.

“I don’t have the power to pay for this ritual,” Jessica said.

“Ms. Casabien.  Jessica,” Alexander said.  He sounded exasperated.  “We discussed this last night.  If your lack of sleep was bad enough you can’t recall maybe we should postpone-”

“I want to hear you say it.  Again.”

“I do have the power expenditure covered,” Alexander said.  “No obligation besides what we discussed.”

“My undying loyalty?”

“Only the usual trust and loyalty you can extend me as a happy student in my school.”

“Why are you doing this, besides that?” Jessica asked.  She still wasn’t looking at him.  “Power doesn’t come easy.”

“Frankly?” Alexander asked.  “I wouldn’t make light of your circumstances or the seriousness of this, but something like this, well crafted, complex, done well?  It’s why I practice.  Whatever roads I travel to get here, this is the sort of endpoint I strive for.”

“This is fun for you.”

“Yes.  I’m sorry, it doesn’t mean I’m taking it any less seriously.  But yes.  I like complexity, interplay, and the games between practitioner and practitioner, or practitioner and Other.”

“Selfish.”

“I- if you choose to see it that way, you could say that.”

She climbed to a standing position, being careful with the chalk on the floor.  “It’s fine.  If you gave me an answer that wasn’t selfish, I don’t think I’d believe you.”

“Can I ask?” Brie raised her voice.

“This is the time to ask questions,” Alexander said.

“What’s my role?  Or our roles?  On the perimeter.”

Avery nodded at that.

“To see what good practice can do.  If you’d keep an eye out for any trouble, that would be appreciated.  And if the echo comes to us as a wraith, a complex spirit, or something in that vein, or if he’s been taken and the owner tries to send something at us to discourage us, you could help.  Under no circumstances are you to destroy him.  Protect yourself and protect the people on either side of you.”

“How do we tell the difference between him and a sending?” Avery asked.

“If it’s him or something in him is there, he’ll go to the center of the room where Ms. Casabien is.  If it’s not, it’s liable to go after Zed or Eloise.  But I really do think it’s less than a one percent chance the echo has been taken, and if that’s the case, less than a one percent chance the person who took it could conjure up an effective sending to challenge us here.”

“Even lower chance they’d make it past me without me deflecting it,” Eloise said.

“Anyone else?” Alexander asked.  “Questions about roles?  About the ritual?”

There were none.

Avery watched Jessica, who had one hand up at her arm, fingers of her right hand tracing the black and skin-tone ‘loon’ marking on her left arm.  The hand of her left arm dangled, and it trembled a bit.

“Say when, Ms. Casabien.”

“Start it.”

Zed threw a switch.  “Machine one.  A death camera, it caught imprints of old echoes.  We tore out the guts and built something more robust, refracting out the images to capture accompanying scenes.  Felt right to use it as the primary delivery mechanism.”

The machine hummed.  The lines on the floor took on a faint glow.

Avery felt the small hairs all over her body stand on end.

The room around them darkened, the sunlight fading like a cloud had passed over the sun.  Dull, blurry images surrounded them, too incoherent to make out, with the same rippling and ‘bleeding’ of the edges that echoes had.

“The campus is protected from minor pests like dull echoes,” Alexander said.  “No pollutants visible.  Reassuring.  Keep going.”

“Machine two.  Cursed phone called back to a point a year in the past, the guys on the other side would trace the call, pass it on to a linked group that would plan and arrange the murder of the person calling a minute after the call ended.  We cleaned it all up, got it spic and span.”

“Hope so,” Jessica said, not moving.

“We only need the line back,” Zed said, throwing the switch.

The machine came to life, hissing with static and phone noises.

The hiss and static materialized around them.  It was visual noise too, like a downpour, all around them.  The blurry blotches of white became detailed, but the detail was lost in the visual disruption of rain coming down.

“Machine three… television of the future.  Color television from nineteen sixty-five.  Turn it on, and you’d see yourself as a kid on the screen, while the you of then would see the you of the future at the same time.  Allegedly, seeing the adult self would shake the kid so much they’d change the course of their life.  You’d disappear, your life rewritten from childhood.  Practically, it was pretty burned out, and we weren’t inclined to test it…”

“Zed,” Alexander said.

“Sorry.”

“I’m happy you enjoy what you do.  But throw the damn switch while you’re at it.”

Zed threw the switch.  “I wonder what would happen if Zed the kid saw Zed the adult.  Would that make things better or worse?”

“I don’t think it’s worth the risk we lose the Zed of today,” Brie said.

“Gag me,” Chase said.

“Shhhhh,” Alexander said.

Around them, the image was clarifying, taking on color and detail.  The room continued to darken, and images appeared around them.  A river with some wooden buildings nearby, including what looked like a crazy huge shack that appeared to store a ton of boats, some on the ground level and some in the rafters.  There was a dark blurry image in the center, and men loomed nearby, shouting something indistinct.  There was another sound, pulsing.

“Tweaking it,” Zed said.

The pulsing became a dog’s bark, relentless.

“Kid, stop fighting!”

“Let me go or go get my mom!” the kid shouted, voice faint.  He rattled off something in what Avery assumed was Ojiibwe.

“She’s not answering.  Stop playing games.”

“Then I’m not going anywhere!  I didn’t do anything wrong!”

“You stole!” another man shouted.  “And you broke it!  It costs more than you’re worth, you little shit!”

Three grown men ganged up on the blurry patch in the middle of the scene.

“You can try calling her from the station.”

“I was- no, I can’t- you can’t!  I can’t say anything to the police without a parent present.  I have to ask for my mom and I go nowhere and say nothing until my mom’s there and a lawyer’s there.”

“This isn’t your television shows from the United States, kid.  You don’t get a lawyer just like that.”

“I need my mom or I’m not-”

An officer reached for the kid.  The kid swiped out with a fist.

“You just hit an officer.  Do you know how much trouble you get in for that?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“They’re fucking teaching them to fight us from the time they’re this young.  It’s ridiculous.”  The officer picked up the blurry patch.  The boy screamed, bloodcurdling and frantic.

Jessica flinched, and Avery flinched to see Jessica flinching.

“Eloise?”

“Yep.  Brace yourselves.  We don’t know what state he’ll be in as he comes through.”

Avery looked around herself, thought about grabbing a shelf on the bookshelf, then thought twice.  If the shelf fell and books tumbled-

Snowdrop’s nails bit into her shoulder.  She put a hand up on Snowdrop.

Her greeting being ignored by Jessica had felt like a hit to the chest.  This was almost the opposite.  It hit her like a punch but it crashed over her like a wave.  Emotion.

Terror.

Terror at being so small, surrounded by bigger men.  At everything being so out of control.  At the prospect of trouble.

Certainty.

Certainty, that there was a way things were supposed to be.  Rules that were supposed to be followed, an order to the world.  Do this, get rewarded.  Do that, get punished.

Wrong.

No.  That was the wrong word for it.  But it was right too.  It was a betrayal of that certainty to that fear.  It was a feeling of loss, the whole world draining away with what was being lost.

Things wouldn’t be okay.  The call wasn’t reaching mom, and mom wasn’t coming to make it all better.

The patch became an echo.  No line crossed the middle of the circle Jessica was in.  No sign of taint, no faint, distant figure holding onto the boy’s echo, no sending, no monster.

The boy said something in Ojibwe, with a ‘Jessica’ in the middle of it.

“Let’s get you home, then,” Jessica said.  She didn’t break eye contact as she reached into her pocket and pulled out a small jar.  A firefly buzzed within.  “Want to climb in?  I know a handsome fellow who needs you to bridge the gap between the child he was and the young man he is now.”

She said something else, like a term of endearment.

The boy took a step forward.  The lights in the room flared bright.  Machines squealed, chugging, and Zed could be heard swearing.

Avery blinked, as her eyes readjusted to the abrupt disappearance of the diagram.  Jessica was still, holding the jar.

“Oops.”

The word, a woman’s voice, recontextualized everything.  Jessica’s stillness, the abrupt change back to the room.

“I would call you an idiot, but I do think you knew exactly what you were doing,” Alexander said.  Avery’s gaze snapped to him.

She looked the other way, following his gaze, and saw Brie on the ground.  Two of the children from the Hungry choir stood next to her.  And beside her, a large glass was on the ground, the contents spilled across the floor, across chalk lines.

Shellie Alitzer stood in the doorway, expression blank, silver all over her body glittering.

Avery clenched her fists.

“I had no idea what I was doing,” Shellie said.  “Couldn’t see in the dark, bumped into her.”

One of the Hungry Choir children growled.

Another one paced away, but stopped at the edge of the diagram.  He turned to face Seth.

The sound of music rose.

“Don’t,” Brie said, quiet.  She reached out and touched the kid.  “Back.”

The kid flickered and disappeared.

Brie grabbed the girl that was facing Shellie, and that one disappeared as well.

“Why?” Zed asked.  “The barrier-”

Shellie shrugged.  “I see a big keep out sign and I get curious, sue me.  I’m good at ducking through barriers.”

“Enough,” Alexander said, angry.  He crossed the room, mindful of the chalk.  “Enough.  No.  You need to go and you need to leave this campus, before harm befalls you.  The safe passage Bristow guaranteed you is very thin at the moment.”

Avery watched Alexander walk past her, then Jessica moved, pushing Alexander, and striding forward.

“You would die if you tried,” Shellie said, rising her chin, staring down Jessica.

Jessica stopped.  Alexander stopped at her side and she backed away from him, with a fierceness like he’d burned her.

“Fuck you,” Jessica said, to Alexander.  “Fuck you and your stupid games and your rivalries.  This wasn’t my fight, and you’re trying to drag me into it.  Fuck you.”

Avery started to approach, watching the chalk even though she wasn’t sure if it mattered- Alexander might avoid stepping on chalk lines as a matter of habit.  Jessica glared at her as well.

“I had no intention of you getting involved or hurt because of this.”

“You like your complex games and rivalries, right?  You got me involved anyway, because you can’t keep your house in order,” Jessica said.  Her voice was hollow.  “Now what am I supposed to do?”

“I’m sorry, the ritual-”

“I’m not talking about the ritual!” Jessica raised her voice.  “I’m talking about wanting to hurt her, because I got as close as I’ve gotten in years and she took it away from me.  I want to hurt you, because you play these games and I suffer for it.  I can’t do either, because then one of you wins.  So I’m going.”

“If you go, he gets everything he wanted by sending Shellie to interfere.”

“Shut up.  I said I’m going,” she said, bending down to grab some of the items from the inner circle.

Avery edged closer, wanting to help, to reach out, and yet not knowing what to do.  On the far side of the room, Verona shook her head.

“Jessica,” Zed said.

“No.  You told me I could trust Alexander with this.  You were wrong, Zed.”

“I know.  But I want to tell you-”

“I don’t want to hear what you have to say.”

“The echo was intact, we learned that, at least,” Zed said.

“Shut up.”

“Coherent, he came from the northeast.”

“Shut up!” she shouted.

He pressed on.  “He came from the northeast.  Whatever else happens, I know you’re going to keep looking.  He’s in good shape, as echoes go.  The echo didn’t seem to break up much when the image did.”

“Roughly two hundred miles northeast,” Eloise said.  “He was a bit sticky as he pulled away.  I’m betting it’s a minor, incidental hallow.”

Jessica didn’t say another word, striding from the room.

“Just acknowledge us for one second?” Zed raised his voice.  “Listen?  You’ll be glad you did when-”

But Jessica was gone.

“She fought so hard for every small lead, and we got some big ones.  I know it sucks to get close,” Zed said, shaking his head.

“It’s not about that,” Lucy said.  “About the leads or getting close.”

“You don’t understand,” Zed said.  “Everything has been about the leads and getting close, these past few years, when it comes to Jessica.”

“I don’t know her enough to say,” Lucy said, quiet.  “But I do know that sometimes it’s more about proving to yourself that you can count on someone.  Even if that means making herself that someone for her cousin.”

There was a loud clearing of a throat.

“Well,” Shellie said.  “Hate to interrupt, but you guys seem like the sort to talk forever and I actually did slip in here to pass on a message.”

“I think you’ve delivered an adequate message, Ms. Alitzer,” Alexander said.

“Nah,” Shellie said.  She pushed past Brie, stepping into the puddle and tracking the wet across the chalk.  “I’d take my shoes off before entering, but fuck niceties, right?”

Avery tensed as Shellie got closer.

“We saved your brother,” Avery said.

“Was that you?  Huh, small world.  Now get out of my way.”

“Ms. Kelly?” Alexander called out.  “Get out of her way.”

Avery grit her teeth, lips pressed together.  To her right, Lucy looked ready to spring to action.  Verona was off to the right, a spell card in hand.

“Me?” Nicolette asked.

Avery turned.  Shellie moved, pushing her aside, and Avery landed on the ground.  Snowdrop almost fell from her perch.

Nicolette backed up to the wall, drawing a feather from a back pocket as Shellie got close.

Shellie leaned in close, whispering.

Avery watched as Nicolette’s wariness gave way to a series of emotions.  Eyebrows up, eyes widening.  Then eyebrows down, tongue wetting her lips, eyes focused on something, like she was deep in thought.  Concern.

“Are you done?” Alexander asked, curt.

“I’m done, yes.”

“Then leave.  And tell Lawrence I want to talk to him.”

“He said you would want to, after.  Not to worry.  He’ll meet you at his convenience tonight.  His car is still in the garage, you see.  It was a cute trick.”

Alexander didn’t respond.

Shellie walked out, casual, feet splashing in the puddle of juice.  On her way out, she kicked the little bit of wood that was propping the door open, and it swung closed.

Avery found herself moving, heading out the other door.  She looked back at Verona and Lucy, who followed quickly after.  Alexander raised his voice.

“Back me up?” she asked.

“Nah,” Snowdrop said.  The opossum hit the ground running.

“Slow down!” Lucy called out.

Avery pulled the charm from her bracelet.  Hockey stick, thoroughly enchanted.

She rounded the corner, saw Shellie, and called out.  “Hey!”

Shellie smiled, turning.  Her thumbs were hooked into the belt loops she’d cut into her own skin.

“Why!?” Avery asked.  “Why?  Why, when things are going well for someone who needs it, would you do something like that?”

Snowdrop, fork in hand, caught up, then immediately started circling around to flank Shellie.

“I don’t like practice much, I guess.  Creeps me out,” Shellie said.

“We helped Daniel, as best as we could.  We were kind to him, really kind considering the circumstances.  He seemed to like us.  We helped keep the Faerie from taking him.  Do you not like him?”

“I’d do just about anything for him,” Shellie said.  “He’s a sweetheart.”

“Then why?  Why hurt us, why help Bristow, when he put Daniel in such a dangerous situation?”

“Avery!” Lucy called out.

Lucy had caught up.  Verona was right behind her.

“Then there were two little witches,” Shellie said, eyes narrowing.  “I don’t care about you one way or the other.”

“Why hurt Jessica?  Has she done anything to you?”

“Nope.  Don’t know her.  Maybe the melodrama of that moment rankled a bit for me,” Shellie said.

“Do you have any humanity at all?”

Shellie’s eyes widened, her hand going to her mouth and then her heart in mock shock.  “If you see any, can you let me know?  I’ve got some freshly sharpened blades, I’ll cut it right out.”

“It’s not worth it, Avery,” Lucy said.

“Then what is?” Avery asked.  “There’s so much awfulness in the practice.  So many monsters, so many scary things.  We can’t have one nice thing?  One reunion?  One fix?”

“Little girls with hockey sticks,” Shellie whispered, hand cupped by her mouth.  “They’re the scariest thing out there.”

“She got a lead, Ave,” Lucy said.  “A huge disappointment, in the Blue Heron Institute, and disappointment in herself, for letting herself buy into this a bit, but Jessica got a lead.  It’s not a total wash.”

Verona had caught up and Avery hadn’t noticed.  Verona paced, silent.

Avery looked back, and saw that most of the others had emerged, and were staying at a distance.

“I don’t understand it,” Avery said, voice tight.  “It’s senseless.”

“It makes a lot of sense.”

Avery turned, looking.  It was Verona who’d just said that.

“You can go, Shellie,” Verona said.

“Of course I can.  I was just going to wait and see if the red haired one was going to try something.”

“She’s not, not here and now, unless you force it, I swear it,” Verona said.

Avery looked at her friend, scandalized.

“Don’t make me a liar,” Verona said.  “What you want?  I don’t think this is it.”

Avery relented, though she didn’t relax.  She let the hockey stick fall to the grass.

Shellie sniffed, then walked off.

“You said it makes sense?” Lucy asked.

“She’s a counter to Faerie,” Verona said.

“I don’t- oh,” Lucy said.

Avery, tense, watched the Bright-Eyed woman leave.

Snowdrop came to her, and hugged her.  Avery, otherwise motionless, hugged Snowdrop’s head to her chest.

“Faerie make deals,” Verona said.  “They’re really, really, really good at it, slipping in tricks in wording, baiting you in, messing with you, whatever else.  Shellie and people like her counter Faerie.”

“Makes more sense now, how the file on her said they don’t live long,” Lucy said.

“She seems like she changed her mindset.  Maybe on purpose, retraining her brain.  Maybe automatically, being Bright-Eyed.  Made herself literally impossible to deal with.  Unwilling to be reasonable or equitable or fair, unwilling to stick to deals, unwilling to see other points of view.”

“Except looking after Daniel,” Avery said, rounding out the thought.  “And following Bristow, I guess.”

She disengaged from Snowdrop, picked up her hockey stick, and shrunk it down to a charm again.

She turned around, one hand on Snowdrop’s shoulder.

The people who had been there for the ritual had gathered together.  Some were talking.  But Nicolette hung back, at the rear of the group.  Her eyes on them.

“What did she say to Nicolette?” Avery asked.

“I don’t know,” Lucy said.

Even Zed looked pissed, and Zed had been pretty casual and offhanded about summoning static Others and even dealing with John or the damage to his car.  Relatively speaking.  Alexander’s smiling facade had cracked.  His apprentices remained close to him.  A hundred feet away, they talked among themselves.

“It’s too tempting to go to Belanger,” Lucy murmured, quiet.  “If we go, we talk about feelings, share info, make sense of the situation.  But I feel like we end up Alexander’s pawns in this shitty, shitty fight.”

“Kinda, yeah,” Verona said.

“Ave?” Lucy asked.

Avery shook her head.  It was stupid when Jessica had never reciprocated, but Jessica had been cool, and there had been enough parallels, and the ritual had been good.  A reunion.  A family reconnected.

“Do you want dinner?” Lucy asked.

“I guess,” Avery said.  “But if I see Shellie I feel like I’ll get mad again.”

“We’ll deal with it when that happens,” Verona said.

Avery nodded.

This was a declaration of war, Avery thought.  The Kennet Others are already holding down the line back home.  We can’t afford to get wrapped up in this too.

She clipped the little hockey stick charm to her charm bracelet, then rotated it, so it wasn’t in easy reach.

[6.5 Spoilers] Demesnes Text

Part I:

1. A Place of Power; Introduction
2. Schoolhouses; Practices and the Place of Power
3. A Hut on Chicken Legs; Placement, Realms, and Routing
4. Furnishings; The Things Found Within

Part II:

5. In Power; Exercising and Translating Power
6. Permission to Enter; Guests, Long-Term Residents, Familiars
7. Preparations; Staging, Expectations
8. The Ritual; Making the Claim

Part III:

9.    First Steps in One’s Place of Power
10.  Advanced Demesne Practices
11.  Closing Thoughts
12.  Appendix


Chapter One: A Place of Power

The Demesne, sometimes called the Demesnes, particularly if there are multiple spaces or dimensions to it, is the practitioner’s place of power.

It is hard to pin down when and where the Demesne originated, not because of any lack of records, but because the demesne can be as flexible as the practitioner, and the lines between the establishment of sanctuary, the elaborations on sanctuary, and the origination of the Demesne as a practice are not clear ones.

The Demesne is a place declared by the practitioner, and serves as a place for one’s own comfort and security, convenience, and the myriad expressions of power.  The chapters of this text explore these ideas, the ritual, and the effective use of the Demesne.

Assume, unless stated otherwise, that the Demesne is a challenge to penetrate.  Even a greater practitioner may find it difficult or impossible to intrude if a practitioner of the lowest tier is within.  The space is the practitioner’s in every respect, with permission to enter contingent on their permission.  Within, matter may be shaped, power transformed or put to efficient use, and spaces demarcated for specific uses.  The practitioner can be considered an unchallenged lesser deity within their place of power, with control over contents, rules, and boundaries within the space, although the strictures and nature of the original space will impact the limits and bounds, as will the nature of the practitioner themselves.

These limitations are flexible ones, and investment of time, attention, and power will allow a practitioner to grow the effective space or challenge its rules more and more with time.  This grows more difficult as the limits are tested, and thus an expenditure of power might expand a space by twenty percent with the first instance, fifteen with the next, and ten the next, diminishing each time until it is fruitless.  This expenditure is easy and natural, and may be directed at other functions, aspects of the space, or qualities of the space, though the nature of the original space will constrain all things, not only dimension.

The ritual places a heavy emphasis on claiming one space, to a degree above and beyond even the influence of common spirits, who must be given permission to enter.  The ritual, explained in some depth in a future chapter, requires a challenge to establish this claim against all who would take it.  Of the three major rituals common to western practice, it is the most difficult, and the most rewarding.

Note, however, that depending on how the Demesne is cultivated, this personal place may develop in a variety of ways.  Virtually every statement and rule listed within this text may be challenged, but one should expect that this challenge has its own cost and weakens the end result.  Because the bones of the demesne ritual are so malleable, we draw on a variety of examples to illustrate, all real-life cases, some with names changed and details slightly altered.


Chapter Two: Schoolhouses

The Demesne is a reflection of the practitioner, and few things impact the practitioner more than the practice.  Arguments could be made for the things that impact the man having greater weight, but here we primarily focus on the arts that man wields and the impact on their realm.

With this in mind, the innumerable schools of practice have their impacts on the Demesne, the initial steps, and the end result, and we begin with this.  This also provides us with a foundation we can use to illustrate the variety of possibilities.

Keep in mind that any practice will draw on aspects of multiple schools.

The Schools Excorporate

In the Schools Excorporate, also known as conjuration schools, we count those practices which deal in those forces both flighty and fundamental, which may be banished, brought, wrought, and bound most easily.  The elementalist, shamanism, echoist, necromancer, and evangelist schools can be counted in this number, all with some ready ability to translate power to the apparent Other or that Other’s actions.

Vlatka is an Archaic Echoist, a wide-track specialist who has dedicated decades to finding, collecting, deciphering, and studying those echoes of events in early civilization, when Others held more power.  She has a Demesne she has cultivated since she was young, and it provides the structure for her to place echoes within.  The area is akin to a museum, hermetically sealed and secure, but it holds the scenes as far as she has been able to piece them together.

Judi is an Ardorous practitioner, an incarnate practitioner who collects and wields the diffuse Others of attraction, obsession, love, sex, and physicality, transforming certain Others into those of an Ardorous type.  Her Demesne is a home for her Others to reside in when she doesn’t require them.

The greatest difficulties for these practices are the point of expenditure where they must pay the cost of bringing their creations and effects through, and the relative fragility of their creations and effects, with a propensity toward taint and outside influence.  These may be mediated with the practice.

Vlatka has finished enough of one scene that she can create a greater echo, the shadow of a Titan of ancient times.  The individual components of this greater conjuration are no less than a thousand echoes that were directly in the Titan’s vicinity or resulted from the wake of its movements.  In virtually any other environment, so many echoes would be prone to being tainted.  Within this cultivated Demesne, they are free of that influence.  Moreover, the great ritual to bring the Titan’s echo forth is one that is exceedingly fragile and prone to being tainted in itself.  Here, however, though her realm is a wide pool of black sand punctuated by constructions of white marble, not even a speck of sand will land across the diagram as she works on it.  The Titan’s echo can be brought forth without interruption or difficulty, and it can be kept within by those same measures.

Judi’s situation has changed, as she establishes an ardous pentad that links her to four other practitioners and Others.  As one member of their network finds themselves under threat, Judi wishes to contribute resources and help protect the others, defying her normally conflict-averse nature.  To these ends, she modifies her Demesne, drawing out courses and connecting these courses to adornments she wears.  Her Others remain within her Demesnes as before, but some are kept on standby.  Calling them forth is made easier and less costly, as her Demesne now launches them forth.

The Schools of Contrivance

In schools of this heading, the practice is dependent or focused on the physical object, wielded, honed, or made the focus or endpoint of the practice itself.  Enchantment, collection, textual, some vodun and sympathetic practices can be counted in this broad category of schools, as may the practices of those chosen by a greater power, or those who negotiate with Others such as goblins or Faerie for magic items and tools.

Greene is a trophy hunter, unaware of the practice in large part for twenty years of hunting Others before chancing across the community, Awakening, and learning a small amount of practice to supplement the hunting.  For Greene, the Demesne ritual was the end, rather than the means, as Greene practices largely with the trophies collected from slain Others, such as the tooth of a Chupacabra, the eye of a Siren, and the fur of a Blight Hare.  Performing the ritual was a crude means of drawing the attention of an elusive quarry, and, indeed, every Other in the greater region.

Sebastián is a Complex practitioner who finds, creates or encourages the creation of Incarnate Spirits that are enriched by being set on the world, then collected and stored in cards.  For him, the Contrivance is the deck of custom-made cards, each card a binding for the specific Other, and the deck as a whole a battery for power he can gather, with the cards taking on color and additional detail as they divide up the power between them.  He finds he spends enough time in the Alcazar constructed of his deck that he decides to formalize the arrangement, creating a Demesne where the Alcazar is forever erected.

The focus of Contrivance practitioners is on the object, and the Demesne may act as an environment to work on that object, or it may provide alternate rules for effective handling of the object or associated practices.

Greene treats the Demesne as a secure storehouse for those items he is not using on a given hunt.  The Demesene becomes something of a workshop for refining objects, and Greene even invites some base Others in as workers to process and craft.  When he has power to spare, he adjusts the area, making time pass at a different rate, so these craftsmen might do eight days worth of work in a week.

The Complex practitioner Sebastián finds that the Demesne space is a refuge.  The contrived situations, the deck of volatile Others, and the number of outside parties who want the cards for themselves are a constant onslaught, and the Demesne is a contrast to that; a place of rest and a vault few can penetrate.  Because it is an Alcazar, he can spend this leisure time examining the deck for imperfections, taint, and influences, something he cannot do in the hectic day to day elsewhere, and he can remove any taint or alter any cards while within.  Rules are adjusted to put the specific requirements of each card on hold while Sebastián and the deck are within.  Later he expands this effect to ease the strict requirements for a time after leaving.

The Schools of Realm

Those schools of practice that dwell on realms are interested in travel and in places both mundane and esoteric.  Virtually all practices draw power from Other realms and Other influences, and the Realms practitioner often travels to or through these sources, such as the Scourge, the Fae Walker, the Warren Runner, and the Dreamer of Paths or Chaos Mage.  In other cases, they remain rooted, but bring importance to areas, such as the the macro-scale practitioner or Astrologer, the Technomancer, the Nomad Shaman, or the Draoidhe Caller.

Realms practices have some unique interactions with the Demesne, and as such, are given special focus in chapter three.  For the time being, we will save the examples for more discussion there, and simply state that any and all of these practices can have special applications or benefits from the Demesne.

The Schools of Relation

Relation practices are those which dwell on connection or the interaction of practitioner and another.  Practices of illusion, deception, misdirection, and those practices where the power is drawn from sources that must be negotiated with each time they are used will fall in this field.  The Oni and Faerie practices can be both, while Enchantresses and Enchantment may lean into the former, and Shamans or Finders the latter.

Darren is a dabbling Oni practitioner, bartering with those Others who eschewed label and sought to war against Practice itself.  Many Oni went out of their way to specifically attack, subvert or exploit the convention of Practice, and Darren barters with Oni for these techniques to supplement his general practice as an illusionist.  Sharp knives, in a sense, to wield in the fog.  He creates his Demesne as a place to practice and catalogue this knowledge, for it comes with strict rules.

Mimi is an enchantress who navigates a media-focused environment she does not wish to disclose.  Her day is busy and crowded with people, to the extent that she cannot find the time or space to practice.  Even bathroom stalls will have people in earshot.  Her practice is established in those few private moments, with rituals and rites that she can then coast on, making the social interactions of her day that much more fluid.  To better allow for these private moments, and to help freeze the escalating rent in an expensive city, she claims her apartment.

Relation practices are focused on other individuals and when taken to a Demesne, are almost always a place to invite Others to.  The space can be customized and part of that customization may be to make it more hospitable or comfortable.  In other cases, it may be a lens to work through.

Darren marks out a table, lit from an unseen source of light, surrounded by shadow, and the tableaus depicting the various arts he’s learned and gifts he’s been given, kept secret enough by the dark.  He makes the space one for Oni to be invited to, a difficult process when Oni are opposed to practice.  He makes the central space of the Demesne one that is for Oni, not himself, as something of a counter-Demesne or forfeited space.  With this, the invitations become easy.  With the right props, such as tea poured into a golden cup, the assumption of a visit from a specific Other is enough that they can easily travel to him, stepping out of the shadow and to the opposite end of the table.

Mimi regularly invites ambitious Faerie of the lowest caliber to her Demesne, making deals to ferry them into areas of a specific entertainment industry and its culture in exchange for the power to drive her enchantment.  Her career flourishes, until she finds herself hitting a wall with a particular individual she must impress.  She turns her Demesne into a lens, creating a facsimile of the woman as a statue, then placing small stolen and discarded objects of the individual near the statue to exaggerate the connection.  Tape to take the imprint of a lip from a coffee cup and give it to the statue, the scraped-off lubrication of the outside of a condom, and a pen picked up and forgotten.  All of these things focus that ambient and ‘coasting’ nature of her practice against one individual to better ensnare their attentions and respect.

The Schools of Lore

Schools of Lore dwell on collected and collecting information, on Sight, and the associated forms of awareness.  Augury, Heroic and Historic practices, Crossways practices, Alchemy, some Binding, and practices of the Devout can fall into this field.

Jie practices as a Binder, using information and secrets gathered about individuals to tie them up in connections or alter those connections.  He works as a life-binder, using his everyday profession to get detailed information about families, family histories, businesses, and delves into the wealth of social media of everyone still alive to decipher a family, codify it into a ritual space, and then weaves customers into that space.  For the very highest price, a man may be a stranger one day and a familiar and loved natural born son the next.  Most of his contracts ensure and compel arranged marriages.  He creates his Demesne as a system to visually map out the relationships and webs of any given project that he is working on.

Milen is an Alchemist, devising and refining esoteric medicine for mental illness.  Much of her and her husband’s time is spent on ensuring the next batch of youth potion, to turn back the clock and keep her at a young age, repeatedly postponing the day she biologically turns nineteen and three months old and a cavalcade of mental health issues, including schizophrenia and major depressive disorder, take hold.  Each time the potion is brewed, however, the regression in age is less pronounced, the ingredients must be purer, rarer, and thus more expensive and she becomes a little less human and a bit more Other.  The Demesne is established as a place where Time will have less of a grip on her, and a place with a window peering out on the world, letting them better locate ingredients.

The weaknesses inherent in Lore practices are often relatively straightforward, with a high initial knowledge base required, the years required for many of the workings, and less applicability to combat and direct confrontation.  These things, however, are not easily amended by the Demesne, and so the Lore practices often lean more heavily in the direction of executing the strengths of the practice more effectively.

Jie has his Demesne start speaking to him, and turns it into an assistant, running the data and organizing things so he is more free to work on the less dreary details.  As part of a critical project for a key individual, he captures reflections of the various members of one family, brings them to the Demesne, and then interrogates those vestiges thoroughly for details to further the project.  Once used up, the consciousnesses and remains of the vestiges are fed to the Demesne to advance its own awareness and capacity.

Milen, in a desperate attempt to gather information, turns the searching eye of the Demesne into a spying one, looking over the shoulders of other Alchemists and associated fields.  A prying look into a powerful family’s search, however, sees some retaliatory practice driven to the Demesne’s heart, blinding the eye and weakening the effects of the Demesne, with some rebound and lingering poison.  Milen chose to stay within.  Soon after that day, according to Milen’s husband, the door to the Demesne ceased to open.

The Schools of Security

Those schools of practice that deal in warding off harm are second only to the Realms practices in their relationship to the Demesne.  These means of warding off harm can vary from the martial to the passive, deflection to avoiding the circumstances or consequence of harm entirely.  Practices of warding; rhythm, chant, and mantra mages; many Incarnate practices, and the practices focusing on karmic law fall into this category.

Kaja practices warding, carrying on a family tradition of forestalling a Great Spirit of Economic Decline from washing over her area.  This same spirit has consumed many of the other villages along the same coastline, exaggerated in part by the continual deflection from the one location, but through her efforts her town continues to exist.  Much of what she does is rooted in history, creating a generations-long pattern that grows in strength roughly proportionate to the Great Spirit’s rising strength as it is rebuffed time and again.  The decline is inevitable, and at this stage, it promises to do untold harm once it finds its footing.  Her Demesne, claimed while the Great Spirit is otherwise occupied, is but one foothold and one territory it cannot pass, tethered to the quiet and unoccupied demesne of the deceased family members that served this duty before.

Claude is an Incarnate practitioner, addressing Vigor, an Incarnation subordinate to Nature, and to a lesser extent, War.  Tying himself to that pillar of human nature, he gains the ability to spread vigor and steal it, and protects himself and others by having Vigor’s influence wash over areas, deflecting and diminishing incoming events that would impact his own health and energy in any negative way.  He maintains some secondary relationships with Fertility and Integrity to extend his versatility.  However, every Incarnation is a double-edged sword, and comes with its drawbacks, unyielding expectations, and will often extend its influence to his enemies.  The Demesne, Claude reasons, is a place that is just for him, and he can enjoy the full benefits of the incarnations without worrying he will arm his enemies with the same.

The Demesne has its roots in Sanctuary, those spaces that man first was able to claim as safe against the Other, and through this link, much like what occurs with the Realms practices, covered in the next chapter, it affords certain benefits to the practitioner that grows the space.

As Kaja cultivates her Demesne, she ties it to her Self, and brings some of it with her wherever she goes.  Should she express her Self, she extends the influence.  As the Great Spirit draws near and the fishing in the Fjord starts to struggle, she lends her voice, her aid, and her character as a politician to the events, extends a degree of Sanctuary to the docks, and protects the space.  Lashing out offensively from the Umbra, she peels away the layers of warding and the customized rebukes she has given her Demesne, tying them to the offensive rebuke instead, and drives the Great Spirit away.  In both cases, these are acts that would not be nearly so easy without the easy connection between the Demesne’s sanctuary and the Self-as-Warden, if they were possible at all.

Claude’s cultivation of Fertility, to put it as succinctly as possible, led to a surge in new life in his area.  The Universe’s attempt at striking balance, however, saw one local ghoul turn into fifty, death as the inverse of that new life, but still using that same exaggerated fertility to spreading their nature and bringing others to that cusp of life and death both.  Forced to deal with the problem, he deals with the ghouls as best as he can, gaining some added protections as he brings the fight closer to his Demesne, as its Sanctuary extends out for him.  This protection only lasts as long as a greater Self, power, or claim to the area doesn’t override it, and the arrival of the original ghoul does so.  Claude keeps the heart of his power within the Demesne, and controls the ‘double edged sword’ by slamming the metaphorical door when he doesn’t benefit from it.

The Schools of Wages

The final school we will discuss here (though there are a variety of other ways of classifying practices by school, including combat practices, material, immaterial, and those focused on greater powers), the Schools of Wages are those practices that bear the highest costs or risks.  The practices of the Heartless, the Host, of Sacrifice and Blood, and those that channel power from sources that would devour them with but one mistake, such as the Harbinger or Cultist, fall within the scope of this category.

Roland mimes the Doppleganger, riding the fine line of identity and humanity to stalk and mirror individuals.  Feeding an insatiable hunger to replace an absent childhood, he mirrors young boys, stealing their faces, bodies, and memories, while they undergo a kind of warped puberty, adopting piecemeal qualities of a fifty year old man.  His Demesne is his sole place of residence for the latter stages of this process, allowing him to disconnect from the connections and realities of everyday life and better discard what remains.  The final stage of the process sees him take over the mind, shucking off much of his own awareness and memory, so he might be a boy in mind and heart as well.  As he leaves childhood behind and becomes a teenager, he regains his memories and awareness, rapidly ages to fifty, and begins anew.

Roux was a cultist, a devout practitioner specializing in tapping into greater powers who are not aware of her actions.  Pulling on the power of a nameless god bound to one of the great clockwork wheels of the universe, she drew too much attention, received his undivided attention for but a moment in time, and was pierced through and filled with his power, instead.  Now she is a Harbinger, a vessel and aperture for more power than her body could hope to bear, too full of it to practice much else, and a concept neighboring space and time but condemned to history now leaks out of her, reordering the world in a subtle storm around her.  She created her Demesne as a place this body and power does not war with the world, aligning the Demesne’s rules to that lost order of creation, and fuels a spiraling creation with small sapient life she rules over as a goddess, and finds her sanity in fleeting moments within, before the power compels her out and forward, to spread that bound god’s power and find a way to weaken its shackles.

The practices that touch on Wages are often strong, versatile, far-reaching, or cross into ground that many other practices cannot.  Some Demesnes may be one of the many ways that a practitioner of this stripe medicates, tempers, or defers the costs of their practice.  In other cases, the raw power that drives these practices may be put to work with a single added functionality, something that is harder or far lower in impact with other schools.

Roland does face a difficulty with his practice, and it is one that plagued him in the first century of his routine; when he takes the boy’s place, the boy takes his, including his ability to practice and much of his experience, with only personality differences, traits, and facets of appearance carrying over.  His efforts to create deathtraps only he could escape, enlist help to murder the fifty year old practitioner, and negotiate with the targets all had their points of failure.  To these ends, he used the Demesne as a thing tied to his Self, impossible to transfer.  Carrying out the process, he migrated to the boy’s location, put the boy in the Demesne, and kept the doors locked.  The man that had been his target would be kept within, to be devoured by the darkness that swelled as the Demesne fell into its cycle of sleeping, waiting for its master to return so it could wake and resume its part as part of his engine of stolen childhoods.  A large part of it becomes this efficient devouring, keeping the target within.

Roux has a long term goal with her role as a false goddess in her place of power.  Reigning over a miniature planet with a miniature civilization, she leverages her past experience as a cultist and begins to dialogue with the lowest and weakest of deities, beginning the process of using her Demesne to negotiate her way up a chain of relationships to where she can begin to talk or pass messages on to the deity that is feeding her power.  Her hope is to shut off that flow of power, which may kill her, but for the time being, she can use her Demesnes as a way of reaching out once in a good while, to make a request or change the nature of her storm.

As a closing thought, keep in mind that these functionalities are not, with the possible exception of Realm and Security, restricted to the school.  They may operate better with specific practices, but the Demesne as a space is readily molded, reflects the practitioner, not only the practice, and thus functions such as these are readily available.


Chapter Three: A Hut on Chicken Legs

The Demesne maintains an interesting place within the cosmology, as outlined in the text Kobold Koba’los, oft deemed one of the essential texts on the Goblin practices.  Translated:

The [Warren] realms distill the vulgarities of man in architecture and arrangement.  Yet when we take our place of power, we find it adjacent…

In the text Umbrage, on Scourges:

The Demesne forms an easy bridge between the fleeting world of man and our bent and churning dark at the heart of reality…

And, though the citations are abundant, we can finish our illustrations with a quote from the apocryphal Art Almighty:

…we contend the Manse [Demesne] is not only an art we may practise, but one we must.  It is proven and enshrined that the Manse stands above the Kingdom of Man and below the Kingdom of God.  To elevate a place to it is to raise ourselves and raise this world closer to Him…

The Demesne, paradoxically, is one fixed location in our reality, but a roaming place in our cosmology, capable of being adjacent or connected to any realm.

Those who dwell in the Realms practices will find this much to their advantage.  Ironically, though the Demesne is locked in place, those who travel gain many benefits, including an easy connection to return home with less impedance, easier flows and translations of power, and benefits specific to their practice.

Trinette is a technomancer, specializing in a film and video setup that allows her to take snapshots of areas and transpose them to new locations, dropping a room, corridor, or other environment into a location with a camera flash and extensive precautions.  She claims a Demesne in part to have a failsafe, a place to retreat to should something go wrong and she find herself in a situation such as a corridor with nothing to connect to on either end.  Should she make use of it in this way, she finds herself imprisoned within for as long as the Demesne takes to draw out a path between one point and a familiar place, sometimes days or weeks, but she can escape once that duration elapses.

Ivan is an Undercity Nomad.  Using shamanism, he bids the spirits of populated areas to come forth so he can communicate with them, and uses them to access a distillation of that place’s underbelly and dark mirror of its good aspects.  Through this, he enlists help, forms connections, and thrives as a career criminal.  To the innocent outsider, he appears to simply find the best of the worst people and enlist them for help, in record time.  His Demesne makes his movements more fluid and flexible; he has a means of accessing it, and with the right key and the right knock, any door without an active claim on it that isn’t being watched can be an entrypoint to his place of power, or an egress.

Titface is a Warrens Runner.  A goblin princess specializing in the exploration, mapping, and nuances of the Warrens, she created her Demesne as something unbounded.  Taking the largely unclaimed Warrens as hers, she leaves the Demesne undefended and free for others to take or alter as they see fit.  For the most part, the oldest parts of it crumble beneath the weight of vandalism and the attentions of bottom-tier goblins as she claims new territory, making it hers with ‘Titface’ insignia graffiti and the help of her ‘crowd’.  Her Demesne is fluid in a way a non-Realms practitioner could not manage, but the expansion of it is largely dependent on the existence, support, help, and goodwill of the crowd of goblins that follow her for her excellent parties and demeanor.  It dwindles when she stumbles on an ancient goblin and twenty of her ‘crowd’ die, and it grows when she does something sufficiently wild or reckless.

In each of these cases, the rules and default assumptions of the Demesne are looser.  It is, for Trinette, an escape hatch, always within reach but with its price of time.  For Ivan, it is a means of travel.  For Titface, it is something that moves, extending at the ‘head’ and crumbling at the tail.

None of these aspects are tied explicitly to their practices.  A walker of the Faerie realms could use the escape hatch, and a Finder could make their Demesne a perpetual additional room or space adjacent to whatever region of the Dream they are traveling, one they understand and have a connection to.

For other practitioners who have ties to places, their practice modifies those places.

Langley is a practitioner who focuses on rituals that permanently alter a place, largely focused on cleaning up those places that are unsalvageable or dangerous for the innocent.  The rituals require some extensive investment, and encapsulate an area, warding it off while severing connections, to effectively drop it from reality.  The Demesne is a kind of insurance, to guarantee that nothing too severe happens and nothing is lost.  Places ready to be ‘dropped’ are held in suspension, adjacent to the Demesne, for a limited time.  Langley and his family explore the locations as much as is possible with the inherent problems that caused it to be sequestered in the first place, hold to it in case some residual connection would see some linked people or hideaways who resisted evacuation dropped with the location, and then let it go.  The cost of holding onto a rural stretch of wilderness, abandoned mineshaft, or lost farmhouse is exorbitant, but it gets less expensive as the pattern and routine are established.

The practices that affect wide areas and regions, including Astrologers and Callers, can benefit from their own unique rules and relationships to the Demesne.  For Langley, the Demesne can reach out to adjacent areas and influence them.  For a Caller, it may be a way to transform the effect as a great power is called on to flood an area.

Many theories abound as to why the Realms tie into the Demesne, including the notion that practicality demanded it and exceptions found the rule, but the leading principle is the notion that the Demesne is, in brief, its own Realm, much as the Faerie or Abyss may be.  As a realm with a population of one, it is fluid, flexible, and easily adapted, moved here and there.

In any event, when these effects take hold, the claim one has over an area is exceedingly important.  Something as simple as an innocent with a deed to the property being impacted is a barrier to entry.  Nature has its own claimants, in beast and in the Others that may reside there.  Many of these effects, additional features of the Demesne, and the routes that may open up are often going to be rooted in lost, forgotten, and abandoned areas.  The nomad may well thread their way through the part of town where houses aren’t occupied and don’t sell, enter their Demesne, and then exit to a place so inhospitable that even the animals don’t dwell there.


Chapter Four: Furnishings

Within the Demesne, one wields power.  A primary expression of this power will be defining the space, and populating it with properties.  In this, we can discuss some of the nuances of the material, immaterial, and other schools not covered prior.

Objects brought from the outside will, unless sufficiently claimed by others or indicated as separate from the Demesne, be gradually absorbed into the space, as the place’s power saturates it.  Once saturation is complete, the object will be part of the Demesne, and may be hard to remove.

Many parallels can be drawn toward this saturation and the act of ‘gardening’ by allowing an object to reside within the Abyss or Faerie realms, and the effects are often similar to an object being given a great deal of focus from the practitioner’s Self.  Keep in mind, however, that these things are often tethered through the Demesne; one can imagine a string that reaches from object, loops through the Demesne, and then extends out to the practitioner.  Function, form, and effectiveness will be at least partially dependent on the proximity to the Demesne.

Most often, however, one will want to put a small amount of power into the Demesne to have the objects take shape.  This is initially a fragile process, discussed in more depth in chapter nine, but suffices to add basic features.  The nature of the power employed will determine a great deal about what comes about; visceral practices, Others, and realms fuel the tangible first with art coming second.  The immaterial may provide the artistic elements, or ambient changes such as mood, warmth, or weather.  Divine practices and those from greater powers are better for the changes to the rules, and for those who wish to create life, the divine breath is adept at doing so.

At the practitioner’s whim, things may be set to be devoured for their power, preserved, or altered.  Imagination, concentration, focus, and Self are the tools by which things are sculpted.

In the end, however, the end results may be as varied as a chair, a whispering wind, or a rule about decorum for those visiting, but all of these things are made of the same clay.  What begins as an unfurnished room in a house remains that unfurnished room, with something taken away and something added when it is shaped into a new thing.  Power, sometimes a vast quantity of power, is necessary to have any true influence over the space, adding to this initial stake and adding to the metaphorical lump of clay.

The Demesne is a lifetime commitment, and this investment is made over the lifetime.

Cutting Class – 6.6

Verona

Last Thursday: Demesnes Text


The summer rain came down as they were in the midst of dinner.  Half of the students fled inside, while the rest hurried to finish.

Verona hunched over her plate, feeling the cold droplets touching her back where her shirt didn’t extend far enough down her back and her overalls-dress didn’t have enough coverage.

They hadn’t talked much since the thing with Shellie.  Avery had gone for a walk to cool down with Lucy, and Verona had holed up in their room, taking notes and reading up.  The relative lack of conversation even after they’d reunited meant they’d made it further into their meals, and by unspoken agreement they shoveled the last few bites of food into their mouths rather than carry everything inside.

Pork tenderloin, stuffed with pesto and wrapped in bacon, grilled with wood fire, from the faint smokey taste to it.  When her dad did pork chops, they were usually dry enough she had to use applesauce or something, which made them clammy.  The vegetables here were grilled too, and they had life.

“Want me to take your glass?” Lucy asked, as she finished, standing from the bench.

Verona shook her head, finishing the last bites, then chasing them with a swig of water.

“I don’t have the appetite,” Avery said.  “Want to finish this, Leftover-vore?”

“Yeah,” Snowdrop said.

“Too bad,” Avery said.

They stacked up their dishes, glasses and salad bowls, and carried them over to the carts by the door, Lucy pulling her hood up.

Verona shivered, waiting impatiently as a pair of boys took too long to get through the door and water beaded her arms, legs, and lower back.

The humid gloom and the confines of the hallway were a bad mix with the way the students were.  The layout of the school didn’t really lend itself to being indoors and also being able to steer clear of the other students.  In the hallways, students were gathering in clusters that had to be navigated around, and sometimes the looks they shot at Verona, Avery, and Lucy weren’t friendly.  Or they looked like the type who might have a beef with a student.

The end of the hallway near all the storage rooms and stuff had students sitting in the hall.  As they walked by the library, Verona could see that students had taken up residence at tables, and there was a tension in there that was like what was in the hallway, if just a bit quieter.  The librarian Nina looked stressed, picking at her cuticles with her fingernails.

At the far end of the hall, some were hanging out in the student lounge, and others in the big classroom.  Only the senior students were really suppposed to go to the west hallway unless they were going to talk to the headmaster, so that was out.  Kitchen was out.

The babble of conversation changed all at once, as Mrs. Durocher stepped from the big classroom to the main hallway, in view of most of the student rooms and the cushy student lounge.  She walked down the hall, saying ‘hi’, apparently, to the occasional student.

As the babble resumed, it was more subdued.

“We’re going to our room?” Verona asked, realizing she wasn’t walking forward as fast, now that she was walking toward Durocher.

“I guess,” Lucy said.  “Unless you have other ideas?”

“Yeah,” Verona said.  “Unless, like, Ave mentioned wanting to go swimming.”

“It’s raining,” Avery said, raising an eyebrow.

Verona gave her a look.  “You’re going to get wet anyway.  It’s still warm out, and there’s probably less kids out.”

“Aw, but there’s less birds,” Snowdrop commented.  “Gotta love the birds, especially the big ones, they do that cool stuff with sudden movements and flying off in a way that totally makes sense.  I love it.”

“Less birds,” Verona said, seriously, to Avery.  “I guess it makes hunting harder.”

“And it keeps the bugs underground,” Snowdrop said.  “Yucky bugs.”

“I think I’ll pass,” Avery said.  “I mean, if we were already out there, or if we were camping, that’s one thing, but…”

“I think that’s weird,” Verona said.

“Something’s weird here,” Avery said.

“It ain’t me,” Snowdrop said.

“You had your thing you wanted to do?” Lucy asked.  “The Alcazar?”

Verona nodded.  “But I don’t know if the workshop is free.  I put our names on the sheet.”

“Let’s prep, at least,” Lucy said, opening the door to their room.

It felt weird to do it.  Like going to bed at six.  Which was weird because Verona spent a lot of her time in her room when she was home.  This was different because… because the world she wanted to participate in was out there, here.

“What’s the plan?” Avery asked, collapsing onto her bed, pulling her phone out in the same motion.

“You’ve got the book?” Lucy asked.

“Here,” Verona passed it to her from the bedside table.

Avery had to shield her face as Snowdrop threw herself onto the bed a second later, then used her elbow to nudge Snowdrop away as Snowdrop crawled across the bed, up to the pillow and the window.  It was gloomy outside, and the window was fogging a bit from the temperature changes.  Snowdrop breathed on it, then traced the outline of a figure outside in the condensation.

Verona walked over, leaning in, and cupping her hand over her forehead to block out the light so she could see.

Drowne, one of Reid Musser’s two familiars, was standing out there, taking in the rain. He was soaked through, wearing a black sweater and black slacks, his hair long, shaggy, and plastered to his head and shoulders the face behind the long black hair looking as though the flesh was being pulled back from the sides, like a plastic bag pulled against someone’s face.

Blackhorne was out there pacing near him.  Blackhorne was horned, with a curly mane of hair and a beard.  He was wearing a heavy coat even in the summer warmth, but the nature of his hair and coat didn’t seem to absorb the downpour.

Snowdrop changed from human to opossum, to get smaller fingers for more detailed drawing in the condensation.

“The Alcazar is a complex tool for any of the practices that use tools,” Lucy recited.  “It is, at the same time, a crude tool for the beginner who wishes to perform changes with the same care one might employ when swinging a hatchet, and a tool of nuance for the expert who seeks to work with more than mere stone and wood, but with the whispers the wood catches and the heart-impressions laid beneath stone.  These books are so long winded.”

“If you don’t like it, you should take it on yourself to do a book, plain and simple language.”

“My dad always complains about the recipes being buried behind people’s life stories,” Avery said.  “It’s sort of the same thing, right?  Like, I was looking at the Familiar text last night-”

Why?” Verona asked, sitting on the bed opposite Avery.  “What’s the point in you reading about familiars?”

“Go bite her, Snow,” Avery said.

Snowdrop abandoned the window-drawing and scampered across the bedside table, leaping onto the bed.  She mock-bit Verona’s neck.  Verona feigned thrashing and dying.

“I was looking and it’s like, ritual’s wayyyy at the back.  I just wanted to know what the materials and prerequisites were, in case we needed to start early.”

Lucy turned the page, reading carefully.  “Probably some dumb kids would do the ritual without thinking if you didn’t put a bunch of stuff in front of it.”

“Wouldn’t the really dumb kids just flip ahead anyway?  What are you really doing, except adding a few extra seconds of effort?” Verona asked.  She made a different face and contorted as Snowdrop repeatedly ‘bit’ her, touching teeth to flesh.  “Scroll to the end of the terms of service, kind of?”

“At least the reader is acknowledging they’re missing stuff if they flip ahead like that,” Lucy said.  “It makes it harder for them to be angry at the author, instead of being angry at themselves.  The introduction is saying that the difficulty posed by the ritual escalates as you try to do more dramatic stuff.  What are we trying to do?”

“If we did this, we’d be looking to make the photo into something we can use for materials, in making your implement,” Verona said.

“Something glass,” Avery said.  “Could we make the photo into a photo in a frame?  Then use the glass?”

“Book said maybe,” Verona said, as Snowdrop seized her ear.  “There’s a few other possibilities.”

Lucy adjusted her grip on the book, forearms across the pages, hands over the top end of it.  She frowned.  “How sure are you that you’re willing to give up these objects?”

“Do you not want us to?”

“I’m really touched that you’re offering.  And I like the idea of having you guys with me.  But…”

“But?” Verona asked.  She picked up a struggling, nipping Snowdrop, sitting up straight.

“Okay, let’s say we divide up the rituals.  We’re giving this one more ‘us’ weight, right?”

Verona nodded with some emphasis.

“Do we do that with demesne and familiar too?  And if so, how?”

Verona lowered Snowdrop to her lap.  “Well, putting aside some possibilities that are a bit touchy…”

“Touchy?” Lucy asked.

“You not being human anymore?” Avery asked, quiet.  She twisted around so her head was closer to Lucy as she lay on the bed, more able to face Verona.

“That, yeah.”

“I don’t- I don’t think it’s touchy, exactly,” Avery said, voice soft.

“Weird then, or sad, or- I know it bothers Lucy.”

“I don’t want you to change, like that,” Lucy said.  “You wouldn’t be you.”

“It’s so I can stay me that I’d want to do it, though,” Verona said.  “Nevermind.  It’s not the primary plan anymore.”

“I want you to trust us that we can help more than you trust that that would help,” Lucy said.

Verona nodded.  A second later, she jumped, nearly dumping Snowdrop out of her lap.  “Geez, Snow!”

“What did she do?” Avery asked.

“Tried to nip my thigh, and her whiskers tickled me, too.  Okay, enough.  Go bite Avery now.”

Snowdrop climbed out of her lap, then made halting progress climbing down the sheet that draped over the side of the bed, head pointing down as she climbed.  Verona put a hand on the sheet to keep Snowdrop’s weight from pulling it off the bed, which would have dropped Snowdrop face-down into the floor.

“So how do we balance it?” Avery asked.  “How do we do the familiar thing in a way where we’re all contributing?”

“We could work it into the ritual,” Lucy said.  “One person takes the familiar, the other two are like… ministers at the wedding, or something?  Handing off or giving permission?”

Avery raised her head up to watch Snowdrop as the opossum reached the floor, nails clicking on wood.  “It would be cool if, I dunno, if we tied things together so we can say, hey, Alpy, want to go be Verona’s sorta-familiar for a bit?  Or Lucy’s?”

“We’re tied together and we draw on a similar pool of power, right?” Verona asked.  “We don’t really know a lot about how that works, but I remember reading about something like it in the Famulus tome.  How things are shared.  One person can be depleted, then the others are drained.”

“And the Familiar would be something tied to that three-way pool?” Lucy asked.

Verona shrugged.  “Might make it easier.”

“We’d want someone all of us can connect with, then,” Avery said, smiling like she was up to some mischief.

Verona felt the mattress shift, and she jumped a bit.  The bed was breaking?

Snowdrop tackled her, human-size, and pinned her arms to her side as she bit into the softer part of Verona’s shoulder where it met her neck.

“You were supposed to bite Avery next, you little beast!”

“I have no loyalty!” Snowdrop shouted.  “Especially when it comes to someone as terrible and lame as Avery!”

“Did you crawl up between the bed and the wall?”

“Demesne is easier,” Avery said.  “I figure however we do it, we’re all getting an access pass and some ability to change it, right?”

“Oh yeah, anything else would feel weird,” Lucy said.

“We’d-” Verona started.  Snowdrop leaned on her, full-weight, and she collapsed onto the bed, Snowdrop pressing her down.  “Stop!”

“We’d have to pick a good place,” Avery said.  “Which is tricky.  Even if we wanted something more freeform, with the ability to get there from a lot of places, it’s still gotta be somewhere.  Right, Ronnie?  If I’m taking the familiar, you need to decide these things about the Demesne.”

“You-” Verona started.  Snowdrop grabbed the pillow and pressed it down over her head.

“Verona’s not saying no,” Avery said.  “That’s progress.”

Verona, unable to speak, settled for a gesture using her free hand, before she started tickling Snowdrop to get her to relent.

“How are you losing a fight against a five pound opossum?” Lucy asked.

“She’s human right now, and she’s goblin-trained!” Verona protested, as she got her head free.  “Wait, wait, wait, Snowdrop, wait.  Important!”

Snowdrop stopped, eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“We were talking about balance,” Verona said.  “Whether you become a familiar or not, it’s important to balance things between our group, like we balanced the Awakening ritual.  Focusing too much on me and Avery is unbalancing things with Lucy.  Really, I think you’re pretty much obligated to go bite Lucy and show her how someone can struggle when ambushed by an opossum.”

Snowdrop looked over at Lucy.

“It’s a good argument,” Avery said.

“Is it, though?” Lucy asked, making a face.

Snowdrop climbed off Verona.  She straightened herself out before facing Lucy.

“Counter-argument,” Lucy said, looking very serious.  She put her arms out.  “Pets are also a way of forming a bond and balancing things out.”

“Terrible argument,” Snowdrop said.  “Pets are annoying.  Scratches are even worse.”

“What about if I said I’d try to get that doll going again, too?” Lucy suggested, pointing to the shelf above Avery’s bed where the horrible doll was poised.

“You’re the second-worst human I’ve ever met,” Snowdrop said, sullen.

Lucy, arms still extended, gave them a shake.

Snowdrop approached, turned opossum, and settled in Lucy’s lap.

“Avery stole what I was going to say, about needing to position the Demesne.  But that has to wait until we’re back home, anyway,” Verona said.  “Question is… can we say, with reasonable confidence, that there are options we could explore?”

“Yes,” Avery answered.  She looked at Lucy.  “Right?”

“Right, sure.”

“Then are we cool going forward with this?  Using items personal to us to help fabricate your implement?  Then we shore up the other things in some way later?  Figure that out when we get to it?”

Lucy moved her head around in about five different ways and directions as she mulled it over, settling on a nod.

“Yes?” Verona asked Avery.

“Cool.”

“Cool,” Verona said.  “Then back to the alcazar.  Such a cool word.”

Avery motioned for the book, which Lucy couldn’t even hold while scratching Snowdrop, so Lucy handed it over.

“I want to ask stuff,” Lucy said.  “Asking the teachers some of this risks giving stuff away.”

Lucy leaned forward, fingernails scratching Snowdrop, and looked at the markings they’d put on the floor and around the light fixture, warding off the evil eye and the various forms of Augury and connections.

“Contacting Miss is tricky,” Avery said.  “I got the impression it was a bit of a setback for her, getting dragged out and then rebounding back to where she was.  I wouldn’t want to make it a regular thing.  Emergency thing.”

“Charles?” Verona asked.

Lucy made a face.

“He knows stuff.”

“I’m not even sure he has a working phone.  And I don’t want to.”

“Fair,” Verona conceded.

“Matthew and Edith?” Avery asked.

Lucy considered, then nodded.

She dialed.  “Putting it on speaker.”

The phone rang.

The ringing aborted with a fritzing crackle.

“That’s… that’s pretty alarming,” Lucy said.

“We have enemies here,” Avery said.

“We do, but how did they know we were calling?  We used protections to block their view of this room.”

“Some of those enemies are really good,” Avery said.

Lucy tried again.  The phone rang.

“I hope they’re okay,” Avery said.  “Things were bad when we left.”

“I think someone would have let us know if they weren’t,” Lucy said.

“Hello?”  Matthew’s voice came through on the phone, but it crackled and was distorted.

“Matthew, hey,” Lucy said.

“I imagine it’s you three,” Matthew said.  “Is everything alright?  Something’s interfering.  I can’t hear you.”

Verona sat up straight, then hopped off the bed.

“Does it help if I speak clearly?” Lucy asked, louder.

Chalk, chalk chalk chalk…

Lucy used the chalk.  It was by Lucy’s stuff.

Verona dropped to her knees on the floor, then began scribbling to modify the diagram they’d painted on the floor.  She had to think back to what they did when they’d reached out to her dad, bypassing the connection blocks.

In this case, though, they’d made the entire room a connection block.

Exception.  Specify date, time, and place… name…

“Trying again,” Lucy said, watching Verona work.

“Better.”

Verona finished with a dramatic strike of chalk against the floor.

“And now?”

“I can hear you.  Are you okay?”

“We’re managing.  Someone we liked had a bad day, so we’re in a funk, I think…”

Avery nodded.  Verona followed suit.

“…but we’re managing.  Had some practice questions.  But are you okay?”

“Edith’s in a bit of a funk, too, but it’s for such silly reasons that the mood is relatively good.  We had a very full day, and things aren’t quiet yet, but something resembling peace and equilibrium are…”

“We can see the way to get there,” Edith filled in, sounding like she was a few steps away from the phone.

“Why the funk, Edith?” Avery asked.

“Ugh,” Edith said.

“We had a big dinner planned using the barbecue pit outside, then the weather forced us to abort.  We had to put it all into containers for another night and do a pasta dinner instead.”

“You like your barbecue, huh?” Verona asked, sitting on the bed again.

“Edith, the body, needs rest to recuperate.  I like my big fires, and they serve the same purpose for me.”

“I took the day off work again,” Matthew said.  “We have the savings to coast through a bad patch, and this counts.  Spent the day organizing, had Others in our house for about nine straight hours.  That Other you liked was there, Verona.  Tashlit.”

“Her name’s Tashlit?”

“She doesn’t talk or write, so communication’s tough, but Alpeana and her get along and Alpeana translated some of it from dreams and some questioning.  Sounds like an Other of divine lineage.  Complicated.”

“Too complicated for a phone call?” Verona asked.

Matthew answered, “Pre-biblical king offended a god by refusing to let them marry his eldest daughter, so the god threatened the daughter’s well being.  King dressed up his youngest daughter to look like the eldest, god transformed the youngest daughter, King got his big a-ha moment, do you really deserve her enough to marry her if you can’t recognize her?  The god was forced to concede, king got wealth and riches, and his eldest daughter eventually married another King.”

“And the youngest daughter?” Avery asked.

“Apparently that wasn’t undone.  She was made Other by the transformation, shouted epithets at her father over his treatment of her, and was thrown in the deepest, darkest hole they could find.  She lurked there, cursed to bear a monstrous enemy of her countrymen from her flesh every time word, water, or stone passed from her.”

“Water and stone?” Lucy asked.

“If she spoke, urinated, or defecated, she also had an Other tear itself free of her,” Edith interjected.

“Ohhh.  Wow.  That poor woman,” Avery said.

“If it’s any consolation, we’re fairly certain that kingdom and nation no longer exist.  I do believe the Others did their work in the end.”

“That’s not really a consolation at all,” Avery said, frowning.

“If there’s no country anymore, do the monsters at least stop sprouting from her?” Verona asked.

“We can assume so,” Matthew said.  “One of the Others, a many-eyed serpent capable of swallowing ships, had its mind exchanged with that of a young lady of high standing.  There’s a whole other story there and even if I’ve spent enough time around Alpeana to follow what she’s saying, it gets worse when she’s tired, worse when she’s excited, and it was a very long tale at the end of a long and bloody day.  I didn’t have the capacity to take it all in.”

Edith chimed in.  “I would simplify it and explain it away as, well, sometimes Sleeping Beauty doesn’t get woken up by the prince.”

“A… very enterprising laborer figured it out and tried three times to prove his love for that lady.  Tashlit and her older sister came about from two of those, uh, tries.”

“What.” Lucy said, more statement than question.  To Verona, she asked, “Just what is she again?”

“She’s an Other with a neat aesthetic and a great backstory,” Verona said, smiling.

“Uh huh.”

“So she’s really old then?” Verona asked.

“Old?” Matthew asked.  “No.”

“No?”

“No, her mother is, but she’s seventeen or so.  Hatched from an egg, grew up human with only minor weirdness, until, well, she came of age, essentially.  She seems to take it in stride.”

“This sea serpent and laborer thing happened recently?  There are real sea serpents?” Lucy asked.

Matthew answered, “As with many things Other, you have to travel a ways off the beaten track.  A lot of the time, it’s not enough to just go to a faraway place, but you have to reach a faraway place by an uncommon manner of travel.  There are some shores that you can only reach if a storm blows you there.”

“Knotted places?  Crossways places?” Lucy asked.

“That’s one scenario, yes,” Matthew said.  “You are getting an education.  That’s not the worst thing.”

“Speaking of.  Can we ask some questions?  Some stuff’s tough to run by the teachers here.”

“Ask.”

“Alcazar.  Familiar with that?”

“No,” Edith said.

Matthew answered, “I am, but that’s only where you’d be turning yourself into one.  And that’s in a book my dad had me read more than half my lifetime ago.  I’d think guidelines are similar.”

“We read the book.  Verona and Avery want to treat Avery’s photograph from the awakening ritual to turn it into something else, so we can use it to make my implement.”

“Is Verona contributing too?”

“Yes,” Lucy and Verona said at the same time.

“With something of equivalent value?”

“My scissors,” Verona said.

“Good.  Okay.  Book should have covered something like how, when you’re inside, you need to be very careful what you say or do.  Even small actions and sentences will leave their impressions.  If this a gift is for Lucy, then be nice and be Lucy-positive.”

Verona nodded.  “Cool, alright, book did say something like that, but not in that context.”

“The more of a change you’re doing, the more it’s going to fight you.  You’re inside a house and you’ll be rearranging where the rooms are, the walls, some are going to be load-bearing.”

“What do we do about that?” Lucy asked.

“Standard rules.  A lot of that is going to be metaphor for spirits transforming, or flooding in, or washing out.  Picture being in a spaceship and someone puts a hole in the hull, or you’re in a submarine, same scenario.  Standard measures for dealing with spirits work.  Barriers, diagrams.  Reinforce before you undertake anything big.”

“Circles and lines?”

“Yes.  What does the book say about means of escape if things go poorly?”

“There are instructions on a circle we can put inside a paper.  It makes a door.”

“Have multiple.”

“There are also some papers for containing and moving certain objects or aspects of objects.”

“Bring more than you need.  I never did that ritual, but I know my father did, and he explained it.  I was young and too stupid to listen as closely as I could have, but I remember it was tough for him.  He had to face his demons, looking inward, and he had a lot.  Even in the easiest, most mundane case, I think the regret of not having enough is far, far more than any regret of spending the time to prepare more papers.”

“Matthew’s the type of guy who brings three extra fishing rods when he drags me out to the lake,” Edith said.  “I don’t even really fish.  I watch him and enjoy the sun.”

“And fuss over the campfire,” Matthew said.

“I’m really glad you two are managing okay,” Lucy said.  “And Kennet’s still standing, apparently.”

“It’s been hard,” Matthew said.

“I won’t lie,” Edith said.  “I almost cried when I didn’t get my dinner tonight, and if I’d started crying I can see myself sobbing hysterically.”

“You really like barbecue,” Verona remarked.

Avery kicked out in the direction of Verona’s knees, Verona moved her leg to avoid it.

“It’s all I was looking forward to over the past few days, we barely had any time to ourselves.  We’re spent, and when you’re that spent, it doesn’t take much to make you break down.”

“Ah.”  Verona digested that.  “Sorry.  Yeah, I was kinda at that same point, toward the end of the night we were there.  I get it.”

“Look after Edith, will you, Matthew?  And yourself?” Lucy asked.

“That’s the plan.  About your Alcazar.  Who’s going in?”

“We were thinking us four, or maybe us three, if Snowdrop might unbalance us.”

“You should see about getting someone to stand guard.  While you’re inside the Alcazar, you’re not especially aware of the world outside.  You’re vulnerable from the item, but also if someone on the outside happened to decide to tear the photograph while you’re inside it…”

“Bad,” Avery said.

“Yes.  Bad.”

“Someone messed with a ritual in progress earlier today,” Lucy said.  “It wouldn’t be too surprising if someone did the same to us.”

Matthew made a ‘hmmm’ sound, then went on to say, “I don’t know that I would rely on the practitioners there.  Have you befriended any Others?”

“No,” Snowdrop said.  “Nobody.”

“Goblin riff-raff of Cherrypop tier might not be the best guardians for a sensitive ritual,” Avery said.

“I wish I was better equipped to help,” Matthew said.  “It makes some of the other Others uneasy, here, but I don’t personally see much wrong with binding and using the more mindless Others, if you need protection in a situation like this.  But if you don’t have any and I can’t send you any…”

“Charles?” Lucy asked.

“Unfortunately no.”

“We’ll try to figure something out,” Lucy said.  “Thanks.”

“While we have you on the phone,” Verona said, “We’re considering the other key rituals, besides implement.”

“Alpeana’s happy to work with any of you three, if that’s your inclination.”

“Wow,” Verona said, eyes widening.  “Are we that much of a broken-”

“Yes,” Lucy said.

“-record?”

“Yes,” Lucy said.  “Very yes.  Oh my god yes.  Yes.”

“I think maybe,” Avery whispered to Verona.

Verona made a so-so gesture, then said, “I was going to ask about the demesne.”

“What about it?”

“Any objections?  And do you know of any spaces that are in Kennet, but not already owned?”

“In the modern world, that gets tricky,” Matthew said.  “If it’s not the province of the city, it’s often Parks Canada.  That’s a hard one.  Normally a practitioner gets around it by owning the space they claim.”

“I don’t think we’d want to use our parents’ homes.”

“You’d need the permission of your parents, because their right to the space exceeds yours.”

“We’d definitely not want to use our parents’ houses,” Verona said.

“For the challenge,” Edith said, “the ten new Others in Kennet, not counting the goblins, who are being treated as one entity, are being given limited vote and the expectation they’ll obey if our core group of Others give them instructions.  They get one vote, which they work out among themselves, and Tashlit brings it to us.  But we’d ensure the Demesne ritual goes as unchallenged as possible.  We’d fight alongside you against anyone who slipped the perimeter and questioned you.”

“How big exactly a space are we talking?” Lucy asked.

“A lot depends on what we could get, in the way of property the government doesn’t have a claim to,” Matthew said.

“The book suggested one room was pretty normal.  A handful of rooms if you’re really good.”

Matthew said, “My instinct is that we could get an empty lot or a foreclosed house.  Empty lots here can go for thirty to ninety thousand dollars, depending on how close we are to the city center.”

“I don’t think we have five hundred dollars, let alone that much,” Lucy said.

“It would be a gift from us to you.  Edith is nodding like she agrees.”

“We’ve had our reservations in the past, but connecting you to Kennet and making you stronger is a good thing,” Edith said.  “We don’t have a lot of money, particularly if we keep missing work like we have been this week, but we have some.”

“That’s a lot of money, though,” Lucy said.

“Our-” Matthew started.  “Our unique life circumstances, let’s say, they make for a unique long-term financial situation.  Let’s leave it at that for now, and if you want to discuss it further I’ll discuss it with you three at a later date.  For now, I’ll look into it.”

“It’s worth it,” Edith told them, her voice slightly muffled, like she had changed position to lie down or hug Matthew.

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “Okay, thank you.”

“Anything else?”

“Tell the Others we say hi?” Avery asked.

“I will.  Be safe.”

“You too,” Lucy said.

She hung up.

“They’re just giving us a property?” Avery asked.

“Unique financial situation,” Lucy said.  “No kids?”

“And they maybe don’t expect Edith to live to the point she needs to retire,” Verona said.  “The vibe I get is that the Doom’s going to escape eventually.”

“That’s really freaking grim,” Avery said.

“I think some Others live a crazy long time, like Alpeana or Tashlit’s sea serpent mom,” Verona thought aloud.  “And others don’t last long at all.  Only rule seems to be that they don’t get ordinary human lifespans.”

“Hey,” Avery said.  She looked up in Lucy’s direction.  “Can I have my opossum to hug?”

Lucy leaned out of her chair, handing Snowdrop over.  Avery handed the book on Alcazars over to Lucy, as part of the same exchange.

For a short bit, they didn’t really talk.  The rain drummed against the window.

Verona looked down at the diagram on the floor.  “We’ll need to tweak this so we can get incoming calls from them.  It’d be bad if there was another emergency.”

“True,” Lucy said.  “Good thinking.”

“Could that be why the thing from Sheridan isn’t coming through?” Avery asked.  “Except I’ve been outside of the room more than I’ve been in it.”

“Maybe she tried?” Verona asked.

Avery stood, holding Snowdrop against her chest with one hand, phone in the other, and got the door open, striding out into the hallway.  She stood out there, her screen bright.

“Maybe call her?” Lucy asked.

Avery walked back inside the room.  Verona knelt down and began tweaking the diagram.  They’d painted it onto the wood of floor and ceiling, and what she was doing in chalk would need to be painted over again.  She began to make alterations, for the reception of calls.  A select few names.  They had to be careful about the connection blocker, or their parents would start connecting the dots and start wondering where exactly their daughters were.  ‘We sent them to summer camp, but what kind of summer camp?  Where?’  Panic.

“What do I even say?  I haven’t heard back from you, I really do appreciate this, but what’s going on?  Let me know?”

“Something like that,” Lucy said.  “I honestly don’t know how you guys normally talk to one another.”

“In my house?  We don’t talk normally to one another.”

Verona talked while sketching in chalk on the floor, “I’m the only only child here.  I can’t give much input.  Give me a bit before you hit that send button, Ave.”

“Okay,” Avery said.  “I just realized my phone wasn’t working one hundred percent, so if you tried to get in touch and couldn’t, that might be why.  Did you end up talking to dad like you said you would?  Thank you for helping out.”

“Sounds good,” Lucy said.

“Why am I giving this much credit to Sheridan?” Avery asked.  “If you’d said this would happen to me as of last year, I’d have thought you were smoking drugs.”

“Says the girl holding a magic opossum, a few days after traveling across a light tightrope, fighting some naked exploding pig man…” Verona said…

“…While her friend draws a magic diagram on the floor…” Lucy added.

“Point.”

“You’re good to go,” Verona said.

“And… sent, before I second guess myself,” Avery said.  She sat back down on the bed.  “Hoof.”

“Hoof?”

“Hoo and oof.  Hoof,” Avery said.  “Man, I wish the weather was nice enough to go for a run or something.  I’m restless.  And Snowdrop is squirmy because this is normally when she’s waking up.”

“Ahh, that’s why she was so bitey.”

“Maybe a bit.  Oh!”

Avery’s phone was buzzing.

“A reply already?”

“Sheridan just sent me a message.  ‘Ya’.  Y-A.  Ya.  Two letters.  Thanks, Sheridan, that’s, uh, that’s really a reply right there.  It’s a message.  I’ve been waiting about a day and I get ‘ya’.”

“Give her a second,” Lucy said.  “Does your phone do that thing that tells you someone else is typing?”

“No.”

“Probably wouldn’t work with how remote we are, anyway,” Verona said.

“She’s probably typing up more,” Lucy said.

“She’d better be,” Avery said.  “I swear, if this starts and stops at ‘ya’ I’m going to-”

The phone vibrated.

Verona clenched her fists, and squeezed them between her thighs, sitting on the edge of her bed, studying Avery’s expression: eyebrows drawn together, eyes flicking left and right as she read.

“What does it say?” Lucy asked.

“She says she doesn’t know how to interpret it.  She didn’t have trouble getting through, she just didn’t know what to say and she wanted to figure it out before she messaged me.  I guess a day wasn’t enough to figure it out?  What was she figuring out?”

“She didn’t say?” Lucy asked.

“She ended with three periods, whatever it’s called, she’s still typing.”

There was a knock on the door.  Verona stood at about the same time Lucy rose to her feet.  Lucy sat back down, and Verona got the door, because she was closer.  She glanced back at Avery.

It was Nicolette.

“Uhhh…” Verona said.

“Hi,” Lucy said.  “Excuse my friend’s manners.”

“Hi.  I’m doing some errands for the B.H.I.,” Nicolette said.  “You were on the signup sheet for the workshop tonight.  Were you still interested?  The kids above you on the list decided not to, I think because of the weather.  So you’re bumped to next in line.  Do you want it?”

“I…” Lucy hesitated, looking at Avery.

“Yes,” Verona said.  “Please.  We’ll be doing a ritual, or if they’re preoccupied, I can do some enchantment stuff.”

“Cool.  You have it for an hour and a half.  Let me know if you finish fifteen minutes or more ahead of that time.  Be sure to clean up.”

“I don’t suppose you’re free?” Verona asked.

“Free?”

“We need a guardian, while we’re doing the ritual.”

“What’s the ritual?” Nicolette asked.

“Alcazar.”

“And you don’t want a repeat of today’s incident.  I’m busy, I have work to do for Alexander, we booked it a long time ago.  Um, but you should ask Zed.  I think you trust him, and he’s really upset about today.  He’s the kind of guy who loves to help out.  It’d lift his spirits to be useful.  And he knows a lot about that sort of thing.”

“Okay,” Verona said.  “That’s pretty great.  Where do we find him?”

“I think he and Brie are in their room for the rest of the night, mostly.”  Nicolette turned her head to look off in the direction of the main classroom and west hallway.  “Want me to give him a heads up, tell him to change out the pyjama pants for jeans?”

“I think we need to figure out where we’re at and if we’re even doing that ritual.”

“Alrighty,” Nicolette said.  She glanced at Avery.  “Everything good here?”

Verona looked at Avery as well, who looked up to return a tight smile.

“I won’t pry,” Nicolette said, in response to the silence.  I should go.”

“Thanks,” Verona said.  “For the Zed recommend and info.”

Nicolette gave them a smile, then turned, raising a hand.  “Zachariah!”

Verona closed the door.  She turned on Avery.  “Well?”

“Dad laughed it off, cracked some jokes.  That’s what Sheridan had to figure out.  Like why, and what did he mean?  Mom, um, she said if there was anything to what dad’s coworker said, it was for me to tell the family, not for Sheridan to pry.  Um, and that if there was anything and Sheridan chose to give me a hard time over it, she’d be well and truly disappointed in her.  Then Sheridan said she wouldn’t, if there was anything, dad stopped joking and sided with mom, and Sheridan hugged mom.”

“Sounds like mom’s being cool,” Verona said.

“Yeah,” Avery said, watching the phone, not even seeming to notice as Snowdrop continually licked her chin.  She gave Snowdrop a stroke. “I kinda sorta figured they might react like, finding someone to talk to about it, and maybe giving that person’s opinion wayyy too much credit.  But now it’s like, was my mom cool, and then my dad chose my mom to latch onto in that way, giving her opinion credit?”

“Not sure,” Lucy said.

“I don’t get the joking thing at all.  What sort of jokes were they?”

“Ask Sheridan?” Verona suggested.

“She says she asked dad about the laughing, but he was very firm about it being for me to talk to them about.  That she shouldn’t pry.  Was it like, uncomfortable joking, do you think?  Sheridan would tell me if it was really mean, I think.  Or she wouldn’t, but she said she had to figure it out and I think she didn’t know how to interpret it either.  Do you think it was lighthearted in a ‘ha ha, sorta figured, it’s so normal I don’t really think twice about it’ way?  Or like, Sheridan went in serious so he tried to get her to relax, because it’s cool, nobody cares, and it’s ridiculous to treat it as serious?”

“We don’t really know your dad, Ave,” Lucy said, quiet.

“I’m sitting here trying to figure this out and I feel like I don’t really know my dad,” Avery said.

“It sounds like he’s taking your mom’s lead, or he’s on the same page as her.”

“But if he’s uncomfortable and he’s going along with mom because he doesn’t know what to do that’s…”

“Sucks?” Verona tried.

Avery swallowed.  “…Crushing.”

Lucy moved over to Avery’s bed, taking Avery’s hands in hers.  She checked the phone, then put it aside.

Conversation over, Verona assumed.

Lucy talked to Avery, “I’d tell you not to overthink that stuff, but I would be such a hypocrite I can imagine the practice turning me inside out as punishment.”

Avery huffed out a one-note laugh.

“What can we do?” Lucy asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Your mom’s being cool.  Sheridan is being… shockingly cool, based on everything I’ve heard about her,” Verona said.

“She really is.”

“And your dad’s- I imagine he’s in this situation that’s really hard to figure out.”

“I’m his daughter, I don’t think this should be hard to figure out.  You love your daughter first and that should be the number one thing, and if this being hard to figure out is bigger than that-”

“No, no,” Verona said.  “No, not what I meant.”

“What did you mean?” Lucy asked.

“I mean, coworker springs this on him.  Assume he didn’t know, he has to deal with coworker, right?  He has to deal with office politics, and you said he got mad?”

“Yeah,” Avery said.

“So he’s really mad that this guy’s spouting crap.  And he’s put in this situation where anything he says to this shitty coworker might get back to whoever that coworker got the info from.”

“Daughter, I think,” Avery said.  “Can’t remember.”

“So what can he say or do, that doesn’t go back down that same chain, right?  And make life harder for you at school, when he knows you’ve had a rough time?  And then he goes home, talks to your mom, then a bit later Sheridan knows, and he knows Sheridan and you… you’re like… I’m trying to think of an apples and oranges thing, but really cool and sorta gross.”

“Sheridan’s not gross.  She’s been cool.”

“Right,” Verona said.  “You’re like an apple and an orange then.  And if he says the wrong thing to Sheridan, that’s the kind of thing that makes your life harder.”

“You think he’s okay with it, then?”

“I don’t know,” Verona said.  “I don’t know your dad, I mean, you know him and you’re not sure.  But I can believe he cares, and part of that caring is being careful about how he navigates that, especially if he can say or do the wrong thing and hurt you.”

“You said your parents are a little gunshy about stuff since Ms. Hardy talked to them,” Lucy added.

“Yeah,” Avery answered, glum.

“I can see, like… laughing Sheridan off is safe.  And he cares about you, so he goes that way, until your mom takes a firm line, and it’s like, okay, let’s go with that.  Maybe.  I do think he cares about you.  I think that makes this weird and wonky and hard to know what to do.  I’m rambling.”

“Maybe I should’ve taken the offer to let him drive me here,” Avery said.  “We could’ve talked, then I could either feel great and relieved or feel horrible for the whole summer, until I got home.  And we’d have had to brainwash him after or something…”

“I don’t think it was really an option,” Lucy said.

“You could call him,” Verona said.  “I think we should be careful with the connection block and everything, maybe do the big and proper diagram.  But it’s not out of the question.  We have the workshop space available.”

“Nah, let’s do the Alcazar,” Avery said.  She stood up, stretching a bit.

“Cool.”  Verona nodded, standing as well.

“We’re dropping it like that?” Lucy asked.

Verona frowned at her friend.

“It’s just- this is diving into an item rooted in a pretty tough event.  And we’ve had a crummy day,” Lucy protested.  “You almost went after Shellie earlier.  Now you want to do this?”

“Back in Kennet, with that pigdog man, he threatened some good people.  Guilherme has been telling me to focus on the person I want to be, check off the good moments and good traits.  But part of it, something I know I want, is that I don’t want to stew in anxiety.  I don’t want to freeze when good people are in need.”

“That was what the Jessica thing was about?” Lucy asked.

“The Jessica thing was impulse.  And Verona got me to back off, yeah-”

“It couldn’t have gone anywhere good,” Verona said.  “You can’t deal with people like that, who won’t budge.”

“Sure.”  Avery nodded, almost like there was a thought she’d had and she was nodding in response to it.  She looked over at Lucy, “Look, I want to help.  I want to help with your implement, I want to help people like Jessica when others ruin something truly good that they’re doing, I want to protect people like the people that pigdog man almost attacked.  I don’t want to sit here, stewing, thinking in circles.”

“Are you going to be okay, going back to a tough memory?” Lucy asked.

“I came out in one piece from a prolonged stay with the wolf on the Forest Ribbon Trail.”

“A little different, though,” Lucy said, quiet.  “A little shaken?”

“A lot shaken,” Avery said.  “And elderly people like my Grumble and unhinged people like Daniel, they freak me out now.  It catches me off guard.  But I can work through that.  I know it’s irrational.  I can- I don’t regret it.  I did the Forest Ribbon Trail that night to try to help Reagan and the others and it didn’t work and that sucks… Zed said it was hard enough to bind Yalda that I probably couldn’t have done anything but it still sucks… and I don’t regret it.”

“‘Cause you helped people?” Verona asked.

“I tried, at least.  I think no matter what I do, so long as I’m doing that, so long as I’m not going quiet and paralyzing myself with anxiety, I can’t really regret what I’m doing.”

“Maybe, uh, let’s do that, but you let Verona and me know what you’re doing or let us keep up with you before you go confronting any Bright Eyed berserker girls?” Lucy asked.

Avery made a face.  “After all of this, I think it might have been the most evil thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “I’m not sure I can say the same, but… yeah.”

“And it was so pointless, so senseless.  So dumb.  Arrogant.”

“Evil usually is,” Lucy said.

“It was like it was designed to push my buttons.”

“Don’t let it?” Lucy asked.

“Or,” Verona said.  “Another way to look at it?  That glamour-self you’re making with those little rewards of glamour checkmarks you’re handing yourself?  Make a lack of pressable buttons part of it.”

Avery nodded.

“Sooooo… Alcazar?” Verona asked, eyebrows going up.

“I would like to introduce you to some marvels of modern technology,” Zed said, as he walked across the workshop.

“Somehow I’m not surprised,” Lucy said.

Nicolette had been right.  Zed had been in a bit of a mood, surprisingly grim in expression, when they’d knocked on the door to his room.  He’d had music blasting.

But they’d asked for his help, and that grim mood had lingered at first, only to improve until he was smiling by the time he was stepping out of the rain and into the workshop.

Verona hung back, toweling off moisture from her clothes so nothing would drip on the floor and ruin the diagram they were drawing.  She watched as Zed opened cupboards.

He pulled out a large frame, then a wooden circle.

“Your modern invention is boards?” Verona asked.  “Not even motherboards or chipboards…?”

“We’ve got a bunch in here,” Zed said.  “Standard Alcazar?  Regimented square?”

“That’s the plan,” Verona said.

He pulled out some more stuff.  A heavily notched square, a heavily notched frame.  He then retrieved a can of what looked like spray paint. He gave it a shake, kicked the wood across the floor until it was centered in the room, and then used the width of his shoe to help center the smaller bit of wood within the frame.

“Spray paint?” Avery asked.

“Spray chalk,” Zed answered.

He sprayed, filling in the void, using the wood as a stencil.  It formed a thick border, edges and lines already worked out.

It sped things up considerably, which was great since they’d spent a bit discussing Avery’s family after Nicolette had left.

The serrated square border was the center of a diagram that got compass points marked out around it; long thin triangles with lines down the center sticking out of each side, smaller, filled-in triangles sticking out of the corners.  Then notation, a circle to enclose it, a sun, moon, and star circle each with a ‘comet tail’, like they were shooting outward from the diagram, as celestial expressions for physical space, expanding.

After that, it was ten more minutes of adding small details.

“Photo?” Verona asked.

Avery lifted up her shirt and pulled the photo from the waistband.  “You said to keep it close to my skin, after the tempering.”

“Should be good.  Hopefully the you that you’ve been putting into it is the good stuff.”

“Hopefully,” Avery said.

Lucy, arms folded, paced.

Verona had sketched out the very simple diagrams while Lucy had gone to find Zed.  She handed them out.  Three ‘net’ sheets, and one ‘escape’ sheet.  All sheets were on pieces of paper that had been folded into quarters.

“Good vibes, remember,” Verona said.

“Best vibes possible,” Avery said.  Snowdrop was perched on her shoulder, looking out and over at the proceedings, alert.

“Without stepping within, place it in the center,” Zed said.  “I’ll watch out for trouble, guard your backs.”

Lucy took the photograph, then, balanced on her toes, sitting on her heels, she stood by the central square, leaned forward, and placed the photo in the center.

The diagram throbbed, the individual parts beginning to move, like gears were turning.  The sun, moon, and star part of the circle moved, starting their orbits, and as they turned, the proportion of circle, room, and photograph changed.

The photograph moved as if caught in a wind, then stood up on end.  The border blurred white, the photograph expanded as the perspective skew of sun, moon, and star continued in concert with their orbit, and it became like a cube, each face a door, with a lot of two dimensional images on the far side.

Verona handled the connection blocker and Augur prevention stuff, once she was sure the diagram was done.  She stood back, triple checked her work, then glanced at the others for confirmation.

Avery and Lucy nodded.

“In you go,” Zed told them.

Without really coordinating it, Lucy, Verona, Avery, and Snowdrop each picked one of the sides, stepped carefully across the chalk, and passed through.

We should have dressed warmer.

They were in the Kennet Arena.

Verona’s breath fogged faintly.

It was weird to move around.  The scene showed more than just the photograph had, but details that hadn’t been caught in the picture were just a bit blurry.  Every step she took made the blur worse, like it had to take a second to figure out what the backside of the boards looked like, or what was behind a guy who was in the camera’s shot.

Snowdrop, Avery, and Lucy had entered from different points of the same picture.  Avery behind the photographer.  Snowdrop in the stands.  Lucy on the far side of the rink from Verona.

As Verona walked, there was an illusion where everything looked like two dimensional cutouts, carefully arranged and painted to look like three dimensional objects.

Even the people.

As if in response to the thought, the coach who was taking the picture turned his head, looking at Avery.  His face blurred as his lips moved, unable to decide if the lips should be unblurred and the face blurred, or vice versa.  Whatever Verona focused on was less coherent.

“I should have called it quits when two of my best players went to Swanson,,” he said, his voice thin.

“Yeah,” Avery said, in response.  She looked out over the crowd.  “There you guys are.”

Verona looked.

Sure enough, in the stands, rising to their feet, were a Lucy and Verona.

“Rooting for you, classmate,” the Lucy-image said.

“It means so much to me.  I was too stuck inside my own head and the Olivia situation to recognize it.  I’m so glad you were at this game.  I love that you cheered.”

“So painful, seeing how bad the team is,” the Verona said.

“It was worse being on the ice with them, believe me,” Avery responded to the photo-Verona.

“You skated so fast,” Verona told her friend.  “That was one of my big takeaways, after the, uh, less than stellar performance of some of the girls on the team.”

Avery smiled.

“I was and am so jealous of that coat,” Verona said, pointing.  Lucy was wearing a red duffel coat with little black horn shapes stuck through leather loops at the front.  “I’d wear a coat like it if it wasn’t weird to dress so similarly to my best friend.”

“I think I grew out of it,” Lucy said, smiling.  “I’ll have to see next Winter.  But you can have your turn wearing that style, if you want.”

“It was a good night,” Verona said.  “Sucks we lost, really sucks it was rough for you, Ave.”

Avery shrugged, and looked over at Olivia, just barely in ‘the shot’.  The entire Arena was depicted around them, but the stuff caught in the coach’s camera was clearest.

“This was rough,” an audience member said, as Verona walked by them.

“There’s no rush, honey.  Traffic always takes a while to leave the parking lot anyway.”

“I love her hair.”

Verona stopped, checked, and followed the gaze of the person in the audience, looking at Lucy.

That was tricky.

Didn’t want to address it, because that would give it prominence and fill this space.  Matthew had warned about that.

She walked.  A lot of the thoughts were inane.

“Gotta pee.”

“So much sugar, they’re going to take forever to fall asleep tonight.”

“That red mark on her skin hasn’t gone away in a week.  Will she be mad if I bring it up?”

“Gotta take a whiz.”

“They’re taking a picture to commemorate this?”

“If she was on the team we might have won.  They’re naturally more athletic,” one of the audience members said.  A passing thought about Lucy, captured in the moment of the snapshot.

Verona stopped, looking at the middle aged woman who was rising from her seat, turned, and saw Lucy was close.

“It’s not a surprise,” Lucy said, her expression a bit sad.

“We shouldn’t dwell on bad.”

“Maybe.  Maybe ignoring the bad makes the item less Lucy, though?”

Verona wasn’t sure how to respond to that.

“Everything’s good here,” Snowdrop called down.

They looked.

There were some shadows.  Omens.  Or something omen-like.  Snowdrop backed away as they drifted over the seats.

Avery, starting out on the ice, had been forced to circle around to where she could hop over, and was now catching up, picking up a hockey stick.

She smacked one omen-thing, and scattered it into smoke.  She hit the next, and it wasn’t scattered so easily, so she kept smacking at it.

Lucy picked up a beer bottle and hucked it.  It crashed into one of the omens, which twisted, contorting like a snake poised to strike across three rows and two columns of seats.

Avery hit it again and again, beating it down toward the seats and images with each consecutive blow.  When it lay across the seat-backs, the next strike dissolved it.

“Some catharsis there?” Lucy asked, deadpan.

“Some,” Avery said.  She rubbed at her arms for warmth.

Verona looked around, then frowned.  There was the faintest of red hazes around Avery.

“Have to be careful.  Looks like violence stains the area a bit.”

Avery nodded.

“It’s quiet,” Lucy said.  “More stable and motionless than I pictured.”

“I think because we tempered it,” Verona said.  “It did leave a hollow.  I’m surprised more badness hasn’t slipped in over the day.”

“Maybe because I wasn’t thinking of it much?” Avery asked.  “Some chafing against skin, but I’m not sure chafing’s a taint that’s going to really alter this area.”

“Hmmm,” Lucy murmured.

“We should get materials,” Verona said.  “Uhhh… you wanted item three?”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “If it’s no trouble.”

“So,” Verona said, reaching into her pocket for a paper.  She unfolded it, and it had a hole in the center where the diagram had been, the paper’s edges frayed.  She held the paper up, walking around, and elbowed Lucy to get her to follow.

It worked best when they were all together.  Snowdrop joined her.

Verona centered the hole on the light from above the rink, then carefully folded the paper.  Containing the light within.

The rink was noticeably darker, without those lights.

“So… something crystal-y, some fine chain or wire or tether, glimmers, glass…” Verona mused aloud.

“Ice?” Lucy asked.

“Good, yes, uhhh.”

“I got it,” Avery said.  “Let me make sure the plexiglass isn’t fogging it up.”

Taking little elements out of the scene in the picture, storing them in paper folds.  Avery jogged back around toward the ice.

“Uhh!” Verona called out.

There was a woman with tattoos, but her hair and tattoos were canary yellow, her skin a smokey black-purple.  Her eyes were unblinking and surrounded with folds and wrinkles that made it hard to tell where the points of the iris, the eyelashes, and the natural folds of eyelid were.  She moved with a good speed, striding toward Avery.

Avery held up the hockey, stick, ready.

It was Snowdrop who came running, tackling the woman.

“It’s not a spirit!” Snowdrop called out.  “It’s super smart, it’s really rare too!  I’m gonna die!  I can’t do this, auuuugh!”

The encounter was brief and ended with Snowdrop’s hands and face spattered in that smokey black-purple with specks of bright yellow.

Avery got the ice.

Verona took the eyeglasses of a man wearing glasses who was positioned in a way to catch the light with the edge of the frame.

Lucy found one of the skates, slung around the neck of a kid on the Swanson team, the blade’s edge catching the light.  She pulled the paper away, the edge caught in the circle.  She folded it up with care.

The three of them gathered more than they needed as they walked around.  Stuff they wanted to emphasize for the implement.  Zed was going to help them do the actual transformation, using these captured aspects.

More omens turned up, but they were dumb, aimless, not even doing anything except polluting the space.  They handled them.

It seemed like they got more common, the longer they spent here.  Verona worried that it was a trap or a time limit being enforced on them in reality.  Like they were trespassing in this space and that trespass got bad sorts of attention.

Snowdrop, meanwhile, walked over to the ice, then to the stands, then back to the ice.

“What’s going on, Snow?” Verona asked.

Snowdrop pointed.

Verona looked, and she didn’t see anything.

“You can’t start here where I am,” Snowdrop said.

“We don’t have a lot of time.  Is it important?” Verona asked.

“It isn’t important to me, at least,” Snowdrop replied.

Verona decided to look.  The other two joined her, making their way across slick ice.  Verona was wishing she’d dressed warmer.  Her legs were going numb.

Standing on the ice, looking through the plexiglass, she could see Miss, sitting in the stands.

“You have to focus on her face, so she stays there,” Snowdrop said.

“Makes sense,” Avery said.

Avery put her hand out, blocking out the view, then made her way around.

Verona and Lucy followed suit.

Off the rink yet again.  Into the stands.  Toward Miss, keeping their hands up so they couldn’t see her face.

“Fuck,” Avery said, as she tripped over an extended leg.  She looked up and around.  “If you’re in a position to see, she just disappears.”

“Nah,” Snowdrop said.

Avery was quick enough going back and catching up that she was only a few steps behind Verona and Lucy as they reached Miss’s side.

Verona took a seat behind Miss, looking at the back of her head.

“So she was here before,” Avery noted.  “Watching us before things went bad for Kennet.”

“Keeping tabs on a few candidates for the local practitionership,” Lucy said.  “Before anything went wrong?  Or did she know?  It’s so weirdly convenient and coincidental that she was here.  Watching us.”

“Watching…” Verona paused.  She carefully reached around, touching the sides of Miss’s head just to figure out where her head was pointed.

Not looking at the three of them.  No, she was looking off to the side.

They walked over and around, following her gaze.  To the window.

To the space beyond the window.

It wasn’t in the picture, so it was filled in with context, maybe the minds of the three of them and maybe Snowdrop, if Snowdrop had even familiarized herself with this space.

There was a lot to digest, in what was out there.

To begin with, the mountains and trees of the background were gone.  A vague silhouette that looked like Zed was out there, looming over them.

And the sky, dark, had three different constellations pinned in it, faint, pale, dark grey stars on black.  Eyes, belonging to three different Augurs. Each was missing components.  No iris, no pupil.  Just ‘x’ marks or a smear of stars across the center, blinding the eye.  Their anti-augury marks had helped.

Outside the window was the outdoor rink, people collected around it.  There were a lot of kids, siblings of hockey players, maybe.  Or members of the choir.

A bunch of college-aged guys, and some figures standing in the parking lot, talking.

The figures in the lot were people who’d abandoned the rink, which was stained with blood.  Had they seen the blood?  Or had something else happened, that drove them from that rink?

“The Carmine Beast dies partway through the game.  Lies there.  Time passes, parking lot empties…” Lucy spoke her thoughts aloud.

“Kennet Others gather to discuss their game plan,” Verona noted.  “And for Miss, we’re fresh in her mind, after, well… this.”

She gestured toward Miss, sitting in the stands.

“There might be more to it than that, but sure,” Lucy said.

“Miss is here early.  That’s not the most shocking thing in the world.  She moves fast,” Avery said.

“But some of the Kennet Others don’t,” Verona said.

“Yeah,” Avery said, quiet.  “Some were already here.”

Points of light were in the parking lot, close together and far away, and they could have been mistaken for lit cigarettes in the gloom.  But they weren’t.

Two glowing orange eyes, Edith’s, surrounded by children.

Edith, outside and near the bloody body of the Carmine Beast, so soon after the murder.  She would have had to leave and come back.  But she was here.  She was here and she was okay giving them money?  She was here, but she’d taught them?  Were there traps in the teaching, or was she playing it cool?

She’d just said she felt good about supporting them.

Verona shook her head.

“I’m trying to tell if there’s anyone else from the Kennet Others in that crowd, but I can’t,” Lucy said.  “But those glowing eyes…”

“No more omens around,” Snowdrop said.  “They’re close.”

Lucy glanced back.  “Annoying.”

“We should clean those up and go, then,” Verona said, not looking away from the scene.  Edith was out there at this point in time?  It wasn’t a trick?

“I don’t get why scenes so far out of the photo’s frame are here,” Avery said.

“Because Miss, I think,” Verona said, aloud.  “She’s here, watching, it’s important to her, so it leaves an impression.  Or because certain things filter through, and anything important leaves its impression.”

Lucy was quiet, staring.

“I’ll get the omens,” Avery said.

“Thanks,” Verona said.

Avery headed off.  Snowdrop followed.

“You good, Luce?” Verona asked.

Lucy held up her paper.  She centered the image of Edith, the kids, and the bloody rink in the circle.  Verona and Avery moved to help it focus, because otherwise it wouldn’t center right.

“Snapshots of this scene for evidence?” Verona asked.

“And for fine tuning my implement,” Lucy said.

“Works,” Verona said, after a bit of thought.

She partially unfolded the escape paper.  A reversal of the expansion sign.  She waited until Avery had dealt with the gathering negative forces, then finished.unfolding to make the door.

The door widened until it passed over them, then shrunk again.  It fluttered to the floor once more.

“Not too bad,” Lucy said.  “Any issues?”

“Get what you came for?” Zed asked.

“More than,” Lucy said, her expression serious.

“Do tell?”

“Maybe later.  You’re on the shortlist of people we’d tell stuff to, I think, the moment we can get away with it,” Lucy said.  “We really appreciate you helping us out.”

“No, it’s cool.  Can I see the trophies?”

They brought the papers around, placing them on a table, and placing them into a loose configuration.  Each paper had what looked like an ultra-high-quality illustration, an optical illusion trapped in the page.

“We can use this to turn the photo into an image in glass?  Or ice?” Lucy asked.

“Yep,” Zed answered.  “I can work with you on that.  You’re sure that’s the shape you want?”

Verona moved the pages around, then placed her own scissors down.  She had illustrations depicting the end result, and she placed things so they were in rough alignment with the illustration.

The handles of the scissors, taken apart and filed down to something subtle, would become ornamentation, fitting to the curve of the upper ears, sitting just inside the rim.  The inside of each would be more framing and decoration, hooking around the side of the ear to hold the ornament in place.

But in the end, it was earrings.  The crystals and glimmers they formed using Avery’s photo would decorate the dangling portion, and be decorated further with the blade.  An earring to let Lucy shine, to be proud of her appearance, because both of those things mattered.  A creative working poised around the ear for the girl who loved music.

And, perhaps most critically, captured on the last page Lucy had snared, a scene.  A distant, captured conversation to adorn the ear of an eavesdropper.

“Yeah.  It’s what I want,” Lucy said.

Cutting Class – 6.7

Lucy

As magic circles went, it was less structured than some.  A central line, a slash across the room, with everything unfolding from it.  Lucy held down the ruler, and struck the chalk across its length.  The side of the chalk had caught on a edge of the ruler that wasn’t touching the floor, so she set the chalk aside, then wiped the ruler clean.

Her feet were bare, the moisture of her sweat leaving footprints on the blackboard-like surface that the ambient warmth erased shortly after.  She was wearing her stretch sweats, but she’d rolled up the pants legs to the knees, her top was the hooded, sleeveless one she’d gotten for Christmas and had looked forward to wearing for months. She’d folded up the bottom of the shirt inside to expose her stomach and lower back; the front door was open in one corner of the room, the back door open in the opposite corner, allowing a breeze to blow through, and her skin periodically prickled with goosebumps as the breeze got cool enough to make those footprints on the floor last another second or two.

The text had said to dress comfortably.  She preferred to be cooler than to be warm, so this was a compromise to match the weather.  The clothes she was wearing were about as comfortable as she could get without borrowing something, and her instincts were to go with the advice they’d gotten for awakening.  Bought or given, not stolen.  Not someone else’s.

She measured and marked the center of the line.  Then, as if she were drawing an ‘8’, she drew out a pair of diamonds with their points meeting at the line.  She knew from the lessons with Edith that framing something in a diamond signified quality.  Imparting qualities of the element to something, like hardness and weight from stone.

Across those diamonds, ruler clacking and scraping against the floor as she moved it to avoid touching or breaking any existing lines, she drew smaller diamonds, this time with the points overlapping to form another diamond in the center.  The interlocking diamonds were another thing they’d learned very early, signifying connections.  Licking her thumb, she wiped away some of the chalk lines and bits of the central line where they crossed or met one another.

Back hurting a bit from bending over, in combination with the exertions from earlier in the day, Lucy straightened, hands at her lower back, and stretched.  She walked carefully around the diamonds.  She was rapidly getting to the point of no return, where leaving would necessitate more work than it saved her.  She’d gone to the bathroom and sat even though she hadn’t needed to go, because even though the book said she would have reduced needs, she really didn’t want to use the bucket in the corner.

She had some food and drink set aside as well, sitting in a shelf that was more an indent in the wall than something protruding.  Again, something she wasn’t sure was necessary, especially considering that Avery, Verona, and Snowdrop had committed to visiting and guarding her.  They would bring her anything she needed.  Probably.

Yeah.  This was tricky.  She really hoped Verona and Avery weren’t running into trouble.  She couldn’t go much further until they got back, and there weren’t many preparations left to do.

She had candles set out, sitting on another shelf, along with matches.  That was for evening.  She’d had to ask, dig up boxes in the deep storage room, and found what she’d wanted.  She hoped she wouldn’t regret her choice.  These ones produced a heavy smoke that would sit close to the floor.  Chosen because, when she’d been asked and quizzed back when they’d started the practice, she’d decided that more than water, than fire, than iron, wood, or air, the element that was most her was smoke.

Smoke warned of imminent fire, and smoke lingered after those fires had gone out.  Smoke could be abrasive, could be cleansing in some spiritual contexts.

She’d picked it by instinct when talking to Edith, way back before they’d faced down the Hungry Choir, that first week.  She’d picked it again when working through everything she might need for this.

She had other things.  Lucy had some extra water bottles, on top of the ones she’d brought for snacks and meals, just in case, and stuff for washing up, including some hand towels and wet wipes.  She’d brought her toiletry kit on a whim, and instead of setting it inside one of those indents in the wall, she’d placed it on the floor, near the edge of where the diagram would end.  Two changes of clothes, folded and sitting beside the kit.  A fire extinguisher, sitting on the shelf, along with some papers, including ones like they’d used during the Alcazar rituals.  One dive to get the papers out.  One dive to take them in and make structural changes.

A light knock on the door made her head turn.

Verona and Avery stood in the doorway, pulling off their shoes while simultaneously working out how to hold the folded silk cloth between them.  They whispered.

Lucy held her finger to her lips.

The whispering stopped, Verona stepping out of her sandals while Avery kicked her shoes off to land in the grass somewhere beyond the stairs.  They walked, bare-footed, across the floor, leaving those same faint, fleeting footprints, while both holding the package.

It was a little extra, doing it in this ceremonious way, but it couldn’t hurt, and the thought was appreciated.  Lucy smiled a bit.

They held out the silk bundle, then peeled away the folds on top, taking turns, with some halts and hesitations before they finally uncovered it.

This was the first time Lucy was seeing it all in one piece.  The loop of the handle where the fingers were inserted had been separated, made to sit inside the outermost rim of her ear.  It extended to the lobe, and there was a pin there to extend through the hole in her earlobe she already had.  A fine wire dangled, and a smokey, red-tinted crystal was set within a cage of the same material the scissors were made of.  More crystals studded the upper portion.

They’d debated going with two and going with one.  In the end, the decision had been made for them, when the preparations of the first piece had gone a bit south.  Avery and Verona had been rubbing a handle against a filing surface, and a part had broken off.  They’d decided that it was more trouble than it was worth to repair things.

Better to finish the construction of this one, give a little ceremony to say goodbye to the broken piece, saying a few words about mistakes being made, but it not being an ending.  They saw this stuff through.

Lucy pressed the earring against her chest, over where her heart was, smiling.  She really was touched.

Verona, on apparent impulse, leaned in to give Lucy a hug, arms warm against Lucy’s cool shoulders, kissed her on the cheek, then walked over to the far corner of the room, where a chair sat ready for her.

Avery, apparently compelled to follow suit, gave Lucy a hug of her own, brief and tight, then a kiss on the other cheek.  Snowdrop craned her head in to give Lucy a lick, which prompted a silent giggle from Lucy.

Avery took up a seat in another corner, about ten paces from Verona, the door just to her right.

Lucy turned her back to them, facing the diagram.  She weighed if she needed to go run off to the bathroom or something, figured she didn’t, considered all the other variables, then bent down and placed the earring in one diamond.

The sides of the diamonds and the line that divided the room were her guidelines for what followed.  She wrote parallel to those lines, starting at one corner of the diamond and working her way toward the back of the room, well past the tip of the diamond.

Born September 23rd, 2006, in Kennet ON

She started another line at the tip of the diamond, and wrote more.

Awakened May 1st, 2020, in Kennet, ON

She straightened, rubbing her back where it was uncomfortable to stoop over, then fixed her shirt where it had become untucked.

She looked across the room, and saw that on the other half of the room, there were matching lines of text, one in two rows, the other in one.

Manufactured December 17th, 1913 in Oshawa, ON
Captured March 25th and printed April 6th, 2020, in Kennet ON

Refashioned July 5th, 2020, at the Blue Heron Institute, ON

At the far end of that diagram, she could see a collection of tools.  She had to look back, then forward again.  Files, pliers, snips, a fine drill, all mirroring the position of her makeup kit.  Matching the location of her folded clothing was the leftover material.  Curls of shaved metal and some dust from metal filings.  Bits of crystal and dust from the grinding and polishing of that crystal.  A curl of wire.

Footprints were rapidly evaporating on that black tile floor, on the far side of the room.

A breeze blew through the room, and she felt the goosebumps again.  She walked with care to one side of the room, and watched as footprints appeared, mirroring hers.  She could hear them, too.  A sharper sound than she could ever make.

She knelt, touched a fresh piece of chalk to the floor, and began writing on the far side of the line that divided the room.

Lucille Desiree Ellingson

She stopped as her arm made contact with something solid.

Stretching across the line, doing its own writing, was an arm, slender, black-skinned, and prickling with goosebumps.  The nails were like red-tinted crystal framed in metal, the skin had a faint smokey texture to it, and the wrinkles at the knuckle and the crook of the elbow had deeper, almost tarnished texture within them.

Her forearm crossed the other, and she took care not to look up.  It wasn’t that looking up was wrong, but this was a case where every response had meaning.  Even looking up.

The earring went through the ear.  She didn’t want to yield.

She pushed, driving her forearm against the other arm.  It pushed back, hard enough it threatened to part her flesh.  It was harder than her skin was.

Something gave.  Metal penetrated flesh, then found the sucking void in her arm where the bone was supposed to be.  An arm extended through her own, cold, cool, and smooth, still holding chalk to the floor on her side of the line, drawing out its own message.  She pulled, carrying on, and the arm pulled through, slipping through nerves, veins, and muscle, through trace amounts of fat, through skin.  Goosebumps stood out all up and down her body as she continued.

-Practitioner and protector of Kennet.

She stepped into the diamond on her side and sat.  She could feel the weight and presence of Avery and Verona behind her, watching her and watching over her.  She could see chairs at the far end of the room that they hadn’t placed there, one with a long, narrow pair of scissors resting against the seat back, point on the seat.  The other with a series of photographs pinned to it.

Sitting opposite her was herself, wearing not clothes, but an intricate and careful wrapping of the same crimson and charcoal colored banners and ribbons that Lucy had seen so many times, tied to the handles of swords she viewed with her Sight.  This other her had her hair tied back, but the ponytail was wire in tight curls, ending in innumerable ornaments like the ones on the earring, grazing bare shoulders and running down her back.  The other her had skin of a similar color but a different tone and texture, catching the light, her eyes were metal, and she wore the earring, exaggerated and writ large, framing one side of her head.

As Lucy had signed the far side of the line, this other her had signed her side.

Eavesdropper’s Earring, Implement of Lucille Desiree Ellingson.

Rigid and tense, the Earring put one hand as far forward as she could without crossing the line, leaned forward with fingers splayed on the ground, and then began to whisper.

Lucy took a relaxed posture, hands behind her to prop herself up, and she listened.

“As your teacher Mr. Belanger explained yesterday evening, we have a tendency to structure the classes in a way that puts the most practical and active exercises toward the end of the week.  Field trips, group rituals, summonings and bindings of Others, on site and elsewhere, and, of course, competition.”

Mr. Bristow stepped back, arms spread, the corners of his mustache turning up.  Behind and around him, the magic circle extended across and around the ‘blasting site’, the gouged, scarred, and repaired field that stretched behind the west halls of the school.  A building was well underway in its construction at the northwest corner of the field, wooden framework looming high, stones placed around the foot, as if to help prop them up.  The materials that were gathered at the northern and western edges; stacks of wood, piles of stone, and even the sheets of blue-tinted glass, standing up with spacers placed between them.

The grass, damp with last night’s rain, was taking on a glow as if lit from within, forming a perfect, vast circle, surrounded by script.  Dust like pollen lifted away from the edges, but as motes drifted toward Lucy, she could see that they were letters and runes.

Mr. Bristow was wearing a short-sleeved dress shirt, vest, and slacks, his forehead shiny.  Nothing too surprising, except that he was out of his element, kind of.  Which was weird because Lucy had a hard time imagining him as ever being in his element.  By default, the most comfortable she’d ever seen him, he had the aura of a blustery, arrogant, alcoholic teacher or principal dropped into the middle of a gang-ridden school to be the counterpoint to the protagonist’s stern-but-gentle, world-wise approach.

Man, she hated those movies.

This was that guy, transplanted out and into a backdrop of nature and vaguely rustic construction, with the magic circle equivalent of a coliseum unfolding behind him.

Off to the side, not even seeming to care or not whether he was talking, was a tall, square-jawed man with a nose that had been broken and not fixed, once upon a time.  His clothes were the sort that someone who made tons of money bought if they wanted to ‘rough it’ and look outdoorsy.  Good for someone who was going to camp, hunt, and hike trails, but the shirt probably cost a hundred bucks alone, the boots five hundred or more.  His haircut looked expensive, the stubble on his lower face not incidental but cultivated, and his gaze was level and analytical when he looked at the students.

By contrast, Ted Havens looked like he’d picked up his clothes at a thrift shop and cut his own hair, but he wore it well.  He looked confident and at ease enough that she imagined he could visit a red carpet event and not get called out for wearing a decade-old t-shirt and drawstring hemp slacks.

Mr. Bristow was still talking, of course.

“I helped to place stones beneath this field in a ring, for this very purpose.  Mr. Belanger talked at the very beginning of your semester here about wanting to form connections, build networks, and be something more.  It was my ideology that he so illiberally borrowed, then.  To be fair, it’s a founding principle.  To be less fair, he failed to mention fundamental elements about the dynamic.  Much like world peace, unity among practitioners is not had by sharing, caring, and a leveling of the playing field.  It necessitates some hard calls and it requires that all great powers be held in check by some meaningful measure of fear.  Ensure that any altercation will end in mutually assured destruction and only the depraved will wage war.  Then we excise the depraved.  You must know how to defend yourselves, because there are individuals and Others who would prey on you.  Even ones you consider friends today may be your ruin tomorrow.”

“How could you, Snowdrop?” Verona whispered, mock-horrified.

Snowdrop’s mouth dropped open.

“I’m harboring a legitimate kernel of worry that Bristow will talk through so much of class we don’t get around to the binding part,” Lucy murmured.

Avery made a sound of amusement.

“Our exercise today is about binding.  Binding humans, and avoiding being bound.  In lessons earlier this week, we covered some fundamentals.  Now, drawing on our own abilities and experience, we put them into practice.  Now, rather than subject you all to my own experience with human bondage, which is far more crude, we instead have my friend, Mr. Hennigar, who is willing to lead the lesson.”

The man with the bend in the bridge of his nose stepped forward.  “If you’d line up, please.  At the field’s edge.  Arrange yourselves by your confidence level in this scenario.  At the left corner of the field, I want the most confident to stand ready.  If you know nothing about binding or protecting yourselves from binding, take the far end of the line.”

“While you get sorted,” Bristow said, taking the opportunity to talk more, “Standard rules for using the field are in the student guide, but I’ll remind you.  No targeting or interfering with the diagram protecting the combatants and bystanders.  No gouging the ground any further than three feet, unless you acquire permission first.  Mrs. Durocher will sometimes perform demonstrations out here that use the entire field, but we take precautions to protect the space.  No effects that can last or have influences beyond the duration of the contest.  If you can’t end it when we call it, you can’t use it.  Punishments for violating these precepts can and will be severe, including but not being limited to transferring all deleterious effects from the victim to you, or expulsion…”

He kept going.  Lucy had stepped back, along with the others, judging the line.

This was tough.  They weren’t experts or even experienced at this stuff, but they needed to make a show of strength.  If they lied or faked it, it might get to be a problem later.

“Got your kits?” Lucy asked the others.

“Brought just about everything,” Avery said.

Lucy looked at Bristow, and saw Mr. Hennigar bending down as Bristow whispered something.

“Such a one sided education.  More’s the pity, Alexander.”

Lucy wished she knew what they’d said.  Mr. Hennigar smiled.

Lucy looked over the line again, trying to work it out.  What was the game, here?

At the head of the line, she saw the three younger Hennigar children.  The boys Kellen and Mccauleigh, and the girl Sawyer.  Gore streaked in various arrangements.  Okay, sure, if Mr. Hennigar was teaching this, then that was fine.  There was also Silas, Jarvis, and Maddox. who were roommates, if she remembered right.  Jarvis did contract magic and summoning, kind of like Charles, while Silas was the younger brother of the Vanderwerf girl in the west wing, who did Winter Court faerie stuff, and Maddox did spellbinding and soulbinding… that was even less surprising.  The only reason Maddox seemed to not be at the very head of the line was that the Hennigars were intimidating.

Next were the Legendre boys, Milly’s younger brothers.  Lucy couldn’t remember the names, but they dealt with goblins and binding and stuff, so, ok.  Believable.

Then Yadira, the Kitsune practitioner, and Raquel, a soft implement collector, with Fiona the body jumper and the only member of that group who wasn’t very confident in their abilities was Kass, who took up a spot somewhere in the middle of the bottom half of the line.  Daniella was up there, which was interesting because she was an ‘Abyss drinker’, whatever that meant.  Bogeymen came from the abyss and they were human-ish, maybe?

Fernanda was separated from her friends and looked a bit uncomfortable, but she’d picked her position very deliberately.  Emotion manipulator.

Then the Tedds, goblin princesses, not because they were goblins, but because that was what a goblin-focused practitioner called themselves.  Lucy wasn’t sure how much they were taking up that spot because they were that good, and how much was because someone of a goblin-ish mindset would rather boast and pretend to be better than they were, even if it meant losing.  Look big for a moment, get a bloody nose for it later.

Xerxes and Erasmus were further into that territory where the mental jump to ‘they could bind humans’ was more of a leap.  Hosts.

Then Laila, Lane and Max, Natasha Scobie, Salvador and Zachariah, Corbin and Melody, and finally the youngest, including Dom, Sol, Talia, and Jorja.

Jorja was totally alone, here.  Her brothers had left campus to go into town, with intentions of taking it easy over the weekend.  Three day weekend.

“Ah, that’s his game,” Lucy murmured.

“What’s that?” Verona asked.

“Top end of the line.  People connected to Bristow have a lot of human binders.  Ten of the top twelve are in his camp.  Only the Legendres aren’t.”

Avery’s eyes widened.

Bristow beckoned, indicating for them to take their spots.

“Be careful,” Lucy said, to the others.

Verona and Avery nodded.  Avery put Snowdrop down.

Lucy picked her spot, toward the middle-ish.  It put her by the Tedds.

America leaned in to whisper to LIberty.

“I’ve never been so insulted in my life.  She thinks she’s better than me.”

“Make her bleed.”

Lucy tried to ignore the unintelligible whisper and the glance back her way, that was followed by a syrupy smile.

Avery took up the spot on the far side of the Tedds.  Verona took the spot by Laila.

Mr. Hennigar bent down as Mr. Bristow whispered something.  They exchanged words.

“You know Graubard’s daughter.  The other is Jorja.  Alexander likes her.”

“And?”

“Up to you.”

“Talia, Jorja, to the field,”

“We don’t- can I sit this one out?”

“You shouldn’t.  Don’t worry, this is a good opportunity to return to fundamentals.”

The two girls went to the field.

“Talia, you were positioned to the left, so your task is to bind Jorja.  Let’s return to fundamentals.  At the most basic, repetition and power.  State, ‘I bind you, Jorja.’  Use her full name, weave in details if you’re confident in doing so.”

“And what do I do?” Jorja asked.

“What do you think?” Mr. Hennigar asked.  “Trust your instincts.  The goal is to work our way from beginner to advanced concepts.  This is a learning experience.”

Jorja looked uncomfortable and intimidated.

You should have been here, Tymon, Lucy thought.  Big brother’s responsibility.  There’s too much going on.

“I bind you, Jorja Alexa Leos,” Talia said.  “I say this for the first time.  Bend to my will.”

“Good,” Mr. Hennigar commented from the sidelines.  “Strong.  Using the full name, the elaboration, spelling it out for the spirits.”

“Don’t,” Jorja said.  “We’re friends.”

“Not in the arena,” Bristow said.

“I bind you, Jorja Alexa Leos.  My friend.  I say this for the second time.  Bend.”

Jorja put her hand to her mouth.

“Act, Jorja, you gain nothing by staying still!” Avery called out.

“Quiet now!” Bristow called out.

“I am acting,” Jorja said.  She stuck out her tongue, and there was a neon green pill on it.  She tilted her head back and spat it skyward.  It shot straight up.

“I bind you, Jorja Alexa Leos, friend, roommate.  I say this for the third time-”

Pills began to rain down onto the arena, only within the arena.  With them came a shadow from above.  A long-limbed woman, twenty feet tall, emaciated and covered with painted images that looked like they’d been drawn and lit up with blacklights.  Her hair was dyed, her makeup garish, and she wore a cowboy hat.

“Bend to-”

The figure reached down, emptying a pill bottle over Talia’s head.  The girl scrambled to get away from the downpour, ducked left, then darted right.  She and her doll began moving in different directions.

She hadn’t finished her declaration.

“Bend to my will!”

“My spirit and I are stronger than you,” Jorja said.  “No.”

By some unspoken signal, Talia and her doll changed tacks.  The doll familiar rushed Jorja, who pointed at Talia and said something in in foreign language.

“I order you bound,” Talia said.  “I bid-”

The pill rain had intensified.  Some pills exploded into multicolored puffs on contact with the field.  Others sprouted into psychadelic flowers and light shows.  And one was caught out of the air by the spirit, who flicked it at Talia.

It struck Talia in the forehead like a bullet.

Talia sat down, hard.  She swayed, and looked around, her right eye a pink spiral against a black backdrop, the left a throbbing green circle against blue.

“Thank you,” Jorja said, her voice shaky, looking up.  “I’ll make my payment at a later date.”

“You must remove the effect at the duel’s close,” Bristow said.  “Or risk expulsion.”

“I- I can.  Of course I would.  She’s my friend.  It just takes power,” Jorja said.  She looked up.  “Please?”

The spirit nodded, holding up a hand.

The pill reversed direction, shooting back to the waiting fingers.

“And clean up the battlefield of these pills, please,” Mr. Bristow said.

“That’s tougher but okay,” Jorja said.  She looked around at the sea of multicolored pills that threatened to bury the grass.  “It’s hard to avoid making a mess when I summon something big.”

“While you’re at it, dismiss your spirit for your next round,” Mr. Hennigar said.

“My next round?”

“You’ll try to bind the boy.  Sol.  Hurry now.”

“If I dismiss my spirit, it’s expensive to bring her back.  Can I sit this out?”

“Do try, this is a life skill,” Mr. Bristow said, smiling.

Jorja frowned.

It went, Lucy observed, about as well as expected.

Sol was an elementalist.  Jorja got about three words into the binding, got his last name wrong, and he pressed the sides of his hands together, closing a diagram he’d drawn or had tattooed on the palms.  The resulting explosion ripped up and scorched the grass without really touching the dirt, and flung Jorja back, blood streaming from her nose.  She crumpled to the ground.

The diagram flared bright, and the wound was undone.  Jorja stood where she had a minute ago, swaying on the spot.

“Perfunctory but effective,” Mr. Hennigar said.  “Staying in place while performing practice has its merits.  The spirits can settle, sit, and watch.  But it comes with its caveats.  Moving gives you space to repeat yourself, reinforce, and keeps you alive.”

Jorja retreated from the field.  The grass fixed itself as the arena’s diagram glowed bright.

Lucy could recognize aspects of the arena.  Similar to what Guilherme had taught her, but far more elaborate.

Sol blew up Dom, who flipped literally head over heels, twice, then bound him while he lay bleeding and reeling.  Whatever the binding did, it really seemed more like insult added to injury, because Dom wasn’t really capable of moving.

“Can you skip me until later?” Melody asked.

“You’ll only face someone tougher,” Mr. Hennigar said.

“That’s fine.”

“Then Corbin.”

Sol nodded, turned to face Corbin.  Corbin adjusted his collar and promptly disappeared.

“I bind you, Corbin Kierstaad!” Sol shouted.  He blasted the field, turned.  “I bind you once by my word!”

I’d bind you first, Sol Ferguson, though no human can hear my voice, the spirits can.  I stand behind you and I lay hands you cannot feel on you…”

The wind rustled.  Sol blasted again, ripping up more ground.

“I bind you, Corbin Kierstaad, twice by my word!”

“By voice, by touch, I lay claim on you.  I bind you over once again, Sol Ferguson.”

There was a whisper in the wind and Lucy could almost hear it.

Sol turned ninety degrees, then blasted again.

“I bind you a third time, by voice, by hand, by arrest.  I lay my claim and-“

“I bind you!” Corbin raised his voice, appearing behind Sol.  He shoved the boy to the ground, pinning his arms down so he couldn’t touch palms..  “Cease and surrender!”

Sol went limp.

“A counter-binding.  Good.  He spent himself, which makes it easier,” Mr. Hennigar said.  “The power we spend to fight can weaken our resistance to binding, and the opposite is true.  The threat of a binding, however thin, can force an enemy to spend power.  Self may triumph in most cases, but the binding, if sufficient, can open the door to other workings or further bindings.  And even if an attempt to bind on one occasion is too weak to truly take control of the target, they can be diminished, influenced, you could single out one action to prevent, or it could be the groundwork of a series of lesser bindings that do give you that control.”

Corbin had badly underrated himself, it seemed.  He beat Zachariah, Natasha, and Max before Lane let a bunch of Echoes out of a box he carried, flooding the arena.  Whatever Corbin was doing to hide and bind in silence, the echoes didn’t care about it.

Lane beat Laila, then Xerxes, and then went up against Erasmus.  Lucy couldn’t really see, even with her Sight, what was going on there, so it was hard for her to tell if he’d just run out of echoes or the juice to pump them out, or if he just couldn’t touch Erasmus.  Either way, the chubby Host practitioner won.

“Next is Verona Hayward.  Alexander got to them first.”

Erasmus against Verona.

“I bind you, Verona Hayward!”

“Which one!?” Verona called out, as she cast out some papers.

The papers became black cats.  Verona followed suit, using the taller grass to confuse things.

“I bind you once.”

“You bind which one?” Verona crowed.  “How?  Why?  You don’t sound very authoritative!”

Just how much glamour are you spending here, Ronnie?  Lucy thought.

Probably okay that she was, in any case.  Appearing strong.

Erasmus took his own turn at appearing strong.  An Other beneath his skin rippled, then changed his features.  His hair grew long, and wove into braids.  Broad shouldered and buxom, he became Other and Practitioner in one.  Io Lucy’s Sight, he was split, overlapping, to her regular eyes, he wore the skin of some female viking, but spoke with his own voice.

“I bind you-”

“You bind nothing here!  You don’t know me, to bind me!”

“I know you’re a wild practitoner, a dabbler!”

“You know the bare minimum!” Verona crowed, from one end of the arena.  “You know-!”

Erasmus twisted, the practitioner and viking girl catching a cat that had been sneaking at them from the side.

“Throwing your voice?” Erasmus asked, as they held the cat.

“A little acoustic trick.”

“I’ve caught you and I’ll declare you bound,” Erasmus said.  “Become human and-”

They gave Verona a shake.

There was no human beneath the glamour.  Only the firecracker.

That’s a limited resource, Ronnie!

They threw it away before the fuse could touch the base.  It still knocked them flat.  The image of the viking girl slipped away, the features becoming Erasmus’s again.

He remained sitting.  The diagram flared, cleaning him up.  Verona shucked the cat form, standing from her hiding place.  Cats returned to her and became papers again.

“Erasmus?  If you’d leave the Arena?” Hennigar called out.

“I’m, uh, not well,” Erasmus said.  “The diagram didn’t fix it.”

“Verona, if you’d undo any curses or effects?”

“Can’t undo that.  It’s physical.  It’s mundane.”

Bristow had to walk all the way over, leaning in to talk to Erasmus.  Then he walked out, returning to his spot.  He bent down, held his hand against the diagram’s edge for a bit.  It flared, and Erasmus stood, dusting off his buttocks and pants before walking out.

“Avery Kelly.  Same group as Hayward.”

“Avery Kelly.”

“Don’t go doing that to me, Ronnie,” Avery said.

“I like you too much.  Avery Kelly, I bind you by the names Pam, by Ms. Hardy-”

“You dick!”

“I bind you by these facts and the secrets that I know.  I bind you by the fact that you drool, you talk in your sleep.  I bind you by the fact that you’re too hard on yourself when you’re super cool.  I bind you by your love for shitty energy drinks, I bind you by-”

Avery sprinted at Verona.  Verona became a bird.  She didn’t take off fast enough.  Avery leaped about ten feet into the air to catch her.  She pinched Verona’s beak shut.

Verona became human.  Avery adjusted her grip to hold Verona’s lips closed.  She looked at Hennigar.

“I would like to see you be more enterprising in your offense than in your defense, Verona Hayward.  Liberty Tedd!”

Oh god.

America leaned in, whispering.

“Spank the freckles off her pale ass.”

Liberty cackled, and she cackled all the way into the arena.  She had what might have been a deck of cards or a collection of drawings, and she held it as a stack, doing the ‘make it rain’ gesture to scatter them.  Where they landed, goblins about Gashwad’s size appeared in the short grass.

“It seems she’s begun, Avery, I would not waste time,” Hennigar called out.

“I bind-”

“Drag her to the ground and fill her mouth with your filth,” she ordered.

No, Liberty,” Bristow called out.

“Go fuck your dead mom!  You’re not in charge of this school and you’re not in charge of me!”

Lucy glanced.  Bristow’s expression didn’t even flinch.

“-you to my will, Liberty Tedd, I bind you to surrender, with this first utterance.”  Avery continued.  She ran, skirting around the goblins.  They weren’t quite fast enough to keep up.

Liberty snatched a Gashwad-sized goblin off the ground, whispered something to it, and then hurled it.

It started to smoke, then ignited.

It detonated into a ball of fire a second later, it left the field burning.  Avery had to change direction and hop over goblins.

“Slowest of you are going to dieeeee!” Liberty crowed.

“I bind you, Liberty Tedd!  A second time!”

“Bind-” Liberty kicked a goblin.  It exploded violently, leaving another patch of fire and a shower of gore that took a few seconds to settle. “-your mother!  Tell her she shouldn’t have any more kids and use a stapler to make sure of it!”

Lucy kept stock still, watching.  But Avery- she appeared stunned by that.

“Didn’t like that, did you!?” Liberty asked, cackling.  “I don’t know how many of you there are, but I hope she stopped at one!  She should have stopped at none!”

It bought goblins time to close in.  Avery adjusted her charm bracelet, then whipped out the hockey stick.  She began swatting them.

“Avery!” Lucy called out.

“No!” Bristow shouted.  “Silent!”

“We awakened together, we’re connected.  Advice seems pretty fair!”

“You won’t always be together,” Bristow said.  “Have you fought every fight up to this point as a trio?”

Lucy shook her head, closing her mouth.

Avery seemed to get what Lucy had been wanting to communicate, by instinct or a realization that what she was doing was only a losing stalemate.  She changed direction, going for Liberty.

Have to count coup, weaken her.  It’s the strategy that scored people wins so far.

The stupid thing is, a lot of the time, anyone in a position to successfully bind can just knock out or beat their target.

Liberty threw a piece of paper into the air, then kicked it.  It became a goblin as it met her foot, soaring up toward Avery.  Avery twisted in the air, kicking out, and changed course.  The goblin sailed by and detonated at the apex of its arc.

Snowdrop leaped from Avery to Liberty, and landed on Liberty’s face, claws scratching.

“Snowdrop, don’t!”

Liberty tossed Snowdrop aside, and a goblin seized the opossum in its jaws.

Snowdrop became human and stabbed the goblin with her fork.  More goblins pounced on her.

“Don’t!  Stop!” Avery shouted.

Lucy took a step forward, but couldn’t speak without breaking the rules.

Avery responded.  She threw spell cards to the ground.  They exploded into light and smoke.

She emerged, using the black rope, from smoke and flame, fire licking her as she came at Liberty from behind.

Goblins saw, reacted, and Liberty turned, but not fast enough to do anything about it.  Avery hit her off her feet with the hockey stick, sending her tumbling into one of her own patches of flame.

“Don’t touch my opossum!  Be bound, Liberty, and call off your goblins!”

Liberty didn’t reply, instead hurling herself out of the fire and past the perimeter of the circle.  She was renewed as she escaped, the fire gone, clothes and hair no longer alight.

The circle pulsed.  Snowdrop and Avery were healed of scratches and gouges.  The fires went out.

Lucy sighed with relief.

Liberty called her goblins.

“America!”

America didn’t cackle like Liberty had.  She looked intense, jittery with adrenaline even before she’d approached the arena.

Avery, very still, gave Snowdrop a stroke on the head.

Avery was saying the other night, she doesn’t like the off-kilter types.  The Tedds are a terrible match-up.

Avery was keeping her composure, cool, collected.  She’d done okay.  But Lucy could tell she didn’t want to do this again.

Lucy tried to think of a way to save her, or to distract her.

“Avery Kelly, into the arena, please.  You did fine, but the binding portion of this is the critical half.”

“No.  I’m going to go look after my boon companion.  I trust my friends to tell me what I need to know.”

“I’m not traumatized at all,” Snowdrop said, very matter-of-factly.

“It would be better if you stayed.”

“Better for who?  Not me.  My friends are my priority here,” Avery said, unflinching.  “Play your shallow power games with someone else.”

“Very well.  Disappointnig.  Lucy Ellingson, then.”

Lucy drew in a deep breath, grabbed her hat and mask, and reached into her bag for the case with the hot lead.  She went in, fully decked out.

Others were whispering.

“They like bags of tricks,” one Legendre boy said to the other.
“She rated herself higher than the other two.  Why?”  Natasha Scobie.
“I don’t envy her, going up against the Tedd witch.”
“What’s your thing, fox girl?” Yadira.

“Don’t get too bruised while thrashing her,” Verona murmured.  “Implement ritual later today.”

Lucy pressed a finger to her lips.

Wasn’t worth revealing too much.  People might hear and if they did, they could interfere, whatever measures they took.

“Outfit sucks,” America said, while wearing cut-off jean shorts that had about the same coverage as a bikini bottom, and a sheer top that made it clear she was wearing a black bra and she had some kind of drawing between her breasts.

“Save the shit talking for after you’re done picking any grass and dirt out of your teeth,” Lucy said.  “It might make you feel better.”

“America,” Mr. Hennigar said.  “Bind Lucy Ellingson.”

“It’s so nice of him, telling me your last name. You’re so forgettable.”

Lucy backed away a few steps, then threw her hat away.

She’d copied some of Verona’s boomerang hat diagram, and added one of her own.

Smoke poured from the brim down, as the hat caught on the wind and soared a lazy circle around the arena.

Lucy ducked off to one side, using the smoke for cover, then bent down.

“Hiding?  Coward!” America called out.  “Stay hidden and be cursed, Lucy Ellingson, I bear the words of Nethertide Wazoo, drowner of all who bear the red wings, she who squirts forth warlords and slurps in the feeble!  I bid you, wear this dark mantle!”

Lucy drew the duelist’s sign.  Arena first.

The circle expanded out from around her, pushing the smoke outward.  It choked America momentarily.

“Be curs- Awww,” America said.  She rubbed at her throat, tugging at a choker, then proceeded to vomit a geyser, extending a hundred feet.

But as Lucy’s arena-in-an-arena spread, the swords rose.  They blocked the worst of it.  She ducked off to one side, and wrapped herself in glamour.

Magnifying herself.  Hair, mask, skin, clothes.  All given a unifying aesthetic.  Her hair billowed behind her.

“You-”

Lucy pulled a sword from the ground and threw it.  Before it even flew past America, she drew out a blade using her weapon ring.

“This is Faerie crap!” America shouted.  She drew in a deep breath.

She didn’t even seem interested in binding so much as the fight.  Cursing, whatever else.

Which, weirdly enough, lined up with Lucy’s observation.

Lucy closed the distance, pulling spell cards from her pocket.

America shrieked.  It was a shrill, vibrating, painful sound, like no human could make.  Doglick could, kind of, but this was that and more.

And it ripped up the glamour closest to her, expanding outward as it went.

Lucy threw the card.  America caught it out of the air.

It billowed out into smoke.  America stuffed it into her mouth, eating it.

The smoke was Lucy’s go-to weapon, flowing neatly from the fact she’d done up her mask to allow her to breathe more easily and see more easily in the haze.  From there, she’d equipped herself with more.

She spotted her hat, caught it, and threw it again.

America pausing to chew had meant she wasn’t screaming and screwing with the glamour.  Now Lucy was in close, armed.

America ripped off a bracelet, and her hand became a claw made of garbage.  She tore off the other with her teeth, and her hand exploded, a ragged hook of bone sprouting out of the stump.

Stepping into the fight felt weirdly like familiar territory.  Practitioners could do so much, in the way of varied tricks.  This, at least, was something Lucy could mostly predict and track with her eyes.

She could watch and see the gulp, predict the vomit.  Fend off the hook, step back from the claw.

In a way, the practice with Guilherme felt like it had hurt her here.  He was measured, precise.  This was wild, like fighting two snarling, rabid dogs at once.  The giant garbage claw and hook had reach.

“Bitch!” America shouted.  “I’ll make you my bitch!  I’ll make you woof like a dog!”

“You’re!” Lucy raised her voice, swatting aside the hook with her pen-turned spear.

America vomited again.  This time it wasn’t fluids, but a mess of bike chains and barbed wire, which pulled out her own teeth and tore at her lips.  She vomited, paused, vomited again, spreading out reels of the stuff to trip and ensnare.

Lucy leaped over it, cutting through the reels with enough force that America’s head snapped to one side.  It only bought her a second.  “The!”

America lunged, claw and hook out.

Guilherme’s lessons had prepared her.  Not for a scrap like this, but to think a little straighter and see a slow-enough movement for what it was.

Lucy dropped low, hitting the ground hard, and pulled a sword out of the ground.  Handle meeting America’s ribs.  The blade bent and was snapped as America was effectively pole-vaulted over and behind Lucy, onto the bike chains and crap.  “Bitch!”

“Lucille,” Bristow said.

“Lucy, please,” Lucy said, standing.

“I do imagine you’re aware, the circle you created overrides some of the protections of ours.”

“I do imagine you’re not fulfilling your duties in warning me sooner.”

“I’ve got barbed wire in my spine, and it’s scratching an itch I’ve had for a year,” America said.  “I think there’s shrapnel in there from an encounter I had with a blunderbuss-toting gremlin.”

“If you’d withdraw your effect, I can at least heal America.”

“And me?” Lucy asked.  “I’m not too badly hurt.”

America made the first sound, like she was really suffering.  It wasn’t because of the barbed wire.  It was because of Lucy’s statement.

“I can, if you ask nicely.”

“Nice,” Lucy said, grunting a bit as she straightened, “is overrated.  If you’re going to make me ask, I’ll deal.  I’ll just call you a failure as a teacher.”

“Walk with me a moment.”

She gave him a look.

“Mr. Hennigar, can you handle things for a minute?  Look after America?”

Mr. Hennigar nodded.

Lucy banished the effect as she walked out of the circle.

“For someone who claims to want to be neutral, you don’t seem very willing to compromise,” Mr. Bristow said.

“Ah, Yadira’s group passed that on?”

“They did.”

Off to the side, Verona was watching, anxious.  Lucy motioned for Verona to settle.  Verona nodded.

Checking if I want the help.

“I don’t…” Lucy started.  It wasn’t really a line she’d planned, so she had to formulate it.  “I don’t think neutral means being smack dab in the middle.  I think that’s really dangerous, actually.  There’s enough outright evil jackoffs out there that the middle feels pretty icky.”

She met his eyes as she said that last bit.

“What do you think neutral is, then?”

“I think it’s not explicitly taking a side.  I think it’s holding onto what we believe.  I think it’s fighting people like Shellie, who hurt Jessica as badly as she did, and not encouraging them.”

“Your connection to the Blue Heron Institute is threaded through Alexander Belanger.  You don’t think you’ve taken a side?”

“You sent people to our town, you refused to negotiate with us because you’d rather hurt Alexander by proxy, somehow.  You hurt someone we like.  I don’t think you’re doing much good for the likes of Clementine, Daniel, or any of them.  We’re being generous in holding back, considering.  And we’re willing, I’m pretty sure, to be hands off.  Let us study without interference or games.  Don’t drag us into it.  We have other stuff to take care of.”

“None of which answers my question.  Do you think you’ve escaped being Alexander Belanger’s pawn?”

“I don’t know.  Maybe.  But you’ve got an awful lot to take care of if you want to take all of those pawns off the board.”

“Very few are as interesting to Alexander, and the ones that are, you three excepted, have already firmly declared.”

“What do you want, Bristow?”

“I want my school back.  I want Alexander to fall.”

“I don’t see how annoying us is getting you there.”

“Everything matters.  I think I win, and I win soon.  I don’t want to win by inches, my dear, I want to win by miles.  A big unknown is ground he could use to scrabble his way back.”

“What if we swore not to help him?”

“I think the oath would soon be broken.  You’d help him without realizing.  Short of you three being off-campus entirely, I don’t see it being likely.  Even if you were in Kennet, you’d be a variable.”

“What if we were on campus but indisposed?”

“How so?”

“I intend to do an implement ritual.  I’ll be preoccupied.  My friends will be keeping me company, to build their ties to the implement.”

“When?” Bristow asked.

“We were planning for this weekend.  Apparently, Familiar and Implement rituals get priority for workshop time?”

“They do.  My order, when Mr. Musser was my right hand.  He felt it important, I obliged him.  The rule was never rescinded.  Interesting.”

“Will you interfere?” Lucy asked.

“Three days.  Saturday, Sunday, Monday?”

“This evening, Saturday, Sunday, Monday morning.  Will you interfere?”

“That only takes you out of the picture.  Your friends?”

“In attendance.”

“From start to finish?”

“No.  They were planning it between themselves.  I was focused on other things.  I think the intention was that one of them would be near me at all times.  They’d relieve one another.  They’re bringing me things if I need them.  Food and stuff.”

“I’ll tell you this.  You wish to be neutral.  I wish for your true neutrality over the three days your ritual is underway.  You wish for your ritual to be uninterrupted.”

“Yeah.”

“If you and your friends do not interfere, I will leave you and your ritual be.  We’ll decide where we stand after.  You may wish to be in my good graces.”

“I’d have to talk to them.  I think they’d say yes.  But we’d need more provisions.”

“Such as?”

“Your guarantee.  Alexander’s already sworn.  I’d like you to swear too.  Not just that you won’t interfere, but you will keep others from interfering too.  You’ll step in in case of outside circumstance.”

“A high ask.  I’d have to devote resources, take steps.”

“As Alexander would.  Neutral.”

“Your intention seems to be that you’re making yourselves very prominent wild cards, and then offering to take yourselves off the table.”

“That’s essentially it.  And we want to be off the table, pretty much.  We just want to study.  I don’t know exactly why people are so very interested in us..”

“You have easy access to a lot of power.  I think you could fight a lot of fights like your one against Liberty just now.  I could tell you to banish your arena and leave you to erect it again, and you’d be fine.  You’re talented and sharp and you’re largely unknown, and being unknown is a sharp edge in this world.  I’ll swear to take the steps necessary to ensure your ritual goes uninterrupted, if you stay out of Alexander’s reach for the duration.”

“Or you forfeit your claim to apartment building and the school.”

Bristow paused, eyebrows going up.

He didn’t answer.

“I don’t have to do the ritual this weekend.”

“You want to.”

“But I don’t have to.  We don’t have to be neutral.  And really, if we aren’t neutral, I think we’d be trying to kick your ass.”

Bristow smiled.  “Shall we shake on it?”

“I said I’d have to ask my friends.  We’ll try and get back to you.  Out of curiosity, why are you so willing to have this conversation out in the open?  We’re not out of Alexander’s Sight, are we?”

“We are and we aren’t.  Alexander is keeping those eyes closed because Kevin Noone is on the campus.  Should Alexander look, he runs the risk that my tenant with the one green eye might look back, and Alexander would lose what he values most.”

“Ah.  Then, while I’m asking questions-”

“I’m happy to give answers.”

“I’m giving you my time.  You invited me.”

Mr. Bristow smiled.

Verona told me you use these word games, talking too much, or giving a lot in a conversation so you can get that little karmic edge, Lucy thought.

“Do you see yourself as a good guy?”

“Do you see yourself as a good girl?” he asked.

“I kind of do.  I have some regrets.  Some people I hate and fantasize about cursing.  But I don’t act on that.”

“We all fantasize.  Could goodness be whether we act on the dark fantasies or not?”

“I think there’s a lot more to it.  You dodged my question.”

“I don’t see myself as a good man, my dear.  But I don’t see myself as a bad man either.  I am merely a man.  A lawyer, a teacher, a property manager, a councilman, a friend, a boyfriend, a father figure, a repairman, a problem solver, a networker, a tech aficionado, and a connoisseur of fine dining that only barely exceeds my budget, as it may continue to do when and if I make ten times the amount I do now.  But I am a man at the end of the day.”

“That sounds even more like a dodge.”

“Speaking of men!”

She turned to follow Bristow’s gaze.

It was Ted, approaching from the direction of the field.  The man who’d lived the first thirty-something years of his life countless times.

“You were bruised in the fight,” Ted spoke, looking at Lucy.  “How are you now?”

“We’ll see, I guess.”

“I devised a salve made using some common leaves in Canadian woodlands.  I see three of the ingredients here, and I’ve seen the fourth closer to the school.  It helps to fight infection.”

“No thank you.  I’m pretty sure it’s only bruises.”

“It should be,” Ted said.

“Do you need something?” Bristow asked.

Ted leaned in close, murmuring in Bristow’s ear.

“They’ve agreed.  You have the Legendres.”

Bristow looked at Lucy, the corners of his mouth turning up.

…agreed.  You have the Legendres.

“I remember the moment,” Lucy replied, her voice soft.

The Earring leaned back, still rigid, one of the charms at the end of the curly, thick wire swinging like a pendulum.

“How do you know what was said, elsewhere?” Lucy asked.  “You weren’t there.”

Someone in this room was,” the Earring whispered.  “I’m to challenge you.  To get to the heart of you.”

“Asking me who that someone was?” Lucy asked.

She turned to look back.

Avery and Snowdrop had stepped out.  Verona was on watch, feet pulled up to the seat of her chair, a notebook in her lap.

“Me?” Lucy asked.  “It wasn’t Verona, on the edge of all those conversations.  It was me.”

“You were there, you didn’t hear, but you knew,” the Earring said.  “You knew Verona had said something, when your mother treated you more gently after crossing paths with her, and took your side against Bader.  You know them both too well.  You pay keen attention.”

“You want me to trust myself?” Lucy asked.

“Your lifelong friend took your side.  She called him unreasonable, a bully.  Your mother talked to him and drew the same conclusion, and she talked to your Aunt Heather about it.  You know this too.”

Lucy swallowed.  “Yeah.”

“Yeah?” the Earring breathed, a whisper.  “Do you know?”

“Yeah?” Lucy questioned.

The Earring shook her head.

The room had gotten so much colder.  It was dark out.  Lucy shifted position, pulling her pants legs down to her ankles.  She pulled at her top, partially folded up to expose her belly and back, partially fallen down at the side.

The diamonds, separate, had drawn closer together.  The earring reached out and touched Lucy’s forehead with a cold finger that could have been metal.  She dropped her hand down the side, grazing Lucy’s ear, then laid the backs of fingers over Lucy’s heart.

“I am an expression of you and your Self.  I am made of the care and attention from two members of your triad.  I am to make you shine, my practitioner.  But you must meet me halfway.  You know too many things and don’t believe them and you think you believe things but can’t know them.  This is like a hurt, a-“

The Earring moved a finger, touching and lifting a wire-hair, positioning one of the crystals at Lucy’s eye level.

“-flaw.  At the heart of you.  It threatens to shatter you.  This internal war has settled and gone quiet, this far from home and familiar sentiment, but it’s not silent.  It swells in your heart.  It hurts.”

The Earring turned its head.  Lucy looked.

Avery was coming in, silent, carrying Snowdrop and a whole bunch of stuff.  The stuff went straight to a shelf.

Metal lips grazed Lucy’s ear, whispering, “She defended you against teammates.  She questioned Bader.  She could have pushed harder, but she pushed.  You know this without hearing it or being told.”

Lucy leaned back a bit and met the Earring’s eyes.  She swallowed.

“I tell you nothing you don’t already know.  You have always paid attention. You know you are loved but you don’t believe it.”

Again, the crystal dangled from the finger.

Lucy nodded.  Then, uncomfortable, checking everything was okay, she glanced back.

Avery was crouched beside Verona’s chair, leaning in close, showing Verona something she had written down.  They were allowed to be here but couldn’t intrude on the conversation.  Them speaking would be an intrusion.

Lucy’s eye fell on the shelf with all the stuff Avery had brought.  Studied Avery’s expression, and how the other two were so caught up in the exchange that they hadn’t noticed she’d fallen silent and was watching.

The extra stuff was spare clothes, food, and toiletries for Avery and Verona.

“Yes,” the Earring whispered.  “Listen.”

Lucy listened.

The two doors of the room were open.  It was evening, but some students were outside.  She could hear the conversations, distant, even if she couldn’t make out the words.

“You know.”

She knew.

“Will you chase that, and run from the question of love?”

Lucy knew she could.  Could chase that distant conflict.  Listen for it.  It would have its effect on her implement.

But it felt like a retreat.

“Avery, Verona,” she said.

There was no reply.  There couldn’t be.

“Do you want to shut the doors?” Lucy asked, glancing at them.

Avery nodded with some emphasis.

Rather than cross the room, she left out the one door, circling around, and appeared at the far door, adjusting the lever to let it close all the way.

Lucy stood, taking care not to cross the wrong lines, and lit the first of the candles.  She began to set the candles around the space.  She liked the smoke that poured from them.  Each candle she lit was matched by a mirror candleflame on the far end of the room, each without a candle to hold it..

When there was sufficient light and Avery was inside, Verona shut the door.

Lucy settled, bringing candles with her, and lit them, arranging them around her, with some care.

She’d face this question of love.  That problem could wait.

She-

She paused, stopping, and found herself almost regretted the choice to choose to face down love instead of distant violence.

The Earring had a phone held to one ear, glowing.

She lowered the phone, holding it so Lucy could hear the screen.

Class_RankR.

“I guess my mind skipped over her when I was going over the list, she’s pretty enough, I guess,” a boy said.  It might have been Brayden.

“Zero?  Nothing?  Brutal.”  She couldn’t place it.  A boy.

“What if it’s weird?  What if her family celebrates different holidays?”

That last one was George’s voice.  She’d liked George, or- she’d liked his face.  His hair.

She wasn’t sure she liked it anymore.

“You wanted to hear,” the Earring whispered.  “You can reject me.  This ends.  You remember nothing except that I wasn’t the choice for you.”

Lucy shook her head.

“I kissed her at the end-of-year party, and I met her eyes and I couldn’t believe how pretty she was.  I’ve been in the same classes as her from the start, how have I never seen her before?”

Lucy smiled, worried there was more.

“I want to kiss her again.  Without a crowd.  Is that dumb?”

“Me too, Wallace,” she whispered.

“I wonder if she’d say yes if I asked her to go to Killaloe Dough or to go out for a day of snowboarding.”

Lucy drew in a deep breath, eyes on the floor.

The Earring was silent.

“Yeah,” Lucy murmured, in answer.  She looked up and found herself looking into the dangling, decorated ‘jewel’.  Her face was refracted a dozen times in different facets.  In the candlelight gloom, she had a hard time differentiating her face being reflected back at her from the earring’s reflection refracting through.

This was only going to get harder.  She had to face a lot of different facets of herself, her life.

And after… well.  Avery had brought stuff to stay here and they’d shut the doors for a reason.  Something was happening while she was here.  Something that had Avery and Verona tense.

So they’d holed up here.  A ritual in progress in the midst of a siege.

The earring whispered, and Lucy, tense, listened.

Cutting Class – 6.8

Lucy (Again)

“Heads up.  The bitch marches.”

Lucy, unable to hear the whisper, walked over to the window, while Verona took the sink closest to the end, pulling out paper towels and running the sink, so she could get the ink stain that had spread where her pen had leaked into her pocket.

Lucy, hearing the whisper, paused, while Verona kept walking.  She glanced at the cluster of girls who’d gathered around one sink, not doing anything except talking.  Some of them glanced at her, smirking.

“What?” that Verona asked, looking back.  She turned the sink on.

There were two Lucys.  One that didn’t hear, and one that did.  The world peeled into two overlapping sequences of events.  In some, the actions like Aubrey scratching at the little soap-shelf between sink and mirror were almost identical.  In others, there were differences like Verona being slower to act.

“What?” Aubrey asked, with a bit of a scoff.

“Nothing,” Lucy answered.

Emerson leaned in, whispering.

“Do you think she heard?”

The question occurred in both worlds, just different enough from one another for there to be a distortion to it.

“I heard,” the one Lucy said.  The other Lucy, standing by Verona and fussing over the ink stain, only glanced over, frowning.

The Lucy that had spoken took a step to the side, to ‘face’ the girls, though they were looking more in the mirror than they were looking at her.  In her own reflection, she was wearing the earring.  Something that hadn’t been the case when this event had unfolded.  The Lucy at Verona’s side was acting out what past Lucy had done.

“I’m not going to apologize,” Audrey said.

“What am I missing?” Verona asked.

“They were talking about me.”

“Barely,” Aubrey said.

“I want to ask,” Emerson said.  “What’s your deal?  Why-

“-why are you so pissed at everything all the time?” the other Emerson asked, impulsively, her voice a second off from the statement by the other.

Verona struck a pose, exaggerated.  “I’m really, really bummed that Dino-sty Dash Through Time got canceled.  Seeing it on Saturday mornings was the only thing keeping me going.  Now I want nothing except for the world to end.”

“It wasn’t that good,” Aubrey said.

“Shush,” Audrey said, elbowing her sister.  “We’re not talking to you, Verona.”

“Lucy,” Emerson said.  “I don’t want to be a jerk or anything, but-”

“You should do something different, then,” Lucy said, arms folded, eyes averted, frowning.  “You’re getting there.”

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about!  That!  Why are you like this?  Who farted on your toaster tarts?  You’re pissed all the time.”

“I’m not that pissed.  This is just how my face is,” the two Lucys said.

“Nah, I’ve gone to school with you for too long,” the Emersons said.  “You’re different, these past few months.”

“Maybe,” the Lucy with the earring said, “I don’t exactly feel like opening up to some jerks who talk behind my back when they think I’m not listening.”

The Lucy without the earring dropped to her knees, paper towel in hand, and dabbed at the vague black stain on Verona’s jeans.  She shot the trio of girls at the other sink a sullen look, but didn’t respond.

“Whatever,” that trio said, while the overlapping trio that had been talking to the Lucy with the Earring whispered among themselves.

“Screw her.  Let’s just go.”

“Yeah,” the Lucy with the earring said. “Go.”

Audrey, Emerson and Aubrey headed to the door, leaving their little bit of graffiti unfinished.  Emerson held back, turning Lucy’s way before passing through the door.  “If you keep treating people like the enemy, sooner or later, they’re going to start acting like you expect.”

The door closed.

“Other way around,” the Lucy with the Earring said, to the closed door.  Her voice overlapped with the other, alternate Verona saying something about the ink stain. She focused on the Earring-reality, and let the true events of the past continue in the background.

“What?” Verona asked.

“Other way around, from what Emerson said.  I stopped pretending everything’s cool when it isn’t.  Someone’s acting like a jerk, I’m going to call them out on it.  I used to smile, I used to pretend stuff didn’t bother me, or that people weren’t being dumb or mean.  On purpose or by accident.  But it sure didn’t make anything better.”

“Hm.”

“Hm?” Lucy asked, glaring up at Verona.

“Something to think about, I guess.  You do you.  So long as we’re friends.”

“Always.  Always always always,” Lucy said, kneeling on the bathroom floor by the sink, wet paper towel in hand.  She used wet paper towel to daub at the stain at Verona’s leg, seeing if she could absorb some ink, then shook her head.  No use.

Verona smiled, then looked down at her jeans, with the big wet spot on the side of her thigh.  “And I’m… going to be really annoyed my jeans have an ink stain on them.”

“I think you’re supposed to pat, instead of rub.  My mom said something like that about grass stains, before.”

“My mom works too much to really give me any advice, and my dad… I think all my dad knows about clothes is that he wears the same outfit to work every day.  And t-shirts with his faded old University logo on them during the weekends.  I hope they’re not mad about the jeans.”

Anxiety touched Verona’s features, as she contemplated her parents getting mad.

“Don’t worry about it,” Lucy said.  “Really.  It was an accident.  They can’t really blame you.”

“I’m never sure.  Ugh.  Ugh ugh ugh.  Maybe I can hide it, or sew a patch onto it.”

The door shut as the Earring-less Lucy and Verona made their exit.  Lucy turned to look at the door, then looked back to Verona.

“Just tell them, Ronnie.”

It was just the one Verona and Lucy in the washroom, now.  Delayed by a conversation, which was spurred by a whispered insult.  In the wake of it, they were reaffirming their friendship and keeping each other upright.  The two of them against a vaguely hostile, busy, uncaring world.

“This wet spot on my pants is annoying.  I’m going to go grab my gym shorts.”

“It’s cold for shorts.  Want my sweatpants?”

“Sure!  Yeah.  Let me just clean this up-”

“I will,” Lucy said, grabbing the sink as she straightened up.  She put her paper towel with the paper towels Verona had been using, all in the sink, and gathered them up.  “Go grab my pants from my bag.”

“Catch up with you in a minute then,” Verona said.  “Thanks.”

Then there was only Lucy, in seventh grade, wearing an earring she hadn’t owned then.  She gathered up the paper towels, then wiped at the sink to clean up the dribbles of faintly inky water, before they could stain anything.  She dumped it in the trash, then washed her hands.

Only when that was done did she face herself in the mirror, and the Earring personified stared back at her, holding up one finger.

“What?”

The Earring touched one finger to her lips, indicating silence, then touched the ear with the earring.

Lucy listened.

“…should stop hanging out with her.”

“She’s getting a reputation as a bitch.  Nobody likes having her around.”

“I do.  She’s my best friend.”

“Maybe reconsider?  If she goes around calling us all jerks and stuff, people are going to start reacting to that.  It’ll hit you too.”

“I can deal.”

“Everyone on the dance team thought you had natural talent, before.  I think you’d kick ass if you joined.”

“And abandon Luce?  Nah.”

“Not abandon.  Just… hang with us too.  Do some dancing.”

“It’s a little bit tempting, but the more I get nagged about it, the less I like the idea.”

“Do you actually like how she’s acting?  You know she’s changed.”

“No, I- sure, she’s changed a bit.  Deep down, she’s the same Lucy.”

“If you say so.”

“Do you want to be the person who hears these things?” the Earring asked, through the mirror.

“Yes.”

“Even knowing it makes things worse, little by little?  Verona pushed slightly away?  To flirt with joining the dance team?  To find some escape with them and some stolen vodka after the divorce, instead of solely with you?  To leave the door open for her to escape into a mind-numbing haze, even before Miss ever finds you and gives you three magic?”

The voice was behind her now.  Cool metal settled on her shoulders.  A hand and a forearm.  The hand attached to that forearm touched her ear.

Lucy stared at the door.

“There’s no wrong answer, really.  But we must reconcile this gap between you and me.  Any answer you give helps us negotiate our way closer.”

“Are all implement rituals this harsh?”

“No.  I don’t know anything you don’t, except what threads through my manufacture, my design, my aesthetic.  But the same tempering rituals that scoured me clean of small evils and pollution also erased some of the softer edges.”

It felt like Verona should walk though that door, ready to change into Lucy’s pants.  Or the alternate Verona, from the real sequence of events, where Lucy hadn’t heard those words as she’d walked into the girls washroom at school, hadn’t retorted in the same way, hadn’t made Emerson just a little irritated, so she’d talk to Verona…

“Besides…” the Earring whispered, her head moving beside Lucy’s so a cool metal ear could press against Lucy’s own ear.  It should have squished the earring between their heads in an uncomfortable way, but it didn’t.  “…Would you have me be anything but harsh?  Uncompromising?  Willing to challenge?”

“If it leads to something better,” Lucy said.

“Your answer decides if it’s better.  Would you want this to be your Self, from the beginning until now?”

“Yes,” Lucy said.  “Because hearing… paying more attention, being more responsive, I can steer her away.  I need to catch stuff.”

“Do you know what scares me most?  It’s the idea that this will be it for the next however many years we’re alive and together.  Me, being the level-headed one.”

Lucy nodded, recognizing the whisper.

“But if you actually ask me to tell you what to do to make it up to me, and make that my burden or job, on top of everything…”

“I get it,” Lucy said.  “I do.  I know.  I’m taking on more.  It’s more burden, more stress, more… focus, I guess, that I’m spending on doing that.  On paying attention.”

“So long as you know,” the Earring said, embracing her from behind, arms crossed over Lucy’s chest, fingers digging into her arms.

“Yes,” Lucy said, voice firm, eyes fixed on the door with Verona on the other side.

“Why?”

Lucy hesitated, searching herself for the answer.

The Earring whispered, “We have only the three days, and so much ground to cover.  Tell me, will this earring tarnish?  Or will it do the opposite, and shed any defect to glitter bright?  Does it have sharp edges?”

“I don’t- isn’t that already decided?”

“Physically, yes.  Symbolically?  Decide down there.”

She let go of Lucy, and Lucy dropped, no ground beneath her feet.

Her bare feet struck the floor with a hollow echoing sound.

“There.  There!  I hear her.”

“Get ready.  Go.  Fan out.”

Her head turned to the room nearby.  She heard the faint footsteps.

It was like a vacant office building, some of the panels of the drop ceiling missing or fallen, wires dangling.  Paint chipped.  There were vents in the walls that were leaking a faint haze, which clung close to the floor.  The open space she was in now had a few scattered pieces of broken furniture, pillars, and windows at one side that were papered over from the outside.  The light from the windows was blue-tinted and dim, failing to reach into the full depth of the room.  What would have been a huge collection of cubicles, now mostly cleared out.

Deal,” the Earring whispered in her ear.

Lucy turned.

The physical manifestation of the earring was gone.  There was only what was at her ear.

She reached for her stuff, and her hand slapped skin and a thin layer of clothing.  She was wearing only a sports bra and her skintight gym shorts, both stained with odd fluids, like the watery ink from the efforts of cleaning Verona’s pants.  Her skin was dotted with scabs and healing wounds, splatters of blood that had dried against skin, and some more of those other dark fluids.  Her lips were chapped, her eyes dry, her skin cold, and her hair loose and unbound by any cord.  Her feet were bare, and she could feel the grit, like salt or sand, all across the cool floor.

She ducked low, hurrying over to a pile of tables, most of them missing three legs.  Quietly, without a sound, she moved around them without touching them, moving her head around to peer under and beneath, looking for anything she could use.

Nothing.  No missing chair legs, not even a pen.

It’s like the Hungry Choir ritual.  No spoon, fork or knife.

A test.

She listened, because it had to be important, and she heard the footsteps.  She moved around the pile of tables to keep them between herself and the source of the sound.

Sounds.

Multiple sets of footsteps.

Stepping out of the gloom was a man, wearing a business suit, no tie, gore covering the white dress shirt and giving texture to the black suit itself.  His face had the blades of three kitchen knives embedded in it, each running in parallel, points near the chin, handles near the forehead.  The bloody ruin of his face was impossible to make anything out of.  A knife blade ran vertically through each eye, and the middle one bisected nose and lips.

He held a fourth kitchen knife.  Throwing it, catching it by the handle.  Throwing it, catching it by the handle.  She could hear it slap against his palm.  She heard his footsteps, and the sound as he kicked a bit of ceiling tile to one side.

As he reached the point where he was fully in the light, he stopped, head turning so that blind eyes could rove over the space.  A second one, a woman, emerged behind him.  Business suit, same deal, but the three blades that were sticking down her face were long enough to penetrate her collarbone, making her head rigid and unable to turn.  All the wounds were still bleeding, blood continually soaking out through her pale blue top.  Lucy wasn’t sure if that was a forever thing; if an hour from now, there would still be white portions of the top for blood to seep out into.

The woman was holding another blade like that.  A machete.

She looked for escape routes.

Doors in each corner of the room.  One led to a stairwell.

Stairwells were narrow, but once she was in there, she had branching options.  She figured if she could get a headstart, she could get in there, and even if they chased, they’d have a hard time knowing which floor she’d escaped to.  It opened the most options.

She heard heavy footsteps, and hesitated.

A man, tall and as muscular as a bodybuilder, emerged from the dark.  His skin had more scars from cuts than it had untouched flesh, thick body hair bristled out from chest and arms, and his head had three axes and two knives embedded in it.  The handles stuck straight up and formed a kind of crown.

She knew, right away, that he was the one in charge.  He fit the theme- he had a tie loosened and hanging from his neck, looking more like a claimed trophy than a thing he’d normally wear, black business pants, and shiny brown leather shoes caked in gore.  He carried an axe in one hand, a knife in the other.

He thrust the axe out with enough force that it whooshed in the air.  Gesturing.  Lucy pulled back further behind cover.  He repeated the motion.  Indicating two different corners.

“Search for her,” the muscular leader ordered, voice rough, choked, but not especially weak for how it was choked.  “Tell the others she was here.

He started walking directly toward her.  The other two took the other corners he’d pointed to.

Leaving her no good option except for running to the stairwell.  She’d have one right behind her, bigger and stronger than she was, another two flanking.  Any direction that wasn’t away would have two of them collapsing on her.  Staying still would mean the big guy would pass within a few paces of her, as he walked around the table.  If she tried to creep around, keeping the tables between them, she’d be in plain sight of the others.

She didn’t move, and waited instead, listening to footsteps to keep tabs on where they were.

“Little girllll!” the first one she’d seen called out.  His voice echoed through the desolate space.

Lucy bent down, looking at the ramshackle pile of broken tables, and saw light on the other side.

She crouched down, and then crept into a gap between tables.

This could go so wrong so easily.  One nudge on the wrong table and it might fall.  It could trap her, alert them, or, most likely, both.

She shimmied forward on her belly, bare stomach rubbing against the accumulated grit on the ground.  A screw here, a bit of wood there.  Both things too small to use as practical weapons.

She had to rotate her upper body to slip through one gap, then inch forward, lifting up ribs, then pelvis, moving with glacial slowness, deeper into the mess of tables.

Lucy was forced to stop, almost dizzy, her body telling her to breathe hard, to panic, to react, while her mind wanted only control and silence.  Fear was like a furnace blazing inside of her, a hot flame that ate at her energy, her focus, and her coordination.  She had to keep feeding it, but everything she had available to feed it was vital.

Even hope.  The idea that she had a plan was something she could feed into that fire, but the act of feeding it made her greedy and anxious, too eager to move forward and do something reckless.

An edge of table, a safe table that sat with its top flat against the ground, scraped at her side, as she slid by.

What happens if I fail?  Do I doom myself to have this pain and ugliness infecting my implement forever?  Is it weaker?  What does it say about me, if this Earring can conjure up some darkness out of my subconscious that my conscious mind can’t defeat?

She crawled forward, turning her hips to avoid another dangling table-leg, until her head was at the far side.  It was a narrow gap.  Once she was partway out, she had to carry on, because backing up wouldn’t be an option.

She listened.

Some footsteps paced.  One of the Others had already entered one room and returned from it.  She kept her eyes closed, trying to visualize the space.  There were pillars… where?

She put everything into listening, eyes closed… the tap of shoes against floor, traveling left, then right.  Left, then right.

A little bit further away and quieter, as it traveled right.

Like smoke, Lucy thought.  Like becoming moonlight and darkness.

She stuck her head out, then drew her shoulders together to get them past the gap.  Her chest and belly scraped the floor as she got them through-

Something crashed.  She dropped her head flat to the floor, to give less of a profile, and looked through the gloom.

The pacing one had pushed over a cubicle partition wall without anything to anchor it.

“Problem!?” the large one called out, from the stairwell.

“No. Nothing.”

The pacing man moved left.  Lucy counted two steps, then planted her hands on the floor, pushing herself out from under the tables.

Going through, instead of around.  She watched as the pacing one’s shadow moved across the floor, and slipped forward, quietly as she could, to enter the room the three Others had come from.

Her hand went to her nose and mouth, covering them.

Three security guards and four office workers were piled up in one corner of the room.  Butchered.  Seven bodies, all piled up against the door she needed to go through.

No other exits.  No other ways out that didn’t necessitate that she go past one of the Others.

She went to the doorway and peered out, through the darkness.

There were four, now.  The newest one looked like some intern kid or something, with a short sleeved shirt, small letter openers radiating out from his head.  He carried a disproportionately large blade that looked like it was meant to cut through entire stacks of newspaper or something.

Verona would have an easier time with this.  What would Verona do?

She touched her earring.  Made with a bit of Verona in it.

Footsteps were moving her way.  She couldn’t say if they were coming straight to her or just wandering.

Lucy crossed the room, pulling on the door handle, as if the bodies could be pushed out of the way.  It moved an inch before stopping.

Lucy looked around the door, at the wall, wondering if there was a way through.  Not without making noise.  She would barely dent the wall before they caught her.

She looked up.

Hauling on the door to create as much gap as she could, she made a face, then moved one of the corpse’s arms.  It wasn’t rigid, and she was able to place a hand in the gap of the door.

Stepping up onto the knob, she put fingers over the top edge of the door itself.  Bracing one foot against the wall beside her, the other reaching up, she grabbed the frame, and hauled herself up until she could squirm and achieve a position where she was perched on the very top edge of the door.

Drop ceiling.  She moved one of the foam tiles aside, then crawled in and through.

Something within the ceiling fell through.  She tensed, listening, and heard a thump.

“Shhh.  There.”

She twisted around, moving as gently as she could, using the firmest ‘ground’ where there were walls beneath her.  Anything else risked that she’d fall through.

There was a scrape.  She turned, and she saw a hand reaching up.

Her breath a hiss through congested nostrils, her eyes stinging from the dust up here, she tensed.

The head peered over the top.  The man with the kitchen knives.

Her hand gripped a knife by the handle, and she twisted, hauling on it.  It made his head turn, and she lodged one handle against the edge of the ceiling.

She pulled her earring off, and gripped the bottom end and wire in one hand.  She raked the metal reinforced jewel at the bottom end across his fingers, to weaken his grip.

He pulled back, grabbing onto something-maybe the same door she’d used to climb.  The force of his tug dragged her about three inches closer to the open tile where she’d climbed through, but it also loosened the knife.

She pulled it free.  He made a gasping, sucking sound, fresh blood welling from the wound.

Tense, she remained poised.

“Stop hunting me.”

He stabbed awkwardly with the kitchen knife.  She plunged the knife she’d pulled out of his head into his neck.

She almost lost her grip on her weapon as he dropped.

The big guy was hacking at the wall, making a hole he could go through.  The others were moving, communicating.  She could listen, but she had a pretty good sense of what they were doing.

She crawled away, through the ceiling, in the direction of the staircase.

The jewel in her hand caught faint light, flaring, and she was blinded.

“Deal.”

Her heart sank.  She blinked hard, eyes wet.

“You okay?” Avery asked.  Voice a bit low.

Lucy had to blink a few times before she could see.

There were a lot of people here.  Her mom sat on the edge of the bed.  Then there were a bunch of twenty-something people around, some edging on thirty.  Everything was bright and dazzling and she couldn’t wrap her head around it.

“Don’t ruin the makeup,” Avery whispered.  “But you know more about that junk than I do.”

Lucy’s eyes locked onto Avery, reconciling the voice with the source.  Avery was there, wearing a suit, top buttons undone, hair in a swoosh not all that different than what she’d worn at the party.  She had a bit of tattoo peering out of her sleeve and at her collarbone.  Her voice wasn’t lower because of any artificial way of speaking, but because Avery was an adult.

Lucy’s hand went up toward her face, then stopped short, before she could ruin her makeup.

“It looks so good,” her mom said.

“Um,” Lucy said, her voice hollow and breathless.  She ran her hand down her stomach.  She was wearing a silk shift that extended to the knees, while everyone else was dressed to the nines.  They were all ready, and Lucy wasn’t, and they weren’t freaking out, which meant…

She touched her left hand, fingers running along the stones on the ring there.  She wore the weapon ring, too, on her index finger.

She touched her earring as well.  Reminding herself it was there.

“Need some space?” Avery asked, a bit more serious than before.

“This is a lot,” Lucy said, still a bit breathless.  What the hell was this?  She couldn’t imagine many ways to raise the stakes than a major, life-defining event.  Except what she was doing was a major event unto itself.

Getting married?

She looked at her mom and remembered Paul.

There were so many ways this could go wrong.

“It’s supposed to be a lot,” a girl said.  Alyssa.  Booker’s girlfriend.  “A lot is good.”

Lucy smiled, tentative.

“Give us some space?” Avery asked.  “I’ve got some stuff to talk to Luce about.  Then we should get some things moving.  But I want to make sure we’re square.”

“Normally Lucy’s the one dictating schedules,” Alyssa said, with good humor but she rose to her feet.  She gave mom a helping hand.

Lucy’s mom touched her cheek.  “You look perfect.”

Lucy smiled, even as the tension of the moment built.  How was this at the same level as the knife-heads?  Or was it a reprieve?  Or a trap?

How was she supposed to ‘deal’ with this?  It was a test, probably, but…

The room cleared out.  Only Avery and Lucy within.

“Did you See something?” Avery asked, quiet.

Lucy shook her head.

“Nothing practice related, then?”

“I don’t know,” Lucy said, quiet.  “And I know this is supposed to be about believing and knowing and about love and figuring that out, but…”

She looked around the room.  At the hanging bag that presumably had her wedding dress in it.  There was a makeup kit, like the one she’d taken to the Blue Heron Institute, but more elaborate.  Maybe enchanted.

“…I don’t know.  Maybe that’s what I’m supposed to deal with.”

“This sounds like the sort of riddle Verona would be best suited to tackle,” Avery said.

Lucy back at Avery.  “Where is she?  Is she okay?”

“Verona’s… Verona.”

“That’s not really an answer,” Lucy said.

“It is, though.  And I’d hate to get into it when things aren’t going to change no matter what I say or do today.  Can we just make today a good day?”

Lucy shut her eyes.  Hurt welled in her chest.

Was the challenge to ask that question?  To face that reality?  Or did facing it help make it happen, or… or…

She floundered.

“Or is that already ruined?” Avery ventured.

“I don’t know,” Lucy said, again, voice hollow.

“I’m so sorry I’ve been so hard to reach.  Doing my own thing.”

“Are you happy?” Lucy asked, looking up.

“Yeah,” Avery told her.  Avery smiled, her features softening.  “Yeah.”

“You look fantastic.”

“A bit of glamour from new sources.  A bit of good, healthy living.”

Lucy hugged Avery on impulse.

“You good?” Avery asked.

A knock on the door made Lucy jump.  She was surprised Avery didn’t.

“I’m told you’re in there, Luce?” a male voice asked, on the far side.

“You’re not supposed to see each other before the wedding,” Avery said.

“We’re not that traditional.  Can I come in?”

“Some patterns and traditions are useful,” Avery said, with a warning tone.  “Shall I let him in?”

Lucy had a sinking feeling in her gut.  She nodded.

Avery steered Lucy to face away from the door.  “Stay.  Stick to the tradition.”

Lucy stayed, back to the door.  She could hear the door.  She could hear the footsteps.

“Back, easy does it, back, back…” Avery said.

He bumped into Lucy.  She reached back to pat at him and get a sense of where he was and what he was doing, and he took her hand, holding it..

They stood, back to back.

“I’ll give you a moment.  Don’t take too long.  We need to get you dressed,” Avery said.

“Ooh,” the fiancé said.  “So tempting to turn around.”

Lucy gave him a swat with her free hand.  He laughed.

It was a good sound.  Easy.

Lucy leaned her head back until it rested against his neck.  She turned her head a bit, saw the vest and shirt, and she smelled the cologne.  She closed her eyes, taking it in.  Feeling the warmth of him against her back.  His hand in hers.  So big.

She was prepared for the trap. The nightmare reveal he was… frick, who would be the worst possible person?  Chase Belanger?  Nicolette’s transphobic, lazy master?

Gabe?  Not that there was necessarily anything wrong with adult Gabe, freed from the Choir, but… what would it say if she had to face the fact that she’d rated a zero on the ranker app and he’d done the same?  That she didn’t deserve better?  That they were supposed to grow?

Except there was another chat.  Another hard, impossible, crazy thing that had to be tackled, and that made a far greater trap that would sit far heavier with her.  She believed even the likes of Chase could evolve and grow as a human.  She’d kick his ass if he didn’t.

“I wanted to check in,” he said.  “All these people around, and I only want you.”

“Thank you for indulging me,” she said.

“It’s my pleasure to indulge you,” he said.

She shivered at that, full-body, drinking in the scent.  “Enough time for that later, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“That-”

But he was already laughing.

Her hand escaped his.  She ran it up his forearm, feeling his arm in her hand.

He spoke again, voice low, making her shiver again.  “Keep that up, and I’ll barricade the door, we’ll delay everything.  And everyone will know why.”

He laughed again.

She stopped, hand at the crook of his elbow.

He had such a Booker vibe, but different.  Gentle, bigger, and he felt like someone who she could lean on.  Literally, even.  She gave it a try.

Reaching backward, with one finger, he ran the back of one finger from her wrist to her shoulder.

“You’re chilly.  Is the room that cold?”

“I’m partially dressed, and I’m nervous.  We need to… we have to have a conversation.”

His hand stopped, body turned sideways, head turned away, back of his hand between her shoulder and neck.  “Uh oh.”

“Wasn’t that long ago that I was fighting off a bunch of corporate monsters with knives through their faces.”

“I’m going to need about five hours of elaboration on that, and our wedding guests wouldn’t wait that long.”

“It doesn’t matter that much.  Thing is, I didn’t really have anything except my earring and my wits.  I got dropped into it, and I got dropped into this.  Again, earring and my wits, and a situation I don’t feel prepared for.”

“I don’t feel totally prepared either, Luce.  But since you brought it up… the earring,” he said.  He reached up, finger tapping the hanging crystal so it swung.  “I was wondering if you’d wear it.  That’s kind of why I came.”

“Really?  An earring-related anxiety?  Are you going to ask me not to wear it?”

He was silent.

“Good lead-in to the heavier stuff, I guess,” she told him.

“Is it?”

How do I tell you about the practice?  How do I bring you safely into this world?

She fidgeted.

There were two Lucys in the room, but they inhabited one body.  One was midway through the Implementum ritual, the other was preparing for her wedding.  Neither knew exactly what to say.

The choices she was making were deciding things, changing the earring’s identity, and her relationship to the earring.

Say nothing, put the earring away, and it would maybe become something that she could put away.  A division in her life between practice and the mundane.

Speak, say the hard thing, and weave it in… but at what cost?

She wished Avery was still around.  But Avery was hard to reach.

She wished Verona was still around.  But Verona was… Verona.

This was her future.  A potential future, believable.

“I’m wearing the earring,” Lucy breathed the words.

He was silent.

“Do you remember us discussing the practice, Kennet, and how we’d approach it all, practice, a while back?”

She let the question hang.  Her heart hammered.  My future is mine to decide.  I’m deciding.  I would, I will tell my partner, well before a wedding day.

“Yeah.  Of course.”

“It’s important that I wear the earring.  That’s why I had Verona help design my dress to match it.”

The statement felt like another leap of faith.  A challenge posed to this test.  A challenge posed to her dynamic with Verona.  A pledge to her future, that she’d keep some connection with Verona, whatever happened.

“I look forward to seeing it, then.”

“You’d better!”

“I’ve got my eyes closed,” he said.  “Excuse me.”

“You’ve-”

His hand reached around to her face, covering her eyes.

A moment later, he kissed her.  Very different from the Wallace kiss.  It was familiar, and she matched it like it was familiar.

“I think we’re doing pretty well for a political marriage, tying our families together,” he said.  “I love you more than I thought was possible.”

Her mouth opened, then closed.

Why this?  A clue that by being the kind of person who would bear her implement into her marriage, she’d be the kind of person who’d marry into a practitioner family?

Or was it another test?  The earring pushing her, testing her limits, as far as her willingness or ability to decide her future?

Was it a negotiation with fate?  Do this, and you can have that?

“Yeah,” she said, her voice soft.  She smiled.  “I’m painfully fond of you too, you know.”

He kissed the back of her neck.  “I’ll let you get ready.  I’m looking forward to seeing you again, and the decades to come.”

The door closed, then opened again.

“Avery?”

“Yes.  Should we get you ready?”

What followed was a somewhat rushed flurry of activity.  Getting the dress on, touch-ups with wire in the hair that had to wait until the dress was on.

“Did Verona make it?” Lucy asked.

“She’s here, yeah,” Avery said.  “She’s keeping back.”

“Oh.”

There was no more room to ask.  The flurry of activity continued, with people leading her down the hall, downstairs.

This was weird.  This was intense.  The step forward.  The decision.

Booker stepped up next to her, taking her arm.  Giving her away.

“Mom’s sobbing,” Booker whispered.

“She’s upset?”

“She’s relieved.”

Because Paul.  Because that was a pattern that hadn’t been broken.

The doors opened.

The light was perfect, if glaring, and it caught on her earring, reflecting against the open door beside her.  She wore it, and she shone.  Every set of eyes on her.

She had only a glimpse.  Of Avery and her plus one, and Snowdrop.  Of Nicolette, of Zed.  She looked for Verona before she looked to her husband, and that eyeblink of a glimpse was followed by a deep darkness that swallowed her.

Deal,” the Earring said.

“Every single time I see them, every time I hang out with my friends, you’re on my case about this thing…”

“No.  I can think back to two times you’ve come from seeing them and said something without thinking or doing some research.  But that was it.  I’m content to let you have your friendships and family and I stay clear of them.  You’ve said you were okay with that.”

“But when you do see them, you always point out things.  You make me out to be this terrible guy for not noticing little things, and I don’t think I’m that awful.”

“You’re not awful.  You’re not.  You’re so good to Booker.  Lucy adores you.  You’re kind and patient, and you’re so thoughtful.  I can be with you and I can feel like the kids are better off and living richer lives for seeing us together.  And that’s rare.  But when it comes to this-“

“That’s not how it works.  Because if I’m really failing on this thing like you’re saying, then I am awful.  And that’s not fair.”

“Would you please let me finish a sentence?”

“I will, but only if you do something for me.  Give me a concrete solution.  Tell me what you want me to do.  I’m happy to do it.”

Lucy lay in her bed, unable to hear the argument, and pulled her pillow around her head to cover her other ear.

Lucy lay in her bed, listening, and sat up, anxious.  She reached up to touch the earring.

“It’s not one thing, Paul.  It’s not.  You keep saying that and you’re not listening-“

“Because you’re not giving me a solution.  Believe me, I’ve thought about it for hundreds of hours, and it’s not like I can send them to sensitivity classes.  They wouldn’t go and they wouldn’t respect the lessons if I did.”

“It’s not about them, Paul.”

“It is, though.  They’re racist.  And I can try to call them on it, but I associate with them, and that makes me racist too, in your eyes?”

“It’s not- can we just drop the idea of racism from this discussion?  Because yes, it’s a thing.  But it’s always a thing.  It’s hard to escape.  My issues with your family and friends are broader than that.  What I want to talk about is you and me, not them.”

“Give me a solution.  Do you want me to stop talking to them?”

“I want you to stand up for me.  I want you to pay enough attention to realize that Booker and Lucy are being excluded from the group of your nephews and nieces, and then Booker gets bored and starts acting out, and Lucy copies Booker, and the things that happen after just reinforce the problems.”

“Going back to that.”

“It’s more than that, Paul!  It’s not the one thing!”

“Says the person who harps on the one thing every time she sees me with my friends and family!”

Lucy, lying in bed, unable to hear, remained where she was, groaning with annoyance that she was being kept up.

Lucy, sitting up, extricated her feet from the covers, then slipped from bed to ground.  She pulled off her cap and placed it on the bed as she walked to the door.  Pausing there, she looked into the full-length mirror by the door.

There were now three Lucys in the room.  The third was in her reflection, with metallic, smokey skin, and hair like wire, wearing an exaggerated version of the earring.  The other her, like her and her alter ego that was still trying to sleep in the bed, was wearing jammies with pastel dots.

“What happens if I go?” Lucy asked her Earring.

The Earring didn’t respond.

“It’s about respect, Paul.  No girl dreams of being second priority to her mother in law.  Can we- let’s drop this for now?  The kids should be asleep, I don’t want to wake them.”

“Can we let it drop?  Is that even a possibility?  Because I’m stuck here.  I don’t know what I’m supposed to say or do, you won’t tell me.  Do you want me to cut off my family?”

“I don’t know.  Maybe.  But I do want to drop this.  For those two.”

“And then you resent me for days.”

“I don’t resent you.  I resent that you’re not listening, but if we come back to it with cooler heads-“

Lucy opened the door.

She traversed the hall, quiet, until she reached Booker’s room.  She eased the door open.

“Mmph.  Hey Loopdeloo,” a young Booker mumbled.  “Want in?”

He lifted up his covers, inviting her in.

She wavered in the doorway, whispering, “Can we talk?  Or can you come with me?”

“Nnnh.  I’ve got a test tomorrow and it’s hard enough to sleep with that going on.”

“Sorry,” she whispered.

“You sure you don’t want under?”

She shook her head, then eased the door closed.

Lucy ventured down the long, dark hallway, with the single nightlight to guide the way to the washroom, and the light by the stairs to ensure nobody sleep-stumbled over the top step.

They keep telling me to watch out for this, and I really hate to say it, Jas, but they’re kind of right.”

“I would not treat your immediate family as a reliable source here, Paul.  Jesus.”

Up toward her mom’s room.

“Who else am I supposed to talk to?  You harp on this.  You make me out to be the bad guy…”

“This isn’t something where you’re good or bad.  It’s about paying attention and trying.  And you’re not doing great right now.”

“Oh come on!”

Until she was close enough to make out the words through the closed door without needing to.

Mom’s voice was measured.  “Just listen when I tell you something matters more than you think it does.  Respect my opinion that much.  If you want to be a dad to those two like you say you do, then pay more attention to the kids in those situations, instead of getting caught up in things with your brothers or mom.”

“She needs help sometimes.”

“She has a robust family with several sons.  You’re not the only person who can give her that help.”

“I can’t help but feel like no matter what I do, or the concessions I make-”

“Is you listening to me and supporting the kids that much of a concession?”

“-you’ll say it’s not enough.  Or I’ll miss something and I’ll have to hold my breath after each and every visit, waiting for that gentle little verbal rebuke from you, pointing out how my family’s horribly racist-”

“That’s not what I do.  It’s not after every visit.  It’s not even after most visits.”

“-and alluding to how I’m racist by supporting them.”

“It’s not about that!  It’s a factor, but it’s not the entirety of it.  It’s- Paul, let me try to frame this in a different way.”

“Please.  Sure.”

“I was talking to someone, and I can’t share specific details about patients, but she’s a nurse, and she had a patient who was pregnant.  Every time the patient went to the doctor with health issues, they’d give the same diagnosis.  It’s the pregnancy.  Stomach problems?  It’s the pregnancy.  Aches?  Pregnancy.  Rashes?  Pregnancy.  They were slow to deliver the actual diagnosis, the baby didn’t make it, and she passed away four months later.  It’s something that hits very close to home for me.  Because Booker and Lucy’s birth father had something very similar happen.  They missed the diagnosis.”

“As educated as they are, even doctors are human.”

“It’s not that.  It’s a failure to see.  It’s a failure to listen.  It happens with trans patients, and doctors will point to any hormones they’re taking as the explanation for anything.  It happens to the morbidly obese, and obesity will be blamed.  It’s not that hormones are bad, or that the obesity is that much of a complicating factor.  But some people are blinded by the label, or that one factor.  It’s happening here.”

“Here?”  Paul’s voice was defensive.

“You can’t diagnose every problem I put in front of you with the same thing.  I, Booker, and Lucy have so much more we struggle with than just the color of our skin.  You’re ignoring everything I say, stamping it with the same label, and then getting defensive over it.”

“Because I’m prejudiced?  I can’t see past my own bias?”

“Or because you’re attached to your mom and it’s a defense, I don’t know, but I want to talk this out without- without getting caught in this endless circle.”

“Oh believe me, the cycle’s getting to me too.  Can’t win, can’t escape it.  What happened with the pregnant lady.  Was that prejudice?  Was what happened with the trans person prejudice?  Misogyny?  Transphobia?”

“It… pretty much by definition.”

“And me doing this here, as you allege, is racist.”

“If you can’t have an honest conversation with me, and you hold onto that notion instead of listening to me… yes.”

“There it is.  Right there.  It was inevitable.”

“Can we stop?  Can we take thirty minutes, can-”

“We can stop.  I’ve been on the edge of being done with this for a while.”

“Good then-”

“Then that’s it.  I stuck around for Booker and for Lucy but-”

“What are you talking about?”

“They were right, Jas.  They told me, over and over again, I can’t win, I won’t ever win this debate, or reach that point where I get the thumbs up, I’m clear.”

“Frankly, Paul, you’re being an ass about this.  Stop, take a break-”

“I’m done, Jas.  I’m spent.  Call me an ass, I don’t care.  I’m going to go to my mom’s.  She needs the help.  I’ll send G or Rod over to grab my stuff, if you’ll pack it up.”

“Don’t do this.  I invited you into our lives, at the very least you owe Booker more than that.  You owe Lucy.  Have a sit-down with them.  Explain-”

“How do I explain this?  How?  No.  Tell them whatever you want.  Make me out to be the bad guy, it’s fine.”

“It’ll break their hearts.”

“And it breaks mine.  I’m pissed.  I hate this.  I thought we were building something but it’s impossible to get past this.  I don’t know what I’m even supposed to do.”

“Stop listening to them.  To your brothers who you know are shitty, and to your mom, with her ulterior motives.”

“She loves me unconditionally.”

“That’s scary.”

“That’s what this should have been.  Us.”

The bedroom door opened.

“Paul, don’t go.  Don’t do this to them.  Don’t do it to me.  We deserve better, and if you’d just listen-”

Paul, a backpack over one shoulder, stepped out into the hallway.  He froze as he saw Lucy.

She glared at him.  Aware he was going.  Aware her mom was hurting, from the sounds of her voice in the other room.

“Be good to your mom,” he murmured.  He put a hand on the side of her face, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

She reached up, taking his hand, and gripped it, squeezing her ear and his hand both, with the metal and decorated studs between them.  He jerked, and she held on, digging into her own ear with her fingernails for traction, squeezing.

He finally pulled away, his hand bleeding.  He turned and fled downstairs.

Her own blood dripped from her ear to her earring, collecting, she imagined, on the dangling crystal, before dropping down to stain her jammies.

She looked into the room and saw her mom, crying, fighting the tears.  Like she was drowning, and when she came up for air, it was a moment of dry eyes.  Of looking hurt beyond words.  No doubt having to imagine explaining to the two of them.

It hurt, seeing the process.  But she made herself look.

A life in the process of being built, dashed to pieces, because of stupidity.

The door closed downstairs.

Moments later, the other Lucy emerged from the bedroom, wearing her hair cap, no earring, no blood.

She walked up until she intersected the Lucy with the earring.

Together, they got a replay of that scene from years ago.

You couldn’t have won that argument, mom, because he wanted to lose it.  He got scared and he bailed.  He’s a coward at heart.

Her mom straightened, realized Lucy was there, and hurriedly wiped her eyes dry.  She rose to her feet.  “What are you doing up?”

“Deal.”

Eyes burned across the campfire.  A circle of Others, stand-ins for the Kennet Others, ringed the fire.  Amadeus and Emerson flanked Lucy.  Stand-ins for her friends.

Suspicion, paranoia, and imminent accusations brewed.

Firelight caught in the dangling jewel and danced around Lucy.

“Deal.”

“Deal.”

“Deal.”

“You’re taking on more.  You’re facing harsher truths, which costs you, when you claimed to your friends that you were so worried about the burdens being placed on you.  Taking your own burdens after complaining of burdens.  You take the harder roads, you focus, you don’t retreat.”

“Yes.”

The Earring laid a cool metal hand across Lucy’s cheek.  “Why?”

The second time Lucy had been asked.

“Because someone can tell you all the answers and it doesn’t matter at all if you don’t listen.  That’s how you figure the stuff out.  You said my issue was I knew a lot of things but didn’t believe them.  And I believed in things but thought I couldn’t know them.  It’s stuff like Booker validating me, and Verona backing me up, and Avery cheering for me, that bridge those gaps.  I need to listen to the cries for help, like Verona’s, in that parking lot in Kennet.  The little clues from Avery, that she’s probably not going to stay in Kennet in the long term.  She’s meant to be out there in the world.  New places.  Why?  Because yes, it’s hard, but it’s essential.”

The hand at her cheek slid beneath skin, caressing bone.  It traced down Lucy’s throat, fingernails grazing spine, past collarbone, to sternum.

Over Lucy’s heart.

The question was implicit.

“Mom, Booker, Verona, and Avery love me.  I can be loved.  I want to be a person that’s easier to love.”

The Earring, hand within Lucy’s flesh, like it was reaching into a puddle, reached past bone without resistance.  Lucy caught its wrist.

The Earring met her eyes.

“And scary to be against,” Lucy whispered.

The earring reached past her, into and through her heart, then moved the hand sideways, through flesh and bone, through blood and everything else.  Past shoulder, along arm, until fingers met fingers. Like a hand into a glove, but the glove was already occupied.

Arm and body and head followed, and arm and body and head followed suit in finding their place.

Lucy was heavy, metal, with red jewel studs that caught the light and cast red, smokey patterns on the ground and walls around her.  A little tarnished, a little scuffed up, but that was wholly okay.

The ritual lines glowed in darkness, and then the darkness slipped away.

She knelt on the floor, where every aspect of the diagram had knit together into a circle.  She watched as it flowed into her knees and feet.  Into her.

She took in a breath for the first time in two days.

“Done,” she said.  She straightened, moving her head around to feel the simultaneous weight and lack thereof on her ear.  Reaching into and through it felt like using her Sight, but another appendage.  Subtler and more obvious to the outside observer at the same time.

“Any problems?” Verona asked.

“Some, but… they’re riddles and patterns I want to go back to later.  For now… how bad is it?”

“The siege?” Verona asked.

“Yeah.  Or whatever’s going on in The Blue Heron Institute.”

“We’ve been cooped up in here with you, hiding out so we can’t get accused of interfering,” Avery said.  “But last we heard, it was really bad.”

“Hit me with it,” Lucy said.

“Nicolette had some group she was going to join.  Bristow found them, made deals.  She’s obligated to help Alexander for contracted appointments, but she’s otherwise defected to Bristow.  Tanner, Seth, and Chase defected too.”

“He took most of the Belangers?”

“It was one thing of like, five, with a bunch of other things rumored.”

“It felt like we couldn’t take three steps without hearing students talking about what was going on,” Avery said.

“And Alexander?  He made moves?” Lucy asked.

“He did, but it sure sounded like Bristow took the B.H.I. in one fell swoop,” Verona said, her expression darkening.  “And I’m not sure what that means for us and our ability to keep being students.”

Cutting Class – 6.9

Avery

A light rain fell as they stepped outside, and Avery couldn’t shake the feeling that it was like in the movies, when a rain put out the fires left on an empty battlefield.  Except there were no fires, there were no signs of destruction.  Nothing obvious, anyway.

Less cars in the parking lot.  It was hot out, but the classrooms and workshops that were separate from the main building had the doors closed, with no signs of activity within.  Nobody outside.

She was sore from the weekend spent watching over Lucy, hiding out from the worst of the Blue Heron Institute’s civil war.  Too much time spent sitting on a chair, or lying on hard ground.  Her hand had an ache from holding her phone too much, and from holding some of those big tomes in her lap while still keeping it where she could read.  She was sweaty, her hair a bit messy, she was tired, and her stomach sorta vaguely ached, probably from the weekend of snacking on granola bars, fruit cups, yogurt, and eating no veg in the process.  She’d done two changes of clothes while Lucy was busy being a fractal Lucy-earring-blob, and she still felt like she was ten thousand percent ready for a shower and a fresh change of clothes.

Verona wasn’t much different in terms of scruff and all the rest of that, but Verona was probably the only human Avery knew who could spend a weekend perching on a plastic chair in an inadequately lit room, sleeping on the floor, going without a change of clothes, and munching on packaged foods that definitely hadn’t been the same healthy-ish assortment Avery had chosen, and still be normal afterward.

Scruffy was Verona’s normal, as was occupying herself with writing, sketching, and phone stuff, and watching the magical diagram periodically make movements from being something room-spanning to something that framed Lucy, to eventually folding into Lucy altogether.

As for non human scruffy sorts…

“I hated that,” Snowdrop said.  “Being in the dark, nothing to do except sleep and eat random crap.”

“Thanks for helping me keep a lookout, Snow.”

“I hate that nothing happened.  Can you imagine?  It’d be great!  Some Others kicking in the doors, me with my fork, you with your hockey stick, trying to protect Lucy?  Aaaaa!”

“Aaah,” Avery said, too tired to put any emotion into it.

Lucy didn’t look scruffy.  She didn’t look like she’d been cooped up in a warm building without showers or changes of clothes.  She’d come and gone as the ritual flowed around and through her, and for the last two days she’d been mostly gone, barely moving or doing anything when she did appear.  Her hair was the same, her clothes the same as she’d worn when she’d gone in.  The earring was different, but it was hard to pinpoint exactly how or why.  Maybe a bit more tarnished, a bit sharper where the segments that ran inside her ear were, the gem a little redder, but all in ways that could be explained as a change in the light.

Avery turned on her Sight, and she could see the earring, exaggerated.  Metal-framed crystals, elongated, hung in the air, close to her head, and wire ran from her ear, along her hair, and into her ponytail, where it proliferated, decorating what was there.

“She seems taller,” Avery remarked, watching Lucy pull her sneakers on and chat with Verona.  Lucy put her hand out past the eaves to check the rain, then stepped out, carrying some of the stuff they’d brought in.

“She doesn’t seem that way, but she is,” Snowdrop said.

“Yeah.”

Avery turned that same Sight out toward the campus.  The ‘bands’ of film-negative cutouts that represented connections were stretched tight, to the point of being strained, and many others were lying limp on the ground, especially here, between the parking lot and the school, and at the front of the school itself.  She didn’t know if that meant they were broken forever if it meant the slack would be picked up later, but it caught her eye.

Not that many bloody handprints.  Some on one workshop door.  It had been the one Eloise and Amine had been helping with, last week.

Because Verona and Lucy were taking their time, and because she was restless, Avery walked a circuit around the grassy area between all the outside classrooms and workshops.  Snowdrop walked with her.

It was close to lunch, but there were no students.  Nobody was hanging out in the doorways of the workshops, messing around, chatting, or catching the breeze.

“I can’t ask around about what happened,” Snowdrop said.  “There’s no little goblins or anything nearby.”

“Maybe try it later.  For right now, until we have the lay of the land, we should stick together, at least staying where we can all keep an eye on each other.”

“Ugh.  I’ve spent too much time in your company these past few days.”

“It’s like with the Carmine Beast and the Kennet Others.  We can’t start taking risks or taking action until we have more information.”

“Worst part of this approach,” Snowdrop muttered, “Is I’m going to start getting Bonky Donks shoved in my face by the brownies again.”

“Be careful, okay?”

They joined back up with Lucy and Verona, who were on their way to the front door.  Avery hopped up to the windowsill, standing on the edge of it to better look through the window.

The big classroom had an afternoon class in session, and it was only ten people.  Of those ten, three were wary enough to spot Avery at the window.  Jarvis, Silas, and Maddox.  The sixteen year olds who were good at human binding, second maybe only to the Hennigars.

Graubard was teaching.  A big screen behind her was showing some heiroglyph-like symbols.

Assuming there was another class running, and this was the big one, where the heck was everyone?

“We should swing by our rooms, get sorted,” Lucy said.  She lifted the bundle of food, trash, spare clothes, and makeup stuff that they’d brought into the workshop room.

Verona turned Avery’s way as Avery hopped down.  “I was just telling Lucy, if we assume Bristow has Augurs on his side, now, then we should be careful what we say.  We don’t want to agitate.”

“Good plan,” Avery said.

“Side door, so we’re not walking through the middle of class?” Lucy asked.

Avery nodded.

They circled around the school, walking over in the direction of the lunch tables, inside, and then past the library.

A class was in session there too.  Bristow and five students.

No chatter in the rooms they walked by.  No noise in the showers.  No movement in the student lounge.

Avery’s Sight indicated the spot where Laila had attacked Melody with the curse breath.  Bloody handprints that smoked in a hazy way.

There were others.  A streak here, like fingers had dragged against the ceiling.  A spatter of ‘paint’, white, between two stark white handprints with blood leaking out of the creases.

A bit of fish skeleton.  A set of paw marks.

“Paper?” Avery asked.

“Huh?” Verona asked.

“Do you have blank paper on you?  I have some in my bag but I’d have to drop stuff.”

“Yeah.  We could step into the room.”

“Yeah, but this is faint, and I want to take note of it.  Sight stuff tends to disappear or move if I take my eyes off it.”

“Sure,” Verona said.

Their door was only steps away.  Avery kept an eye on things.

Verona handed her paper.  Avery bent down and sketched the rough outline of the little paw marks.

“Animal?” Verona asked.

“Snowdrop?” Avery asked.  “Do you know your prints?”

“That’s not Dreg’s,” Snowdrop said.

There was a rustling.

Lucy reached down, touching Avery’s shoulder, and pulled her to a standing position, a bit further back from the door opposite theirs.

The door to the room of the Leos boys opened.  Tymon was there, not wearing a shirt.  To Avery’s Sight, he had a bloody handprint on his face, but no visible injuries.

“Sorry if we disturbed you,” Avery said.

“Nah,” Tymon said.  “Just glad it’s you.”

“It’s us,” Avery answered, shrugging.

“I heard Lucy was doing the implement ritual,” Tymon said.  “Go okay?”

Lucy nodded.

“You missed a lot.”

“On purpose, a little bit.  We keep getting sucked into things.  Being a step away from this is a survival decision,” Lucy said.

“But we’re pretty bewildered.  Can you give us a recap?” Avery asked, pressing her hands together.

As she asked, her Sight showed her some movement to her left, just past the frame of her ability to see.  She turned her head, and Tymon did too.

Jarvis and Silas were standing in the archway that separated the dormitory hallway from the main classroom.  Staring at them, the class continuing behind them.

“For right now, I’m waiting on word from the parents,” Tymon said.  “It’ll take a while, I think.  They’re busy this summer.  Part of them sending us here was to get us out of the way.  It’s why they sent Jorja, despite her being young.  That and Talia was coming and she’s friends with Jorja.  Sucks, with how that’s going.”

“Friendship on the rocks?” Verona asked.

“It’s… rocky here, right now.”

“Is your familiar okay?” Lucy asked.

“Dreg?  How’d you know about Dreg?”

“My sight,” Avery jumped in.  She held up the paper.  “I saw a bloody footprint on the floor.”

“And I see a sword in the ground there, and a stain behind you,” Lucy offered.

“You guys are supposed to be new to the practice,” Tymon said, eyes narrowing a bit.

“We are.”

“That kind of fine-tuned Sight doesn’t come easy.”

“We adopted a bit of a role, when we awoke,” Verona said.  “I think we specialized more because we Awok-”

“I hope you understand if we don’t get into that,” Lucy jumped in, before Verona could say more.  Lucy gave Verona a look.

“Even with that.  That’s…”

“And we’re strong,” Verona said.  “Not giving anything away by saying it, enough people have seen.”

“No kidding,” Tymon said.  “I can pull that kind of Sight stuff off, but it’s pricey.  Black Gutter starts to chase its way down any channels I make when tapping into power like that.  I’ve still got some scars from the times it caught me.”

“What happened with your familiar?” Lucy asked.  “I didn’t think students could be attacked.”

“I like you, Lucy,” Tymon said.  “I like you three, but asking about vulnerabilities after protecting your own…  Like you said, I hope you understand if I don’t get into it.”

“I don’t, but at the same time… fair.”

“Cool,” Tymon said.

“Can we ask, at least, about what happened over the weekend?” Avery asked.

“Again, I’m waiting on word from my parents before I do anything more.  Even sharing information could test things.”

He glanced over in the direction of Jarvis and Silas.

“Where is everyone?” Lucy asked.  “Nobody in the back field, workshops are quiet, classes are small…  Or is that sharing too much info too?”

“The weekend was pretty rough.  Some long friendships aren’t doing so hot.  I know you guys are new to this, but… it can be hard to make friends.  Real friends, who get what’s going on.  Makes it sting when you lose that.”

“Relationships too?” Avery asked.  “Partners?”

“That’s a whole other mess.  The unawakened tend to get suspicious, and the awakened, well… practitioner families.”

“And arranged marriages between families,” Lucy added.

Tymon’s eyebrows went up.  “That’s jumping straight to thinking about huge stuff most of us don’t have to worry about for a while.”

“Eloise and Ulysse are in that sorta situation, right?” Avery asked.

“Yeah.  Yeah, and I guess, speaking of them, and going back to what I was saying, some of the students are taking a break.  Talos took Jorja down to the town, down the road from here.”

“Talia Graubard didn’t go with?” Avery asked.

“Her mom is making her stay close to her, from what I can tell.  I think Talia would’ve wanted to go with.”

“That’s so sad,” Avery said.

“Oh yeah,” Tymon answered.  “Jorja’s just- she stayed with my brother and I last night after Talia wouldn’t talk to her for hours.  Kept saying she wanted to go home, she wanted to go home… and the centerpiece of our place, in case Talos hasn’t mentioned it or you haven’t heard, has a naked, house-sized spirit of degeneracy and downward spirals situated in the middle of it.  And she’s homesick for that because this is- this is pretty awful, for her.  For a lot of us.”

“How big is your place?” Verona asked.  “Demesne?”

“Come on, Verona,” Lucy said, elbowing her friend.  “Empathy, remember?”

“It’s big,” Tymon answered.  “Big enough we’ve got a temple for that primary spirit I mentioned.  And no, not a demesne.”

“I hope she bounces back okay,” Avery said.

“So do I.  She’s tough.  So serious, it’s part of why we gave her the Cowgirl.  We thought something a little cartoony, a little wild, would shake her up.”

“Serious isn’t bad,” Lucy said.

“No, but-”

Tymon stopped talking.

Jarvis and Silas were approaching.

Hardline Bristow loyalists.  Left Alexander’s class after he took over for Bristow, were at the top of the line for human binding exercises.  Jarvis was a summoner who did contract stuff, and Silas Vanderwerf was associated with Fae stuff.

Avery had done some reading through the school’s guidebook over the weekend to teach herself with who the students were, so she could be just a bit more prepared for anything that came up after.

“Any issues?” Jarvis asked.

“Are you the police here, now?” Tymon asked.

“Next year Silas, Mad and me are going to be senior students, along with Gene and Xerxes.”

“And America, right?” Avery asked.

Silas and Jarvis smiled.  Tymon didn’t.

“She’s old enough, right?  To be a senior student next year?”

“She got expelled, along with one of the Hennigars,” Tymon said.  “Stuff happened.”

“Liberty too?” Avery asked.

“Liberty is still around, for now,” Jarvis answered.  “America and Kellen might come back, but they’ll have to appeal the expulsion.”

“And Mr. Bristow decides?” Lucy asked.

Jarvis shrugged, smiling again.  “Yep, so long as he’s headmaster.”

“And Alexander?” Avery asked.

“Has projects to look after.  Three of his apprentices are preoccupied with opportunities the new headmaster has provided.  Some work for the Belanger circle, sure, but they’re only helping Alexander with some prior stuff they promised to do.  Not taking any more jobs or picking up the slack the others left.  So Alexander’s got a full plate, for meeting obligations, keeping things in motion, fulfilling contracts.”

“Sounds busy,” Lucy said.

“He does, doesn’t he?”

“And Bristow has a school with barely any students in it?” Verona asked.

“For today, at least.  I think we’re all taking it easy.  He’s focused on the long term, he has the money to keep this place running.  It might mean a few students leave in the short term, but we can be more tightly knit and stronger in the long term.”

Silas nodded as Jarvis finished speaking, then added a simple, sly, “Bringing up the number of students on a day like today isn’t the sort of thing that knits us together and strengthens us, Verona.”

“We were just telling Tymon that we’re new at this,” Verona said.  “We’re out of the loop, and mistakes happen.”

“Yes, and we regret them so,” Silas said, a small smile at one corner of his lips.  He clearly wasn’t buying it at all.

To Avery’s Sight, the connections from their huddle here were strained so tight that they almost vibrated.  Between student and school.  Friend and enemy.  Between them and the two groups who wanted them on their side.

“You finish your ritual?” Jarvis asked.

“I did,” Lucy said.  She adjusted the angle of her head.

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

“You know, if you want to make the most of it, you should ask Mr. Musser.  He came a long way to be here for our new headmaster.  I know you were hanging out with Raquel Musser last week.”

“Yadira and Raquel, yeah.”

“She’s related to him, of course, you could use that.  Go ask him some stuff, and it’ll give you another shot at getting acquainted with her.  Connections matter.”

Connections.  Avery could see that Silas Vanderwerf’s connections had a tint to them, and as she focused on it, she could see that the very rigid, intense connections had more of that tint.  A fine creeping of black frost on the dark bands that extended from Silas and along the band, toward everyone he was interacting with.  Her looking at the frost seemed to thaw it- but it also drew Silas’s attention.  As if they’d always been there, but were turned sideways so she couldn’t see them, new bands extended from Silas’s eye level to the point she was looking at, then back to her.  The frost was quick along that line.  His eyes locked to hers, pupils narrow.

Under the guise of adjusting her top, aware she was still sweaty and sorta gross from the weekend spent in the workshop room, Avery reached for one connection, seeing if she could loosen one of those new connections.  The edge of it cut the side of her finger, like sliding her finger along the length of a piece of paper.  The chill at the band, even though it hadn’t crept all the way to her, made her finger go a little numb.

She turned off her Sight and the pain changed from being something physical to something like a glimmer of bad feeling when she thought back to an embarrassing moment, threading through her arm like a flinch, then into her stmoach.  She wanted to retreat before that more intense frost got to her, but she didn’t want to look weak.

“…think she was realy close with Mr. Musser,” Lucy was saying.

Avery felt uncomfortable, aware of the subtle game being played, even if she wasn’t on top of the rules or the full consequences.  She wasn’t sure they had the tools to defend against it.

“It’s a story you see a thousand times, in a certain class of practitioner, probably non-practitioners too,” Silas said.  The fact his name was Silas caught on Avery’s attention, like it was very fitting for a few reasons.  That it sounded almost like ‘silence’, and he maintained a volume that was quiet, precise, and controlled.  That it started and stopped with ‘s’ sounds.  Like a snake’s hiss, his words slithered through the conversation, while that creeping chill extended along connections.  “The chosen heir gets all the privilege, all the attention, love, hope, and expectations.  Meanwhile, there’s someone who gets the opposite.  No privilege, no power, no inheritance, no hope or expectations.  But they want it.  The kid who has it doesn’t care, and the kid who doesn’t have it craves it.  That’s Raquel.”

“Not very flattering,” Verona said.

Silas chuckled softly to himself.  His voice had a cool edge to it.  “It’s not good or bad.  Whether it flatters or doesn’t flatter is up to her.  If she can recognize what’s happening and use it, it’ll be very flattering.”

“Exactly,” Jarvis said, sounding far less insidious.  He was more the kid who sounded like a wannabe lawyer or businessman.  Casually confident, just full enough of himself that he was a bit rigid.  “Consider it a win-win.  If she remains where she is, within the Musser family, she’s still a point of contact, eager for opportunity and other routes to climb by.  And if she somehow rises above the expectations Mr. Musser has in her, you’re now the friend of someone powerful who is in a position to reward you for your support.”

“Applies to any powerful family,” Silas said.

“Doesn’t mean they will pay you back, though,” Tymon said, leaning against the doorframe of his room.  “Some cut ties to everything that reminds them of who they used to be.”

“Some do,” Jarvis admitted.  “But being nice costs so little.  Which begs the question.  All of us are over here, enjoying this class, networking with powerful families.  And what are you guys doing?  Sitting in your room, licking your familiar’s wounds, Tymon?  Hiding, Wild Practitioners?”

“Taking advantage of resources here,” Lucy replied.

“And you, Tymon?”

“Like you said, looking after my familiar.”

Avery stole another glance with the Sight.  Silas still had that effect at work, and it didn’t look like he was doing anything.  She was starting to get nervous about what happened if they stayed in a conversation with him for long enough.

But when things were this tense, it was hard to avoid offending, or to avoid looking like they were scheming.

“If you need a bit of help healing the familiar so you’re not so useless right now, we can help you out,” Jarvis said.

Snowdrop was remaining quiet, watching everything, and Avery put a hand on Snowdrop’s shoulder.  Snowdrop looked up at her and frowned, grumpy.

“I don’t like to be in people’s debt.”

“No intention of that.”

“There’s always some debt,” Tymon said.

Avery subtly gave Snowdrop a firm two taps behind the neck where the boys couldn’t see her fingers move.  Again, Snowdrop looked up at her, slight smile on her face.

Avery pressed her lips slightly together, knowing Snowdrop was paying the most attention to her.

“Avery?” Snowdrop asked.  She adjusted her grip on stuff she was still holding.  “Can I ask you about something we talked about before?”

“Yes, of course,” Avery said.  She glanced back, “Excuse me.”

Silas was giving her a long stare.  As Avery walked away, the band between her and him reeled out.  She could see the frost accelerating, and forced herself to look away, in case she fed it and gave it more paths to chase her.  Moving away, at least, seemed to outpace how fast it crept toward her.

“Did I do that wrong?” Snowdrop asked, quiet, as Avery dropped down to a crouch by her, setting the bags of stuff on the floor.

“That was great.  Thank you.”

“I don’t know how your head works or anything like that,” Snowdrop said, biting her lip for a second.  “But I understand this.  What’s happening?”

“The conversation is a trap,” Avery murmured.  “We need to extricate ourselves without making enemies.”

“Avery!” Lucy called out.

“Yes?”  Avery twisted around.

“Everything okay?”

“We were going to get sorted.  I know you didn’t have a physical body for a good portion of the weekend, but I did, and I think Snowdrop, Verona, and I could use a scrub-down, a good meal, and a bit of a break.”

“I think that sounds like a plan.”

“There are more things at work here than creature comforts,” Silas said.  “Didn’t you want to know what happened?”

“I don’t think that story’s going anywhere,” Lucy said.  “My friends supported me for the weekend.  Now it’s my turn to look after them.  Please excuse us.”

“We can talk later,” Silas said.

“We’ve got the entire summer ahead of us,” Verona said, picking up the bags and clothes she’d set down.  “Of course we can.”

“Take care of your familiar,” Jarvis said, to Tymon.

Tymon didn’t respond, and remained where he was, watching the other two boys retreat down the hall.  Avery followed Lucy and Verona into her room, put her stuff down, got the stuff from Snowdrop’s arms, then returned to the door to shut it.  She paused before shutting it, seeing the emotions in Tymon’s face as he stared down the hall, so preoccupied with what he was thinking that he didn’t even realize she was looking.

When they emerged a few minutes later, Tymon had disappeared, presumably into his room, but Bristow was standing at the end of the hallway.  They walked quicker than they otherwise would have, hurrying to the showers and away from Bristow.

They had to figure out a plan.

“So he studies Winter Faerie, right?” Verona asked.

They walked down the road to the town.  Away from campus, toward the students who had escaped campus for a bit.

“Rigid, inflexible, imperious,” Lucy said.

“So this connection thing you’re describing,” Verona said, looking at Avery.  “He wasn’t doing anything that pushed it?”

“Nope,” Avery said.  Avery was walking backward, hands in her pockets, the rain occupying that annoying middle state where having a raincoat on or an umbrella up would be wimpy, but it was still making her wet. She had a jacket in her bag but didn’t want to pull it out.

As mindful of each step as she was, Snowdrop was walking at her side, legs swinging forward, each foot being deliberately placed in ditch-mud and puddles.  Some droplets were splattering Avery’s legs, but Avery didn’t mind that much.  It made her think of soccer practice, and she was just glad to be away from campus and in the outdoors, as damp and drizzly as those outdoors were.

“There’s some practices that you do, and they’re rituals that change how things work,” Verona said.

“Like the Paths.”

“Like that, sure, but more… I dunno.  More like you get benefits just for doing the ritual, and you don’t have to go anywhere.  Maybe you deal with some people.  Some of it was in the collector stuff we looked up.”

“Doing a ritual so the world sends the trash-tier trinkets and doo-dads your way,” Lucy noted.

“Yes,” Verona said.  “And some that are like, they increase your claim.  Just a big, expensive ritual, and it gets harder to take stuff from you.  And you can do it multiple times, but each time the price doubles.  And you have to renew.  So if you’ve got some crazy claim ritual where the cost doubled up to something like a million dollars, you’re having to pay that every five years or whatever.  So you have to be careful.  Because failing to be ready when the renewal time comes clears you out.”

“Sounds like the sort of thing Bristow would love, and would definitely do,” Lucy said.  “And if you can find it in the Blue Heron Institute texts, chances are good he’s probably read it too.”

“Probably,” Verona said.  “And he’d take a ton of safeguards to protect himself, and probably wouldn’t schedule any big school takeovers for when the renewal thing is due.”

“Unless he needs the school to pay what’s due?” Avery asked.

“I don’t feel like that’s the key to handling this whole thing,” Lucy said.  “Anyway.  Yes, there are rituals that give you big benefits.  And they’re pretty much always on, sometimes needing renewal, or a constant power source, or whatever.”

“Yes,” Verona said.  “So my guess?  Silas has this.  And Faerie love the social manipulation and subtle crap.  So how does that work with something like a Winter Faerie?”

“A creeping frost over connections?” Avery asked.

“What does frost do, though?” Verona asked.

“Chills?  Makes things more rigid?” Avery suggested.

“Or it’s a prelude to freezing them,” Verona said.  “Imagine.  A big ritual, and it locks things down?  Imagine that this kid is spending time around people, establishing a relationship as… I dunno.  A friend, an enemy, a boyfriend, a student, and then freezing those relationships.”

“What’s the advantage in doing that to us?” Lucy asked.

“I think there’s a huge advantage in knowing exactly where you stand with people,” Verona retorted.

“Certain not-very-wild cards!” Snowdrop proclaimed, jumping into a puddle, thoroughly undoing the work of getting her clean.  Avery had made her take a shower.  Snowdrop pumped her fists in the air, turning their way.  Her t-shirt read ‘my spirit animal is a lumpy garbage bag’ and had a garbage bag framed in the center, with all sorts of abstract smoke and effects coming off of it.

“Set up the pins, knock them down,” Lucy mused.  “But students aren’t allowed to practice on other students.  Do they get away with it because Bristow’s in charge and calling the shots?”

“Maybe because it’s always on, Silas can’t turn it off, he can’t get chewed out,” Avery thought aloud.  “It’s like if you invite a goblin to your tea party, it’s really your fault if things end up a mess.”

“Or it’s neutral,” Verona said.  “Sorry, I got this idea from yours, but if it affects friends and foes, can it really be ‘hostile’, exactly?”

“We should stay away from Silas.  And we should look into protections,” Lucy said.  “It helps that we want to research Faerie countermeasures anyway.”

“Oh!  I wanted to ask, but not in earshot of the school’s augurs.  Back there, when I told Snowdrop the conversation was a trap, did you hear?” Avery asked.

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “It’s easier to hear you two than other people.”

“What’s it like?” Verona asked, excited.  “The implement?”

“There’s a weight to it.  I hear whispers, but the sound doesn’t come through my ear, and I don’t hear the louder things.  There’s a weight to the decorated part of it that’s hard to explain.”

“Try, try,” Verona said.

“Are you going to be annoying about this?”

“I can be, if it gets you to explain.  This is interesting!”

“It’s like a sense, but it’s not a sense like seeing or hearing or touching, smelling, or tasting.  It’s like the sense of balance.  And it reaches out and I can feel… I felt that Avery wasn’t hesitating and wasn’t saying sorry as much as she used to.  That Tymon stood a little taller when he stopped worrying about us doing something weird in front of his door and started to just talk to us.”

“I think he might like you,” Verona said.

“I could see it,” Avery added.

“I don’t know,” Lucy said.  “Wouldn’t I feel that?  Or something relating to that?”

“Depends on what you’re feeling exactly,” Verona said.  “We need to do tests.”

“Something for tonight, maybe,” Lucy mused.

“Yes!” Verona crowed.  “Yes, okay, so Ave, we’ve gotta think of a battery of things to test.  So we can understand this better.”

“I have zero ideas,” Snowdrop said.  “I’m a dumb opossum.  I don’t have a brain…”

“What’s your idea?” Avery asked.

“You know those tiny goblins and little Others who’re around the school?  Can’t get in with the barrier?  I say we make them show off to Lucy, be all powerful and cool so we can see what happens.  Then we make Lucy show off to them, if she can.”

“Presentation tests.  Goblins to Lucy and Lucy to goblins.  Cool,” Verona said.  “I should take notes, and make a list.”

“I don’t know if I want to go out at night.  Things are dangerous enough in the day,” Lucy said.  There’s so many loopholes to the protections at the school.”

Like the loopholes at home.

They walked down the road.  The ditches on either side of the rough two-lane road were filled with trash thrown from cars or blown by the wind, but past those ditches were tall pine trees.  The air was easier to breathe than it was in the middle of Kennet.  In the fifteen minutes they’d walked, one car had come by, and the driver had thought nothing about going into the other lane to give them an extra-wide berth.

“Can we use loopholes of our own?” Avery asked.

“I think that’s a dangerous question.”  Lucy was measuring her words out, being very serious.  “Because asking it means there’s intent, and if there’s intent, then it’s harder to skirt the rules.”

“Right,” Avery said.

“But if we happened to have options, that wouldn’t be the worst thing.”

“That’s where we’re at, huh?” Verona asked.

“Yeah,” Lucy said, quiet.  “I had to stab an Other in this scenario my ritual conjured up.  There was a bunch of stuff.”

“Can I ask?” Verona asked.  “What were the scenarios.”

“Being hunted by Others, with only the Earring to use.  Me on a rock with hundreds of little Cherrypop style goblins around me, unable to climb up.  Some more real stuff.  Paul.  Kids being crummy in seventh grade.”

The way to the town meant rounding a corner and walking down a slope to get to the town.  As they turned the corner, the ‘town’ was there.  Kennet was a quarter the size of some places that could be called actual towns, and this was less than half Kennet’s size.  The houses were scattered, and there was a gas station, two fast food places, and some scattered stores.

And there were students there.  Zachariah and Salvador, with Dom talking to Jorja.  Talos was using a decrepit old pay phone a few steps away.

Laila, of all people, Fernanda’s friend and the one who had spat curses at Melody, was sitting on the little yellow-painted concrete bumper that kept cars from driving into the front of the gas station.  Alone.

“It’s like they’re hiding out here,” Lucy noted.

“Where else do you go?” Avery asked.  “I mean, a lot of them live in the city, and the cities are way further from here than Kennet is.  Can’t go home, and the school’s a hostile place…”

A house off to the side of the road had a dirt driveway, and a kid with a low bowl cut that was young enough to be totally indeterminate, gender-wise, but old enough to be left unattended in a shallow kiddie pool in the front yard.  The kid stood there in ankle deep water, chewing on a plastic shovel, watching them walk past.

“There’s no goblins here,” Snowdrop said.

“Is this where they camp out?” Avery asked.

“Nah.  Nowhere near here.  No spirits or echoes either.”

Talos hung up the phone.  He looked out of place in this rustic, out-of-the-way spot, with a mop of black hair on top, sides shaved, earrings, and a tight-fitting shirt with a pattern on it.  The other students from the Institute remained where they were, watching, as Talos approached.  Behind him, a small black duck with white dashes at its cheeks and sides of its wings flapped awkwardly, crash landed, and then rose to its feet, swaying slightly, as a tall woman with wavy brown hair that came to the backs of her knees, with a sloppy black dress and half-lidded eyes.

She reminded Avery a bit of Daniel Alitzer, the Glamour-Drowned.  Like there was some incredible grace there, but it had been hobbled.  She followed after Talos, not moving in a straight line.

“Done your thing?” he asked.

“Yep.  Talked to your brother,” Lucy said.

“How’s Dreg?”

“On the mend, I think?” Lucy asked, looking at Avery, then Verona.

“Sounded like Tymon lost a lot of power, but Dreg is okay,” Avery said.

“Then about the same.  He should have come.”

The woman with the long brown hair steped up behind Talos, then wrapped her arms around his shoulders, resting her chin on his head.  She swayed enough that he swayed with her.

“What are you doing here?” Lucy asked.

“Talking.  Thinking.  We came this morning.  Some came and went back.  Some from Bristow’s camp.  Others like us who couldn’t stay away from class, because their parents check in.”

“The school seems so empty,” Avery remarked.

“Tymon didn’t go over what happened?”

“Not in any detail.”

“Alexander’s gone, Durocher is stepping back, Ray is keeping his head down.  Zed is looking for Jessica, I think because he doesn’t want to be here and he’s mad at Ray.  Most of the Augurs turned.  A lot of students got hurt or scared off.  Some went into the woods, others came here.”

Into Avery’s ear, Snowdrop whispered, “I’m gonna stick around.  I’m more useful here than elsewhere.  You guys are useless without me.”

“Don’t go too far?  Be safe?”

“Nah,” Snowdrop said, with a snort.

Avery patted Snowdrop’s hair more into place as Snowdrop walked away.

“He invited Musser back.  And Musser hasn’t been back in person since he and Alexander got in an argument years ago.  Doesn’t even drop off his kids, normally.”

“Reid and Raquel,” Avery noted.

“What happens next, then?” Lucy asked.

Talos shrugged.  “It depends on what Alexander does.  Some kids aren’t calling their parents, in hopes Alexander wraps up what he needs to do elsewhere, then delivers a master stroke.  I called my parents, but they’re useless for this.  They’re doing a big project they’ve been prepping for a year.  Eventually some of the parents who get calls, like ours, are going to say something to parents who weren’t told.  Some of us might get pulled out of school.  The Kierstaads are pretty worried about that.”

“Are they here?” Avery asked.

“They were sitting in the Drooling Cow with Brie.”

Avery looked over at the more distant of the two fast food places.

“We pretty much have to go back tonight to sleep,” Talos said.  “They will make a big power play when we do.  They’re giving us today to come to terms with the regime change, but tonight they’re going to hammer home that we need to make a decision.  Join or leave.”

It was kind of chilling, Avery observed, to hear him say it with such certainty.  “How do you know?”

“Because my family’s dealt with a lot of gangs in the past.  You start to see the patterns.”

“This sucks.  I just want magic classes,” Verona said.

“This is more than that,” Talos said, with some intensity.  The brunette lifted her head up, like she’d been startled awake.  “This is important.  It’s  going to determine which families are important, which aren’t, I- you don’t deal with outside practitioners in some way?  You dealt with some of the senior students.”

“Zed, Nicolette, and Brie.”

“Yeah,” Talos said.  “As our parents catch on, there’s going to be ripple effects.  Families and practitioner circles rise and fall with this crap.  You know two students got expelled?”

“America and one of the Hennigars,” Lucy said.

“Tymon told you.  Yeah.  And the Hennigar will get back in, and America will… if Liberty stays and America doesn’t, then that puts Liberty at an advantage, where she’s learning stuff and she might end up taking over the family.  There’s tons of stuff like that.  It’s going to change who you meet, who the go to people are to talk to… there’s Others that need to be kept bound, far from humanity, and I know the Legendres do a lot of that, but if they end up stepping down, someone else might end up stepping up.  For some these moves are huge promotions, for others it’s responsibilities they didn’t ask for.”

“Bind this Other once a month or a town gets eaten or something?” Verona asked.  “That type of thing?”

“Yeah.  And as much as some might sabotage or attack another family for power, others will fight to avoid being made to handle stuff like the bound Others nobody wants to associate with.”

“It all seems so cutthroat,” Avery said.

“Throats may actually get cut.  Mostly we’re stuck waiting.  Seeing if Alexander has a plan.  Trying to figure out if there’s a way we can take action on our own.  The moment stuff starts leaking…”

“Your parents won’t?” Lucy asked.

“Nah.  We talked it out and things are okay for now, but this stuff gets out eventually.  Bristow will force it if it’s convenient for him.”

“It’s messing with the school, right?” Verona asked.  “He weakened it.  Less students… a bunch left?”

“It’s weaker now.  I think he thinks that if he invests in it, shapes it according to his will and preferences, it’ll be more his, and it’ll be a smaller, more tightly-knit group of students that he has some influence over.  That’s more powerful in the long run.  It doesn’t matter that it kind of ruins this summer for us.  It’ll be better in the long run.”

“He specializes in messing with people, doesn’t he?” Verona asked.  “Setting them up?  Like, to be stronger, or weaker, or complimentary?”

Talos nodded.

“And the big class on human binding… the reason all the students on his side were so good at it?  Is that because Bristow taught them?”  Verona asked.

“Tutored.  Yeah.”

Avery’s eyebrows went up.

“So that’s his specialty.  He moves people around, he arranges them, binds them, he has a bunch of kids with complementary skillsets in his contacts-”

“He has lots of contacts,” Talos said.  “Organizations, groups.”

“That’s how he got Nicolette?”

“She was going to join another Augur circle, once she had enough information to sell.  Bristow talked to them.  Then she defected.  And Seth’s been treated like crap for a while, and Bristow made some promises to Tanner years ago… I guess Tanner’s been considering them for a while, and he got what he wanted out of Alexander, so why not?”

“And Chase?”

“I don’t know.  All I know is that Alexander Belanger is fantastically good at what he does.  He’s not world famous like Durocher or Ray are.  He doesn’t seek that out.  But he does earn a reputation with the people that do know him.  So there’s a feeling like of course he’ll save us.  Of course he’ll turn up, critical solution, and bring Bristow down in a way that doubles the Belanger holdings, get his apprentices back…”

“You don’t think so?” Lucy asked.

“Lawrence Bristow knows this as much or better than any of us do.  And he still decided to do this.”

Snowdrop had returned.  She stood by the side of the road.  A small goblin with a condom stuck in one ear and out the other was perched on her head.  It looked like maybe his brain was sitting in the bubble of the condom that sat outside one ear.

Avery looked around, then jogged over.  As a test, she murmured, “Checking on Snow.”

Lucy looked back over her shoulder, then leaned in to say something to Verona.

“…the guys Bristow has with him, they’re scary…” Talos said.

Avery left the conversation behind.

“This guy doesn’t want to talk to you,” Snowdrop told her.  “They’re really useful guys, they’re willing to share everything they know.  Do you think we can do them a favor?”

“A favor?”

“Brownies!” the little goblin yipped.

“They love ’em,” Snowdrop said.

“Nuh uh!”

“And they want to do nice things in exchange for nice things the brownies did for them.”

“They’re the worst things. They’re horrible. They’re awful.  Why are you so wrong!?” The goblin craned his head around to try to slap Snowdrop’s scalp with the little fluid-filled latex balloon.  He wasn’t coordinated enough to be good at it, and was maybe giving himself brain damage in the process.   “So wrong!  F!  You get an F!  You’re an F of a person!  I’ll beat an indent into your flesh so people know!!”

“He’s cool,” Snowdrop said.  “They had no information about…”

Snowdrop fell silent.

In a town where there hadn’t been a single car in the entire time they’d been talking to Talos, three cars were coming down the road.  Avery recognized them from the parking lot.

The goblin on Snowdrop’s head climbed down, scampering away to hide.

Talos’s sleepy, dizzy brown-haired familiar straightened up, a bottle in her hand that hadn’t been there a bit ago.  Behind Talia, at the corner of the building, her creepy, floaty familiar loomed, out of sight of any innocents, but there.

Lucy slipped on her ring.  Verona stepped back, hands in her back pockets.

Avery wrapped her black rope around her hand, taking Snowdrop’s hand firmly in case she needed to move.

The cars stopped in the middle of the road.

It was some of the senior students Avery hadn’t really met yet.  Reid and Estrella, along with Chase and Fernanda.

In the car behind, it was Ted, Shellie, and Kevin’s girlfriend, Rae.

The door to the gas station opened.  A sixty-something woman in a faded forest green polo shirt with a nametag came out.  “No!  I don’t want any of your trouble!  You rich kids at your school, you’re causing trouble every month, your kids mess with ours, break our teenagers hearts or get them mad enough to murder!  Get out!  Go!  Whatever you’re doing, not here!”

“Go inside,” Estrella called out.

“This isn’t your place!  I’m sick of-”

Estrella looked around, then she pointed.

The gas station attendant turned and went back inside, slamming the glass door hard enough the attached bell could be heard from Avery’s position.

Estrella looked back over her shoulder at Avery.

“The little goblins I found would be useless against her.  Can you imagine?”

“I don’t think it’d be as easy as you’re imagining, Snow.”

“There’s not many.”

“Even if there’s lots.”

Estrella, craning her neck around, spotted the vacant kid in the kiddie pool.  She pointed at the door to the kid’s house.

The kid turned, tripped over the lip of the kiddie pool on the way out, then hurried to the door, shutting it.

I don’t want this to be what we do, Avery thought.

Estrella indicated the Drooling Cow, and beckoned.

It took a minute before Brie, Melody, and Corbin emerged.  Laila backed away from the three of them, giving the rest of the kids who’d fled to this small town a wide berth, before stopping at the fringes.

While they got sorted, more car doors opened.

Blackhorne stepped out.  Standing in the street in the middle of broad daylight, radiating menace as he stood a step behind and to the left of Reid.  He took up a spot between Kevin Noone and Shellie.

“I would like you to know that you are all expected at dinner tonight,” Estrella said, her voice carrying.  “This is not optional.  Classes will be signed up for at the dinner table, so the teaching staff can better accommodate you.  If you don’t sign up, you won’t have classes the next day.  They’ll give you worksheets to be done in the library, instead.”

“Expect more practical exercises over the course of the week,” Chase announced, with a smug little smile.  “Practicing is dangerous, and we’ll all need to prepare for any eventuality, so look forward to some more competitive classes.”

“The little goblins didn’t have anything to say about that,” Snowdrop mumbled.

“What’s that?” Avery asked.

“It’s been reported to us that some students are plotting sedition,” Chase said, with a smug little smile.  “You will be expelled if you act against the school.  Staffing concerns are the concerns of the staff.  The quality of your education will not diminish unless you diminish it yourselves.”

Those were his parting words.  Message delivered, they turned to go.

Avery watched Fernanda’s brief moment of eye contact with Laila, and found herself sympathizing so much it hurt.  She watched Fernanda get in the car and drive off.  Laila remained behind.

This was all so dumb.  Could they really duck their heads down and ignore what was going on?  Like Jessica had intended to do, before she was pulled into it?

“America!  Lovely America!” a new small goblin crowed.  It was lumpy, scabby, and twisted, like it had been rolled over by a car a few times.  It spoke with a lisp.  “They kicked her out!  I cried!  She called them names!  I laughed!  She fought!  I cheered!  They came for her!  I fought!”

“Who came for her?  The aware?  The big guy, and the woman with the weird eyes?  The one with the decorations!”

“A lot of them!  The horned one.  The bitch!  The small-faced dick-curd of a man!  Glorious Liberty couldn’t even fight to protect her, because of oaths sworn!”

Estrella or Fernanda?  And Chase?

Students were supposed to be protected from students and staff.

Except, Avery realized, if we’re expelled, those protections were revoked.

She looked back at the gathered Blue Heron refugees.  At how lost and scared they seemed.

Did they know?  Or were they suspicious?

“Bristow’s a total tyrant,” she said to Snowdrop.  “He’s betting we’ll endure it instead of risking the war between families?  Or is he holding students hostage?  He wants to bully us into submission?”

“Doesn’t even have the whole summer to do it,” Snowdrop said.

Avery used the black rope, tugging Snowdrop behind a tree with her, to get to the gas station quicker.  She had to dance a few hurried steps to the right to keep a safe distance away from Jorja’s creepy floating bogeyman familiar.

“They attacked America Tedd?”

“We don’t know,” Corbin said.

“The local small-fry goblins are saying they did,” Avery said, lowering her voice so the little kids wouldn’t hear.  “They expelled her, then went after her with students and Aware.  And now she’s gone?”

Brie, the only real adult present that wasn’t an Other, exactly, was trying to calm the youngest kids.  But she looked pretty bewildered herself.

She was more a newbie to all of this than the three of them.

And the other students who were left weren’t exactly the heavy hitters.  The Leos were, but the Leos’ practice was apparently expensive and they didn’t look eager to throw down.

“It’s going to be another power play when we get there,” Corbin said.

“I know,” Talos said.  “Don’t panic.  We have a bit of time before dinner.”

Lucy, Verona, and Avery exchanged a look.  Avery looked down to Snowdrop, who took her hand.

Silent agreement.

This wasn’t okay.

“Do we-” Verona’s expression was pained.  “Do we have to miss class?  To try to fix things so the rest of classes aren’t awful and manipulative?”

Avery gave Verona’s shoulder a squeeze.  Verona’s expression was cold, the emotion dropping away.

“Damn him,” Verona muttered.

“I told the earring I wanted to be scary to be against.  I don’t think they want to be nice to us,” Lucy said.  “So… time to live up to that.”

“Melody,” Avery said, turning.  “Or Talos, or Zachariah.  Can you walk us through what happened?”

[6.9 Spoilers] Binding & Countermeasures

Cutting Class – 6.z

Interlude

Last Thursday: Binding & Countermeasures


Saturday

“Fernanda.”

Fernanda did her best, most practiced flounce, turning around.  Chase stood on the path, a bit behind her.

She waited, hip askew, hand resting on it, other hand dropped, as he approached.

“Did our father die?” she asked.

“Hm?  No.”

“Mom, then?”

“No.  This is something else,” he told her.  He cleared his throat.  “I have family business to conduct.  By arrangements made, secure me from the Belanger sight.”

There was no whoosh, no puff of smoke or anything.  She used her Sight to glance left, then right, then turned it off.  Mostly her sight made everything grayer, let her see connections, and made people a bit easier to analyze, and she didn’t care to analyze Chase.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

That’s your business?” she asked.

“It matters.”

“Why does it matter?”

“Stuff’s happening.  Trouble.”

“Is that the deep, mystical sort of insight that an apprenticeship with Mr. Belanger offers?”

“It’s happening now, or close enough to that I thought it was worth tracking you down.  No nonsense, this is me being official, as part of the Whitt family.  I want you to tell me.”

“I’m going for a swim.”

“This isn’t the way to the bridge.”

“No it is not.”

He folded his arms, looking at her, then lifted up a hand to do a little circular ‘elaborate’ gesture.

She sighed.  “We’re going down past the bend where it’s private.  Laila and some boys are already there or on their way there.  There should be no swimsuits except those we were born with.  Do you need more information on that front?”

“Which boys?”

She sighed again.  “Beau, Easton, Howie, and Myles.  Are you really going to start pretending to be the macho, protective older brother?  It’s so gross.”

“No.  I trust you to handle yourself,” Chase told her.  He looked off into the trees.  “There are more than four boys out there.”

Fernanda turned, looking, turned on her Sight, but didn’t see anything special.  Still, she groaned,  “Damn it, Laila.”

“You think she brought the extra boys?  Who are the likelies?  For the new additions to the group.”

“Wouldn’t be Corbin, after what she did to his sister.  I know Reese, Stain, and Mikey have been talking to her.”

“The practitioners who do the Eastern arts?”

Fernanda shrugged.

“There are seven boys out there, so the numbers add up. How much do you trust them?”

“The boys?” Fernanda asked.  She thought for a second.  “They’re fine.”

“You should reconsider going.”

“Should I?  Why?  Are we going to get ambushed by Bristow’s group?”

“I don’t know.  I don’t know what people’s allegiances are.  This thing, off campus, it’s…”

“I’ll be fine.”

“But-”

“You have your focus, Chase, you’ve got your thing with Mr. Belanger and the Belanger circle, and it’s good.  You keep doing that.  Our father and mother are very pleased.”

“And what about you?”

“I’m…” Fernanda had to think for a second.  She grimaced.  “Pleasantly surprised that you’re doing as well as you’re doing.”

Chase, arms still folded, quirked an eyebrow.  “Is that your way of saying you’re proud?”

“I’m pleased.  Let’s avoid saying ‘proud’.  That makes me feel so gross.”

“When I asked ‘what about you’, I wasn’t asking for a verdict on my performance, by the way.”

“Oh?”

“What about you?  What are you doing, what’s your focus?  Skinny dipping with random boys?  You’ll be fine?”

“Chase,” she said, a smile creeping across her face.  “You do realize I’ve been working on toying with hearts since I was four?  I’ve been at this longer than you’ve been with Alexander.  The doting student for a tutor or teacher, I can pick out a classmate and they want me to be their best friend… others might hate me but I don’t care.  I target the people I want and I win them over.  Do you remember the first one?”

“I might.  Tell me.”

“When I was four I realized that Mrs. Morrow was fond of me, and our father wanted something from her.  I drew her a picture.  When she asked me to describe it and explain what I drew, I pulled myself up onto the chair next to her and put the picture in our laps.  Then, as the conversation continued, I sat, good as gold, my head leaning against her arm.  Our father never told me I did a good job, but I distinctly remember a unicorn ride afterward.  Might be the closest I ever got.”

“I do think he told me.  That you did a good job.  Not in so many words, but our father never used so many words.”

Fernanda shifted her posture, hands clasped behind her back, shifting her weight behind her foot.  She hated that she cared enough to want to know more.  She didn’t know what to say, so she offered him an airy, “I wanted so badly to ride on that unicorn alone, but I was obviously too small.  Our father made the maid ride with me.”

Chase looked her over, then said, “He wanted to reward you and didn’t know exactly how.  But he thought so highly of you then.  I would’ve been eight or nine.  Our father told me, rough quote, look after your sister, after you awaken.  She will be an asset.  He still feels that way, I think.  Other times you make him want to pull his hair out, but… overall good.”

“Yeah,” Fernanda said, smiling, and it was a weird smile, like melting ice cream.  Nice and feel-good but uncharacteristically hard to keep intact, like how the ice cream needed regular licking as the drips made their way down.  She dropped her eyes to the ground. “I’m glad.”

“Speaking for myself, you haven’t said or done anything to change my mind on that.”

“You’re being sentimental and it’s… ugh.  Offputting,” she told him, the smile dropping away, replaced with disgust.

“I’m being honest.”

“I’m an asset, Chase.  Like our father said.  I’ve known from the start.  I do know what happened to Louisa.  She so wasn’t bright, she didn’t take advantage of what the family provided her, we all knew she was messing around when she shouldn’t.  Then she was introduced to Wilson and told in no uncertain terms that she would marry him.”

“I haven’t thought about our cousins in years.”

“I think about Louisa every day, Chase.  To remind myself of what I need to do.  I’ve never sat down to talk with our mother and father about it, but I think there’s a silent agreement.  If I’m smart, if I play these political games well, keep the family proud, get my education, and pull a few tricks that get the family an upper hand, then I get the choice, the freedom, and the resources.  That’s the deal, I think.  Our father gives me money and I always put a bit of it aside, thinking about the events the family has coming up, or people that are coming to visit, and what I might need to wear then.”

“And here I just go to the tailor when told and they make me a closet of suits.”

“You get, Chase. You’re the golden child, you got chances, and you get more things handed to you.”

“If you resent me for that, you have to know I didn’t ask for it.”

She made a face.

“What?”

“It’s fine.  I hate saying it, but you got the chance, sure, and you used it well, getting into Alexander’s circle.  You’re doing fine.  You’re working hard.  It’s good.  I don’t hate you for it, even if I wish I could get a chance like that, instead of a unicorn ride and clothes to wear.”

“I was expecting an insult.”

“My point is, Chase, fine, you get, but don’t ignore the fact that I have to take.  All of us lesser members of the family have to.  We have to grab for the advantages, complain, manipulate.  We have to know when to be the squeaky wheel, when to tease, when to go the extra mile, because the payoff later is so critical, when to take the social gamble.  The flip side of the deal I was talking about?  If I take a gamble and fail, if I do something stupid, or I hurt the family, then I’ll be sent down the same path Louisa traveled.”

“Married off?”

“No, Chase.  In five to seven years, if I’m not good enough to leave to my own devices, I’ll be a pretty piece of meat that belongs to the best man our father can find that will put a ring on my finger.”

“Vulgar.  This doesn’t suit you,” he said, shifting his weight, body turning away by a few degrees, face turning away by more.

“What?  Why does that bother you?  And how would you know what suits me?  I’ve heard you with your friends back home.  You’re vulgar.  The things you and your friends say about girls.”

“I didn’t think you heard.”

“You’re not quiet, Chase,” Fernanda said, laughing so suddenly she startled herself.  “I don’t have to be an augur in training to pick up on that.”

“I don’t- will you be careful?  With the swimming and things like it?”

She stood straighter, forcing her expression to be serious.  “Rest assured, I will continue to be careful I do not depreciate my value as an asset of the Whitt family.”

“That’s not-”

“Not what?” she asked, laughing again.  “Why does it bother you?  It’s reality.  I know how to keep boys interested without giving them anything in return, and that’s what I do with things like this bit of swimming.  I can try to play smart for teachers like Raymond and be the whiny child for the substitutes that don’t know how to teach, I can make a dirty comment for the Tedds and that gets me some points with them.  Stuff like that.  I’m so not a genius at the stuff with the teachers, but I know the stakes, I try, and I do okay.”

“What if I offered you help?  I can pass on some of what I’ve learned.”

“Out of pity?” she asked.

“I don’t-” he started, stopped.  “I’m not sure I’ve ever felt pity.  So you don’t have to worry about that.”

That did make her feel better.

“But I don’t want that to be your reality.”

“I don’t see why I get the special treatment.”

“Because you’re my sister?”

She scoffed.

“No?”

“We’re not close, Chase.  We’re only barely brother and sister.”

“That can change.”

He wanted so badly to close this divide.

Fine, she’d use that.  She’d step back, forcing him to extend further to reach out.

“You’ve got your thing, keep at it.  I’ll do my thing,” she said.  She sighed as she started her next sentence, the first words forming out of the sigh, “I’ll study hard and I’ll do as the family needs, and I get money and clothes and training in exchange.  Better deal than most get.  If I get a quality guy on the hook, I’ll run him by our father and make sure it’s okay before bringing him on board.”

“You know, with the way things have gone, my lessons with Alexander, the work I’ve done, the contacts I’ve made, the status, power… nothing formal has happened, but the argument could be made that I’m the head of the family more than our father is.”

“Yes,” Fernanda agreed.  She thought about it for a moment, then said, “I’d make that argument if I had to pick a side.  Then I’ll tell you too, before committing to any boys in any real way.”

“If you wanted more freedom in that department, to lift the pressure…”

“Sure,” she said.  “If you’re giving it, I’ll take it.  If there’s a price or new responsibilities you need me to take on, I’ll consider it.”

Again, marking out the distance, seeing if he’d step closer.

“I need input,” he said.  A step closer.

“If that’s the price I would need-”

He almost growled the words, “It’s not a transaction, Fernanda.  It’s me trying to be a better brother and I’d be glad if you could help me out by being a bit of a sister and a little bit of a friend.”

She scoffed.  “So it is a transaction.”

“No.  It’s not- not obligatory.  That’s not what I meant to say.”

“You’ll be more of a brother, I’m expected to be more of a sister.  That’s the deal?  Ugh.  I’d rather keep stuff where I know what to expect, with rules I know.  But whatever, sure, I can try if that’s what the family needs, Mr. head-of-the-family.”

She wasn’t sure why it bothered him so much when she said that, but she filed it away.

“I know we’re not close, like you said, but I root for you.  I pay attention, I look into your friends and peers.  I want you to be happy.  I want to be a brother to you.”

She shifted her weight, uncomfortable, lifting up her foot to scratch the back of her knee, then took a step back as she set the foot back down.  In a conversation with virtually anyone else, who wasn’t currently the most important person in her family, she would have just turned and kept walking.

Chase pursed his lips together, pausing, then said, “Stuff’s happening.  I don’t know what to decide, and I don’t have anyone to talk to.  Tanner and Seth are mixed up in things, Nicolette hates my guts, Wye is busy, our father and mother have expectations.  If I go to our father for advice and get him to tell me what to do, then I won’t be the presumptive head of the family anymore.  I’d be the kid who runs home to daddy when things get tough.”

“Our father left all decisions on all things Belanger to you, didn’t he?”

“Yes, exactly.  It’d be conceding on some level, taking it to him.”

“And what’s the big dilemma?”

“It’s about the Bristow thing.  And how we handle it.  The Belanger circle is having a meeting shortly.  I want you to come.  Please.”

Her nose wrinkled.  “You need to be more manly, Chase.  You’re soft around the middle, you needed a haircut two weeks ago and it’s worse now, and you’re coming to me and you’re dangerously close to sounding like you’re avoiding running home to daddy by running over to your little sister, instead.”

He bristled a little at that.  She liked that he bristled.

She’d been waiting a long time for a conversation like this.  A part of her had expected it to come in five or so years, not now.

It was easy to put emotion aside, to throw out the answers, remind him of just how vast the distance between them was.  For whatever reason, he was shaken enough that he desperately wanted to close it, now.

She didn’t let him.

“A little change of wording makes all the difference,” she told him.  “Order things.  Tell me, hmmm… that I’ll be at your disposal all my life, or at least until I marry, so I might as well know how these things go and sit in.”

“Realizing I didn’t have anyone to talk to, I wished I’d talked to you more.  I thought it’d be nice if I didn’t have to do that.”

“No, Chase.  That’s not who the two of us are.  It’s… it’s probably better to stick to what we know than to try to change how we do things as a family in the middle of a bad situation.”

He sighed.

She waited.

He stood a little straighter.  “The meeting is in a little under twenty minutes.  Attend.”

“I’ll talk to my friends to let them know I can’t join them, do a quick change of clothes and pay some attention to my hair, then come straight there.”

He nodded, looked like he was going to say something, then changed his mind.

“Shall I go?”

“This is the longest conversation we’ve had in five years, isn’t it?”

She supposed she wouldn’t go.  He still wanted to talk.

Was this the time?

It was the time.  She shook her head to his question.

“No?  Am I forgetting?” he asked.

“Last year, in spring.  You came home so drunk that the spirits were in a tizzy.  You hadn’t seen your friends for a while.  I was in the backyard and you tried to sneak in.  You didn’t make it to the back door.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“You threw up in the bush, I kept you steady.  Then you fell on top of me, head in my lap, smelling like puke and beer farts.  We talked for hours like that.”

He winced.  “I don’t remember.  Did I say anything regrettable?”

“Yes.  But so did I.  I swore nothing but I did tell myself I should say nothing of it, after, and I haven’t, and I have no intention of doing so.  Sharing it hurts too many things, including the family.  You.  Me.”

“What did I say?  What did I do?”

“Does it matter?”

“It does.  I’ve wanted to talk to you, to be brother and sister instead of members of a family, and now I learn I did?  I want to know.”

“Chase, you talked about the expectations on you, and you sobbed.  You spent the night with your non-practitioner friends and you said you were thinking about not seeing them anymore, because the loneliness was so bad you either couldn’t sleep the night after or you had to get drunk to fall asleep.  You had a list of resentments to rail against, things our mother and father did and didn’t do. It took work, to keep you quiet.”

Saying it aloud was like slapping him in the face over and over again.

She’d thought a lot about that conversation in the last year.  She’d imagined enjoying it more, talking about this.

“I’m sorry.  Putting you in that position,” he said, a bit stiff.

“I didn’t have to stay.  I could have extricated myself and got the maid.  You had your resentments about me.  You bruised my leg, drumming your hand against it to punctuate what you were saying.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t know what you were doing.”

“Maybe.  The resentments- there’s good things too.”

“I know.  You said things like how you were proud of me, you wanted the world for me.  That I was one of the only people in the family you liked-”

“Good.  Good, it wasn’t all bad.”

“-and that I was a spoiled little brat, that I had no idea what you had to deal with, that you did the work and I got the rewards from it.  That I’d get what was coming to me after I married some mediocre practitioner from a mediocre family-”

“No, that’s not how I feel.”

“A drunken man’s words are a sober man’s thoughts.  You said I would lose my looks, and I’d end up a bitter middle-aged woman who knew about her husband’s affair with a younger woman but did nothing about it.  That I’d have to keep silent year after year, while my kids lost respect for me, because these political marriages are all kinds of hell to break out of.  You slurred a lot more and rambled, but you managed to paint a very complete picture.  Or fantasy, if you want to call it that.”

“Not a fantasy.  I- could it have been a fear?  That you could end up like our cousins, or our aunts?  Our mom?”

“I don’t know.  It’s probably a bad idea, me calling you gross and talking about your beer farts and you crying and exposing your every weakness.  It’s not good politics, with the guy who’s basically the head of my family.  I can stop, if you say the word.  Or you can punish me.  Take away my allowance, or slap me in the face, spit on me, give me busywork that keeps me up all night…”

“I’m not going to do that to you, Fernanda.  Stay honest.  One way or another, you’re probably there as my right hand or as a voice I can trust.”

She looked to the side.

“Or that the family can trust, at the very least.  Until the day I die or pass the reins to my eldest.  We’re family.”

“As you wish,” she said.  “Sir.”

He sighed, and it was heavy.

He looked up at the sun.

“I should go.”

“Thirteen minutes, twenty seconds,” he said.

“Excuse me,” she said.

She hurried down the path.

What was happening?  The situation had to do with the Belangers, and with Bristow.  Was it an expenditure of power?  A discussion of whether they’d fight, and if they fought, how much would they put forward?

She had some things she was decent at, and she had a fairly free stream of money from her father, and with enough attention, she had the footing to be the top girl on campus, when she was a senior student.  But she had weaknesses and she was very aware of them.  Fighting was a weakness.  Of all the other Augurs, only Alexander and Nicolette could do much, and they weren’t great.

What else could it be?

She ducked beneath branches, identifying the ‘path’, which was more trampled grass and weeds than it was any actual dirt path.  Down a slope, and down to a point further down the river from the bridge.

She could hear the splashing.

“Coming down!” she called over.

There were whoops.

She ducked under a branch, then straightened as the sun hit her eyes.  The grassy bank was littered with clothes.

All seven of the boys and Laila were already in the water up to their necks, separated by about ten feet, splashing at one another.

“What took you so long?” Laila asked.

“Something came up-”

“Something definitely came up here!” Easton jeered.

She gave him the finger.  “That’s awful.”

A switch of roles.  From the younger sister and lesser member talking to the big brother who was basically leading the family, to being this.

“I can’t stay, I would if I could.  You can take my word for that,” she said.

“You’re leaving me alone?” Laila asked.

“I don’t like doing this,” she said, giving Laila her best pained expression.  She didn’t like doing this, but there was more at play than Laila’s feelings.  “I’m so sorry.”

“Can I come with you?” Laila asked.

Boys groaned and complained.  “Noooo!”

“You can’t come with me to the family meeting, but I’ll walk you back.”

More groaning and ‘nos’ filled the area.

“Don’t look!” Laila told the boys.

“Turn your backs!” Fernanda backed up her friend.  “I wish I could stay, but it’s coming from family.  I’ll see about making it up to you boys later, at least the boys who were supposed to be here.”

There were some comments, jokes, and stuff.  As Laila got as close to the bank as she could without emerging, Fernanda moved her hand, indicating for the boys to turn around.

“No looking!” she ordered.  “You don’t want to be on my bad side.”

She held up a towel for Laila for good measure, as Laila pulled on her clothes.  She used a toe to nudge Laila’s shoe closer.

“You’re not in my good books, Miss Throop,” Fernanda said, quietly.

“I couldn’t really say no.”

“And you,” she raised her voice, making Laila jump.  One of the Eastern Practices boys had turned his head, looking back through the corner of his eye.  “Stain.  You will regret not listening to me and being a creep.  For the next three or four years we should be attending this school I will remember this for our future interactions and it will matter.  Your friends too, so long as they’re with you.”

“Damn it, Damarayon,” Mikey muttered, pushing his friend underwater.

“Did he see anything?” Laila asked.

“No, you’re safe.  Dressed?”  she asked.  She saw the nod, then called out, “You can turn around!”

The boys did.

Fernanda used her sight, judged, and tracked the lines.  She found Damaryon’s clothes, then used her toe to flick his shirt into the water, then his shoe.

“Come on, no!  Don’t-”

“Don’t cross me, don’t cross my friends,” she told him.  “Expect this sort of treatment to be regular, until you make amends.”

“Come on!”

She booted the other shoe into the water.  He splashed his way closer, but stopped when he was submerged up to the waist.

She found his pants.

“My phone.  Come on!  Not the phone”

She checked the pockets, got his wallet, and got his phone.  She dropped the pants into the water.

“Don’t be a creep,” she told him, holding the wallet and phone over the water.

“Come on, please.”

“Laila?” Fernanda asked.  “Your choice.”

Laila took the phone from Fernanda’s hand.  “He peeked?”

“Tried to.”

Laila seemed to consider.

“I’ll pay you.  Or do you a minor favor as a practitioner.”

Laila dropped the phone onto a pile of clothes.

“Thank you.”

Laila stomped on the phone, cracking it, then kept her foot there.

“Drive this suffering home,” Laila whispered.  Fernanda smiled.

The phone shuddered, and something screamed as it slithered down from Laila’s hand, down the side of her pants leg, and plunged into the phone.  The screen flickered violently, making static-y whimpering sounds, with contorted human-ish shapes straining against the cracked glass, each appearing for a second, disappearing and being replaced by another, in rapid succession.

While the boy was cussing, Fernanda tossed the wallet downriver.  Damaryon splashed, hurrying after it before it could disappear underwater.

“Bringing those three…” Fernanda said, as they made their way back up the ‘path’.  She sighed.

“They were close by, I thought at least if they came, there’d be less chance they’d stumble on us.  And they’re nice-ish, or I thought they were.”

“You couldn’t at least call someone else to come?”

“I didn’t know who you’d be cool with.”

Fernanda sighed.

“It was fun.  I want to do something like that again.  But with more girls.”

Fernanda raised an eyebrow.

“I mean, to balance out the numbers.”

“It’s good if there’s more boys.  If the numbers are too balanced, they’d want to pair off.  If there’s more of them, they compete for attention and affections.”

“Huh.  Yeah.  Why are you so good at this?”

“Have to be.”

“It’d be so nice to get lessons in this stuff, I feel like I’m always playing catch-up,” Laila said.  They emerged from the trees, and Laila bent over, squeezing water from her hair with her hands.

“I could give you lessons.”

“Really!?”

“You’re my best friend.  Why wouldn’t I?”

Laila blinked a few times.

“Right?” Fernanda asked.

“Right, yeah!  Yeah!  I didn’t expect that, but yeah.”

Fernanda smiled.  “I’m in a rush, can we walk faster?”

“Yep, yeah.”

Fernanda’s smile wasn’t a warm smile, though.  She was trying to think to the future, to the incoming meeting.

How to gently get things sorted out?  To get what she needed?

If only to quiet the anxiety that was fluttering in her chest as she drew closer to school.

“Can I count on you to back me up?” she asked.  “When things go bad?”

“On- sure.  Yes, I can back you up.  I don’t know what I could do, though.”

“I know how to boss people around, and I’ve studied and sought counsel from Others about the games boys and girls play.  My family wasn’t especially strong before Chase hit it big, but we specialized in emotion manipulation.  In love, and feuds, and trust, and fear.  If you can call it specialization.  Chase mostly left it behind, only using some of it to track people, but I got lessons.  That’s what I’m using and it’s what I could teach you, if you were interested.”

“Definitely.  I want to learn it.”

“Can you teach me practice stuff?”

“Absolutely.  I will.  Are we talking lessons?”

“Please?” Fernanda asked.

“Yes, okay,” Laila said.  “Lessons later.”

Fernanda smiled, then hugged her friend.  “Then I can let the thing go, then, about you inviting the other three guys in.”

“Thank you.  Thank you.  I don’t want you to have a grudge against me like you seem to against Steyn.”

“I knew it would be him who tested my order,” Fernanda said.  “So gross.”

“Super gross,” Laila echoed.

“I want to mess with him at dinner.”

They entered the school, chatting about ways to get back at him.  They could use karma to put him on the back foot, see what they could do.

The other kids were milling around, many of them around the library.  There was a class wrapping up, it seemed, but Saturday classes tended to be lighter, easier, and more about fun stuff.  Others were returning from a swim, still wearing swimsuits, and a group of the younger kids were eating old fashioned candy the Brownies had provided.

There were still the battle lines, though.  Just like how she and Laila had planned the swim with boys who were on the Belanger side of things, and had invited three more boys from that same group.  They wouldn’t invite Bristow’s guys.

They hurried back to the room, and she checked the time as they got to the door.  Barely any time to get ready.

“I barely have time.  Can you help?  Blue dress,” she ordered.  “Closet, left hand side.”

Laila jumped to the task.

She’d given Laila nothing concrete, but she’d gotten a pledge in return.  It was the product of months of establishing friendship, from last year until now, that let her set that into motion.  It didn’t matter that Laila was her best friend, because it helped her feel like she was inching toward a better place.  Whether this turned out to be a fight or a power grab, a manipulation or Alexander giving her a job, she couldn’t be worse off for having the option.

Good.

Bad.

The mood was a dark, tense one.  Alexander and Nicolette were late to arrive.  Seth’s foot tapped relentlessly.

Chase, for all his moments of weakness, the drunken venting that night a year and three months ago, and how lazy he could be about his successes, betrayed nothing.  This could have been the wait for a routine doctor’s appointment, for all he showed it on his face.

But Tanner was pacing, and next to Alexander, Tanner was the best at seeing things coming.

Bookshelves scraped against the floor.  Fernanda turned, looking, and saw how the study was rearranging.

The single door became a set of double doors.  They opened, banging against the bookshelves to either side.

Alexander was first through, not as tidy as he usually was, but intense, hair and clothes a bit out of sorts, like he’d been in the midst of a violent wind.  Still looking good, for an old guy.

Nicolette followed after.  She glanced around the room, adjusted her glasses, then took a seat beside Fernanda.  To the side of the door, back of the study, facing Alexander, it was Chase, Fernanda, then Nicolette, in that order.

As she settled in, Fernanda had a view of her hair ornament.  The lower jaw of something with fangs, a decorated phial of liquid, and silver wire with the smallest feathers tied to it.

“Hey, kid,” Nicolette whispered.

“Hi,” Fernanda responded, finding the familiar tone of voice, the slightly kid-ish smile.  Nicolette liked the ‘kid sister’, and so Fernanda played that up a bit.  A bit more than with Chase, which seemed to annoy her older brother.  “What’s happening?”

“Stuff.  Alexander will explain,” Nicolette said.

Nicolette was tense, and the look in her eyes…

Had the augurs Seen something?  Was that why they were so freaked out?  Why Alexander was weirdly intense?

Zed, Brie, Eloise, Amine, and Ulysse entered, followed by both of the other full-time teachers.  Bookshelves moved and divided in two, melting into the background and expanding the room, accommodating the number of people present.

“I apologize if the sudden crowd is an inconvenience,” Alexander said.  “The other teachers and their apprentices have been asked to maintain peace, not to interfere.  I am many things, but a would-be tyrant is not one of them.  That position is very much covered.”

Fernanda glanced at Chase, then the other way, at Nicolette.

Chase barely batted an eyelash.  Nicolette looked like she hadn’t eaten in three days, so tense for so long that a kind of leanness had touched her face.  Fernanda had seen glimpses of it -she liked Nicolette the most of all of them so she paid attention- but she’d assumed it was because Nico was being put to work by Alexander in stressful times.

She wasn’t assuming that now.

“I invited Fernanda in,” Chase said.

“That’s fine,” Alexander said.  “I don’t imagine that tipping the balance of power in the room.  No offense, Ms. Whitt.  I hope you’re well.”

“Very well, sir, thank you.  I would be even better if I’d been given the ticket to decide the court for the field trip to the Faerie.  My answers were fewer in number but higher in quality.”

Alexander paused, looking less harried for a moment, as he smiled at her.  “Perhaps.  There’s more to consider, though.  Like what serves the lesson being taught.”

“Prettier, richer, more powerful people win more.  That’s a lesson.  It’s not a nice lesson, especially for those who are less pretty or wealthy, but I’m personally very fond of imparting it.”

Alexander, still smiling, wagged a finger at her.

Seth’s leg continued to jitter, foot tapping the floor.

“Has Bristow done something?” Eloise asked.

“Oh, he certainly has.  But if you mean has Bristow set something specific into motion, then no.  He has kindly allowed me to determine the time, place, and setting of the tinder being lit.  It’s my understanding that he would rather I withdraw in meek and frustrated defeat, as he once did, instead of meeting a sad but quick end, stabbed twenty-three times at the door of my study.”

“Betrayal?” Zed asked.

Raymond touched Zed’s arm, then put a finger to his lips.

Those two, Brie, Durocher, and Durocher’s two apprentices were here as observers and protectors only.  Not to comment or act.

Betrayal?

“Me,” Nicolette said.

Fernanda’s heart sank.  No.  Nicolette was the nice one.

“You’re part of it,” Alexander said.  “Not all of it.”

Fernanda looked around the room.  Every expression was serious.

And she knew nothing.  She could decipher nothing.

“What are you doing, Nico?” Zed asked, quiet.

“Zed,” Raymond cut in.  “Please.”

“Does this have to do with what the piercing girl said to you after ruining Jessica’s big ritual?” Zed persisted.

“Zed,” Raymond said, again.  “Silence.  We don’t interfere.”

“Yes, it has to do with what she said.”

“Explain?” Seth asked, leaning forward.

“Please,” Chase said, but his voice was harder.

“I have received a better offer than what Alexander Belanger and the Blue Heron provide,” Nicolette said.  “I know Alexander knows, now.  There’s no use hiding it.  If he’s amenable, I will give my figurative two weeks of notice.  I will serve out the remainder of the tasks I’ve pledged to do for Alexander, then go.”

“I could arrest you, imprison you indefinitely, to keep you from falling into the hands of my enemies,” Alexander said.

“You could.”

“Have you killed.”

Nicolette’s lips parted, then closed.  She nodded.

“I don’t like killing, so I won’t.  I won’t arrest or imprison you, either.  None of those things in the here and now.  We’ll see for the future, allowing for the fact you may be a rival of this circle.”

“Thank you,” Nicolette said.

“The rest of you are to leave her alone,” Alexander said.  “Let her see to her tasks, then let her go, as appropriate.  Understood?”

There were nods all around.

“Nico,” Zed said.  “Really?”

“Leave her be,” Durocher said.

“She’s a friend.  She was, I don’t know what happens-”

“I’d like to stay friends,” Nicolette said.

“This makes it harder.”

“This,” Alexander cut in, “is a machination of Mr. Lawrence Bristow.  If you get upset, if you allow anger to overtake you, you’re doing as he wishes.”

“And what are you doing?” Chase asked.

“That is a very easy question to answer, situated in a very difficult moment,” Alexander said, reclining in his chair.  He crossed his ankles, placing them at the far right edge of the desk.  “Nicolette is not the only one who defects.  If I tell you and you defect to Mr. Bristow or one of his many contacts, then that hurts my position.  Are you going to defect, Chase?”

Chase remained quiet.  He glanced down at Fernanda.

This?

This was why he was insecure?  He’d seen something like it coming?  This was why he wanted the advice?

“Tanner?” Alexander asked.  “I know you and Lawrence have a history.  He sent you a Christmas card.  You talk from time to time, and you talk to Reid Musser, who talks to his father, who talks to Bristow.”

“Yeah.  He’s offered me a position with a powerful family, residence at a conflux of power.  If he becomes headmaster, I’ll have continued attendance here.  If not, then there are a few opportunities elsewhere.”

“And a girl,” Alexander said.

“He introduced me to two young women.  I’m fond of one.”

“Both very fine ladies, from what I could see.  Clever, talented in their respective practices, and pretty.  I would discourage you, about the work, the residence, and the marriage prospects, but I can see why you’re tempted.”

“Discourage?” Tanner asked.

“Elaboration is a kindness reserved for the loyal, Tanner.  But let’s put that aside.  Two of my five apprentices will walk away.  Any others?  Seth, you seem agitated.”

Seth didn’t respond, didn’t take his eyes off the floor, and didn’t stop jiggling his leg.

“Chase?” Alexander asked, quiet.  Dangerous.

“I wonder if any defection on my part would send Nicolette screaming back to the Blue Heron,” Chase said.

“Defecting to the same group?” Nicolette asked.

“It’s a hypothetical,” Chase said.

Alexander swung his feet down, then moved closer to the desk, leaning over his clasped hands.  “The difference between two of my five apprentices defecting and three of my five apprentices defecting is significant.  It could decide the ownership of the Blue Heron Institute.  Wye is loyal.  He’s also elsewhere.  Now, Chase, Seth… shit or get off the chamber pot.  Decide!”

He raised his voice with that last word, fingers gripping the edge of the desk.

Seth’s leg had stopped moving.  Nobody moved or spoke.

Alexander was strong, he was a teacher, but the way these things worked, it was often a lot of lessons and things to learn at the outset, then that knowledge tapered off.  Deals, goodwill, or the security of the devil one knew over the unknown kept people close.  Many teachers stretched out the lessons and the offering of information over years or decades, just to keep them around long enough that the other ties could be established.

But Alexander used his apprentices for business, sending them out.  They needed a good grounding of knowledge for the Belanger Circle to maintain its success rate in getting things done.

Meaning he’d given what he had to give, and the only thing keeping people close was…

“Hypothetically,” Fernanda murmured.  With the acoustics of the room, her voice felt far too loud.  “Could you leave if you wanted to?”

“I swore no oaths to stay.  He could have, but he didn’t.”

“Lawrence Bristow would have you swear,” Alexander said, sitting back in his chair, relaxing his grip on the edge.  “Think about what that means.”

“I will.  I’m thinking,” Chase said, stiff.

Nicolette was leaving.  What happened next, then?  Would Bristow be headmaster?  Or was this a long play by Alexander, that would secure him the Blue Heron?

“Tell me, Seth.  Tell me, Chase,” Alexander said, his voice like background noise, pervasive.  “I recognize your dilemma.  To say no to Bristow makes for a stubborn, irascible enemy with connections that extend all around the world.  I’m not so connected.  I keep to this province and its neighbors, with some work in the United States.”

What else?  To turn against Alexander would invert or twist relationships with just about every family in the area.  It would extend the Whitt family relations to countries all around the world, because Bristow was well traveled and he was good at finding and placing people.

They could potentially have so much more, maybe moving to a place Alexander couldn’t reach.

That felt so thin.  Every place could be reached.

Alexander continued, more background noise.  “My primary advantage is that I know you.  Make of that what you will.  But if you decide and if you’re upfront with me, then I will be an upfront enemy.  My demesne is one that is welcoming, to student, to you lot, who’ve come to smoke, drink, and tell stories.  Twisting its nature to kill those who’ve been welcomed in would violate rules of hospitality.  I will not do that.  I will let you go, and all I ask in return is that you are upfront about abandoning the Belanger circle.”

“Did you get an offer?” Fernanda asked her brother.

“Yes.”

“What was it?”

“What was it, Chase?” Alexander asked.

“You know already, don’t you?” Chase asked.

Alexander smiled.  “Yes.”

“Apprenticeships for every member of the Whitt family.  Fernanda, my cousins.  The adults who want to learn.  A cure for a heart-wrenching my aunt suffered, when practice backfired.”

For everyone?

“Apprenticeships like you got?” Fernanda asked.

“Bristow says the emotion manipulation our family focuses on makes a good foundation for other practices.  There’d be you and six of our cousins, and eight spots.”

You don’t include yourself in that, Fernanda thought.

Because he didn’t want it.  Because this was his out.  A way to score a huge win for the family, elevating all of them, and simultaneously free himself from all of the immense expectations that had been chasing him in recent years.  Their mother and father would be so glad they couldn’t be mad that he was stepping down.  Or he could run the family without the other pressures.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” Chase said.

“I can imagine,” Alexander said.  “But I am making you decide now.”

“I was kind of hoping to have more time, to lay down some cards-”

“You’ve done that.”

“-to roll dice, pull the guts out of birds…”

“What?” Brie asked, quiet.

“You’ve already done that as well.  You know what you get, with each decision.”

“I don’t know for certain,” Chase said, quiet.  “I’m better at looking to the present than I am at looking forward.  I find people, I don’t…”

“What happens?” Fernanda asked.

“With Bristow, you get a better life.  Our cousins do, our mother and father do.  Some struggle, alone and far from home, it spreads us out.  We stop being even a facsimile of a family.  There are no more Christmas holidays, no more ski vacations in Europe, no Caribbean, no sailing trips, no troll hunts.  Only the passing visits.  One of us passing through a town where another lives, having drinks, and catching up.  But all of us are happier alone.  Except me.”

“Why?  Why you?”

“I can’t see that so clearly,” Chase said, sticking out his chin.  “How sad is it, that I want the fake family, the strained holidays, and my own well being, even if it means it sucks for the rest of us?”

“I don’t-”

“But we talked.  I tried.  You weren’t interested.  If there was a hope, Fernanda, maybe I’d make a different decision.”

“No, Chase.  The status quo-”

“I didn’t ask you here to decide,” he said, his voice heavy with emotion.  “I needed input, and you gave it to me thirty minutes ago, before walking here.”

Fernanda swallowed.  “Then why am I here?”

“To witness.  To report to our mother and father if something happens to me, to tell them not to be mad at Alexander.  Screw this family.  I’ll take the future that blows it up.  Be happy without me, maybe do me a favor and miss me, just a bit, a few minutes out of the year, every year.”

“You’ll go to Bristow then?” Alexander asked.

“For all the good it’ll do me personally.  I can’t do this anymore.  I can’t- I can’t be the sole hope of my entire family.”

“You make it sound like it’s more about running than it is about helping them,” Zed accused.

“So what if it is, Z?  You don’t know.”

“I don’t have a family to throw away, really, C.”

Chase shrugged, slouching back.  He looked at Alexander.  “Do your worst, I guess.”

“I told you, be upfront, I’ll let you go.  Perhaps I can bring you back into the fold later.”

“Maybe,” Chase said.  “But I know you, Alexander.  I know you’re a real bastard when you want to be.  I know it’s not going to be that simple.”

“Being gainsaid may well be the extent of my retaliation for this,” Alexander said.

“And me?” Fernanda asked.  “I didn’t want this.”

“You’ll be fine.  But think hard before you swear any oaths.  He’ll want you to burn bridges.”

Fernanda swallowed and nodded.

Alexander looked at Seth.  “Three of the five have defected.  It will matter.  But I will need an answer from you.  You owe me that much.”

“Do I?” Seth asked.  “Three is enough, isn’t it?  It hurts the Belanger Circle, Bristow brings you low… maybe kicks you out.”

“He will.  And those who stay will face an uphill struggle,” Alexander said.

Seth shrugged.

“I ask you a second time.  Will you go, or will you remain?”

“Second? Seth asked.  “You have your answer.  Three defect.  You lose the school.  I’ll stick around here, help out with whoever’s in charge.”

“What did he offer you?” Nicolette asked.

“Five hundred and fifty thousand dollars, respect, a position in another family, who have a daughter a year younger than Seth.  They do simple work, keeping track of some elusive Others, they would appreciate Seth’s augury, and if he wasn’t a complete asshole, marriage to the daughter would be inevitable.  For someone who doesn’t want to work, it’s… a fine offering.  Isn’t it, Seth?”

Seth nodded, looking reluctant, wary.

“According to my sources, Mr. Bristow was willing to offer three times the amount of money, a better position, but Seth would have balked.  Too good an offer is a kind of responsibility.  If you only had ambition, Seth, you would have what you sought.”

“If everyone had your kind of ambition, the world would be a bloodbath,” Seth said.

“People with my kind of ambition often see that finding good people to work with often raises you up higher than cutting others down.  Mr. Noone, Bristow’s man with the evil eye, is a good example of that.  I’m frustrated you haven’t learned what I’ve tried to teach.”

Seth shrugged.

“Side with me for the status quo, if you must.  Or go to him, for this cushy life where you need not wish for anything.  Negotiate with me, Seth, or threaten me, or scheme.  But make your decision.”

Seth stood from his seat.  He pushed it aside.

“Don’t be a coward now, in this moment.  The Belanger circle, which has taken care of you for years, is facing its darkest day.  You are being called.  Be ambitious, be loyal, but don’t be craven.

“This doesn’t change the outcome,” Seth said.  “It’s a bullshit power play, forcing me and the rest of us into a corner, so you can take advantage.  It’s not worth it.”

Seth walked to the open set of double doors.

His hand bumped against the space.  It was no longer a passage, but a painted surface.

Fernanda rose to her feet, Nicolette grabbing her shoulder and pulling her close.

Chase remained where he was.  Across the room, Tanner backed away as well.

“You pledged hospitality.  You pledged welcome.  If you turn this place into a prison, deny me my freedom-”

Seth.

Alexander’s voice was intense.

Seth turned.

“Do you remember when your grandmother was in the hospital, Seth?” Alexander asked.

“Of course.  But using my dead grandmom here is pretty low.”

“Your mother couldn’t take care of you, you were too much a wild youth, too recalcitrant, aggressive, prone to running away.  Your mother couldn’t work and care for you at the same time.  Your grandmother took over.  When she went to the hospital, you threw a party.  Trashed her house.”

Seth’s fingernails scraped against the painted surface where the door should be.  His hand dropped.  “I was a kid.  And you’re keeping me prisoner, in violation of the spirit of your demesne.”

“I know you were a kid, Seth.  I do.  Your mother was distraught.  She called me, I came, I took over.  I talked to your grandmother, I had Wye help clean the house.  I sat at her bedside when you wouldn’t.”

“And?  Karma?” Seth asked.

“I know the promises you made her, as she lay there dying.  To be better.  To meet your potential.  To try.  I am prepared to name you forsworn, Seth Luke Belanger.”

Seth stiffened.

“Alexander,” Raymond Sunshine spoke up.  “What are you doing?  He hasn’t even acted against you.”

“He will, left to his own devices.  I can say that with certainty.  He simply can’t admit it to me now, just like he can’t even meet my eyes.”

Fernanda edged away from Seth, looked at his face.

And she kind of believed Alexander here.

“Do you want to try?” Seth asked.  He didn’t meet Alexander’s eyes, but something took hold of him.  Tension, alertness, focus.  His eyes moved like he was reading something or looking at something that wasn’t present.

Maybe looking back?

“Very well,” Alexander said, his voice level.  “I hereby name you forsworn.  For filial promises made and taken to the grave by the other party.”

“Do you need help, Seth?” Nicolette asked.

“Who would help me?” Seth asked.

“I would.  I might not like you in the slightest, but forswearing as a practice should be left well in the past.”

“Forswearing is the source of our strength,” Alexander said, his voice rising.  “What are we without our word, Nicolette!?  Seth!?”

“I was a kid,” Seth said.

“You had awoken!  You made your promises to your grandmother, and you did not fulfill them!  You made them for yourself, to assuage your guilt!  I’m sure it felt nice in the moment to say it but it was hollow!”

“Forgiveness,” Nicolette said.  “Did she say anything, however minor?”

Seth blinked rapidly, shaking his head.  “I was getting to that!”

He seemed so flustered, Fernanda was pretty confident he hadn’t, in fact, been getting to that.

Alexander, at the same time, was breathing hard.

Seth cleared his throat. “It may have been hollow.  But in these cases, a promise can be made and broken,” Seth said.  “I may be gainsaid, but among her last words to me were her wishes that I had a good life ahead of me.  And her expressed forgiveness and love.”

“Yes,” Alexander said, and seemed to almost swallow his anger, composing himself.

“That protects me.  I would name you forsworn, instead.  Fuck you, Alexander.  Fuck you for trying this.  Fuck you for violating hospitality.  You didn’t even know her!  Who the fuck are you to get angry about this?”

“I spent some time with her, Seth.  She and I talked about you in depth.”

“Doesn’t mean you’re not forsworn, trying this!  And no bringing up other stuff, either.  You made your attempt.  If there was anything real to this, the universe would’ve seen me forsworn after she died.  But it didn’t!  It’s been three years!”

“We talked.  She was worried about you.  I agreed to take you as my apprentice.  To take custody of you, to bring you into my house, home, and school.  To those ends, we both signed papers.  She didn’t know about the practice, but she didn’t need to.  All she needed and wanted was for someone to take responsibility of you, after her death.”

Seth was very still, back to the painted wall, fists clenched.

“You signed those papers too.  I took over all responsibilities in respect to you, Seth.  She forgave you, but it was not for her to handle the broken oath, then.  I had taken on that responsibility by then.  And I will not forgive.  The universe has not seen you forsworn because I have been in firm custody of it, judgment pending.”

“What does this serve?” Raymond asked.

“Careful,” Durocher said.  “Things this grave can spill out.  We’re pledged to avoid intervening.  As bystanders to this, the backlash for a broken pledge will be that much worse.”

“I extended opportunities to Seth week after week, month after month, year after year.  The Belanger Circle extended much to him, and as much as he seems concerned about hospitality right now he has accepted it for years with a minimum of gratitude.  Here and today, I gave him a chance to walk away.  Here and today, this very hour, I extended him the chance to walk away.”

“Seth,” Nicolette said.  “Was there any outside interference?  Any spirits, possessing forces?”

“Insufficient to escape this forswearing,” Alexander said.

“If you bled yourself for power for any practice, forces would be present and influencing you.  Alone it’s not enough but it could be one of several factors…”

“I didn’t,” Seth said.  “I didn’t bleed myself for power, I didn’t take in any Others or anything like that.  Nobody manipulated me.”

Nicolette shook her head.  “The open future clause.  Is there a feasible future where you could fulfill the oath?”

“The clause you name,” Alexander said, voice harsh, “is not about feasible futures.  It’s about reasonable futures.”

“Depends on the book you read,” Nicolette said.

“I’m sure it does, but I would challenge Seth.  Seven times seven times seven times, he’s been given a chance.”

“Can you name those times?” Nicolette asked.

“Yes,” Alexander said.  “I could.  I keep meticulous notes.  Can you name a plurality of sevens, where Seth has risen to the spirit of the oaths?  Name seven and I will name seven times when he did not.  But challenge this forswearing in this way, you cannot make another defense.”

“Seth,” Nicolette said.  “This may be your best chance.”

“Then I’m pretty fucked,” Seth said, eyes wet, shaking his head.  “The one person who cared about me died.  I went off rails.  I haven’t cared about much since.  Fucking around, getting into trouble, being lazy.”

“Dressing nice, putting on a good front for guests…” Nicolette ventured.

“Stuff like that, sure.  But I’m betting there’s seven fuckups.”

“Do you forfeit?” Alexander asked.  “Or do you have another defense?”

“Why sevens?” Nicolette asked.  “It’s usually threes.”

“A list of seven things is harder to hold in one’s head,” Alexander said.  “I’m confident you’d repeat yourselves before I did.”

“This isn’t a game!” Nicolette raised her voice.

“No.  It really isn’t.  But I have been fair.  I have extended a great deal toward you all.  And three of you would betray me for better opportunities.  For money, power, positions.  And you?  For what, Nicolette?”

“Escape.”

“From?”

“From being married off.  From being crippled in practice.  From being stuck at the bottom of your list of apprentices, because I’m a woman and you like your old boys club.  I know you have plans.”

“I have all sorts of plans.  There’s no guarantee that I would make use of them.”

“There’s no guarantee you wouldn’t.  I can’t risk it.”

“Very well,” he told her.  “But as it stands, I require an example to be made of one of you.  Seth and Seth’s grandmother gave me responsibility over him, over all balances owed, and one of those debts is long overdue.  Seth knows.”

“I made a promise to a sick old woman.  And you’re holding it against me.”

“If those promises had any merit, even in sentiment, then you would have at least managed to hold off on fucking up until after she’d passed.  But the police called her, and she knew.  To the grave, she knew.”

Seth’s expression twisted.

“He was grieving, Alexander,” Nicolette said.

“Tell me, Seth.  How much of your promise to your grandmother was because you cared?  Not that the spirit of the oath is enough to decide on its own, but… do share.  How much was because you cared, and how much was because you were greedy for the inheritance?”

Seth shook his head.

But he didn’t answer.

Everything is on the line for you, Seth,” Nicolette said.

“I don’t know,” Seth said.  “Some.  A lot.”

“Defend yourself,” Alexander said, his voice cold.  “Tell me you wouldn’t have betrayed the hospitality, care, and patience I extended you and gone to Lawrence Bristow sooner or later.”

“That doesn’t pertain to the forswearing,” Nicolette said.

“As it stands, the failure that condemns him is a failure of character.  I have my own responsibilities.  If there was even a glimmer of hope, resolution, or something, I could withdraw the forswearing.”

“Can you?” Nicolette asked.

“At a cost.  But I know he gave up long ago.  I know he made promises out of greed, thinking she was unaware of practice, and if he did nothing he wouldn’t get his inheritance.  So long as she died, the oaths would lose impact, he would have to stand up against the universe to make his arguments.  And the universe is a more forgiving prosecutor than I am.”

“There are other defenses,” Nicolette told Seth.

“I know.  I don’t think any of them apply.”

“Before these witnesses, I name you forsworn, Seth Belanger, my sister’s son, my nephew, my charge.  I have given you opportunity to fulfill your oaths, and you have spurned them.”

“So be it,” Seth said.

“Don’t-” Nicolette tried to interrupt.  She went to punch the nearest bookshelf, and nearly hit Fernanda.  She put a hand on Fernanda’s shoulder instead.

“Be forsworn, then.  The hospitality you desired here need not apply, for you are owed none.  Let your power be forfeit, your word without merit, and all protections owed to practitioner, innocent, and even animal stripped.”

“I would give Seth Belanger my protection for the time being,” Nicolette said.  “I would take him into my custody, and be a shield between him and the world.”

“You are too kind to those who are horrible to you, Nicolette,” Alexander said.  “And too unkind to those who would support you.”

“You may be right,” Nicolette said.

“I don’t contest your protection.  I could make my claim, as the closest thing to the wronged party, but I will not.  Have him.  The door is open.”

Seth had slumped down to the floor.  Chase was the one who reached down for Seth’s armpit.

“Do you think he’s the only one I could forswear, right here and right now?” Alexander asked.

Everyone present looked to him.

“I know you,” Alexander said.  “What have you said while out of your mind and drunk, Chase?”

“I don’t know.  But that’s a weak approach.”

“But it is an approach.  Perhaps if you made a promise once while drinking, that could be contested.  But three related promises?  Or three times three?”

Chase pressed his lips together.  “I already kind of threw everything away, saying I’d go to Bristow.”

“No.  You threw this away.  Everything is something entirely different.  Nicolette?”

“My delirium?” she asked.

“You had your spells.”

“And I’m certain,” she said.  “I’ve watched my back.”

Alexander smiled.

“You trained me well,” Tanner said, as he retreated toward the door.

“If your response to a forswearing attempt is to claim I trained you, and that I’m partially responsible for your broken oaths, Tanner, then you should know I’ll answer it by saying you have not yet repaid me in full for what I’ve invested in you.”

Tanner nodded.

“Tell the others this isn’t over,” Alexander said.

Tanner nodded again, before escaping the study.

Fernanda watched as Chase and Tanner practically dragged a sagging Seth out the door, Nicolette following right behind.  Outside, rain was pouring, heavy and hard.  Thunder cracked.

Fernanda remained.

“Is your answer to Bristow to wage a campaign of terror?” Raymond asked.

“No.  My answer to my apprentices turning on me is to terrorize them.  Let them be afraid.  Let them think back and wonder what they’ve said, and the mistakes they’ve made.  My answer to Bristow will be something else entirely.”

“Okay,” Raymond said.

“Okay!?” Zed asked.  “No, Ray.  You’ve let a lot slide before, but this?”

“We’ll talk about it later.”

“No, I want to talk about it now!”

“Do I need to worry?” Fernanda asked, quiet.

“About me?” Alexander asked.

“Yes.”

“I am fond of you, Fernanda.  I hope you find your way back to classes with me.  Don’t burn that bridge, and you won’t have cause to worry.”

“If my family makes me swear under Bristow-”

“Know what you’re doing if you do,” Alexander said.

Fernanda nodded, then escaped the study, following Chase.

She made her way down the hallway.  Senior students had left their rooms and watched as Seth was carried.

Everyone who could See was aware.  There might have even been a thunderclap and the beginning of a storm to mark the occasion.

Seth was a goner.  No practice, no life.  Condemned.  His power forfeit, taken by Alexander, his body and mind now vulnerable and weak.

Estrella watched with a cool gaze.  Fernanda had to remind herself that allegiances had changed.  She’d thought of Estrella as a danger, but now… just the opposite.

They’d reached the end of the hallway when Bristow appeared.  More students had gathered, milling around, concerned.

“Who did it?” Bristow asked.

“Alexander.”

“Then I think it may be best if he leaves the campus,” Bristow said.

“I object!” a girl raised her voice.  “No way, no, this is bullcrap!”

It was one of the Tedds.

“Mr. Havens?” Bristow asked.

The big guy with the scar rose from his seat at the stage of the big classroom, and navigated the crowd as he approached.  “Do you want me to deal with this girl or the headmaster?”

“I think virtually every parent of a child at this school would agree a teacher should be suspended for a time after forswearing a student, until things can be assessed.”

“Objection number two!” America Tedd called out.  Someone grabbed at her and she smacked the hand away.  “Alexander shouldn’t be suspended because, number one, you probably planned that all along, and number two, he’s hot, in an older guy sorta way, and it’s a tragedy to lose that.”

Alexander was coming down the hall.  Fernanda backed away.  Chase was at Bristow’s side.  There was no sign he’d said anything or done anything.  But Bristow seemed to know he’d come to a decision.

The guy could probably see that rock solid connection, now.  It would get even more solid after any oaths from Chase.

“Final decisions on the suspension of faculty are largely up to me,” Alexander said.

“You’ve lost your apprentices, you’ve gone rogue and forsworn a student, your apprentice.”

“The opportunity was given for him to challenge it.”

“Your students are afraid of you.”

“My enemies are afraid of me.  If students being afraid was any concern at all, Mrs. Durocher wouldn’t be here.”

“Speaking of… I would challenge faculty to make a judgment call.  One case where you could be removed is if there was an agreement among all other staff that you weren’t fit.”

“Abstain,” Mrs. Durocher said.

“Are you insisting on a majority vote?” Alexander asked.  “After gathering a number of your guest teachers?”

“Shall we make it require a unanimous vote?”

“This is bullcrap!” America raised her voice.

“It’s worse than that!  It’s the bullcrap a dog’s choked down and crapped out again!” Liberty echoed.

“If it’s a unanimous vote, I won’t be voting to remove Alexander,” Raymond said.  “I would be voting for a suspension of both you and Alexander, Bristow, until peace can be restored.”

Zed was shaking his head behind Raymond.

Mr. Havens got close to Alexander.  He reached out, and America Tedd smacked the hand away.

“You don’t need to step in, America, as kind as the gesture is,” Alexander told her.

“Uhh, yes I do, because fuck this, fuck you Bristow, you’re boring, and-”

“And you’re going to cause a riot if you keep this up,” a boy said.

He reached out to grab her.  She punched him in the face.

He punched her back.  She sat down hard, blood gushing from her nose.

“Reflex,” he said.

She smiled, nose bleeding, blood in her teeth.  “Not reflex from me, it’s-”

“It’s enough,” Alexander said.  “Stop, America.”

“I’m not even close to being done,” she said, as she climbed to her feet.

Alexander put a hand on her shoulder.

“I’ll leave, if only to stop a riot from breaking out.  I cede no control-”

“I will assume it, to keep things running,” Bristow said.

“Do as you will, you have no real right to.  Executive decision is left to Raymond.  I must look after the business of my apprentices, so for the time being, I depart.  I will return.”

Alexander looked over at Chase, his eye moving over Fernanda, then over to Nicolette, to Tanner.

The threat implicit.

He walked down the hall, back toward his office.  Ted Havens followed.

People remained where they were, talking, guessing what had happened.  Anxious.

The lines between factions were trenches now.  Ten foot gaps.  Some people were definitely bristling for a fight.

“The violent student must be expelled,” Bristow said.

“By the rules, yes,” Raymond said.  “But it’ll be America and Kellen who go.  Both.”

“Fuck you, and fuck you,” America said.  “He’ll kick me out and then give Kellen an invite back.  Fuck off.”

“Please settle down.”

“Get fucked!”

Mr. Belanger, wearing his raincoat, carrying an umbrella and bag, could be seen beyond the window.

If he’d hoped for his departure to help settle the chaos, he’d lost.  It was the opposite.  Things were going to pieces fast.  Voices were raised.  Some people like the Legendres had defensive practices going, now, which was its own thing, especially when it was a fine line between a mystical shield that punished attackers and a big mystical diagram that could be used to smack people in the face for extra punishment.  Stuff like that.

And, Fernanda couldn’t help but notice, as the lines were drawn, people keeping to their groups, Laila was on the far side, mouthing words.  An excuse, an apology.

Laila’s family was invovled in subtle curses that could affect whole cities.  It was huge and expensive and took years to set up, and it used a lot of omens.  It required preparation.  It was tied in heavily to Alexander Belanger’s circle and work.

She couldn’t.

And Fernanda wasn’t about to let go of her family, now that she had a chance.

She stayed where she was, as the crowd grew more and more heated, fights threatening to erupt.  It might as well been just her and Laila in focus as everything else dissolved.

And Laila, who had so recently made promises, trusting their friendship was more important than practice, visibly diminished.  If she wasn’t gainsaid now, she would be later.

Fernanda hadn’t planned that, but it was the kind of asshole move she’d learned was essential and near-universal.  She’d learned that years ago, and Laila had learned it today.

Chase had said he’d never felt pity before.  And Fernanda, if she dug deep inside, could say that maybe that was the case for her too.  But she felt pity now, at least.  Maybe for the first time, for her onetime friend.  For Chase.  For Seth.  And for all of those people who weren’t in a position to capitalize on the various things that were changing.

“Shouldn’t you be over there?” Yadira asked, nudging her.

“No,” Fernanda said, not breaking eye contact with her ex-friend.  “No, I’m good here.”

Gone Ahead – 7.1

Verona

“After that, the senior students who were loyal to Alexander were put in a tough spot,” Brie explained.  “I’m not exactly a senior student, I just got a rooming assignment with Zed.  So I was only witness to it.  Jessica’s been gone, Wye’s been busy and will probably stay busy, so it was really about me, Zed, Amine, Ulysse and Eloise.”

They nodded, listening.  They’d retreated to the Drooling Cow, and the little fast food place barely had enough seats for them.  There was a single person in the kitchen, and a bored middle-aged guy at the counter.  Light rain fell outside.

Brie went on, “Amine and Ulysse can’t really go their separate ways from Durocher.  She’s strict with her apprentices, and they didn’t really say it, but I had the impression that if they left, they wouldn’t be invited back.”

“Yeah,” Corbin said.  He and Melody sat at the table next to them, with Talos and Jorja.  “Basically.  It helps, I think, that Durocher is very neutral.”

“I hate that word.  Neutral,” Lucy said.

“I think it fits here, maybe?” Verona suggested.  “It’s not necessarily her taking a middle stance between iffy and awful.  It’s her taking her own independent stance.”

“Maybe.”

“Are you an apprentice of Durocher?” Avery asked.  She was sitting between Brie and the window, and had to lean forward over the table to get Brie’s attention.

“Me?  No, geez, no,” Brie answered.  Avery sat back in her chair.  Brie explained, “Mrs. Durocher was teaching me about the hosting and harbinger work that might be involved with the agent of the Devouring Song bound inside of me.  But she did that as a favor to Mr. Sunshine, who asked for that at least partially as a favor to Zed.  The big question is how the binding holds up over time.  Will I be a person who holds this immense power inside of me as a host for that power, or do I have to vent it constantly in order to maintain some abilities as a practitioner.”

“Vent?” Verona asked.

“If you can’t host the power, sometimes you can become a focused point or lens for it.  Lots of new and raw deity-type powers do this, getting an agent by careful selection, accident, or sending something out in the world.  And their agent becomes the harbinger of the deity’s power, a walking mess of that deity’s or deity-level Other’s influence that leaks out around them.  Usually it’s subtle so long as they keep moving.  We looked into one that came from a South Korean urban legend.  It would promote trends where kids would get caught up in hyper-competitive games, like violent games of truth or dare or competitions over grades, the murder rate would skyrocket, and then it would all snap together into some broad last-man-standing death game.”

“I can see why it would come up,” Lucy noted.

“So if you went that way, it’d leak out as the storm?  The children?” Verona asked.  “You’d just be wandering around and there’d be singing cannibal kids popping up?”

Brie nodded.  “Maybe.  We haven’t really decided for sure.  There’s a chance it could try to sweep people up in it.  But we’re months off from seeing that.   I’m in a middle state while we see what that power does inside of me, if it starts fighting to get out, or if it builds up pressure or inevitable power over time.”

A child appeared at the table next to her.  Melody, at the next table, jumped a little.  The kid was a girl, skinny, wearing a baseball cap with a ponytail pulled through the opening at the back, with her mouth slit open from the corners to the ears, multicolored yarn crudely holding the clotted-over gaps partially closed.

There were humming sounds.  Not from the girl, but close.  Verona leaned over to look for the source and saw another kid huddled under Melody and Corbin’s table.  A boy with adult teeth still growing in, except the teeth that were growing in alternated perfectly.  Adult tooth, tooth-in-process, adult tooth, tooth-in-process.  The teeth meshed together as he closed his mouth.

As quickly as they’d appeared, they slipped away.  The eye movements that put one out of focus never brought them back into focus, and looking away and then back saw them disappear.

“Do they listen to you?”

“Kind of.  Durocher says the Other at the heart of the Devouring Song might be biding her time, looking for an opening.  But because of that, I can’t really go far.  In case of emergency with the binding, I have to go to her for help.  And at the same time, Zed was angry, he wanted to take action against Bristow and he’s not exactly happy with how Alexander handled Jessica’s thing, but Raymond told him to stand down.”

“So he left?”

“He asked me if I wanted him to stay.  I told him to do what he needed to.  So he left.  He took two of the devices used for Jessica’s ritual.  I think he’s technically not getting directly involved, but he’s going to try to convince Jessica to return to campus.  Which, you know, you can connect the dots.”

“So Ulysse and Amine stayed, but they can’t get involved.  You’re here, against Bristow?” Lucy asked.

“I’m here, but more for the kids with nowhere to go.  I’ve seen too many people caught up in the messed-up side of engines and dynamics they couldn’t control.  Alexander scares me.”

“It’s hard to be a major practitioner and not be scary,” Talos said.  “My mom and dad?  Scary.  Mr. Sunshine?  Scary.  Durocher?  Scary.”

Brie shook her head.  “Durocher is scary like there’s a bear in your house.  Raymond is… I imagine a wealthy, connected computer hacker who could dismantle your life, but won’t.  I don’t know your mom and dad.  But Alexander…”

“Serial killer scary?” Avery asked.

“When things get bad, or scary, or awful, and life really messes you up, I think people show you who they really are.  The violence or awfulness scrapes away the stuff at the surface and you see sides of people you wouldn’t, or you see what priorities they drop.  Zed’s hurt and mad as I’ve ever seen him and he still asked if I needed him.  Then he immediately went to go try and help Jessica.  Others have shown their true colors when they helped me.  I don’t know if they regret doing that…”

Brie trailed off, glancing at Avery, then Verona.

By silent agreement, they didn’t comment.  Not because they did regret it, but because they had to protect all information about Kennet.

“The only other senior student who could be a factor is Eloise,” Brie said.  “She’s on Alexander’s side, but she left.  She’s too dangerous to Bristow, because he focuses on arranging things, and she’s an expert at manipulating those arrangements.  Schartzmugel can even poison them on a really deep, scary level.  If she stayed, she’d get targeted.  So she left.  Zed says that her being out there in the wind is almost as helpful as her being directly involved while trying to dodge those guys.”

“Huh?” Lucy asked.

“Because Bristow and his Augurs have to constantly keep an eye out for her and her involvement.”

“It’s a mess,” Talos said.  “All of this, it’s a mess.”

“Who are we missing?  Who’s a factor, then?” Lucy asked.

“The eastern practices kids,” Talos said.  “Not Yadira- she’s the strongest of them, from a good family with a lot of coverage and resources.  But Reese, Steyn and Storey are really firmly in Alexander’s camp.  And they might actually be players in this.”

“What’s their deal?” Verona asked.  “They’re into the Oni stuff, right?  What do they do?”

“I seem to recall you rolling your eyes at the history part of class signup,” Avery commented.  “Including the Oni Wars part.”

“Shush!  Someone tell me, what do they do?”

The front door to the little fast food place opened.  Zachariah and Salvador came inside, looked around, and found their table.

“Problem?” Brie called out.

“We should get ready to go in for dinner.”

“No!” Verona raised her voice, standing from her seat.  “No, no, no!  Enough.  Just about every time we try to get the details on this, we get interrupted!  I’m starting to think there’s something weird going on.”

“Calm down,” Lucy urged, tugging on Verona’s arm.

“I want to know!”

“Miss!” the middle aged guy at the counter called out.  He had a full beard, very tired eyes, a red hat with blue horns on it, and a red polo shirt with blue sleeves and a nametag.  “Please don’t cause a commotion.”

Verona looked around.  “There’s nobody else in here.”

“It’s annoying me.”

She threw up her hands in surrender and sat.

“When you three joined the school, we thought you’d be like those guys,” Talos explained. “When you first showed and you were secretive -are still secretive- about who your patron was, we discussed for a bit if it might be an Oni.  Practice didn’t line up, though.  You’d be a lot quirkier than you are.”

“No comment,” Verona said.  She looked at Avery.

“You had that disorganized, offbeat approach that they did.  Wide eyed about certain stuff that’s everyday for us.  Except then you started throwing around power like it was nothing.  These three?  They’re not strong, two of them aren’t even from a family dynasty.”

“I wouldn’t call Steyn’s family a dynasty either,” Melody chimd in.

Talos nodded as he continued, “They found a box, fancy and locked.  One of them, Mike, is a lockpicker.  He grabbed the box with the idea he’d use it for practice and see what was inside.  But when he looked through the keyhole, an eye looked back at him.  It whispered things to him.  It promised to teach him ancient ways of fighting.  And it did.  Oni style.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Verona said, settling in.

“I’ll get to that in a second.”

Verona squirmed.  Lucy put a hand on her leg.

“It could only teach him so much, apparently.  To unshackle its own knowledge he was asked to free some other unfairly trapped Others.  He ended up recruiting Reese, because one of the projects required getting onto someone’s property in a minor heist type thing.  And they did that for a year.  Steyn was a dabbling summoner before, from a super minor family practice, and he stumbled onto them and got onboard.  They transferred about twenty Others and moved them to the box, and for each success they each got taught a new trick.  Box eventually broke, the Others escaped, and they were all different.  Practitioners had to step in.”

“Different how?”

“The East has always had a very different approach to Others.  Most of the time, treatment of spirits and Others is better and more accepted, Others can navigate human society more, so they mingle a bit, pop up pretty easily here and there, typically pretty inoffensive, didn’t get in the way, so people didn’t get in their way.  Different stuff going on at the top of the Other food chain, too.  More organization and politics in the spirit world.  Almost more intense than the practitioner stuff.  Don’t paint it all with one big broad brush, by the way.  Different countries, cultures, even cities can be very different from one another.  I’m talking generally.”

“Sure,” Verona said, frowning a bit.

“But there are longstanding traditions of practitioners seizing as much control as they can, over there, in the big families.  To leave zero room for error, they wouldn’t have conversations with their Others like you do with Snowdrop.  The big families would just bind her and turn her into a tool.  Change her, infuse her, tie her to an item so she can be put on a shelf when she isn’t needed.”

Avery visibly shuddered.  She moved a hand to her lap, where Snowdrop snoozed.

“As humanity surged and the families expanded into branches and sub-organizations, it got pretty oppressive for the Others.  It brewed for a long while, around the mid eighteen-hundreds to early nineteen hundreds, Others really kicked off on fighting back.  They organized and started to try to subvert the practice and all conventions.  They devised their own contrary practices and counter-practices.  Stuff like their faerie trading glamour for goblins to dress up in, until the ‘goblin’ label stopped fitting.  Or a goblin edging into the spiritual to make itself more immaterial, or an echo being led to realms to get a bit of Abyss in it, or a bit of elemental.”

“Geez,” Avery said.

“Step one of binding is usually to identify what you’re binding, and they confused labels enough to make that next to impossible.  The Oni thing was more of a uniform than a typing that could be used for binding, as were the masks, old weapons and other recurring visual motifs they adopted.  They worked hard to devise answers to everything.  We rely on truth, they used the rule of discourse to shape their language, so every Other in an area would agree to accept that every third statement from a powerful Other would be accepted as a falsehood.  Then they’d keep that Other in the background until a crucial negotiation.  They actively set out to create more Others that weren’t bound to the Seal of Solomon, which never had as much traction there as in the West, shaped themselves to be dangerous to various practices.”

“Like Jockeys?” Avery asked.  “I’ve heard about Others that go out of their way to be dangerous to Host practitioners or whatever.”

Matthew had mentioned that at one point.  Some Other he’d dealt with.

“Like Jockeys.  Or poisonous blood that they offer to power a ritual, or disturbances for the Sight, explicitly, or Others that naturally complicate bindings,” Talos said.

“Which makes them a background danger,” Corbin added.  “We’re about as far as you can get from the epicenter of that stuff, and a lot of the bigger groups have either been disbanded or started cooperating with us again- like Yadira’s family.  But it’s still like… one in a thousand chance that you might think you’re dealing with something and then wham, it’s one of the Oni that fled after the war ended.  Or wham, that ghoul you’ve been trying to track down for a year?  Traded for a token that flips a binding onto the binder.  Then you’re ghoul food.  They worked with practitioners, but they’d pick out the people who were as far from traditional families as they could get, and make them into Others, or get them to make complex cursed items, or teach them tricks to make them assassins specializing in countering practitioners”

“So our three students- four, if we count Yadira, they know this stuff?”

“A small handful of tricks.  Standard practice gets stronger with repetition, establishment, and investment.  Oni practices get a lot of power and attention put into that… it’s a metaphorical blade you keep up your sleeve.  A lot of power, by the way, to give it the impact it needs.  What matters is the surprise, the timing.  Every time you use it, it’s weaker.  If it’s expected, it’s weaker.  And the more Oni practices you know, the worse your regular practice will be.  It’s tricky, striking the balance that gives you access to both.  Yadira’s family succeeds at it.  The three guys we’re talking about?  Don’t, really.”

Talos added, “That thing in the box?  It was like a spirit surgeon.  Took the time to modify all the Others into Oni while they were stored in the box.  And those Others?  A lot of them had been properly bound or quarantined.  It caused a lot of harm, letting them loose on this Oni’s say so.  Harm that Oni wanted.”

“Did it work?” Lucy asked.

“Did what work?”

“The war.  Escaping this horrible dynamic.  Did the Others get what they wanted?”

“Dunno,” Talos said.  “Never looked into it.”

“I think it depends how you look at it,” Corbin said.  “Things are a bit gentler.  Practitioners have to move more slowly, do more due diligence instead of binding whatever.  But I dunno.  The practitioners at the lowest level had to start to be harsher with those regular Others who used to be free to integrate or exist at the edges, to protect themselves.  I think the war hurt more than it helped, on both sides.  It escalated things, made them nastier.  A few leaders of families got offed, but it didn’t really change how those families operated, except to make them even more controlling, by necessity.”

“So is it like, ‘Darn those Others for fighting back’?” Lucy asked.

“I’m not saying that-”

“Then what are you saying?”

“That open warfare and subterfuge is a heck of a jump.  The Others had other options.  Like retreating to their very organized spirit world or wherever else and putting that same effort into erecting defenses.”

“Do I really need to break down why that is far from okay?” Lucy asked.

“Okay, okay,” Avery said.

“Is it?” Lucy asked her.  “Is it okay?”

“Interrupting here.  I agree with you, Lucy.  I do.”

Lucy gave Avery a wary look.

Verona looked between the two.  She added, “I do too.”

“Thank you,” Lucy said, while looking decidedly uncool and not especially thankful about this.

Avery nodded.  She was agitated enough that Snowdrop had stirred to partial wakefulness.  “But can we deal with what we’re dealing with today in the here and now?  And save the discussions about a place that’s literally on the other side of the world and history from a century ago for, um, after things are closer to normal?  ”

“To me, this is more about wanting to know who exactly it is we’d be allying with, if we took a side,” Lucy said.

“I’m picturing us taking a Booker approach to this,” Avery said.

“You haven’t even met Booker,” Lucy said.

“I saw him on cam one time, and you talk about him lots.”

“Boyfriend?” Talos asked.

“Brother,” Lucy said.

“I just picture him taking this really chill approach, debating with a classmate with opposite views to his while they have coffee or beer or something,” Avery said.

“I don’t think my views are opposite to Lucy’s,” Corbin said.

“Am I way off base here?” Avery asked Verona.

“I can see Booker doing that.”

Lucy heard Verona say that and seemed to concede, sighing, nodding.

“Can we put this off?  And revisit it later, in the student lounge, when things are safe and okay again?  Please?  Because we’ve got the dinner thing Zachariah came in to talk to us about…”

“In a few hours,” Zachariah said.

“…And I don’t know how we handle that.  Or how we even sleep tonight, with the way things are back there.”

“I worry,” Lucy said, making a visible effort to try to chill out. Or Booker out?  “Because if this thing about Alexander forswearing his family member is true, and we know how Bristow operates, and it’s awful.”

“Super awful,” Avery echoed.

“What are we even doing if we step in here?  Are we making this situation worse, like the Oni War allegedly did?  Why should we even get involved?”

“Because this is different?” Corbin asked.

“Is it?  How?”

“Because we have a right to the school.  We paid dues.  We made the effort to come here.”

“And the Others didn’t have a right to be in the city?” Lucy asked.  “They didn’t play their own roles?  They should’ve just gotten out, holed up in their own ghettos?  And if they can’t protect themselves well enough, well, that’s their own fault?”

“Kingdoms, not ghettos, and I’ve never said the actions of the big practitioner families out there are good, or that it’s the Others’ fault.  I know you think this is some allegory for stuff that’s happened between humans, but it’s different,” Corbin said, clearly testy.  “Human cities are the province of humans.  It’s part of what was spelled out by Solomon.”

“Okay,” Lucy said, putting both hands flat on the table.  She stood up from the bench.  “Put me down for a ‘big disagree’ on just about everything you said, Corbin.”

“If you don’t accept the facts as they happened, Solomon’s law, and all that, then you’re going to hurt yourself somewhere down the line,” he said.  “This is fundamental.”

“Oh, believe me, I know that stuff’s fundamental.  Thing is, I don’t like it enough to support it.  We can debate this for hours, I’m sure.”

“It’s reality.”

“Corbin,” Talos said.

“It’s reality, though,” Corbin said.  “What are you going to do?  Give Solomon and his laws the big middle finger?  They pretty much saved humanity.”

“At that point in time.  According to that version of history, which I’m betting was written by Solomon.”

“And so what are you going to do about it?  Tens of thousands of Others tried their hands at banding together to reject it and they failed.  Are you and you alone going to do what they couldn’t?  Because if you’re going to try and stand up for them, you shouldn’t start by belittling their efforts and puffing up your own ego.  And I don’t think you should be standing up for them to that degree.  They were vicious and they crossed all sorts of lines.”

“I’m done,” Lucy said, to Verona.  “Let me out?”

Verona moved out of the bench seat to give Lucy room to extricate herself.  “What are you doing?”

“I’m going outside to stretch.  I’m pissed and I don’t like being pissed,” Lucy said.

“Are you conceding that I’m right, by not responding?” Corbin asked.

“Shut your talky hole, Corbin,” Avery said.

“Easy,” Brie cut in.  “Let’s not get heated.”

Even the guy at the counter at the far end of the little restaurant was standing up straighter, like he was about to intervene.

Lucy tugged her top down where it had ridden up at her back, then fixed a strand of loose hair by her ear.  “I’m leaving because yes, other stuff’s more immediately important.  And we’ll get nowhere while debating this.  We can continue this later, Corbin.  For now, I trust my friends to talk about stuff while I take a second to cool off.”

“Want me to come with?” Verona asked.

“Nah.  Stay, be smart about practice stuff, work with Avery.  Update me in a few minutes.  Don’t get sidetracked for fifteen minutes with the next mention of cool Others or rituals or whatever.”

“Already got my fill for now,” Verona said, smiling.  More seriously, she said, “I’ll try and cover for you.”

Lucy mock-punched Verona in the cheek, super-slow motion, then walked away.

Zachariah drew a little closer, Salvador following after.  They sat as Lucy stepped outside, crossing the street to talk to Laila, who hadn’t come in.

“Any chance you’ll make up with Laila, Melody?” Verona asked.

“Hmm?  I was waiting for her to make up with me.  If I go to her it implies I forgive her and I really don’t.  If she comes to me, even if she’s not actually apologizing, then it’s a bit apology-ish.”

“Right,” Verona said, frowning.  She wanted to make up for Lucy’s absence in this conversation, and she felt like Lucy would have said something to that.  “Think about it?”

“I think Lucy’s right though,” Avery said.  “We should at least decide what we’re doing, on the most basic level.  Because some of you guys, you’re for Alexander?  And then people like Brie and us, less so?”

There were some nods.

“Bristow’s group is all united behind him,” Talos said.  “They want him to stay in power at the B.H.I.  We’re divided.  We’ve got people like Zed and Brie who are, I think, mad at both.  There’s you three, the wild practitioner trio.”

Verona saluted.

“And I get the same vibe there?”

“I can’t say exactly for Avery and Lucy, but we’re here to learn,” Verona said.  “And all this crap?  Bristow ruining our day and making us have to go home because he thinks it’ll bother Alexander a bit?  Nah.  Alexander not handling his crap and leaving us to deal with the mess not just the once, but twice now?  Fucking nah.  No, screw that, and screw him.”

“The world is ugly enough, with enough monsters out there and awful stuff going on,” Avery said.  “I don’t even think they’re trying to fight that, or fight becoming that.  They may even be playing into it, for that little bit of power or advantage it gets them.  Can’t we just, like, vote as a student body to reject them?”

“I think if we voted right now, student body split like it is, Bristow would win,” Zachariah said.

Avery frowned.

“What Lucy said about the treatment of Others, and this whole Oni War thing, I really do agree with her,” Verona said.  “I’m way worse at articulating it and if left on my own I think I’d probably spend a while thinking about it, miss some important interpretations she’d catch in half a second, but I do agree with her.  Should we get involved, if that’s the attitude?”

“It’s different,” Corbin groaned the words.

“Let’s not keep this debate going,” Talos said.  “What are you going to do?  Because a big part of the reason we’re doing this rundown is because you’ve hinted and rumors have hinted that you had a skirmish with Bristow.  You know how he operates.”

“Yes,” Avery said.  “We did and we have some idea.”

“And we’d really like the help,” Talos said.  “You too, Brie.”

“I’m not confident enough in anything practice-related to really dive into this,” Brie said.  “I want to make sure that kids like Dom and Jorja are heard and that things aren’t getting too out of control.”

“We could really use the help,” Corbin said, still sounding a bit annoyed.

“I don’t trust the power I have at my disposal.  Not entirely.  Durocher likes really big, scary, hard to control powers, and she’s interested in me, so…”

“Good argument,” Melody said.

“I think keeping an eye on the kids is helping in its own way,” Avery said.

“We need to destabilize Bristow.  Alexander may be waiting for us to do it.”

“Or he may be doing what he did to us, leaving Bristow to attack us and people we care about,” Avery said, “While giving us a bare minimum of help, only some reading material on his guys.  I want to help, but I want to help us, the wild practitioner trio.  Our people.  Our future, and I want to help people like Jessica.  And you guys, to an extent.”

“…That’s diminishing as you argue with my friend,” Verona murmured.

“What was that?” Corbin asked.

“Avery wants to help you guys more than I do and I want to help you less and less as you make some really sketchy arguments around this Oni thing.  But okay.  When we go to dinner, what happens?”

Talos leaned back and the dingy plastic bench he was sitting on creaked.  “Bristow will expect us to pledge loyalty.  He may make it part of the class signup process.”

“We go, we have to pledge, we have to sign for classes, he gets his validation as headmaster?”

“More or less.  Raymond could, but I don’t think he wants the job,” Talos said.

“I think he thinks it’d be keeping the peace more if he doesn’t fight Bristow on it,” Brie said.

“I imagine we’ll eat then,” Avery said.  “And they’ll take up the good benches or do some stupid, petty power play to split us up or pressure us.”

“Or make us eat last?” Melody asked.  “Table one, grab your dinners…”

“Oh man, I can see him doing that,” Corbin said.

“Nice one,” Verona told Avery.

“I was thinking of day one of high school.”

“It’s a good line of thinking.  Stuff to expect.  So,” Verona addressed the ramshackle gathering.  “Alternative?”

“Alternative?” Brie asked.

“Alternative one: Why go?  What if we skip dinner?  We’ve got food here.”

Avery made a face, looking in the direction of the counter.

The guy with the beard and cow hat made a face back.

“What happens with signing up for classes?” Talos asked.

“I may be the student here who most wants to go to class,” Verona said, with dead sincerity.  “And I don’t want to go to class on those terms.  Not with a guy like that in charge, messing with us.”

“De-legitimizing Bristow?” Talos asked.

“Sure,” Verona said.  “Sure, yeah, screw him, what if we said we won’t go to class on his terms?  Let him have a smaller, weaker school and be a crummier headmaster for it.  We could even weaken his hold, claiming he’s not fulfilling his duties.”

“Until Alexander comes back?” Zachariah asked.

“I don’t want him to come back,” Verona said.  She was doing her best to make up for Lucy’s absence in the conversation.  “Nah, screw him too.  Or, to rephrase that, let’s put the screws to him too.  He can’t keep his own house in order?  Maybe he has to make amends when he comes back.  We’d get everyone here to agree we’re not okay with Alexander coming back and ruling the roost again, maybe even more powerful if he de-legitimizes Bristow or takes Bristow’s power for himself.  Whatever he’s doing.”

“Seems like he’s the type to come out of a fight with more,” Avery said.

“I’m not sure I’m on board with this,” Talos said.

“With knocking Alexander down a peg?” Verona cut in, eyebrows raised.

“My family works with him.  That gets messy.”

“It may be our terms for being an active part of this,” Avery said.

“Okay,” Talos said.  “I guess I gotta ask my brother about that.”

“What happens after dinner?” Brie asked.  “Are we sneaking into our dormitories?”

“I don’t know,” Verona said.

“On Sunday, they terrorized us,” Corbin said.  “The implication was pretty clear, that teachers would be slow to step in if it was Bristow’s side taking action, fast otherwise.  And if we retaliated or fought back, the idea was that they’d expel both parties.  The guy or girl on Bristow’s side would be sent home, probably with some sideline offer from Bristow to make up for the inconvenience.  And they’d probably get invited back.  Practices were being thrown around, kids were using language like preludes to curses.  So we cooped up in our rooms.  They… they had a pretty great Sunday, I guess, swimming, hanging out, doing a weekend exercise.”

“That’s going to happen tonight, you think?” Brie asked.  “I didn’t experience that but I was seeing Zed off.”

“You’re under Durocher’s implicit protection, probably,” Talos said.  “Look, I’m going to go use the phone, I’ll call my brother.  We’ll see what we think about the proposal, about making demands of Alexander.”

“If he can’t be a good headmaster, we should get someone like Ray for the job,” Verona said.

“Ray really doesn’t want the job,” Brie said.

“I really don’t- no, actually, I do care that he doesn’t want it.  I care because it’s a good thing.  The people who want the job are awful.  If he doesn’t want it, then that’s good too.”

“I’ll call my brother.  If he doesn’t like this idea, and I gotta say, I’m really on the fence about it, then maybe we’ll do something different.”

“Okay,” Verona said.  She looked at Avery.  “Want to talk it over with Luce?”

Avery nodded.  “Except… one more thing?”

“Oh no,” Verona said.

Avery kicked in her direction under the table.  “Melody.”

“What?”

“If Laila doesn’t reach out, we need you to.  If you guys can’t put stuff aside… is it really fair for us to jump into things?  We need to be better, less petty.”

Melody sighed.

“I know it sucks.  She was awful to you, for no apparent reason.  But stuff was going on, like strife, I think.”

“I’ll talk to her.”

“Thank you.”

Everyone who was sitting got up.  Trays of eaten food were moved.  The connection blocking diagram that they’d put down using crayon, drawing on the back of the insert sheet for the food tray, had mostly worn away.  Only the basic diagram and the names of their allies and everyone at the table were really intact.  Verona tore the paper sheet that it had been drawn on in half, then balled it up.  “No connection break, be careful.”

Avery lingered behind.  Verona saw why; Avery was cleaning up the rest of the stuff.

She joined in, finding the stray napkins, french fries, and wiping up the salt from fries.  She wet the napkin with a bottle of water and wiped things down.

“We might need help,” Avery said, as everyone else left.

Verona indicated the lack of connection-breaking diagram, tapping the table where it had been.  Avery nodded.

“Call home, you think?” Verona asked.

“It’s a big ask.  I don’t know.  But it would make me feel better.”

“I don’t think there’s much harm in asking.”

They headed to the door.  Avery held Snowdrop so the guy at the counter couldn’t see her.

“To let you know, I wasn’t making a face at you,” Avery said, to the guy at the counter.  “I was reacting to something someone said.  I’m a vegetarian and they were saying we’d have to eat here and there’s not a lot of options that aren’t fries.”

“Ah, I see, in that case, uhhh…” the man said.  He pulled off his plastic glove to rub at his beard, like he was thinking.  Then, over about three long seconds, his features gradually transformed into another ‘face’, tongue sticking out, eye squinting, mouth pulled back at one side.

Avery seemed a bit taken aback.

Verona pushed Avery a bit out of the way, then gave the man her own messed-up face.

“Get lost,” he said.

Avery tugged on Verona’s arm, pulling her after her as she opened the door.

“Guess I know why that place is so empty, now,” Avery said

Verona laughed.

“What the hell?  Is this a strife thing?”

“If it is, it’s great.  I wish all customer service was that honest.”

They crossed the street to where Lucy, Laila and Dom were.  Elizabeth was a bit off to the side, talking to Talos, who was at the pay phone but hadn’t started using it.

Lucy gave Verona a hug.

“Wah?”

“Thank you for backing me up,” Lucy said.  “And not apologizing for me or whatever.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Thank you,” Lucy said.  She hugged Avery too.

“You heard?” Avery asked.

Lucy tapped her earring.

“Geez, okay,” Avery said, hugging back, then pulling away.  “Good to know it’s working that well, I guess.”

“Are we summoning help?” Lucy asked.  “We need backup for tonight, which is one thing.  And protection.”

“Elizabeth has ideas for tonight,” Talos said, “kind of.  A place to sleep for those who don’t want to go home.”

“What place?” Lucy asked.

“I requisitioned a workshop earlier this year.  I can put stuff away, people can bunk down on the floor.  School rules are pretty protective of the space and the stuff I get to request around it.  I can ask for people not to interfere.”

“Okay,’ Lucy said.  “Not as good as having our own rooms, but that helps.  We might still feel better with guards, or protection against subtler interference, in case some students think they can get away with it or risk expulsion by messing with us.”

“Good,” Elizabeth said.  “I have historical entities I can call.”

“What about goblins?  We could recruit the goblins here but they’re not very strong,” Avery suggested.

“Or John?” Lucy put it out there.  It sounded like she’d been thinking about it before she’d even brought up the topic.

“John,” Talos said, from the sidelines.  “Oooh, isn’t that scary?  John.”

“Not winning us over here, Talos,” Lucy said.

“Sorry, sorry!  I’ll stop.”

Brie looked up from talking to Dom.  “If it’s the guy I’m thinking of, he’s- I’m not actually allowed to say.  Gotta be careful.”

“Sorry,” Avery said.

“Mysterious,” Talos said.

Verona shooed him off.

“The question is,” Verona mused.  “Do we really want to go there?”

“We should ask,” Lucy said.  “Maybe there’s no point in worrying about if he’s already occupied with stuff.”

“Ah, run into that a lot, especially when sharing resources,” Talos chimed in.

“Without others chiming in,” Avery whispered.

They moved to a more private spot to discuss.

“It’s close to nine o’clock now,” Avery said.  “Matthew hasn’t called back?”

“No,” Verona said, checking.  Her phone was the only one with charge.

They’d settled down at a grassy bank behind the gas station, which overlooked water, hiding out a bit.  Some of the boys were sitting by the water, the ones who’d worn pants had their pants rolled up to their knees, feet in the water.  Others wore shorts.

John was doing one final patrol before offering them his services, with a reminder that they could call on him if things went bad.  They’d given him a few hours, waiting until sunset.

“Which direction is the B.H.I. again?” Lucy asked.  “The road here curved and it’s messing with my sense of direction.

Avery pointed.

“John Stiles,” Lucy said.  She threw the tag down, stepping up the bank.  The charm hit grass and kicked up a plume of dirt, like something had gone off.

At the bank, the heads of the boys turned.

John, ducking his head down, emerged from the plume.  He wore a tee, green army pants, and black boots.  His skin was tanned with a few marks here and there, and his hair bleached by the sun, freshly shorn.

He turned weary, distant eyes toward the boys at the bank.

“We appreciate this,” Lucy said.  “I know you’d rather not be around here, doing this stuff.”

“I might have to go back.  We’ll see how Matthew and the others fare.”

“Alright,” Lucy said.  “Glad to have you here in the meantime.”

“How are our favorite Others doing?” Verona asked, sitting down.

John walked up the hill, looking around, before walking off to the side.  “Tired.  I can’t say much because we’re being overheard.”

“We could take a bit of a walk away from these guys,” Avery suggested.

“I think this kind of overhearing is the kind that would follow us wherever we went.  Small hairs on the back of my neck are standing on end, birds aren’t singing, and the insects aren’t chirping.”

“Is that a thing?” Verona asked, listening.

“I don’t know how often it happens, but I remember it happening once.  Shortly after, a group of practitioners came for us.  Our group shrank by one, that evening.  I think there’s an effect when the powerful listen in, where the little things avoid making sound, so they won’t interrupt.”

“Okay, hey, good to know,” Avery said.

“I’d like to learn how to listen for that,” Lucy said.

“I would teach you if I could.  If you figure out a way, I’ll try.  For the time being, keep your eyes open and your ears open wider.”

Lucy nodded.  “Is a nettlewisp charm in order?”

“Use it when you’re calling the others.  So the observers don’t learn how to call them and call them in our place.”

“Good call.”

“This is dangerous territory we’re in.”

“Again, we appreciate it.”

John nodded.

Snowdrop was stirring awake.  She jumped up into human form as she saw John.  “Oh no!”

“Yes, it’s me.”

Snowdrop, hair shaggy from oversleeping, wore a light jacket with a strapless dress.  The jacket was in a punk style, and the big feature was a ‘Ticked off’ script on the back.  Badges and buttons had stuff like ‘half a tick’ with a grisly bisected bug on it, ‘ticking time bomb’, and ‘The things that make a girl tick’.

“That is a very nice dress, Snow,” Avery observed.

Snowdrop made a face, looking down.  “That was on purpose.  Except John doesn’t deserve bringing out the nice clothes.”

“I’m touched,” John said, putting a hand on her head.

“You’re awful,” Snowdrop jeered.  “You’re mean to me and you play bad video games and whenever I come over my timing is terrible.”

“Timing?” John asked, bemused.

“Your lawn?  It’s the worst.  I always go home hungry and despairing of how you take care of it.”

“Ohhh, thus the jacket?” Avery asked.

“The huh?”  Snowdrop checked, pulling the jacket partially off.  “Oh.  Nah.  Not that.”

“How do you not know what you’re wearing?”

“I’ve been awake half the day!”

The sun was setting, and the sky was taking on a reddish hue.  It suited John.

They’d skipped dinner.  Bristow hadn’t turned up or sent anyone.  But Verona knew her blustering bullies and she was pretty sure something would follow, as soon as he was ready.

The mood, all considered, was deceptively restful.

John wasn’t settling down, though.  He paced the sloping hillside with its scattered trees, or as much of it as he could cover without venturing close to Talos, Tymon, and Zachariah.

“He’s nervous,” Verona whispered to the others.  John turned his head, a flash of concern on his face.

“We’ve got your back, John,” Lucy said, louder.

“Thank you, but sometimes even that isn’t enough.”

“You gave Matthew the means of calling you back?” Verona asked.

“I did.”

“We could call him.  If you’re that uncomfortable.”

“I’d rather ensure you four are alright tonight.  I don’t mind it something happens to me, if it means I can protect you.  Were you going to call the others?”

“When it’s a touch darker.  I guess we could use the goblins.”

“Okay.”

John pulled out what looked like a can of beans or fruit with the label ripped off.  Rusty blisters covered it.

“Nettlewisp first,” Lucy said. “Starting with ears.  Pick up?”

Verona nodded, pointing at Avery, holding up two fingers.

She was better at improvising, and when Avery picked up the tail, it was often a bit of a stilted thing.

“Don’t look!” Lucy called out.  “Don’t listen!  You may well regret it!”

That line reminded Verona of the outstanding ‘regret’ with Bristow.

“Nettlewisp, nettlewisp, nettlewisp,” Lucy intoned, as she drew in the glamour she’d gathered into her palm.  “Turn your barbs to enemy eyes or ears…”

“Bring about a fate that every spying Augur fears…” Avery joined in.

“And do lasting harm to sight and Sight, that would bring the bravest Augur to tears,’ Verona finished.

“Take the power of our hometown,” Lucy said, as the drawn diagram in dust became like a flower, thorns growing and bristling.  “On behalf of us three.  We shield ourselves against our enemies and those who would harm the places we protect.  Drink, to make this punishment real.  Drink to make it sting enough.”

The flower reached its full dimensions.

That was a fat one.

A bird trilled in the woods on the other side of the water, and it was followed by others, staking their own claims.

“Good,” John said.

“That’ll do?” Lucy asked.

“They know how it works, they saw what happened to Nicolette, didn’t they?” Avery asked.

“Yeah,” Verona answered.

John took a knife to the can, as the three girls covered their noses.

The smell wafted past them, making Verona’s eyes sting.  Snowdrop, who hadn’t covered her nose, doubled over.

Even the boys on the edge of the water a hundred feet away recoiled.

Lucy couldn’t take the can, because her hand was occupied, so Verona did, turning her face away and holding it at arm’s length, downwind.  It didn’t help much.

She poured it into the mud by the water, where it bubbled noxiously.

They’d done a few trial runs of this in the weeks before leaving, but it hadn’t been this gross.

She plunged her hand into the muck.  There was no resistance.

The back of her hand scraped against something fleshy.

She wiggled, struggling to find a grip.  There was flesh in front of her hand too.  She went up and her hand pulled free with a sucking of mud, gross, and flesh.

She reached down again, and again, her hand slid into a tube of meat.

She reached down, further, until she found a bend in the tube, dug her fingernails in, and lifted.  The mud fought her.  Her feet found little traction, and he was heavy.

Her feet slipped, and Verona sat down hard on the muddy bank of the river.

“Don’t sit in it!” Avery protested.

“I frigging know!  He’s- ugh!”

“Don’t get it on your shorts at least!”

“Get bent!  Fricking fragging fugging-!  Toadswallow, stop being a pain and work with me!”

She suspected the swearing helped more than calling him, specifically.  The mud stopped resisting as much.

She hauled Toadswallow up and out of the gunk.  Her arm was down his throat to the elbow, her fingers gripping some bend in the intestine.  It came free with strings of slime nearly as long as her arm was, and he rolled down the bank into the water.  She shook the gobbets off.

“Ahem!” he cleared his throat, lying on his back.  He floundered for a position where he could sit up.  “Ahem.  I’ve had a literal frog in my throat for days now, little blaggard has been fighting to avoid being swallowed.  You cleared me right up, and he’s swimming in the old digestive juices now, kicking up a storm.  Good show.”

“You could have helped me more with that whole process,” Verona said.

“I could have and I might have, dear girl,” Toadswallow said.  He splashed with hands and feet.  Verona stood up, gave a wide berth to the goblin hole she’d just made, now a fresh entrance to the Warrens, and waded into the water to grab him, dragging him to shore.  “But it was too much fun to imagine the look on your face.”

She pushed him back down the bank, letting his face sink into the mud.  With the way he was built, when his face was in the mud of the shore, his legs were left up in the air, kicking.  He floundered, found his grip on her wrist, and then wrestled his way back to a better position.

“Ahem!” he said, licking his broken-glass monocle before setting it back in place.  He smiled.  “That was fun too.  What do I need to know?”

“Augurs, gore streaked, eastern practices… an awful lot of practitioners are out there.  We’re going to chip away at his claim to the school.  He might get ticked enough to retaliate.  John’s going to be our bodyguard in the physical.  We’ll call in others for the metaphysical.  So… sow chaos?  Distract them?  Don’t get bound?”

“I can do that.  Will I have help?”

“There’s some locals, but they’re minor.  We could bring others from home if you want.”

“Well, don’t call Blunt, because they need him.  But any mix of the others will do.  I can try to wrangle the locals.”

“The main buildings are secured against goblin intrusion.  I’m not sure where things stand with the new building that’s going up.”

“If it’s not complete, there are ways.  Gashwad can help with that.  So can Snatch.”

Verona winced, looking at the hole.

“We could take turns?” Avery suggested.

“I’m going to spend a while scrubbing this arm anyway.  Might as well keep the damage to one body part,” Verona said.

“I’m so glad I was the one who’s holding the Nettlewisp,” Lucy observed.

“You’re tense, my boy,” Toadswallow said.

“I am,” John replied.

“It’s not good for you, being all tense and muscular.  I much prefer a fatty, fleshy layer that jiggles as it absorbs abuse.  It has the benefit of being much more comfortable to rest on.”

“I wouldn’t know.  I’ve never had much body fat.”

Verona stuck her arm into the hole.  “Gashwad, you loser, don’t you dare bite me.”

Sucking, fetid mud slurped around her arm as she dug around in the void.

She found his tongue, and gripped it with her hand.  It snaked around her wrist.

She really hoped it was his tongue.

She found teeth, which, considering he was a goblin, did very little to assure her of the tongue-ness, then hauled.

He didn’t make himself as much of a pain in the ass as Toadswallow was.  She shook her hand off as Gashwad crawled through the mud.

“There are protections for the big houses.”

“I wanted to hurt stuff,” Gashwad growled.

“There’ll be room for that too.  We’ll need to herd the little goblets together, get them sorted.”

Gashwad sniggered.

Verona plunged her hand into the gunk again.  “Nat!”

She found hair.  She also found the sharp, jagged piercings.  She had to navigate around the latter to get a better grip on the former.  Her fingers hooked in tangles and ‘decorations’ that had been woven into the hair.

Some of the boys had taken notice.  Talos and Tymon approached, standing at a bit of a distance.  Tymon had his arms folded.

Nat came out of the gunk thrashing, fighting for a grip.  She snarled as she came free enough to have air.

A second later she snarled, vicious.  Verona hauled her arm back.

“Be good!” Toadswallow barked.

Nat stopped, pausing, then snarled again, in a more conversational tone.

“Snatch, we’ll need you to handle any locks or other mechanical things.  There’s a building in progress.  You should like that.”

Nat smiled behind the curtain of mud-slicked hair.

“Is she a gremlin?” Tymon asked.  “A techie-goblin?”

“She beat up a gremlin a while back, took his stuff,” Toadswallow explained.

Nat smacked her piercing-riddled fist into her open palm.

Lucy and Avery were already working out the kinks on the Alpeana thing.

Verona was a little miffed to not be a part of that, but her focus was more on cleaning up her arm and making sure she didn’t have gunk on the rear of her shorts that was far fouler than any other stains that could be found on rear ends.  She ended up just submerging herself and using grass with the mud from a cleaner part of the riverbank to scrub her arm down.

Talos and Tymon at least didn’t stare.  But they were watching the other ritual.

“If you’re going to watch and listen in, you need to swear,” Verona told the boys.  “It’s not information we’re sharing.”

“So sworn,” Tymon said.  “Won’t use this.”

“So sworn,” Talos said, a bit more reluctant.

A circle was drawn in the hillside, in the shade of a tree.  Moon and darkness motifs.

John, the goblins, Alpeana.

The darkness around the circle intensified.  This was more of a symbolic circle, one of the types of magic circle that was more of a shout out into a particular realm and space, asking for an answer.

Alpeana emerged, the darkness around her enough that even her pale flesh was barely visible.  Her hair trailed on the ground as she retreated into deeper darkness.

And she had company, holding onto her hand.

“Tashlit!” Verona cheered.

Tashlit was more comfortable stepping out of the darkness, glancing around to make sure she wasn’t seen, pausing as she saw the boys.  She’d changed her clothes, to a t-shirt with the Illuminati symbol, and jeans with tears in them.  Some of the tears coincided with tears in her flesh, which made the eyes behind them visible, capable of peering out.  Beneath the loose covering of flesh was a body that was thinner than the thinnest living person in the world, like eyeball-printed skin stretched over a skeleton.  The skin, meanwhile, looked like it belonged to a girl that had weighed two hundred pounds, and thus it slopped over and around Tashlit.

Lucy and Avery gave Tashlit a wide berth.

“I’m wet and gross but hey, hi!” Verona said, cheery.

Tashlit put out a hand.  The effect of the loose skin was a very pronounced high-five.  She pointed to herself.

“You are not that wet and gross.”

Tashlit made a sign, like ‘little’.

“The tish has been keekin’ ta see ye, lassie.”

Tashlit looked surprised, every single one of her eyes going wide, then twisted, grabbing the backpack she’d worn.  She pulled it around, reached in, and sorted through pages of what might have been magazines.

“We need to get you set up with tech,” Verona said.  “I bet you’ve read those magazines a dozen times.”

Tashlit nodded vigorously, skin slapping.  The eyes blinked together hard, skin wrinkling where one eyeball met the other.

“More than?  Hundreds?”

Tashlit nodded again.

“Well, we have a project then,” Verona said.  “We’ll get you set up with a phone and you’ll have the whole wide internet to occupy you.  Cat videos and-”

Tashlit’s eyes widened.  She shook her head.

“No?  What, the cat video thing?”

Tashlit widened her eyes again.

“You don’t like cats!?”

“I met an Other similar to her, once, overseas,” John said.  “It didn’t like cats either.  The common cat was anathema to the Other.  Inborn.”

“Well, nobody’s perfect,” Verona said.  “What a shame.  I’m curious what that’s about.”

Tashlit shrugged.

“I think there was something about that in one of the books I took out of the library,” Avery said.

“Was it a thing before you, uh…?”

Tashlit nodded, still fishing in the bag.  She had the benefit of being able to search the bag and still make eye contact with Verona.

Tashlit pulled out clothes.

“For me?”

Tashlit nodded, then held back a bit.  She mimed touching the clothes to her face.

“You’ve worn it?”

Tashlit touched her eye.

“It’s touched your eyes?  Is that a problem?  Mystical or anything?”

Tashlit shook her head.

“It really doesn’t bother me.”

Tashlit passed her the clothes.

“Aye, ye already ken her better than I dae, ‘n we’ve bin talkin’ in dreams.”

“You’re really taking this in stride,” Lucy observed.  “No offense.”

Tashlit shrugged.

“This is a great aesthetic!” Verona said, putting an arm around Tashlit, so they were side by side.  “And she’s not like, evil or anything, right Alpy?”

“Aye, nae.”

“I meant more the communication,” Lucy said.  “It’d be nice if we could get Tashlit that phone so she can type out messages.”

Tashlit shrugged.

“I’ve gotta change,” Verona said.  “Let’s uh… hm.  I don’t want to track mud through the bathroom of the gas station.  Gimme a second of privacy.”

“Remember we’re being watched.  If you get too far from the Nettlewisp…”

“Oh yeahhh.  Yes, okay.  And Chase is out there.”

“I’ll come with,” Lucy said, holding the Nettlewisp.

“I do hope that triggers at some point.  I remember we were talking about the traps,” Verona said.  “And there’s the possibility that thing might need to be triggered.

“We’ll have to be careful,” Lucy said.  “I’m pretty sure I can wash it off.”

“It’s a big waste of glamour.”

“Yeah.”

“Be right back!” Verona called out.  “Barring exceptional circumstance.”

She stepped out into the woods, until she was far enough she couldn’t see the others, then changed into the clothes Tashlit had provided.  They were about two sizes too big, and smelled just a bit like fish, but that was okay.

“Should we regroup, or head back before it’s too dark?” Lucy asked, her back to Verona.

“I dunno,” Verona said.

“We have to consider the kids!” Avery called out.  “Some are pretty young, with early bedtimes.”

“Good thinking.”

Verona touched Lucy’s shoulder as she made her way back out of the foliage, carrying the bundle of her wet clothes.

As a collected group, they made their way up toward the gas station.  Alpeana, Tashlit and the goblins remained behind.

“We’ll do a jolly bit of recruitment and skullcracking,” Toadswallow said.  “And we’ll catch up with you lot after.”

“Be safe.”

“I will, I will.  We’ll circle around, see how the buildings look.”

“That way,” Avery said, pointing.

As they made their way toward the other group, Brie stepped forward.

Some of the children of the Hungry Choir appeared around her.  They kept their eyes down, wary, almost slinking forward.

A problem?

Verona looked around, wondering if any of the locals were watching.

“Is she in there?”

It was John asking.

“I- I think she might be.  She’s been quiet up until now.”

“Can she communicate?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I see,” John said.  “Can she come out?”

“I think the bindings are meant to prevent that.”

The children came up to him.

He touched the hair of one.

It disappeared promptly.  The other faded too.

The look in his eyes was so sad.

Lucy and Avery aside, and maybe her mom and dad when she was smaller, Verona wasn’t sure she’d ever liked anyone enough to look that way if they were gone.

Everyone had gathered.  It included some of those who hadn’t come to town, like Reese, Steyn, and Mike, and Xerxes and Erasmus.  Laila was standing off to the side with Melody and Corbin.  Some summoned Others were around as well.  And Liberty was here, even though America wasn’t.

“Psst.”

Heads turned.

“Psst.”

Liberty took a step, then broke into a run.  She leaped into the space between the gas station and the house next door, tackling Toadswallow.  She planted a kiss on his cheek.

Weird.  Gross.

“Toadie, it’s been forever!  Where did you come from!?  Have you been here all along, somehow?”

“I was called.  By a certain trio.”

Liberty looked, hugging Toadswallow with enough force that it looked like his eyes might bulge out, or his monocle might come free.

“You’ll need to look after them, my girl.”

Liberty set her chin.

Well, that was a certain side benefit.

John found a place at the furthest end of the crowd from Brie.

All of this, to muster forces to go back.  To find a place to sleep, all hunkering down in one building.

But at least they were together.

They walked as a group.

Back toward campus.  The more monstrous Others keeping to the trees.  Moving with surprising ease through denser foliage.  Sometimes they stepped out, only to disappear back into the wood that the growing night was consuming.

A ways down the road, a single man stood.

Muscular, tall.

Not even flinching at the size of the group.

Ted Havens.

They stopped walking.  He didn’t budge.

“Are you going to make this difficult?” Tymon called out.

Ted didn’t move a muscle, didn’t respond.  He stared them down.

“You’re supposed to be a good guy!” Avery called out.

Again, Ted didn’t respond.

They’d explained the Aware and how they worked, with the exception of Kevin Noone’s girlfriend, Rae.  The group here knew what Ted was.  The clout he had with the universe.  The fact he could face off against the sort of thing Mrs. Durocher summoned and survive.

Nobody wanted to be the one to step forward.

John had his gun out, but he didn’t raise it.

It felt like fifteen minutes but it was probably closer to two.  A car came down the road, and Verona worried it was Ted’s backup.  Not that he necessarily needed it.

The approach of the car made their assembled group break up, stepping off to the side or into the other lane.  Ted didn’t move, letting the car pass him by.  It wasn’t backup.  It was just a person.

But the fact they’d moved and he hadn’t, it was like he’d somehow won.  He turned and he walked away.

They didn’t resume moving until he was out of sight.

Back to the school and the tyrant who wanted to claim it.

Gone Ahead – 7.2

Lucy

Lucy hung back, crouching in the trees.  Her sleeveless top had a hood, and she’d tied her hair into a loose braid and then wound it into a bun so she could keep the hood up.

Her mask was in her lap and the eyes burned red – a cosmetic choice that she’d made weeks ago, that was twice as pronounced now.  It might have something to do with the earring that she’d clipped to the ear of the fox mask, upside-down so the wire and crystal dangled from the tip.

More importantly, she’d done some work a long time ago to turn that light into something to penetrate the dark.  A bit of night vision.  She’d need it, since it was evening, now, and a gloomy, lightless one.  The campus didn’t exactly have floodlights, and it didn’t have windows large enough for the indoor lighting to light up much of the outdoors.  Most of the light from the inside only reached about ten or fifteen feet from the building, much of it tinted blue from the treatment of the windows.

More blue-tinted light came from the bright LED flashlights that students walking outside used.  The patrolling students -and they were a patrol, really- weren’t lit up.  Only the paths around them.  They were dark silhouettes, and that complicated things.  Not knowing who they were dealing with could be disastrous, when it was the difference between a violence-happy Hennigar and someone like Jarvis, who was very good at binding humans.

Lucy took some of Maricica’s glamour that Avery was holding and gave the mask a one-handed wipe-down.  Fingernails scraped the painted wood-grain as she turned the color to black.  Only the edges and the most raised edges retained the red.  She extinguished the cosmetic effect at the eyes, leaving the night vision in place.

She pulled it on.  The world became a bit brighter, albeit red-tinted.

It was a massive pain that the Nettlewisp still sat in her left hand, waiting to be triggered.  But Guilherme had explained the need for fair contests when he’d gone over the dueling stuff.  These things worked better if the other person walked into it, instead of it being a one-sided, forced result.  Those same one-sided approaches, bullying or extorting someone into something, could often result in backlash.

Avery did something similar, painting the deer mask black.  With her hands still covered in the pigment that had come about from the mix of water and dust, Lucy reached over to help.

“Thank you,” Avery said, quiet.

Toadswallow, lurking in a bush, and Gashwad, on a tree branch above them, didn’t comment on the use of Fae practices..

They watched as the gathering students got settled in the workshop Elizabeth had requisitioned.  Some of Bristow’s group were outside as well.  Hostile or dangerous students who were free to mess with them.  Either those students could do something and the staff would overlook it, or they’d get expelled at the same time the targeted students did.  A lot of that would depend on which teachers saw.  Ray or Durocher would probably expel both, keeping to strict school rules.  Guest teachers?  They could be looser.

Lucy imagined Bristow’s group would be strategic about that.  Once they started making moves, they could give up their weakest group member for the best of the group that was made up of Belanger loyalists and the people who hadn’t taken a side.

Verona was inside, helping out.  The doors were open, because there were so many people and it was warm out.  Verona laughed, throwing a bundle of cloth to Tashlit, who wasn’t visible through the open door.

She’s happier like this, in a war between practitioners, than she is back homeI don’t think I’ve ever actually seen her this mellow.

The thought coincided with a spooky vertigo-like feeling.  Except Lucy wasn’t standing on a cliff’s edge or anything.  It was only her and Verona.

Lucy was left grasping for something, some way that she could do something about Verona.  What were the options?  How could she keep her friend from slipping all the way into this world, when it was so enticing, filled with things that were one hundred percent Verona’s jam?

“Do you think Verona and Jeremy are going to end up a thing?” Lucy asked.

“Hm?” Avery grunted.

“I know he’s interested, and I think she’s more interested than she realizes.”

“Maybe listen to Verona, when she says she doesn’t want to get into a relationship?”

“But like… what if she does, though, and she doesn’t get that?  We’re all new to this, and it’s so easy to be dumb about stuff.  I was all about George and Amadeus because they’re cute but after being around them a bit more, and being around Wallace, I’m wondering what I was thinking.”

“That they’re cute,” Avery said, finishing up her mask.  She held it up for approval, and Lucy nodded.

“And you-”

“The less said the better?” Avery ventured.

“Well, on some stuff.  But Pam is cool.  Way better for a first crush than George and Amadeus.  So you got that right.”

“I guess.  Except I messed up.”

“But that’s what I’m saying.  We’re messing up a lot.”

“Ahem,” Toadswallow made a noise as he stood on his toes, peering out at the ongoing events.  The patrol group of students had passed by the other side of the building Verona and the rest were in.  Elizabeth’s workshop, protected grounds.

“What’s up, Toadswallow?” Avery asked.

“Do we even want to know?” Lucy asked.

“Remember what I said about war and fighting, my dears?” Toadswallow asked, voice guttural.  “I dare say the matters of men and women, men and men, women and women, men and sheep-”

“Toad.”  Lucy made her voice stern.

He chuckled.  Gashwad followed suit.  “-It’s messy.  Especially the goats.  It doesn’t get less messy.  You find someone to wallow in the mess with you.”

“That’s a worrying phrasing, with your name and everything, Toadswallow.”

He chuckled again.

“Do you have anyone?” Avery asked.  “Is there a Mrs. Toadswallow in the cards?  Or Mr.?”

“Sometimes there’s a someone.  But much as I said, it’s sloppy and messy.  Life pulls us in different directions.  She’s a familiar right now and I won’t see her until the fist-biting chump she’s partnered with slips from this mortal coil.”

“I’m not sure what to say to that,” Avery said.  “If I wish you luck I’d be hoping for the guy to die.”

“I dare say that being at a loss for words is a fine response to something a goblin says,” Toadswallow remarked.  “Here’s John.”

John emerged from the building Verona was in, holding several bags at his back, one hand at the strap, the other at his hip.  The light rain soaked him, and he didn’t flinch or seem to care.  He was followed by Snowdrop, who still wore the jacket from earlier, along with rain boots and a black t-shirt dress.

“You know what bringing him means?” Toadswallow said, voice low.

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  She looked at Avery, who nodded.

“Violence,” Gashwad said.

John slipped one bag from his shoulder and tossed it to Gashwad up in the tree.  He did the same for Toadswallow.

“We ready?” Avery asked.

“Go,” John said.

They kept to the trees at the west side of campus, passing by the workshop buildings, then the west wing of the school, which was framed by shrubbery and gardens.  The blue-tinted light from a western bedroom extended most of the way toward them, diffuse.  A gauzy curtain hid the view.

Avery, black rope in hand, weaved between the trees, and the trees she disappeared behind weren’t the same trees she emerged from behind.  In the gloom, it was a trippy effect.

“When I was playing lacrosse with the others the other day, you walked over this way,” Avery noted.

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “Took a look.”

‘This way’ was the back corner of the blasting field.  The construction of Bristow’s building was underway, the bottom floor mostly done, except for some of the exterior work.  They kept to the outside edge of the field.

Lucy tilted her head, trying to make out the building and see if there was anyone out there.  “There were warnings.  That usual permissions, protections, and student stuff wasn’t valid, not to cross certain boundaries without a teacher’s okay, that sort of thing.”

“Good,” Gashwad growled.

“Is it?” Lucy asked.  “I genuinely don’t know.  I think it means we can’t bring familiars across, and even students might get zapped or something.”

“It’s good because it’s different.  If they recently changed it, there’s more chances they made mistakes.”

“The little goblins and things didn’t say the field was impossible to cross,” Snowdrop said.

“Good to know,” Lucy said.  “Does that mean it’s dangerous, and we get zapped for trying, or does it mean there’s a barrier?”

Gashwad peeked out of the trees, then ventured out, putting a hand out.

“Careful,” Avery hissed.

His hand found resistance, touching an invisible wall.

“Some practitioner houses are like this,” Toadswallow noted.  “They lay the foundation with its own protections.”

“The fields have this sort of dueling thing going on,” Lucy said.  “Healing the combatants after they leave or after the duel ends.”

“Expensive work,” Toadswallow said.

“This isn’t a house, though,” Avery said. “It’s the entire field, and the building they’re putting up is on the field.”

“I think they cleared the area of trees, they laid the stones and circles down, then they placed soil over top,” Lucy said, bending down.  She turned on her Sight, and she could see the heavy staining of the field, the fragments of metal that littered it.  As she straightened up and walked, the fragments closest to her faded, the ones in the distance remaining.

“Gash, this is your moment to shine,” Toadswallow said.

Gashwad spat.  “I thought I was called here to fight.”

“You’re good at getting into places,” John said.  “The fighting might come later.”

Gashwad spat again.  He scampered ahead, moving on all fours, nose and eyes close to the ground, like he was looking along it.  Avery and Snowdrop jogged forward to keep up.

John, meanwhile, turned his focus to the building.  Lucy followed his gaze.  A single light was on, but it looked like it was at the far end of the building, the illumination diffusing through the rest of the rooms on the ground floor.

“Bristow and his Aware have been staying here.  The time loop guy, Ted, then Shellie, the Bright-Eyed sister of Daniel, Kevin and Kevin’s girlfriend… he’s got an evil eye and she’s got something else.”

“Are they holding America here?” Toadswallow asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Our dame was expelled but she didn’t go home.  She didn’t go to the local jetsam-of-dry-land.  Her sister doesn’t know where she is.”

“Are you close?” Lucy asked.

“Taught them the beginnings of what they know.  I’m Uncle Toad to them.  Fine, distinguished young ladies of the upper crust, until I got to them.  They liked what I taught enough to pursue it as their specialty.”

“Their dad isn’t a big goblin mage?”

“Some.  And many other things.  There’s a reason they haven’t called him.”

Gashwad had his head in a hole in the ground.  He wiggled his way in.

“This should take a minute,” Toadswallow said.  “Let’s step back.”

They did, retreating into the trees.

A group of students patrolling the grounds with flashlights emerged from the western end of the building.  They stopped at the door, talking to a tall man.  Because the man was in the doorway, the lights from either side of him made his features clearer.  He wore a white t-shirt under an open black blazer, matching slacks, and a necklace, and he had brown hair with a dense wave to it, like the locks of hair had been stretched under one finger, over the next, under the next, and so on.  He wore glasses that had no arms stretching from the edges to the ears.

The look didn’t really make her think ‘teacher’.  It made her think, like, an agent for actors or musicians, striking that look that was both casual and expensive, and very deliberate.  The look in his eyes, the cast of his mouth, and his posture made her think that if he were one of those agents, he’d deal with a stalker fan of one of his clients by contracting some guys with baseball bats and ties to organized crime.

The hair made her think of Raquel and Reid.

Mr. Musser?

Now that she had a guess as to who he was, she could notice other things: he had a way of standing and moving like he was carrying a lot of weight, but he’d done it for so long that he’d gotten used to it.  One hand gesture in the air, to punctuate a statement, and it felt like it had enough weight to knock on the air.

“Come on, just turn the other way and go inside,” Lucy whispered.

Something changed in the field.  A snap, and the wind blew.  Leaves and strands of grass scattered.

“That’s the barrier,” John whispered.

We have access to the field and the outside of the building, now, Lucy thought.  Except…

Except the practitioners at the door had noticed.

They came, now.  Musser followed behind the group, and pulled off his jacket, casting it aside.  It fluttered briefly in the wind, then disappeared.  White t-shirt that probably cost more than a hundred bucks, necklace, watch, rings, and the glimmer of things at his pockets that suggested he couldn’t even put his hands in them.  They weren’t overstuffed, either.

She glanced over the students and recognized Hadley Hennigar and Maddox the spellbinder.  There were two more but she didn’t dare look for long enough for them to see.

“Draw on my power, let me hear,” Lucy whispered.

John put a hand on her shoulder, pulling her further into the trees as the people approached.  Avery had already withdrawn, carrying a Snowdrop-as-animal.  Toadswallow hurried after them.

Are they going after the headmaster?”

I don’t see anything.”

The group slowed as they got closer.  Maddox paused, peering into the trees.

Lucy drew down, deeper into the foliage, until John’s hand at her shoulder made her stop.  His fingers gripped her, hard enough that it almost hurt.

“There!”

All heads turned.

Gashwad?

She could see.  A goblin, at the pile of construction materials, not moving especially fast.

Toadswallow.

She looked back at where she’d last seen Toadswallow, standing next to Avery, then connected the dots.

She’d lent him the black rope.

“Watch out!” Musser called out.  “He left things behind!”

Toadswallow cackled as he ran off.

Some of the students backed off.  But one, Hadley, kept charging forward.

A box sat perched on one pile of planks with a tarp loosely thrown over top, with near-black, moist, and maybe rotted wood stretching and shuddering, as it nearly burst at the seams.  And Hadley swiped out with a knife as she ran past.

It spun in a three-quarter circle, then detonated, and the swipe maybe controlled some of that detonation, pushing seventy percent of it away from her.

Slime, stringy, cascaded out, the initial bands a black substance as thin as water, surrounding green-yellow bands that slapped down and formed mucus-y bands.  Hadley’s feet skidded on the black and she nearly spun around as the band of mucus slapped down across the ground, touching her hand, and bound both, like a tether tying her down.  More landed around and on top of her.

Another box was within the first.  It too detonated.  A thick white substance with brown chunks in it splashed down.  Someone in Musser’s group threw up a barrier on the fly.  One of the Legendres?

Hadley, hunched over, did her best to straighten up, as she was weighed down by the gunk.

She screamed, loud and fierce enough that Lucy had to cover her ears.  Some of the construction materials slipped from where they sat.  Small branches and leaves fell from the tree.  The blades she was carrying glowed red, like they’d been in a furnace, and her eyes did the same.

John’s grip on Lucy’s shoulder tightened by increments as the scream continued, until she had to pull a hand from her ear and swat his hand away and break that grip.  He looked down at her, startled, like he hadn’t realized what he was doing.

The scream tore away the gunk and crap, freeing Hadley, and stirred up dirt, covering gunk around her.  Veins stood out on her arms and neck and took on that red glow.

The scream ceased.  She broke into a run.  Fast.

“I’ve heard of types like her,” John whispered.

She hurdled over construction material, chasing Toadswallow.  Twisting in the air, she used a practice.  Setting a part of the field on fire.  A small detonation scattered a pile of concrete blocks.

“Gore-strewn,” Avery said, as she drew nearer.  “There’s a bunch of them on campus.”

“We don’t know the specifics,” Lucy said.

“You can shoot them, and they’ll draw on their contract to War or one of War’s children,” John said, somber.  “They get time, and can shake off their imminent demise if they can do enough violence.”

There was more fire, more damage done.

Mr. Musser walked forward, toward the destruction and mess.  He bent down to pick up a plank, throwing it back atop the pile.  He kept only half an eye on what Hadley Hennigar was doing.  He looked up as something fell over, glass breaking.

“Being tied up too?” Avery whispered.

“Yes.  Or curses, or binding, or anything that troubles them.  But they have to do that violence.”

“She’s doing some,” Lucy observed.

The number of fires were increasing.  That was basic elemental practice, being liberally used.

“Gene,” Musser called out.

What do you need?”

“A barrier.  I don’t like that fire being so close to the carpentry area.  All that sawdust.  Thank you.”

The front door of the big building opened.  Kevin and his girlfriend stepped outside, looking around at the chaos.

To Lucy’s Sight, Kevin’s gaze was a stain, subtle but vast, spreading over everything around him.  She could tell when he stopped looking around and started focusing on Musser.  The droplets of darkness beaded on Musser’s face and front, then slid off to the side like droplets on a windshield, over the top and sides of his head, and the sides of his neck and body.

“You’re all so noisy.  And messy.”

“Think of us as the police, causing a commotion as we try to apprehend a burglar.”

“A burglar?” the girlfriend asked.

“Or an arsonist.  There was a fire a few weeks back, wasn’t there?”

“There was.  Who was it, and what do they want?”

“There’s no telling, yet.  I hope Hadley doesn’t kill it.”

“When we have a child, Rae, let’s not call it something shitty like Hadley, of all things.”

“Yeah.  What should we call them, then?  What’s a good name?”

“Them?  Plural?  Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, babe.  I was an only child, that’s good enough for the next generation.”

“Alright.”

It was bad timing, that the patrol would come out like this and be so close, while Gashwad was underground and inaccessible.

“You may want to go,” John said.

“Why?” Lucy asked.  Then, in the same breath, said, “No.”

The explosions and new fires had stopped erupting around the construction site while she’d been listening to the conversation.

John drew his gun.  Head tilted, one arm against the tree, he aimed.  He glanced at Lucy.

“Are you telling me to go with that look?” Lucy asked.

“I was wondering if you’d tell me ‘no guns’, this time.”

Lucy looked over to where Musser’s group was, the figures just big enough for expressions to be made out.

She looked over at Avery, who had Snowdrop at her shoulder.  Avery’s eyes were visible behind the deer mask and it was clear her eyebrows were drawn together.  More in concern than anything, as Lucy read it.

“Can you not make us say it?” Lucy asked.

“You may want to go, then, before any decisions have to be made.  Move carefully, and remember, being still is better than being hidden, so long as you have cover, but being both is best.”

Lucy nodded, getting ready to go.

Avery grabbed her arm.

Hadley made her way back, holding her arm out, knife in hand.  And that knife was embedded in a limp, bloated body.  The body struggled a bit.

“She returns.  Did she get it?”

Hadley dropped her arm.  The corpse dropped to the ground, splitting open.  Lucy had to focus between Sight and sight to see.  The vest.  The monocle.  The little pig-like ears.

But it wasn’t Toadswallow.  A pig’s corpse, roughly his dimensions, wearing clothes like he did, and badly decaying, to the point that skin was slowly tearing from gravity alone.  Insect life, a slurry of insides, and a morass of rodents fanned out from the split belly of it.

“He got away?”

“He got away,” Lucy whispered.

Snowdrop sneezed.  Avery squeezed Lucy’s arm.

Hadley Hennigar swayed on the spot, then collapsed, face-first into the corpse-thing.  Lucy cringed, and Avery made a face.

Some of the other students hurried forward to grab her, but hesitated to get close to the thing, covering their faces.

“If the gore-strewn can’t achieve the violence that they bought their extra time with, then they suffer an equivalent or worse fate,” John said.  “Trying to avoid that fate hurts their practice.”

“It’s a hobb,” ‘Gene’ Legendre said.

“What’s a hobb?” Lucy asked.

John shook his head.  Avery shrugged.

“What’s a hobb?”

“A signpost, except it’s not a sign made of wood.”

“Obviously not made of wood.”

“It’s meant to inspire fear, sow confusion, and intimidate. They make them look like children, or like dead bodies, or animals injured by the roadside, to get people to draw close, but they’re rigged to move, because there’s stuff inside them.  It’s meant to gross out or scare the person that stumbles on it.  Different areas and groups have different hobbs they like to use.  It’s territorial.”

“He’s marking his territory?”

“No.  No, not like that.  He’s marking territory he wants, I think.  Hobbs like this are like a big ‘we are coming’ sign.”

“It’s a declaration of war, of sorts, I guess,” Lucy whispered.  They were huddled in the trees, and not exactly close to the tree’s edge, either.  She kept having to move her head to see past groups of trees and make out the people talking.

“Ah,” Avery murmured.  “I’d say that makes sense, but I’d be lying.”

“Alexander hasn’t been doing his housekeeping, it seems.  Pests should be cleared out from school grounds every once a season, at the very least.  From the surrounding region at least once a year.  This one was mature.”

“It’s possible it was brought here, Mr. Musser.”

“Do you have any, ah, specialists on campus?”

“If you’d like, I can take my leave, Musser.”

“If you want, Kevin.  Would you take my card?  In case of further commotion?”

“Ahem, we just expelled America Tedd, Mr. Musser.  Gave her a scare, sent some things after her to get her out of our hair.  Her sister’s still here, and she’s pissed.”

“I think we know what we’re doing, then.  If we stick her with this we can send her home easily enough.  Shall we see about having a conversation with her?  Kevin, since you haven’t left yet, could you give me a hand?”

“I don’t think I could.  I’ve been told to keep my nose out of anything curious.  All I know is you set a lot of fires and made a lot of noise, trying to apprehend a burglar.  Who is part of a very grotesque gang, if that’s their way of marking territory.  Here I thought Winnipeg had its crime problems.”

“Gene, then?  A hand?  Does anyone have water?  We can use it to wet my handkerchief.”

Gene walked over, but he was holding something.

“What’s this, Gene?  A compass?”

“It doesn’t point North.  It points to-“

The group of practitioners turned.

Gashwad, hiding in the midst of the building materials, scrambled for the treeline, a few dozen feet to the north.

Maddox pulled a chain free from his belt-loops, then swung the heavier, padlocked end in sweeping circles, clipping the grass as it dipped low.

Gashwad ran, looking over his shoulder, zig-zagging.  John leveled his gun, aiming.

He didn’t fire.  Maddox released the chain, and it soared through the air, with enough force that it remained straight, more like a thrown stick than a cord of any sort.

It arced, soaring, and then hit Gashwad, winding around him.  He collapsed.

“John,” Avery whispered.

“Shhh,” John was barely audible.  He adjusted the orientation of his gun, aiming.

“They rarely get up to mischief alone,” Gene said.

“Good.”  Musser spoke only the one word as he walked over.

Gashwad swore and grunted, flopping over, but the chain surrounded him, wound tight.

“John,” Avery whispered.  “You said you guys would be okay with all these binders and things around.”

“We’ll see.”

“If they come looking for us in the trees, this damn thing can go off,” Lucy muttered.  Her hand felt like it was becoming a claw, the Nettlewisp like a lead weight.  She’d come on this excursion to protect them and let them know if the augurs started looking, while the people back at Elizabeth Driscoll’s workshop were protected by measures Elizabeth had taken.

She was starting to think that their guess about the Nettlewisp being a danger if they couldn’t find an excuse to deploy it.  She worried that it might turn on her and blind her if she wasn’t careful.

Maybe the augurs had looked to the future and seen the danger?

“We could bait them,” Avery said.  “Distract them from Gashwad.”

“We could,” John replied, “but then what?  What if the Hennigar girl rouses, screams again, and comes after us?  I’d sooner open fire and give you three girls cover to escape.”

“Stop saying you’re going to throw your life away,” Lucy said.

“It would be sacrifice, not throwing my life away.”

Stop,” she hissed the word.  “You’re not expendable.”

“Who sent you?” Eugene Legendre asked.

“Suck on my hairy nips, boring-face!”

“Who sent you?  For the second time, I demand you to answer.”

“And choke on the hair!  I bind my nip-hairs, curl and twist, and slide past the mouth to the dangle-nard at the back of the throat!  Twist and knot and tie fast, tie tight!  When I get free, you’ll gag on it!”

“Who sent you?  For the third time, I compel you to answer!  I have bound goblins innumerable.  I have authority enough.  By ancient laws, you cannot refuse me.”

“I sent myself!  I am not bound by anything except this chain.  I was summoned, but it was by the tricks and trades of my companion you failed to catch, failure!  Is your daddy disappointed in you?  Imagine the look on his face when your throat is wrecked, the dangle-nard fallen off because the hair has twisted so tight!  You’ll taste me on the hair for months!”

“Seven minutes, give or take,” John murmured.  The gun didn’t waver.  He didn’t blink.

“Seven minutes until?”

“That he has to distract or hold out.”

“He’s trying to curse Eugene Legendre.  Uh, the Legendres, they’re goblin exterminators and sealers.”

“Another Legendre passed by Kennet once.  Miss deterred her.”

“We met her.”

“Mm.”

Eugene was exchanging a murmured conversation with Musser.

Musser stepped away, moving through the building materials, kicking the occasional thing aside, and lifting up toolboxes and things of nails.

“What did you do while you were back here?”

“Back where?”

“I compel you, answer.”

Mr. Musser answered, “He laid traps.  The bigger one did some obvious things, like the slime box.  The small one did something to this stack of wood.  Something to this box of nails.”

“Gashwad did some work,” Lucy whispered.  “Messing with building supplies.  Toadswallow did some more overt stuff.  They managed to do some work, even with the barrier and the practitioners coming.”

Snowdrop sneezed.

“Mark or throw out the offending materials?”

“He spread the taint so it’s hard to find what he messed with.  We’ll have to throw out all of this wood.  And all of these nails.  These tools.  I’m worried about the building.”

“The building?”

Gashwad cackled.

“If he removed a nail and pushed something in, or a screw, or a sliver of twisted wood…”

Gashwad cackled again, louder.

Eugene booted Gashwad, hard.  Lucy could hear the clank.  She tensed.

“You weren’t summoned, but you didn’t come here for no reason.  Why did you come here?”

“To make trouble!”

“No, give a proper answer.  Tell us what you want to keep secret.  Why did you come here?”

To fight!  I live to fight!  I have deep seated, horrible insecurities about being too weak!”

“I compel you, for the third time I ask, tell me the true answer of why you’re here!”

“Cover your ears,” John said, aiming.  “Or go.  While they’re distracted.”

“I can only cover one,” Lucy said.

John reached around her head, putting one hand at her ear.  She put her right hand to the ear with the earring.

Gashwad opened his mouth, and then the lights in that area went out.

The sound followed, muffled by the hands at her ears.  A ‘bap’, sharp, and the sound of breaking glass.  Some practitioners had fallen over immediately, but others took a bit longer to do so.

“Tacks, crushed lightbulbs, cut up paperclips,” John said.  “And a minor explosive charge.  But that wasn’t seven minutes.  He must have cut the fuse before drawing their attention.”

Lucy narrowed her eyes, watching.  Practitioners were hurt, but nobody seemed to be dead or dying.  That was good.

Toadswallow picked his way over the writhing and struggling practitioners, kicked at the chain Eugene was pulling out, and bent down to undo the padlock at Gashwad’s chains with a tool he had.

Gashwad walked over to Eugene, plucked something off his chest, then jammed it into Eugene’s mouth.  Then he scampered off with Toadswallow, in the opposite direction to where Lucy and the rest of the group were huddled.

Kevin Noone’s eye was like a searchlight, but it didn’t really light things up as it swept over the area.  It was like a light was shining through a glass with drops of ink swirling in it; the ‘ink’ was thick enough that the light didn’t really penetrate, and it created more texture and pattern in shadow than anything.

He’d gone inside and he’d reappeared at the small detonation.

He didn’t bend down to help anyone, but he did lift a phone to his ear.

Musser was already on his feet.  Eugene was hacking and coughing.

“Spirits hear me,” Lucy said, louder than the murmurs and whispers she’d been using.  “We were prepared to let Lawrence Bristow be if he did the same for us, but he interfered with our classes, he’s threatened us, and he’s made no amends for the unwarranted attack on our home and territory.”

Some of the less injured were giving chase.  Eugene was among them, heading east.  They had nicks and cuts.

“Let this be first blood,” Lucy said.  “Bristow is not a leader, he’s a tyrant, and tyrants must be resisted.  He is not a leader, and I hope this drives that point home.  He doesn’t protect this space, he makes it hostile.  He doesn’t grow this place, he loses students.  He has no authority.  Let Alexander’s reckoning come later, as it may.”

“As it may,” Avery murmured.  “I don’t like violence though.  If they’re willing to make peace, we should be too.”

“Done?” John asked.

“For now,” Lucy said, watching the practitioners get to their feet.  Hadley Hennigar had roused enough to be the one dragging Maddox away, now.  Mr. Musser carried one of the other students.  It might have been Silas.  Just along for the ride with Maddox, maybe.

“Let’s head back.  Careful.”

Avery went ahead.  Snowdrop went human and followed her.

Lucy trailed, trying to listen for any scraps of conversation.

Nothing of note except frustration and anger.

They had to wait for a group of students to pass through the middle of all the workshops.  Another patrol, moving at a light jog, in the general direction of the explosion and the evacuating wounded.  The chance those flashlights would illuminate them was slim, but Lucy wasn’t about to risk it, and it seemed John had a similar mentality.

“Hello, dearies.”

Lucy jumped a little.  She spotted the monocle reflecting the porch light from one of the workshops.

“I’m glad you’re safe,” Avery said.

“Thanks to John’s preparations,” Gashwad growled.  He drew forward from the deeper shadows of the woods, casting aside bits of trash.  He had bits of glass and burned tacks dug into his flesh on one side of his face and shoulder, cuts, scars, and gritty bits where it looked like clusters of smaller fragments had bitten in, like bad zits.

And he was smiling.

“You did well,” John said.

“I’m guessing you had fun?” Lucy asked.

Gashwad cackled, nodding.

Other goblins were emerging now.  The one Avery had mentioned, with its brain in one end of a clear balloon, stuck in one ear and out the other.  There were a trio of goblins with oversized eyes, ears, and fangy mouth, respectively, who couldn’t seem to help but climb and fall over one another as they tried to get places, and a goblin with strips of white shopping bag bag tied to an arrangement of strings in a really bad fake beard.

“What did you end up getting done?” Lucy asked.

Gashwad reached down, then held up some nails.  Lucy almost touched them, then drew her hand back.

“Rusty nails,” Gashwad said.  “Hollow, see?  And if you put four together, in a wall without wires?”

He put them in the dirt, spaced out like a square, then pushed down.

The dirt slid down.

“Makes a door?” Avery asked.

“We can allow ourselves into the big building when the time comes.  If they don’t get clever and find what Gashy did,” Toadswallow explained.  “When and if you need a jolly old distraction, you’ll have it.  And you lot will be with me, am I right?  You’ve been kept out for long enough, you’ve got catching up to do.”

The little goblins made noises of assent.

“We’ll leave you to it.  Be safe,” Lucy said.  “It’s dangerous here.  If this is all you do, your obligation to support us is more than discharged.”

“Oh, we’re having fun,” Toadswallow smiled, mouth drawing out at the sides until it was ear-to-ear.  “Let’s have at it.  Keep an ear out about America Tedd’s whereabouts, will you?”

Lucy nodded.

Lucy, Avery, and John headed back to the workshop, checking the coast was clear before crossing from the treeline to the back door.  Verona held the door open, holding a finger to her lips.

At the front door, a group was addressing Elizabeth, who refused to let them in.

“It was a brazen attack.  Sabotage of the school.”

“And you’re accusing Liberty?”

“She’s a goblin practitioner.”

“I can testify.  Liberty’s been here since she got back.”

“Studying!” Liberty called out.  “You know, like we’re supposed to be able to do, except Bristow’s a shitty headmaster!?”

“That’s not like you, Liberty!” a girl at the door called out.

“You don’t know me, shitmongler!”

“We’ll be brief with any and all interviews, we just want to get to the bottom of this,” the guy at the door said.

“Too bad.  My workshop, my rules, and I say no intruders.”

“How many people do you have in there?”

“Ask Bristow’s pet augurs if you really want to know.  I rented this place.  Now leave.  You’re breaking rules as long as you’re here.”

“Students aren’t allowed to brazenly suborn the headmaster.”

“For one thing, as far as we’re aware, he’s not officially headmaster.  Nothing was signed, nothing was given.  That’s not in the handbook or rules.  It’s an expectation, not a hard rule, and if we want to talk hard rules and expectations, Mr. Bristow’s violated several.  We paid tuition, we get classes.  He has no grounds to stop us.”

“Primacy.”

“Really?  That’s weak.”

“It’s enough.  He started the school and ran it before, he ceded it, the person he ceded it to abandoned his duties and lost his support, so who else does it go to, except Bristow?”

“It’s weak, Jeremiah.  Now leave, or I’ll petition Raymond Sunshine about the disruption in my special projects.”

“Good job, Elizabeth,” Lucy murmured, as the door closed.

“Did it go okay?” Verona asked.

Elizabeth approached, standing to one side, arms folded.

“A little close for my comfort,” Avery said.  “But we have our distraction for later, if we need one.”

“All that for a distraction,” Lucy said.  She pulled off her mask, and gave her hood a shake, so her witch’s hat would turn from a bit of a brim at the front and an exaggerated point to a normal hat again.  She knocked the mask against the wall twice, and the glamour broke, coming off as dust, returning the mask to its normal colors.

“It’s groundwork,” Verona said.

“Aye,” Alpeana said, from the ceiling.  “You an’ I will go out efter, willnae we?”

“Aye,” Verona echoed her.  “Yeah.  Others are barred from the school premises, but if they’re invited or accompanied by a practitioner, they can slip inside.  And it’s not technically hurting anyone if you carry out your official duties, is it?  You’re just… smoothing out wrinkles and maybe giving someone cause for introspection and self improvement?”

“Mibbie, aye.”

“Be safe,” Lucy said.

“I think Tymon and Talos were planning something too,” Elizabeth said.

“We are,” Talos said.  He and his brother had laid out a few blankets, stacking them on top of one another.  It looked like the bottom one, like with many of the makeshift beds, was a fire blanket.  The others were sheets.  They lay on them, Talos on one side, Tymon on the other, and Jorja in the middle with her phone out, watching a show.

“Be careful,” Lucy said.  “They were out in force.”

“Speaking of safe and careful, that thing still hasn’t popped?” Verona asked.

Lucy looked down at the Nettlewisp.  She made a face.

“Might be time to rinse it down the drain,” Verona said.

“That might set it off, and curses bounce back to the user.  We were theorizing this might too.”

“It’s nice to know they aren’t spying on us, at least,” Verona said.  “Elizabeth said that observation can affect the outcome of rituals, and since she requisitioned this space for a project, and she gets to set rules about this space… she can force them to not get involved.  Or if they try, it’s technically a violation of rules.”

Lucy nodded.

Tashlit, who had been sitting down, rose to her feet.  She looked over, peering at the flower.  It was hard to look Tashlit in the eyes, because there were so many places to look.

“Shield your eyes as you wash?” Avery suggested, to Lucy.

In the background, Tashlit moved her hands all over, as if trying to cover every eye with two arms.  She clutched at the loose skin on her arms, pushing it around to cover the eyes that peeked through tears.

“You should be fine so long as you stand back,” Verona told her, smirking.

The corner of the workshop had a little kitchen area, with a sink, hotplate, and coffee maker.  Lucy put the water on, and rested her hand on the counter.  The ‘blossom’ of the nettlewisp stirred.

“Little bit of water at first.  Point it away, shield your eyes,” Avery said.

Lucy made a small anxious sound.  “It feels like trying to burn off a giant firework that’s strapped to my hand.”

“Don’t say that, because glamour listens,” Verona said.  “Just rip off the bandaid.”

“You’re tough, you’re brave, you’ve done the implement ritual,” Avery said.

“Right,” Lucy said.

“We’re all going to be dead or hurting when this is all over,” Snowdrop said.

Avery put her hand over Snowdrop’s head and pulled Snowdrop back into a hug-from-behind.

Lucy covered her eyes and shoved her hand under the water.

The water made it heavier, and glamour-tinted water ran down her arm.

She stopped, pulling back, as she realized.  Her hand was lower than her shoulder.

Glamour-touched water had flowed uphill, up her arm.  And now as the water ran off, the glamour remained, condensing into thin tendrils and vines.

The ‘delicate’ flower with its bristling needles and blade-like leaves was still sitting in her palm, and it now had roots running along the length of her arm, colorful, and tipped with spikes like sewing needles, narrow, long, and gleaming.  It made it hard to move her arm without stabbing herself.

“Ooh, that’s far fae guid,” Alpeana said, from the ceiling.

“Not helping,” Lucy muttered, under her breath.

“Crap, crap, crap,” Avery muttered.

“It’ll be fine,” Verona said, calm.

“Don’t gainsay yourself,” Avery said.

“I’m not and I won’t.  It’ll be fine,” Verona said, looking from Avery to Lucy, who held her arm out, rigid, hand clutching the bristling, stirring blossom, staring at the thing.  “It’ll be fine.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  She made herself relax.  “What have you been eating, little flower-thing?  I don’t think it’s just water.”

“Attention?” Verona asked.  “Ignore it, and it might wither.  Let’s get settled, sleep, and tackle it in the morning.”

Lucy had to fight the notion that she could wake up and find the vines had crawled across her entire body, multiple flowers manifesting.  She pushed it out of mind, forcing herself to be calm, and nodded.

Sleep.  They needed rest to tackle what came next.  Bristow would surely retaliate.  They’d have to be alert.

“Get settled,” Verona said.  “I’ll go out to take Alpeana around to the school, and then we’ll sleep.”

Lucy settled on the blankets Verona had arranged, lying on her side, arm outstretched, the needles resting on the floor beside the blanket, her hand heavy.

The bang startled Lucy awake.  It startled everyone awake.

“Jesus!” Elizabeth called out.

Lights came on.

Lucy’s arm felt weirdly light.  She sat up, stretching her arm, and flexed her hand.  Her muscles were sore, her hand stiff, but not in a way that didn’t feel like, well, she’d had a dead weight shackled to her palm for hours and hours.

“Nettlewisp went off,” Avery said.

Verona pointed.

The needles studded the ceiling, and one of the points it penetrated the ceiling crackled with a bit of electricity.

“Did it punch through wiring?” Lucy asked, flexing and stretching her arm and hand.

“No,” Verona said.

The electricity stirred, made some vague shapes, and then stopped.  The wound in the ceiling began to bleed.  Thick, black, congealing ichor.

“Careful,” Lucy said.  “They just looked in.  We might want to check why.”

“On it,” John said.  He was awake, sitting on the table by the window.  He hopped off and looked outside.

Lucy touched her skin.  Where the nettlewisp had sat, her palm was stained shades of blue, pink, and red.  Her fingertips were black, but not from necrosis.  The tips were drawn together, until the point of the thumb and the tip of the thumbnails were hard to distinguish from one another.

“This isn’t permanent, is it?”

“I can’t imagine it is,” Verona said.

“They’re here,” John said.

More people stirred, climbing to their feet.  Tymon, Lucy, and Elizabeth.

They went to the door.

“You three!” Estrella Vanderwerf called out.  “I’m passing you a message!”

Lucy didn’t speak.  Off to her left, Verona and Avery looked through the window.

“Use tricks like that to block us, we’ll throw Nicolette at them again and again.  She likes you, but maybe if we make her face your defenses like this enough times, she’ll change her mind.”

“What are you doing to her?”

“Only what she’s agreed to,” Estrella said.  “We’ll be paying more visits.  I hope you’re keeping an eye out.”

As easily as they’d come, they walked back to the main school building.

Lucy rubbed at her arm.

Tashlit reached for her, and Lucy shied back a bit.

Tashlit reached down, and touched the weirdly soft, soggy flesh of her hand to Lucy’s arm.  She gave it a stroke.

The color faded a bit.

“You’re a healer?” Lucy asked.

Tashlit held her fingers close together.  ‘Small’.

“A bit,” Verona said.  “You know how Amine can do favors for his god, and that gets him credit he can spend?  And he never knows exactly how much credit he’s got?  So he’s gotta guess or make sure he has a surplus?  Tashlit can’t really do any favors or anything big, but you could say the sink fills up at a trickle, and if there’s enough in there, she can do little things.”

Tashlit made the ‘small’ gesture again.

“Thank you,” Lucy said.

Tashlit nodded.

“Did you guys manage to get a means of communication going?” Lucy asked.

“She doesn’t write, I think she lost the ability when she changed.  But we were working out some ways.  Alpeana said if she could finish her rounds here instead of dipping back home, she’d try to bring me and Tashlit together in dreams so we could have a conversation.”

“I didn’t know she could do that.  I wouldn’t mind seeing you guys in dreams.”

“That’d be fun to try, but we’ve got all day to spend together.”

Lucy nodded.

Tymon cleared his throat.

Right.

It was the middle of the night.  The Bristow faction had come to disturb their sleep and keep them on edge, and some of the people present looked like they were on edge.

More at stake.  Like families, and friendships.

And for those too young to understand, or whatever else they were, like Jorja or Dom, they were just kids who wanted to sleep.

We’re a bit chatty, Lucy thought.

She looked down at her arm as she lowered herself down to the floor.  She stared at the outstretched limb and the faded colors and weirdness at the fingertips until Elizabeth shut off the lights.

Her arm dropped to the makeshift mattress that she, Avery, Verona, and Snowdrop were sharing.  Tiny opossum feet pressed against her back as Snowdrop stretched.

Verona laid a hand on the altered arm, smiling.

Lucy felt painfully homesick as she pulled off the earring and laid it next to her pillow.

It couldn’t be easy.  Lucy tried once more to draw the circle.

It was like the chalk wasn’t a chalk line, but a pile of chalk dust, and the wind kept blowing at it.  Or she was trying to draw in iron filings and there were magnets under the ground, in elaborate shapes and arrangements.

The earring had its drawbacks, apparently.  Lucy stood, hands on hips, and looked down at the chalk, which had pulled away into spikes, curves, and star-like shapes.

“What’s this?” Verona asked.  She stepped out the back door, hair messy, and rested her chin on the railing of the back steps of the little workshop.  The wood was damp from the past few days of rain.

“I don’t think I can draw plain circles anymore,” Lucy said.  “Or it’s harder.”

“You were never ‘plain’,” Verona said.  “You had style, flourish.  You wore nice clothes and had the best hair in class.”

“You’re biased.”

“But it’s true,” Verona said, easily.  “This is a good excuse to tune your practice to be more you.”

“Hmm.”

“Go, you barbarian!” Avery called out.  “Be safe!”

Fork clamped in her teeth, Snowdrop scampered out of the workshop building, down the stairs, and onto the grass.  She wasn’t a very fast runner in animal form.

“Miss ‘I don’t need to wait in line for the toilet if I use the woods’.”

“She is a wild animal,” Lucy said.

“Yeah.  How’s your arm?”

Lucy held it out.

Ninety-five percent better.  She could see the shadows here and there, and there was darkness like bruising under her fingernails.

“Not bad.  I guess you have to be really deliberate about the counterattack you’re doing, then.”

“I’m just glad Nicolette was forced to spy on us.  They could’ve hurt us more by not.”

“Maybe she knew that?” Verona asked.  “It’d be nice to have a conversation with her.  I didn’t have the impression we were enemies now.”

“No,” Avery agreed.  “What’s this diagram?”

“My earring implement is mucking this up.”

“So go along with it?” Verona asked.  “What are you trying to do?”

“Magic circle for a gated connection block.”

“Ah ha.  Well, I guess you’d want something to radiate out, and something to receive.  If you wanted to play into the earring, then you’d want to make clear declarations in the earring’s language.”

“I’m here, notice me, pay attention.  And… this ear, it’s framed, it’s listening.”

“Okay, so…”

Verona knelt down, helping as Lucy drew on the pavement beside the back steps of the workshop.

“Half circles.  Think satellite dish.  And we want to make this decorative, so if we repeat the pattern, if we have a curl here, maybe mime the shape of the outside of the ear…”

“Maybe,” Lucy said.  “That feels too art-y.  Like, if I’m going to re-learn some diagrams and customize them…”

“I guess to do a barrier, you want something radiating or shining out, right?  So it’d be more like a star or a sun than a circle.”

“Sun, yeah.”

“So what if we did a triangle shape, but put the interlinked diamonds of the connection sign into the design?”

“Okay.”

“And then do that around one side, and link it to a receiver… where we designate the target.”

Lucy bent down, then, opening her laptop on the edge of the porch to check spelling and address, wrote it down in chalk.  That, at least, didn’t fight her.  If anything it was a bit easier to get the chalk to do as she wanted as it wore down.

“Ah,” Verona said.  “Well, I won’t intrude.  We’ll guard the door.”

“I don’t want the augurs to listen in either.”

“Then radiate out noise and static.  Make it violent and unpleasant to try.  Like this, and like this, and… there.  And a bit of an alarm or cut to the call if they do break through and start listening, including anyone around the corner.  That’s better, right?”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “Thank you.”

“Cool.  We’ll leave you to it, then.”

“Maybe as soon as Snowdrop- there she is.”

Snowdrop came back, munching on something.

“What are you eating?” Avery asked.

Snowdrop turned human to stomp her way up the steps.

Lucy moved things around, unplugging her laptop from the wall and then made her way down the steps and back around to the circle, which looked more like a sun giving birth to a star made of overlapping lines of writing.  The static noise filled her ears as she approached, then died as she crossed into the circle itself.

She sat, her back to the wall.  She could feel the damp ground against her butt and the bottom edges of her thighs. A bit uncomfortable, but there weren’t a lot of locations that worked.

She hit the ‘call’ button.

It took a second, then the call connected.

The woman on screen was First Nations, but very different from Jessica, with a fairly stout frame and round face, with very red lips, and a cigarette between her lips that already had the stains from the lipstick.

“Hello?” Lucy tried.

“Hello, you’re coming through okay.  Hi Lucy, how’s my volume?”

“It’s good.  It’s good, thank you for agreeing to this on short notice.”

“Of course.  Are you okay?  You’re away at a camp, was it?”

“I was.  I am.  Yes.  Not really a camp so much as a summer school.”

“Commendable.”  Dr. Mona smiled.  She took a second to settle in, adjusting her chair and moving tea to where she could reach it.

It made it easier, a bit at least, for Lucy to relax as well.

“You’re outdoors?”

“Yep.  Getting some sunlight.  There are too many people outdoors.  Sorry, by the way, if I get interrupted or the call drops.  I’ll try to email you if it does and I can’t reconnect.”

“Whatever works for you.  But you sounded anxious in the email you sent me at… what was it, five forty five in the morning?  You couldn’t sleep?”

“No, not that well,” Lucy said.

She didn’t like admitting weakness.  But talking to Dr. Mona felt like talking to Booker.  Like Dr. Mona was a rock.  Chill and very secure in herself.  It was cool.

“What’s happening?”

“A lot of stuff.  A student, uh, I think she and her family have been kicked around a lot by the government, prison system, that sorta thing.  She was working on something really major for her cousin and it got totally and completely ruined by this total jerkass.  And that was the first of a bunch of things that all happened.  There’s all this history and fighting between teachers, and my friends and I are getting dragged into it.  Depending on how it goes, we might go home early and I don’t want to.”

“We’ve talked about history a lot.”

“There’s always history.”

“If you’re unhappy there, is it the worst thing in the world if you have to go?”

“A part of me wishes it would happen,” Lucy confided.  “But it would break Verona’s heart if we did, probably.”

“How’s she taking all of this?”

“She’s great.  She’s ridiculous.  She’s always been weird and this is so her.  I don’t know how to handle it.”

“And Avery?”

“I think Avery’s resilient when it comes to stuff like this.  I don’t think she loves it, and she was especially hurt because the girl I mentioned before, working on the thing for her cousin?  She felt a connection to her.”

“Ah.  Well we’ve talked about some of that.”

“Not romantic.  But… they were similar in ways.  Maybe Jessica was someone Avery wanted to be like, later.  Traveled and stuff.  Plus, you know, Avery may be one of the most caring people I know.”

“So it hit her hard.  I can see that.”

“But she’s into this.  She’s tackling it.  But it’s like, Verona, the more we’re in this the more I feel like Verona’s pulled into it all and I’m pushed out and that sucks.  I had a dream that we were separated.”

“Related, do you think?”

“It kind of happened before this really kicked off.  Or during, but… more like it felt a bit prophetic.”

“It’s possible the hints were there before things got worse, and your subconscious took them in.”

Lucy nodded.

There was a noise in the distance.  She turned her head.

“New earring?”

“Oh,” Lucy said.  She touched her ear.  “Verona and Avery made it together.”

“Those are some pretty terrific friends, I’d say.  That’s beautiful.”

“Thank you,” Lucy said, smiling.  “Do you think I’m being paranoid?  I should listen to this?”

“I remember being back in University, I went to a student learning workshop, and we were given tips on taking tests.  We were told that those who stuck with their first answer on multiple choice tests did far better than those who second-guessed themselves and changed their answers.  If you have worries, you’re having dreams and you feel like they could be prophetic, then you should trust your feelings.”

“Okay.”

“Even if there’s nothing to it, I don’t think you lose anything by trying to be a good friend, and paying extra attention when she’s a good friend, making you a gift like that.”

“Okay,” Lucy said, smiling.

“I have to ask.  With everything that’s going on, and what sounds like a minority student that was targeted, are you safe?”

Lucy looked down at her arm, faintly discolored.  She really hoped it would go back all the way to normal.

“Am I ever?”

“I’d hope so.”

Lucy let out a bit of an inconsistent, shuddering sigh.

“If you aren’t, I can call your mom.  I could help you navigate that phone call.  Or if her work is a problem, you said her schedule was inconsistent, she can’t always get away?  I could work with her on getting you on a bus.”

“It’s tough to time things sometimes, unless there’s advance notice.  That’s not really it.  I need to be here.  I want to learn this stuff.  It’s just… an awful lot of really old, intense, powerful families.”

“Ah, that kind of place.  Money to spare?”

“Kind of.  Old rivalries, even between teachers.  And then me, only non-white person at this whole place, after Jessica left over her thing with her relative.  And none of us three really belong but I’m the only one of us three who seems to really feel that.”

“High pressure.”

“Yeah.  In a lot of ways.  Like, a lot of eyes on us.  Some hostile.  Pressure like that.  And also like, we’re deep underwater and everything’s harder.  It helps, knowing I could call and get that bus or whatever.”

“Absolutely.  Your safety takes priority.”

Lucy nodded.

Dr. Mona ventured, “So Verona’s as happy as… I don’t want to say a pig in mud, because she’s not a pig.”

“She’s a bit of a pig, if you look at her room, but she’s like a cat.  And here she’s a cat in a yarn store.”

“Good one.”

“Thank you,” Lucy said.

This was so much better than her last therapist.  It felt more like a conversation, but it wasn’t like conversations with Verona or even Avery, where it could sometimes feel like she was walking uphill every step of the way.

“A cat in a yarn store.  You’re- would I be wrong in guessing it’s like a technology camp?  And she’s into computers?”

“There’s some technology stuff, yeah.  And she’s into almost everything here.”

“And it’s hard to connect to that when you feel so out of your element.”

“Yeah.”

Lucy wanted to elaborate but she wasn’t sure how, so she shrugged.

“And Avery?  How would you describe her?  We touched on it earlier.  She’s distracted?”

“A bit.  Because of Jessica.  Angry.  But she’s relatively okay.  It’s hard to put my finger on it.  I don’t know her as well.”

“Maybe this is a time to do that?  It could be that she feels nearly as isolated there as you do.  Or she doesn’t but if she’s relatively okay, she could be more of a listening ear.  You seem to both have feelings over this incident with Jessica.  Maybe it would be constructive for the two of you to do something to reach out?”

“It seemed like Jessica was mad at everyone, us included.  I’m not sure it would be welcome.”

“You’ve told me you had trouble connecting to her, like you did with Verona.  That’s a tall order, considering your history.”

“That word keeps coming up.”

“And perhaps this is a time to start?  What do you think?”

“I think it sounds like a plan.”

“Is there a parents day coming up?  Because if you had that to look forward to-”

Lucy laughed.

“What?  I thought you and your mom got along.”

“We do.  We do.  But this place… if there was a parents day, then people would die.”

“Ahh.  I’m so sorry it’s such a hostile place.”

“So am I.  I’m not surprised though.”

“You were apprehensive, before going.  I guess it goes to show, trust your instincts.”

“About that, I wanted to touch on something from a conversation yesterday evening-”

There was more commotion.  Lucy felt a sinking feeling in her gut.

“Can I get back to you?  Just need to see what’s happening,” Lucy told Dr. Mona.

“Of course.  I hope everything’s okay.”

Lucy had already put her laptop down and Dr. Mona grew faint as she hurried over.  She kept facing it, watching to make sure it was okay, as she walked around to the corner of the building.  John stood at the corner, arms folded.

Dom and Elizabeth were at the front end of the parking lot.  With a pair of adults who looked awfully similar to them.

Elizabeth glanced at Lucy, then mouthed the word ‘sorry’.

“What happened?” Lucy asked.

“Their parents were called.  They came to take them home.  They don’t feel it’s safe for them here.”

“Elizabeth is leaving?”

“The money spent for her remaining time at the workshop was refunded,” John said.

Meaning we don’t have a place to stay at night.  We have to stay in the school?  Split up and at the mercy of the staff?

Lucy walked back to her laptop.  She plunked herself down heavily.

“Is everything okay?” Dr. Mona asked.

“It’s nothing you could help with.  It’s institutional.  It’s this place, these families.”

“I could call the person in charge, or we could have a video conference, and I could try being your advocate.  I’ve helped students with schools, things like boy scouts, and disability accommodations before.  I’m pretty darn good at it.”

I can only imagine how that would go, Lucy thought, wry.

But the wryness didn’t put a smile on her face.  Her expression, visible in the little window in the corner of the screen, was serious, frustrated, eyebrows knit together in perpetual concern.

“Can we talk later this week, maybe?”

“We can definitely try.  Do you want to make an appointment?”

“Can it be last minute, like this?  It’s okay if not.”

“Message me.  We’ll work something out.”

“Okay.  I should go handle this.  Thank you, for taking the call.  And for this.”

“Of course, Lucy.  Even if things start getting better, do you think you could send me a message, let me know?  I’ll be worrying.”

Lucy nodded.

“Alright. Good luck.”

“Bye.”

Lucy hung up the call and turned off the laptop.

I should go, she’d said.  She’d terminated the call so she could leave.

She sat where she was, her butt a bit damp from the wet pavement that hadn’t dried out in the shadow of the big building, her back to the wall, hair a bit messy, and her lightweight laptop heavy against her lap.

There were fifty things that jumped to mind as priorities: people to talk to, instructions from her therapist to follow through on, on Avery, on sorting herself out, stuff to plan, countermeasures and defenses to prepare, stuff to manage with the Kennet Others here, and stuff to do here for the long term in Kennet, with the Carmine Beast and everything.

So many things, in fact, that she did none of it, sitting in the shadows beside the workshop, scratching absently at her arm, for just a little while.

Gone Ahead – 7.3

Avery

Avery pulled off her running shoes, and held them in one hand while holding a box of black-painted wood.  Her feet slipped on the wet grass and mud of the bank, sliding into the water.  Small stones nicked her feet, and the shift in her balance made the backpack she was one-strapping slide down to her elbow, making her wobble.  Snowdrop clambered along her arm, trying to tug on it, which didn’t really help.

“Careful.  Don’t want to dunk that in there,” Lucy warned.

“I know!”

“Do you want to be still, I’ll come in and help you balance.”

“I think I’m good.”

“Okay.”

Avery crossed to the far side of the river, walking on shallow rock that was a bit slimy with creek life and deprived of most of its traction by the passage of water.  She ascended the bank, which was being pelted by the spray of the river.  More water from more rain recently, she guessed.  Bare toes dug into mud.

“Excuse me,” she said, setting the box, and her bag down.  Snowdrop hopped down and became human.

“Not guarding this.  That’s your job.”

“Thanks.”

Avery made her way back down the bank, then washed her feet, before grabbing a tree and using it to haul herself up a dryer section.  She used her hands to wipe the worst of the moisture from her feet.

Verona and Lucy were slower in making their way across.  John and the goblins lurked on the far side.

Tashlit-

Avery’s head turned as she saw a splash downriver.  Tashlit, fully clothed, rose up out of the water, skin not nearly as loose, eyes brighter where they peered through gaps.  The water hissed as it touched her.  She spat out a geyser of water, and it hissed and popped as it splashed down into the water.

“Feeling more yourself, Tash?” Verona called out.

Tashlit nodded, dipping her head in for a second and re-emerging, to fix her hair.

Avery felt like she needed to make conversation, so Tashlit didn’t feel left out.  “Do you spend a lot of time in the water back home?”

Tashlit shrugged.

“Too shallow?” Avery guessed.

Tashlit nodded.

“Sometimes it’s way higher.  Though lately I’ve been wondering if it was that much higher, or if my imagination is playing tricks on me.  Everything’s bigger when you’re little.”

Verona and Lucy, holding each other’s hands, made their way over to the far bank of the river.  Avery put her hand down, grabbing Verona’s, and hauled her up.  She did the same for Lucy.

“Can you not cross running water, John?” Verona asked.

“I can.  It doesn’t bother me.  But there are people following us at a distance.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.  They aren’t moving like they’re trying to catch us.  They only seem concerned with where we’re going.  Maybe they want to keep us from finding a place to get settled.”

“So we can’t make a circle and camp out at night?” Avery asked.

“Maybe.  Best to do what you need to do, before they decide to interfere or develop a better means of figuring out what we’re doing.”

“I’ve got a few tricks I put together last night,” Toadswallow said, more to John than to Avery or her friends.  “The local trash helped.  If they want to look, we can give them a jolly eyeful.”

“If we had a tight swimsuit, we could have you wear it and put you front and center,” John said.

“John, good sir!  How delightfully diabolical!”

“You’re not using anything of mine!” Lucy called out.

“Not it!” Verona called out, a second later.

“Not- damn it,” Avery muttered.

“Do you even have a swimsuit?” Lucy asked.

“I do not,” Verona said.  “In my defense, I’m horribly disorganized.”

“Fight that impulse for now,” John said.  “Now’s the time to be more organized than our pursuers.  Talk, but do what we need to do while you do it.”

“Got it,” Lucy said.  “Thanks, John.”

He gave her a curt nod in response.

“I’ll go ahead, then,” Avery said.  “Scouting locations.”

“Yo, goblins!” Verona called out.  “How do we get you across?”

“Get the bag I lended you.”  Toadswallow’s voice was a croak as he raised it.  “Get the pages, and lay them in a circle.”

“I’ll do it,” Lucy said.  “You did the goblin hole yesterday.  So if this gets messy, at least we’re sharing the mess.”

“Not complaining,” Verona said.  She raised her voice, “You’re doing the next one, Ave!”

“We’re trying to be stealthy!” Avery hissed, as she lifted the box.

Snowdrop and Avery made their way through the woods.  There weren’t many good ‘paths’, so to speak, and it involved some ducking and pushing through branches.

“We can’t stay out here tonight,” Snowdrop proclaimed.  “I don’t know anything about surviving in a place like this.  We’d get eaten alive by the ticks and mosquitoes.”

“Yeah, no, I’m not sure that’s an option, Snow.  Maybe if it was for one night, but the rest of summer?  I can just imagine going back home.”

“What a refined lady our daughter has become!  Shaped by her expensive summer trip we put so much money into!  So much time spent with high society lads and ladies!”

“Yeah, exactly.  Help me look?”

Snowdrop broke away, stomping through the woods.

Avery shifted the box to her shoulder, grunting a bit, then nearly dropped it as it grazed a branch.

After five minutes of walking, she found a hillside, and as part of that hillside she found a grouping of rocks.  It wasn’t really a cave, not in the sense that she normally thought about caves, but one shelf of rock sat at an angle, creating a wedge shaped recess into the hillside, starting at about chest height and disappearing into the ground about ten feet in.

“Snowdrop, Snowdrop, Snowdrop.  Lucy, Lucy, Lucy.  Verona, Verona, Verona.”

“Avery, Avery, Avery.”

The words weren’t audible with her ears, but tickled the back of her neck.

“Avery, Avery, Avery.”

“Okay, yeah,” she said.  “Unless you’re doing that because you’re in trouble?”

“Avery, Avery, Avery.”

“Okay!” she raised her voice.

Verona’s distant laugh could be heard.

Avery set the box down, then rubbed at her shoulder.

“I found a spot,” Snowdrop declared, as she caught up.

“Thanks, Snow,” Avery said.

“And this spot isn’t occupied.”

“Occu-” Avery started.  She backed away a bit, nudging the box with her toe to move it a bit back and out of the way.  She pulled out her phone and turned it onto flashlight.

Five pairs of eyes reflected the light at the far end of the little wedge cave.  Goblins?

No, some small animal.  Maybe weasels or skunks.

“Grrr!” Snowdrop growled, raising her hands.

The black-painted box growled, louder, and more sinister.  The eyes at the back of the cave disappeared.  Crawling out through some hole or deeper into that recessed space than the wedge seemed to suggest was there.

Aveyr started on drawing the diagram, while Snowdrop cracked the box open.

Lucy and Verona caught up.

“Dang, you cover a lot of ground,” Verona complained.

“This spot works, I think?” Avery asked.

“Aye, lassie,” Alpeana said, as she crawled out, into the darkness of the cave.  “Sorry fur the inconvenience.”

“It’s cool.  Just want to make sure you’re safe,” Avery said.

“Best way is if I git as far fae here as I can.  It helps if ye send me.  Tis harder tae travel in the day.”

“Okay,” Verona said, clapping her hands together.  “I’ll do the ritual circle.  Lucy, you want to work out the bit that points the way?  And Avery, write down the details for the target?”

“With my handwriting?”

“We are dispatching a nightmare, so your handwriting would be best,” Verona said, locking eyes with Avery.  Her expression was serious for about three seconds, before it started to crack and she smiled.

“What if I do the main body of the diagram?” Avery asked.

“That might be better,” Lucy answered, “but if you want to chase that idealized self that Guilherme’s been working with you on, you might want to consider how handwriting plays into it.”

“Bah!” a voice croaked.

The goblins had caught up.  John followed behind them.

“Fakery and glitter.  Real growth comes from being able to clench your gut and take a strong punch,” Toadswallow said.  “Clench your fists, throw a punch.  A faerie can’t teach that.”

“Well, I am trying to get lots of exercise.”

“I’m talking about grit and gristle!  Getting proper fat-”

“Gettin’ mean,” Gashwad growled.

“-and getting more red in your red meat, for when you need it.”

Gashwad added, “Twist and knot muscles in your back into shapes that could be mistaken for a cornered rat, then reward those muscles with some pretty piercings.  Good rat muscle, how nasty you are.  Have some claws and teeth.”

“Yeah, see, I don’t want to be ugly or twisted,” Avery protested.

“You’re already the ugliest duckling,” Snowdrop told her, reaching up to pat Avery’s cheek.

“Quack,” Avery said.

“Bah,” Toadswallow grunted.  “Twisted is useful.”

“Stop pressuring the girl, Toad,” John said.

“I have an image in my mind’s eye about what I want to be, and I think I’m taking baby steps to get there.  I don’t know what big steps I could take, except the Paths, and they’re… nonspecific.  Less like I’m chiseling or adjusting and more like I’m throwing random objects at a statue of myself.”

“You want to get the girls, am I right?  I could teach you ways.”

“Getting girl advice from Toadswallow?” Snowdrop asked.  squeezing Avery’s arm.  “How far you’ve come.”

Avery shook her head.  “Okay, how about we send Alpeana where she’s going?  You guys are doing a terrific job of backing us up, I think all three of us are grateful.  But things got sour, so let’s make sure you’re secure in your vulnerable moments.  We’ll send Alpy away in daylight hours, make sure Goblins won’t be bound while sleeping-”

In response to that, Gashwad yawned.

“Not objecting, dear girl,” Toadswallow gruntled the words.  “All I’m saying is I could tell you ways to handle yourself that would turn the heads of hundreds of winsome and woesome dames.”

“I only want to turn the one,” Avery said.  She looked at the image on the phone Verona was holding, then began pouring the chalk with care.  Lucy was doing her own part.  “One cool, nice, awesome girl.  But there aren’t any standing around with flashing signs telling me where they are, so I want to work on me.  Being the me I think would be coolest.”

“Then use my methods, and turn that one girl’s head hundreds of times.”

“That kills the girl,” Gashwad whispered loudly.  “Twists the head off.”

“Okay, enough.  Seriously!” Avery raised her voice.  “No goblin advice wanted.  No snarky comments from you…”

Snowdrop clapped her hands to her heart.

“And you two…”

“Drawing a diagram.  Thinking a bit about the steps you could take on self image that aren’t baby steps.  Or super dependent on glamour.”

“You’re doing fine standing up for yourself, and I’m stuck figuring out how to draw with my earring as a factor.  The books didn’t really explain this, so I’m having to feel it out.  If you ever want advice, if there’s no imminent crisis, then I’m happy to help you brainstorm.”

“Thank you.”

“Might as weel seize the moment,” Alpeana cut in.  She was lying on her belly in the cave, chin in the dirt, hair all around her, bleeding into the darkness.  “Tae tell ye all.”

“Tell us what?”

“I wrapped up late lest nicht, ye were knackered.  Then ye had tae kist me up, ah haven’t had th’ chance tae report.”

“Please, do tell,” Lucy said.

“Ill dreams flow fae an uneasy mind, aye?  Tae mony are uneasy.  Mair in th’ school noo than thare are in a’ oor toon, some nights.”

“Somehow that’s not too surprising,” Verona said.

“I was focusing on this, sorry Alpeana,” Lucy said.  “What was that?”

“Lots of uneasy minds.”

“Ah put feet tae th’ fire tae see wha couldnae take this.  How tha lads and lassies couldnae take it, too.”

“Were there any?” Avery asked.

“Oh, aye.  Wabbit links.  Kinch is, a dinnae ken th’ names. In a nightmare, the written word is a right fankle.  Thay dinnae oft hear their names, either.”

“Could you draw?  In the dirt?” Verona asked.

Alpeana reached out, shying back from direct sunlight.  Verona moved her bag to provide more shade.

Avery focused on the diagram.

“A’ve been thinking.  Aboot my gift fae ye three.”

“Didn’t want to bring it up, but there’s a scrap of paper in one of my notebooks that’s missing a checkmark in a box,” Lucy said.

“Had a thought.  Teuk some contrivin’, bit I think I hae th’ means.  Worked oer it wit oor Tashlit.  A wey tae gab at one anoher.”

“A way to talk?”

“Ah will need a bawherr of payment, or ah’ll be boggin’ fur anythin’ else, bit if ye’ll want tae blather at someone in yer dreams, ah kin see aboot puttin’ ye’n thaim in th’ identical steid in th’ dreamscape.”

“Wait, what?” Lucy asked.  “I think I got ninety-five percent of that, but I’d like to one hundred percent it.”

Toadswallow spoke up, “You’ve got to cross her palm with silver or some such, give her a bit of power.  She’ll play the part of the old telephone operator.  Connect the dreams.”

“Aye.”

“And then we can talk to them?”

“Shuid be someone who haes ‘greed in advance, aye?”

“So like, us to any of the hometown Others?” Avery asked, avoiding using ‘Kennet’, just in case they were being watched.

“Aye.  Write it doon oan a scrap o’ paper.  Seal some power intae wax or summat, ah’ll take note.”

“How easy is that to trace?” Lucy asked.

“Nae’t a clue.  Bit ah can keep watch some.”

“And if we talked to someone here, and got permission, would that work?”

“Aye. But th’ wrong body cuid decipher it, trace hings back tae me, or th’ auld hometoon.  Especially oan a secoint ca’.  Micht be inevitable oan a third.”

“So it’d have to be someone we trust,” Verona said.  “Or someone who can’t share if they do find out.”

“That’s a short list to go over,” Lucy said.  “Nicolette, Zed, and Alexander.”

“Aye,” Verona said.

“You keep adopting Alpeana’s accent when you’re around her too long,” Avery said.

“Says you, calling people wet tubes.  It’s a mental mode switch.  I’m the best person here at understanding Nat, after Doglick chewed most of her tongue off, and understanding Alpy, and all that.  But as in so many things Practice-related, it comes at a price.”

“Of sounding like a tryhard?” Lucy asked.

“Ow.  Okay, first picture.  Round face, except maybe that’s how Alpeana draws faces.”

“Na, tis round. Black locks, wore a bunnet.”

“Bunnet?  Bonnet?  Hat?” Avery asked.  “Kass?  Part of Yadira’s crew.”

“They were kind of on the outs even before this thing happened.”

“Then a lassie, youngest o’four.  Ah’ll hain ye th’ drawin’.”

“That’d have to be Mccauleigh Hennigar, wouldn’t it?” Avery asked.

Probably.  There could be other students who are youngest of multiple siblings, who just don’t have those siblings at this school.  About our age?  In the same room as two other siblings?” Lucy asked.

“Aye.”

“Mccauleigh, then.  We haven’t seen much of her, despite the similar ages.  Sticks pretty close to her siblings.”

“What were the dreams?” Avery asked.  “This feels icky.”

“Icky but necessary,” Lucy said.  “We can be sure they’re prying at every secret or vulnerability of ours they can find.”

Alpeana walked them through the dreams.

For Kass, it was set at the end of term.  Kennedy got everything Kassidy tried to strive for, including letters of recommendation from teachers, from Bristow, boys, and even things from their room that Kass had brought, including a stuffed animal and some magic items. When she complained, teachers and the family that came to pick them up told her to quiet down and be civilized.

Culminating in Kennedy getting into her family’s car and everyone driving her off, leaving her on campus alone with Durocher.

For Mccauleigh, it was being home, with a red light shining under an ominous door.  People’s voices in various rooms, and Mccauleigh chased Alexander’s as Alexander talked about all sorts of practices.  But each time Mccauleigh completed the circuit of maze-like rooms, that door with the red light shining out from the other side was open a bit wider, Mccauleigh a bit more nervous about slipping past, even crawling under furniture and passing through other rooms to avoid passing the door.

Until there were no escape routes, and the door was wide open, the sounds and screams from within too loud for Mccauleigh to hear Alexander’s voice.

Then every step, no matter the direction, took Mccauleigh a few feet closer to the door, then inside.

“Alexander was her way out?” Verona asked.

“Maybe,” Lucy replied, making eye contact with Verona.

“Th’ seers an’ augurs were restless, aye?  No kip for tha wicked, but I thought tha’ it was best if I strayed well clear.”

“Yeah.  Be safe,” Avery said.

“And the last one, aye?  The teacher?  Th’ yin with techy-boo.  Ah couldnae git close fer he haes protections.  Patrols, gates, riddle-ways an’ traps protectin’ th’ dream roads ah’d hae tae tak’ tae get claise.  Bit I culd see from afar, he daesn’t sleep easy either.”

“Raymond Sunshine,” Lucy said.

“Sorry ah wasn’t muir help.”

“It’s a starting point.  Cracks in Bristow’s faction, people to talk to.”

“Aye.  I’ll leave ye ta that, then.”

“What name am I putting down?” Verona asked.

“If ye have any suggestions, ah could go tha’ way.  If nae, ye could put doon tha name Douglas ‘Douga’ Fritch.  Teuk his ailing grandfather’s dosh n’ motor-carriage-a-doo.  Willnae take the auld man’s calls.  Stewin’ in it, he is.”

“Douga Fritch,” Verona said.  “Which direction?”

Alpeana pointed.

“Actually, is there a chance you could take a request?” Avery asked.

“Aye. Could.  Easier if they’re troubled.”

“A message more than a nightmare.”

“Augh, och, ah’ve my duties, it’s not so easy as that.  What I’m offering ye lot, a gift ta connect ye, that’s different.  Builds oon tha bridges and connections, dinnae?”

“If you could find a way.  We don’t have a great way to get in touch with that group, especially if Bristow is keeping tabs on all of them.  But… Daniel Alitzer.  His sister is a huge problem as long as she’s here.  Daniel might be the only person she listens to.”

“Messing with Daniel, even talking to Daniel, might be justification for her to come after us,” Lucy said.

“She’d never!” Snowdrop chimed in.  “No matter what!”

“The piercing girl?” Toadswallow asked.  “Snowdrop’s right.  She’ll come for you eventually.”

“If your enemy is ill-tempered, provoke them,” John said.

“Really, John, my boy?” Toadswallow asked.  “Art of war?  You quoting that isn’t so different from college douchehole quoting Nietzsche.  You’re so much better than this, don’t degrade yourself so.”

John failed to hide a smile before turning his head away, looking in the direction that the group tracking them was coming from.

Gashwad commented, “What if- what if we take a hot poker, and we do the provoking by sticking it-”

“The principle is sound, I dare say,” Toadswallow interrupted.  “It’s a question of the man’s udder-fudging presentation.”

“Can we deal with her?” Lucy asked.  “If she comes at us mad?”

“John might be able to.  Depends what she has.”

“She’s pretty well equipped.  Makes her own weapons and things.”

“Snowdrop, wee been, ye ken this lot better than ah.  Ye traipse around tha woods with John ‘n ye cackle and git up tae no ends of mischief wi’ tha cadcow lot.  Ye ken howfur it’s, bein’ a cratur o’ the nicht, kept up in yer sleepin’ hours.  Hulp.”

“Can it wait?  Shellie?” Snowdrop asked.

“When would you be visiting Daniel?” Avery asked Alpeana.

“T’nicht?”

“Tonight, ok.  Umm.  And if you did it tomorrow, that’d be delayed until tomorrow night.  Meaning we’d have to get through the rest of today, then tomorrow?”

“Aye.  T’is so.”

“You’ll be back tonight?”

“Aye.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.

“She scares me, and I think as long as she’s here, Jessica won’t return.”

“You like this Jessica, do you?” Toadswallow asked.

“I don’t- not like that.  Not as a crush.  Or even as a friend.  She’s hard to befriend.  But I think she’s-”

“You look up to her,” Lucy said.

“Yeah.  I don’t want to be her, but I… respect her.  I can’t really fault any decisions she’s making, even if I wouldn’t make the same ones.  If she were on our side, a senior student, I’d be really happy to have someone who knows what they’re doing and what they want.”

“Especially now that Elizabeth’s gone,” Verona mused.

“Yes,” Avery agreed.  “I think Bristow got rid of everyone who could organize us, and now students are harassing us.  We can’t go anywhere without being followed, or confronted, or watched.  They’re going to try stuff when they think they can get away with it.  It’d be nice to bring someone in who’s a bit older.  Like Brie, but capable of actually getting involved.”

“A team captain?” Lucy suggested.

“Yes, exactly!”

“Our nightmare is ready and waiting!” Snowdrop cut in.

Avery looked over.

Alpeana was face down in the dirt, arms draped on the ground ahead of her.

“I’ll be honest.  I can see the line of thought.  Remove Shellie, it’s easier to get Jessica back in.  But I can sympathize with Jessica here.  Shellie’s move was nuclear tier, as I see it.  Making Shellie go away makes things worse.”

“Worse?” Avery asked.

“Jessica would want revenge, if she thought she could get away with it, or revenge by proxy, or I would, in her shoes.  You can’t get revenge on someone who isn’t here.”

“Right,” Avery said.

“We have contact details for Clem and Daniel.  Why don’t we try contacting them in a secure way.  If we want to do something about Shellie, let’s save it for tomorrow?”

Avery nodded.

“Douga Fritch, then,” Verona said, putting chalk down on wet, black dirt.  It stood out in the gloom.

Alpeana rose to her feet, as much as the cave overhang allowed.  She pointed again, and Lucy finished the triangle, with its extended elaboration.

“Can we make sure she lands in secluded darkness?” Avery asked.

“Easy enough,” Verona said.  She created an extension with a ‘darkness’ crescent in it.

“You’re getting good at this,” Lucy said.

“Studied up during your implement ritual.  Brought a ton of books in with me.  I think this looks good,” Verona said, standing up and tilting her head.  “Good work.  You’re playing into the earring a bit more.”

“A bit, maybe.”

The diagram was a triangle, aimed at pointing to a distant point.  Lucy had handled the pointing and targeting, Verona the writing, time and place, and Avery the basic framework.

Alpeana ventured out from darkness to gloom, touching the circle, then huddling in it.  She looked down and around, wary.

“It’s not a binding,” Avery said.

“Aye.”

“Just needs a bit of power,” Verona said.

Each of them took a different point on the triangle, touching it.  Lucy stood to the side of the extended point.

“Ah’ll check back home, be back in the wee hours.  Watch yerselves.”

“You too.”

To your target,” Lucy whispered.

Alpeana’s darkness boiled up and swallowed her, the darkness darting off into the distance, zig-zagging to keep to shadows.

“To do that offensively, we’d need a real crack in the defenses, right?” Lucy asked.

“Coup and claim.  Or coup and justification,” Verona said.  “Beating them down or having a justified revenge motive.”

“Maybe Jessica’s thing?” Avery asked.  “We could have her help send Alpeana.”

“Reveals too much,” John said.  “About Alpeana.  About our methods.”

Avery nodded.

“We’ll leave the diagram here?  It should be mostly okay without rain.”

“We can protect it,” Verona said.  “If Alpeana’s going back and forth, having a tidy way of her leaving is good.”

“We’d have to change the target, unless we want to really ruin this Douglas guy’s summer,” Avery said.

“Where are we with the pursuers?” Lucy asked.

“Tashlit’s keeping an eye out, she says she’s comfortable in the water, she doesn’t think they could get her.”

“She might not be wary enough,” Lucy said.

“I hung back for a minute, to see.  They stopped about two minutes’ walk from the water.  They didn’t want to cross.  They were worried about her, I think.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  She paused, and Avery frowned as she watched Lucy stare off into space a bit, in the direction Alpeana had gone.

“What are you thinking?” Avery asked.

“Wait,” Verona said.

Verona bent down, and off to the side, she drew a connection breaker.  The circle around the edge was broad.

“There are major forces keeping an eye on me,” John said.  “Nothing related to this.  Do you need me to be part of this conversation?”

Major forces?  The judges?

Verona looked at Avery and Lucy.

“I don’t think so?” Avery guessed.

“Okay.  Carry on, I’ll stretch my legs a bit.”

John walked off.

The circle was drawn around them.  The goblins and Snowdrop remained.

“I’m thinking a lot of things,” Lucy said, quiet.  “I don’t like this.  In my implement ritual, my earring told me to be confident about my gut feelings.  My gut tells me this is bad.  Being in a hostile place, dogged at every step, the dirty looks, the stuff they’re doing to other students…”

“We came here to learn what we needed to know to be good practitioners for Kennet, and because being students means Alexander can’t mess with us.  He’s content to wait, but Bristow isn’t,” Avery said.  “And they’re both horrible, but… everyone in the anti-Bristow camp is hammering him on being a bad headmaster.”

“Making messes,” Gashwad muttered.  “Turning people against him, making him tired, making him distracted.  Making Warren-holes.”

“We’re laying the groundwork for later,” Verona said, looking down at the diagram, watching it slowly erode.  “The goblin holes that bridge the river and enable more movement across the campus, like what we just made.  Stuff to get Alpeana in and out.  I’ve let her in once and I carted her out after.  If we do that little trip three times then it might make it easy for her to slip in and out in the future.”

“That blade cuts both ways,” Toadswallow said.  “That third opportunity is a prime chance for them to foil her.”

“She’s being subtle.”

“Even with that,” Toadswallow told her.

“We’ve got the way into the building in progress, but that place is- Bristow’s heavy hitters are there,” Lucy said.

“We’ve got to draw them out,” Avery added.  “We need to draw Alexander in and we need to get Bristow to start showing up and stop hiding behind his people.”

“Like a coward,” Lucy said.  “Spirits are listening, let’s make it absolutely clear, whenever we can.  He’s weak, he’s short-sighted, he’s selfish, he’s a bad teacher, he’s a bad headmaster.”

Avery nodded.

“And I agree.  But how do we draw them out?” Lucy asked.

Avery shrugged.  “We were thinking about this like a siege.  And we had Elizabeth’s workshop to hole up in until things got better.  Or we could find a way to work for compromise.  But now we don’t have that spot.”

“This man sounds like some goblins I know,” Toadswallow commented.  “Can’t do the ol’ reach for someone who won’t reach around back.”

“Oh yeah,” Verona said.  “I get that.”

“Yep,” Avery said, thinking of her more stubborn siblings.

“Yeah,” Lucy said, her voice soft.  “It’s why it’s so easy to fall into the trap of hating that man.  Bristow doesn’t budge and Alexander seems to accommodate, he invites you in, or puts himself in situations where you invite yourself in…”

“Did that with Seth and he forswore Seth, apparently,” Avery said.

“It’s like he reaches out and you reach back, he shakes your hand, then doesn’t let go, as he marches off and drags you behind him,” Verona said.

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

“It’s like as in similar-ish, I didn’t mean exactly like.”

“Yeah.”

“Draw them out.”

There was a gunshot in the distance.  All three of them froze.  The sound echoed in the woods, and it was followed by a silence like what John had described before.  A lack of birds, a lack of insects.

Just quiet.

“Go!” Toadswallow called out.  “To the warren-hole!”

“The diagram-” Verona said, “If we don’t protect it from the elements and connections-”

“Can you catch up?” Lucy asked

Verona pulled her shirt up, showing the feathers in her pocket.

“Be safe!  Gashwad, protect her?”

“I will,” Toadswallow said.  “Wad can fight.”

They ran, without Verona.  Gashwad wasn’t that fast, and neither was Snowdrop, who took Avery’s hand and became opossum-sized.

Avery pulled out the black rope.

“Communicate what you’re doing.  I can hear you,” Lucy said.  “It’s clearer if you whisper.”

Avery nodded, wrapping the rope around her hand.

As she pulled ahead, she began to weave through the trees, to present a harder target.  Here and there, she used tricks she’d learned from hockey and soccer.  A turn of the head and a twist of the shoulders did a lot to suggest she was going one way.  It had taken two years for kids she was playing against to pick up on that.

She turned on her Sight.  “Sight on.  Looking out-”

Another gunshot.  She saw the bullet’s movement through the air.  She couldn’t tell where it started, but she could see the mist parting.  She could figure out the general direction of it.

“-Eleven o’clock-”

Something in the trees.

“-and it’s big,” Avery whispered.

Snowdrop hissed.  Avery turned her head, looking, and saw a pointing paw.

A grouping of magazines in soggy plastic bags, arranged in a loose circle.  Most of the warren-holes around Kennet had started out like that, but had become overgrown.  Telltale things pointed to their presence.  The way trash seemed to accumulate around them, the apertures, the way vegetation twisted, or died after it reached a certain height, to decay into stuff like the material of a nest.

“Taking the warren-hole!  Circling around!”

Avery plunged within.

It smelled like compost and mushrooms.  Pages from the magazines were stuck to the walls.  If a random kid stumbled onto a spot like this, they might not think too much of it.  It was vaguely unpleasant enough they wouldn’t come back.

But she had to dive in deeper.  There was a dip, a space only wide enough for her to pass through, the muck scraping at her sides.

But it led to another, darker tunnel.  Here, the kid would begin to panic.  Stuff didn’t add up, like the light from above finding its winding way here, or the way light shone through more pages that were stuck to the walls.  An angry note, a stick figure with boobs.

“Snow.”

She picked up Snowdrop and tossed her.

Snowdrop landed, skidding on the slope.

A lone goblin in the middle of the tunnel saw them coming and scampered off.

They ran for a few seconds, then Snowdrop grabbed a fistful of roots and stopped.  Avery’s feet skidded in mud, kicked up a pacifier with a tack in it, and she bumped into Snowdrop.

“You know your way around these back-alleys better than I do.”

“If we go much further down we won’t be able to get far enough,” Snowdrop said.  “Don’t touch that page up there.”

Avery snatched it away from the wall.  There was a hole.  “Up?”

“No.”

Avery wrapped an arm around Snowdrop, glanced around, and then black-roped them up to and through the hole to the far side.

From there, it was a climb up a tangle of roots that were wound around a rusty bike wheel.

The Warrens were one of the spaces that overlapped reality.  Actually getting inside wasn’t always easy, but if there was trash, decay, or debris, then there were often ways in and through.  Opening up a new hole was doable, but took power.  They, at least had power to spare.  The others would have spent the day’s use of the hot lead to open this up, and then some.

The more of these Warren-tunnels there were, the more goblins there were.  The more goblins there were, the more tunnels there were.

Upside: a bit of distance covered in the Warrens was a larger amount of distance covered aboveground.  Ten paces here could be thirty, fifty, or a hundred aboveground.  There were goblins here, and making or making use of a warren-hole, big or small, could make summoning or bringing more goblins in that much easier.

Downsides: there were goblins here and the further down one went, the more goblins there were.  They could lay traps, like making a bit of floor collapse, dropping the unwary into strategic zones.  She had the black rope for that.  They could also wound.  Some Others fed or preyed on goblins and traps were meant for those Others.  She couldn’t prevent that so easily with the black rope.  It wasn’t always a clear route, either.  What looked like a short tunnel could be a winding one that carried the person within to some point outside of the city limits, instead of into the city heart.

And there were dangers here.  Darker realms opened up into the warrens, sometimes, and the things that escaped those realms could reside here.  Meaner goblins could rule over areas, scaring away or enslaving the lesser ones who just wanted to make fart noises all day.  Some were barely more than animals, and, others were clever.

What she’d thought was a clear way up wasn’t, but Snowdrop seemed confident, crawling forward.

Her experience to date had been with the shallower warren-tunnels in Kennet, and only if and when she knew she could take a shower or bath after, without having to interact with siblings or parents directly after.  She’d borrowed Lucy’s shower twice, dipped into the river twice, and black-roped into her family’s bathroom for another three times.  But Kennet’s warren-holes were relatively, well, sanitized.  Goblins could come up but not through, and the most dangerous goblins didn’t even bother getting close.  Here, the longer she was present, the higher the chance there would be some snake-shaped goblin sniffing her out.

She was still in a shallow place, a step down from the uppermost level of the warrens, here.  A step down meant the compost and mushroom smell were that much worse, that mushrooms oozed like blisters on the darker tunnel walls, and there were more random objects here and there, hidden beneath the wet mud of walls and floor, or poking out of the ceiling to scrape at her scalp.  The moisture here smelled like old fast food, or household chemicals, or it had an oily, rainbow sheen that emphasized the oil and sheen and downplayed the rainbow.

“Not this way.”

Avery felt a bit of relief, hearing Snowdrop say that.  Still, she held a finger closer to her lips without actually touching.  Her hands were muddy and the mud had green streaks in it that refused to blend in with the diarrhea brown.

There was light, and it felt too bright as she emerged.

She heard another gunshot.

She’d picked the warrens as a route because it kept her down and out of the way, while any bullets were flying.  She was pretty sure John was being careful not to put any bullets in their direction, but she wasn’t going to be dumb about this.

“Surfacing.  Checking…” she whispered.

There was a crackle to the air, a buzz that wasn’t from insects, but more like bad electronics, and that crackle put a filter over everything, like there was no straight black, white, brown, or green anymore, but those colors with a layer of television static over them.

They set something loose?

A man, stuttering and jumping in a way similar to how an Echo did, crossed the path.  The effect was more pronounced near him.  He had a plastic bag over his head, and it sucked in around his nose and mouth with every attempted breath.  There was too much condensation to make out his features as anything except shadows.  The rest of him was draped in the layers of a homeless person.

The bag made audible, wet crinkling sounds as it sucked in, puffed out, sucked in, puffed out.

If he saw her, he didn’t act.  Instead, he walked up to a tree, examined it, and then reached out for a branch.  He pushed it, and the tree swiveled, rotating ninety degrees, and with every degree it moved, the light level did too.

It was like the sun went out, and there was only the static.

No air, even.

Everything returned.  Avery gasped for that air.

The hole was gone, and so was Snowdrop.  The trees, path, and everything had moved, and the temperature had dropped.  It looked like the trees were more organized.  Rows and columns, now.

He turned, head roving, and found what he was looking for.

She adjusted her bracelet, found her hockey stick, and paused to think for a second, watching him walk.

She’d meant to slip in behind, to get to the rear, maybe interfere with the practitioners.  Maybe.  Or just to flank any problems.

But she’d gotten caught up in it, somehow.

She pulled the hockey stick away, and shook the glamour free of it.

The Other looked at her, and she went still, crouching, muddy, stick in hand.

“Can we talk?” she asked.

He shook his head, plastic bag crinkling.  It sucked in around teeth, lips, nostrils, and drew close enough to the eyes to reveal the deep black shadows of the eye sockets.

It shuddered like that, straining, but refusing to tear, the moisture wicking away to reveal faint details, and then he exhaled, and it all went foggy.

“Are you bound?”

He nodded.

“Do you mean us any harm?”

He nodded.

Then he fast-walked toward her.

She backed away, and he sped up, running.

“Here!” she hollered, at the top of her lungs.  “Attacking it.

She heard John’s distant reply.

She swiped him with the stick.  She felt the heavy impact, the movement in the air, and the momentary pause in the static.

He didn’t hit the ground, he didn’t follow through.  He was gone.

She spun, turning a hundred and eighty degrees.  Nothing behind her.

She turned again, and he was there, grabbing her wrist with one hand, her throat with the other.

His weight pressed her down to the dirt path with the rows and columns of trees on either side.  She struggled to move her hand with the stick, struggled to breathe, and reached up to claw at his face, to try to tear that bag.  Because it had worked with the pig-dog man.

He pulled away, still gripping her throat.

She couldn’t move the hand with the stick, and his grip was tight enough her hand threatened to go numb, but she could adjust her grip, turn her hand, and move the length of the stick to where her other hand could reach overhead and grab it.

She hit him, in an awkward swing.  The rune flared, and he disappeared.

She gasped for breath.

She tried to climb to her feet and fell, dizzy.  She turned, looking this way, that-

He was in the trees.

Again, she tried to stand, and fell.  She huffed for breath, trying to suck in enough to shout, give directions.

He did something in the trees, moving a stone in the woods.

Everything went dark.

In the middle of trying to catch her breath, she was left without air again, and the lack hurt.  No ground beneath her, nothing to hold onto except herself and her hockey stick.

Avery was plunged back into this noisy, hostile reality again.

She heard more gunshots.

The area had rearranged more.  Stone, concrete walls cut through trees and framed the path, the trees were closer together, and the visual noise was worse, limiting vision to maybe twenty paces in a given direction.

Huffing for breath, hand at her throat, she used the black rope, stepped forward, and jumped ahead in the path.

Another jump, another- she used her Sight as best as she could to peer through mist and see the angle of gunshots, so she wasn’t just jumping into John’s way.

Somewhere off to the side, she heard Lucy and Snowdrop.

Then it all went dark.  She realized it was happening, gasped in a breath, and braced herself.

This was the pattern.  It moved, it went after some specific targets, things that moved that shouldn’t, in ways they shouldn’t.  A tree that rotated, a rock that slid like it was some adjustment dial on an instrument or toaster.

“He keeps adjusting this reality,” she whispered, struggling.

And then they were plunged back into this world it was editing.  After longer and longer periods of darkness.

She re-emerged into reality.  The trees to her left were so close to one another she didn’t think she could pass through them.  Well beyond what was reasonable in reality.

“Avery here!” she called out.

She heard the other shouts.  John’s.  Gashwad’s, Snowdrop’s.

Were they closer?

Was this space getting smaller and smaller?

She black-roped her way through.

Catching up to the others.  Gashwad and Snowdrop were attacking the man, Snowdrop stabbing with the fork.  Gashwad doing… about ten times more damage.

The man was taller, bigger than before.

“Rip the bag!” she called out.

Even with a young girl and a goblin clinging to him, the man with the plastic bag over his head wasn’t really hampered.  He was making a beeline for a section of wall.

Snowdrop stabbed him in the neck.  He hit Snowdrop.  She fell, and he didn’t.

Avery went for the legs, since Gashwad was perched between his shoulders, going for the spine, periodically clawing at the back of the plastic bag.  It didn’t seem to do much.

She swiped at his legs, and he disappeared.

Gashwad hit the ground on all fours.

Avery did much the same, dropping to the ground by Snowdrop, glancing around.  She touched Snowdrop’s face.  “Snow.  Are you okay?”

Snow barely roused.

“Go small.”

The man emerged from the trees by the wall.  Avery pointed.  Gashwad ran for it.

The man touched the cracks, pressing in three sections.

The darkness swept over them.

There was no Snowdrop beneath her hand when she reappeared.

The walls were as tall as Avery was, now.  Even many of the trees toward the center were close together in an impassable way.  The dirt paths narrower.

“He gets bigger and stronger every time!” John called out.  “The arena gets smaller!”

“Snowdrop’s hurt!  Is there a way to get ourselves out!?”

“I don’t-”

John opened fire.  He kept shouting, but the gunfire was too loud.

Avery moved toward the sound, ducking low.

Yeah, plastic-bag head was getting a few inches taller each ’round’.  A bit harder to budge, a bit stronger.  The difference from one time to the next was subtle, but the difference from the first time she’d seen him to the most recent was drastic.

He wrestled with Tashlit, holding her against a wall as he walked.  Tashlit struggled to find a way to arrest that.  The bullets sank into the Other.

“Do what you did to the Elemental, for the hot lead!”

“I can’t!”

John put three bullets in each of the man’s knees.

Tashlit found a grip near the top of the wall, where the concrete was jagged, and instead of feet sliding and failing to get beneath her, flesh and eyeballs being ground against the rough concrete and stone walls, she found enough leverage to stop him from dragging her.  One hand at the top of the wall, the other at the Other’s throat, she strained, and lifted him off his feet, slamming him into the wall in a single motion.  He bounced off, stumbling, and John kept shooting out the knees as the Other recovered.

Gashwad almost got shot himself as he dashed out of the trees.  He jammed a black spike of wood into the knee-wound.

The fact they were all able to ‘reunite’ like this… it was because the arena was getting so small.

Avery gripped her stick, found her grit, and started forward.

“Don’t!” John called out.

She stopped.

“Look for a way out!  Or find what he’s after and do the opposite!”

“I’d be guessing!”

The Other was building momentum.  Getting faster.

Avery looked for the direction it was going.

A tree?

She found a bit of wall to duck behind, then black-roped her way there.

“He’s fuzzy, he’s static-y, I think he’s a techno-Other.  Like Zed would use.  He keeps shrinking this place.  It’s like the arena- John called it an arena, it’s as much a piece of him as anything.  Um-”

She kept talking, whispering, hoping Lucy could hear.

Searching the tree, touching branches, checking roots.  Nothing moved.

She looked up, then black-roped her way there.

A nest.  With a red bird in it.

She reached for the bird, and it didn’t fly away.

Holding it, she jumped down.

The Other tracked her, changing direction to follow.

She kept her distance.  This bought them time.

“He has a plastic bag over his head, he gets stronger every round.  No face, no features, but he doesn’t get hurt, we can’t tear the bag like I did with Pigdog man’s mask.  Could do with some help, Lucy.  Please.”

He broke into a run.  She ducked behind a tree and moved to the far end of the clearing.

John reloaded, then kept shooting.  It slowed the Other down, but it didn’t stop him.

It felt like minutes were passing.

“You made arrangements with other practitioners?  That you were leaving to see to business, if you didn’t return, they’d come?”

“Yes!” Avery replied.

“We could use their help!”

“I know!”

As the Other got closer, she black-roped her way to safety, as far away as possible.

It reached down, as if annoyed, then pulled the black spike of wood from its knee.

“More where that came from!” Gashwad called.

He sounded like he was enjoying this.

The Other plunged the black spike of wood into its own throat.

Avery black roped immediately, cradling the bird.  Black-roped, looking, searching- black roped again, to be safe.

A hand grabbed her from behind, seizing the wrist with the bird.

“No!”  She shouted.  “That’s not-”

His other hand gripped the hand that held the bird in it.  She tried to move her fingers to push it free, but instead, he crushed her hand closed, the bird in it.  Sawdust bulged between her fingers.

Blackness swallowed them.

Can’t be scaredy-Avery.  Can’t be hesitant.

Snowdrop needs you.

The arena that unfolded around her was so small that she could see all four walls at the same time.  Like a room, twenty paces by twenty paces across.  Walls of concrete that looked like it had been slapped between the trees, mortaring them together.

Snowdrop lay unconscious on the ground, Gashwad crouched by her, patting her head.  John was in one corner, Tashlit in another, Avery in the other.

Other in the center.  The Other bulged with as much muscle as adult Guilherme had.  Its head was large enough the plastic bag was permanently strained.

“Does anyone see a red bird?” Avery asked.

“No.  Why?” John asked.

“Because there’s a sequence, it seems to know the sequence, but if we can turn it back against it we can-”

The Other moved.  Straight for Tashlit, who still had wet hair and clothes from swimming.

She charged in, meeting him, and swung a punch.

It wasn’t as strong or as fast a move as what she’d done before.  He caught her.

She pulled at one side of the loose-skin face, then spat on him.  It sizzled violently.

He threw her aside.

Red bird- or anything?  Anything odd that wasn’t what he was after?

She couldn’t see.

He reached the wall, where cracks formed a triangle, and pressed inward.  It sank in.

They plunged into darkness.

Into an arena ten paces by ten paces wide.  The Other stood close to Gashwad, who snarled and hugged Snowdrop’s head, putting his body between her and the Other.

“Close your eyes!” she shouted.

“Why?” John asked.

“Do it!”

Tashlit’s eyes winked out.  John shut his.  There was only the Other, who had eyes for a branch that stuck out of the wall.

Avery ignored that.  She headed to a point where the Other couldn’t see.

Then black-roped her way across the space, searching.

A triangular stone, near John.

She black-roped there, then stomped on it.

Darkness.

And back to the twenty-pace room.

“Again!”

She was good at being fast, and she had good eyes.

She darted across the room, searching.

A bloodstain near Snowdrop’s head that wasn’t actually from Snowdrop.

She got to it before he got to the triangle.

But he’d caught on.  Now he was ignoring the targets, coming for her.  She used the black rope, which only helped a little.  He was fast and she couldn’t see when she was moving too fast.

And there was too much ground to cover.

She found the three bricks in the wall.  One had to be pressed in before the other would move.

He interrupted, coming for her, and she used a flash of glamour.  Blinding him for a moment while she could figure out the order.

Stepping back and out again.

He changed tacks, deciding she was too hard to catch.  Instead, he went for Snowdrop.

And she couldn’t allow that.  She had to fend him off.  Had to swat at him, had to endure the fact that every time she landed a good hit, he’d disappear, reappear, and either grab her or hit that combination of three stones to pull them down a level, into a smaller arena.

Was it only three or so times that she had to fight to get away?  That John or Tashlit or Gashwad were stepping in to pry her free?  Two or three times that they plunged into darkness and she had to make that split second decision to either defend Snowdrop or get to the bricks before he got to the bird?  He varied it up, feinted.  She was running on instinct and adrenaline, fighting in the moment.

Trying to survive, to preserve her friend.

It all dissolved into static that ran through her body.

“We got you,” Lucy said.  “Oh geez.”

Avery wobbled, sagging.

“Had to go back to the dorm room for the big red button,” Verona said.

“We should be carrying that,” Lucy said.

“I’m a little worried about bringing everything essential, after the party thing.”

“That’s not a good reason.  Keep the essentials and small things.”

“Snowdrop,” Avery said, rubbing at her throat.

Snowdrop lay on the ground.  Tashlit stroked Snowdrop’s head, and the girl became an opossum.  She crawled to Avery, then curled up in her lap.

“That was a real attempt at killing us, wasn’t it?” Avery asked, her voice a little hollow.

“Or trapping,” Lucy said.  She held up a black cartridge.

“They can’t get away with that.  We’re students.”

“I have no intention of letting them get away with it,” Lucy said.  She pushed Avery’s hair back from her face.  “No way.”

“I bet they have an excuse,” Verona said.  “Like, ‘we put that out there to let it power up, we were going to go back after lunch.'”

“It’s lunchtime?”

“Come on,” Lucy said.

“You did good,” John said.

The words felt weird.  She didn’t want to be in a situation where this was good.

“You going to be steady on your feet for this?” Lucy asked.

Avery stood, testing herself, then nodded.  She kept two hands on Snowdrop.

“Pretty intense, from what you were saying,” Lucy said.

“I want to know who pulled this.”

“So do we,” Lucy said.  “Absolutely.  Look, they’re going to be looking for us.  If you want to sit this one out, take a break, that’s cool, but if we show up, we’ve gotta look strong.”

“You’ve done awesome,” Verona said.  “Snowdrop’s okay?  Okayish?  And Tashlit?”

Tashlit nodded, rubbing at her arm.

“And John?  Gash?”

“I’m fine,” John said.

Gash nodded.

Lucy was fussing with Avery’s hair, which had mud in it, and it was simultaneously the last bit of nitpickyness that Avery wanted to dwell on, and it was a bit zen, fingernails running against her scalp as a makeshift comb.  Lucy dropped it as they left the trees.

Gashwad hung back, hiding.  If he was recognized, that would be bad.

The other anti-Bristow kids were out, sitting by the field in damp grass.  Some stood as they saw them.

How bad do I look?

Avery pulled on all the golden checkmarks and everything else to keep her head up, to avoid looking as emotionally wounded as she felt after all that.  As sore and scuffed- those weren’t as bad.  She’d gotten battered during practice, before.

“They tried and they failed.  That counts for something,” Lucy murmured.

“They hurt Snowdrop,” Avery said, voice hard.

“That counts for a heck of a lot, too, yeah.”

They took the path to the side door of the school.

“We’re not talking to the others?”

“After,” Lucy said.  “For right now… our room.  You need a shower and a change of clothes.  For mental reasons as much as anything.  I need it.  Even Verona.”

Avery nodded.

Verona reached out to touch Tashlit’s arm at the same time Lucy did with John.

Oh.

They entered the school premises.  John and Tashlit looked around.

“Tashlit was saying before that she missed civilization.  John, Matthew and Edith have been able to give her some, but… not a lot of people?” Verona asked.

Tashlit shook her head.  Loose skin slapped her cheeks.

We’re making small talk?  Talking about regular stuff?

After that?  Do you guys realize?

But Avery didn’t want to whine.  She wanted to look strong.  So she focused her attention on keeping her head up and being gentle with Snowdrop.

Students stared.  She found herself looking back, searching for an iota of guilt.

Was it worse if she found it and she felt the need to act right then?  Or that she might never find it?  That some of the people here could be so messed up they’d pull that crap and then not give a damn about it after?

They returned to their room.

“They’ve been inside,” Verona said, as the door closed.  “But they weren’t willing to mess with the nettlewisp.”

The nettlewisp they’d put on the locked chest at the foot of the bed had grown just a bit.

Lucy rubbed at her arm.  There were still some yellow and blue stains in the skin, like how lips got after a lemon or blue raspberry icee crush.

Avery ventured over to her bed as Verona shut the door.  Her move was in part because there were five of them and one opossum in the one room and it wasn’t that big a room.

Verona sat down next to her.

“John will remember our little car ride with Sharon.”

“I do,” John said.

“And I had a chat with Bristow.  Funny little thing, that.”

“Not so funny that you’ve got that game of whether he’d regret his move on Kennet going,” Lucy said.

“Yeah, no,” Verona said.  “That’s not great.”

“I kind of just want to nap instead of talking about this,” Avery said.  “I know that sounds super lame, but-”

“It’s not lame,” Lucy said.  “Believe me.  I’ve been feeling low too.  But at least just listen and talk this out with us, as we discuss our next moves.  We had to wait until we were inside, with this protective diagram.”

“Moves?” Avery asked.

Lucy nodded.

Verona flipped through her phone until she brought up some images.

“Text messages?” Avery asked.

“Oh, look at that, emails from Bristow to Sharon the horrible skeptic,” Verona said.  “That I just so happened to save, just in case.”

“Yep.  Long winded in emails too.”

“Oh, look at that,” Verona said, again.  “Regards, Lawrence T. Bristow, esquire.”

Avery looked at Verona.

“Regards, Lawrence T. Bristow, esquire.” Verona said, plucking her feather from her sleeve.  She ran the tip along the screen.  “What do you think?  Do you think we should pass his regards on to the brownies?”

“It wouldn’t be just yet,” Lucy said.  “A few other things to sort.  We need to strategize with others.”

“He’s going to come for us, you know.  If he hasn’t already.  Shellie, Ted…”

“If you want to say no, or change what we’re doing-”

“I want to nap.  To shower, change…”

“Try an afternoon class?” Verona asked.

Avery grit her teeth, considering.  Then she remembered they were here for a reason.  “Maybe.  Yeah.”

She looked down at Snowdrop.

Tashlit navigated between the beds and their knees, bent down, and gave Snowdrop another stroke.

Snowdrop stretched, paws reaching out, trying to claw the hand back for more strokes.

Avery provided them.

“I think she’s just being a lazy butt.  This is like, three in the morning, nocturnal time,” Verona said.

“Yeah.”

“It’s okay if you want to back off, wait, see what happens,” Lucy said.  “It’d be tough.  I think he and they would keep making moves against us.”

Avery shook her head.  “I don’t want to.  I don’t want to declare war either, or start doing anything big, but… we might have to.”

“My feeling exactly,” Lucy said.

“Sorry,” Avery said.

“Don’t say sorry.  You’re doing fine,” Lucy said.

“I mean- John.  Tashlit.  You guys are getting dragged into this.”

“I’m no stranger to conflict,” John said.

But John looked as tense as Avery had seen him, outside that moment he’d held Lucy at gunpoint.

In the midst of that tension, a sharp rap sounded at the door.  John’s hand was at his hip and resting on the gun in as much time as it took Avery to turn her head.

Granted, she was wiped out.

He kept the door between himself and the person on the other side, hiding the now-drawn gun as he opened it.

Nicolette.

“You’re okay, after the nettlewisp thing?” Avery asked, quiet.

Nicolette nodded.  She looked past John to the bristling flower on the wooden chest.  “Is that what that monstrous thing is called?  I’m okay, a device I borrowed from Zed to act as a buffer isn’t.  I owe him one.  I owe him a lot.”

Guess that explains the black goo and zappy electricity, Avery thought.

She gave Snowdrop a stroke.

Of the three of them, Tashlit, and John, none volunteered to fill the silence.

“Can we talk seriously?” Nicolette asked.

[7.3 Spoilers] – Borrowed Eyes Comic

 

 

Gone Ahead – 7.4

Avery

Last Thursday: Borrowed Eyes Comic


“May I come in?” Nicolette asked.

“Y-” Avery started.

“What are your intentions?” Lucy asked, voice hard.  “You namedrop Zed, but you’re on Bristow’s side, aren’t you?  You’re supporting all of this?”

“I’m on my side, which I think puts me closer to you guys than you’d suspect.”

“It’s awfully crowded in here,” Verona said.

Avery looked around.  John stood behind the door, Tashlit stood with her back to the wall, standing by the desk.  Verona was on the other bed, and Lucy sat next to Avery on Avery’s bed, with Snowdrop set between them in opossum form.

“There are things I want to talk about I cannot, out here, with others potentially listening.  I’d have to get permission to…” Nicolette leaned her head in, and John tensed.  Nicolette made eye contact with Tashlit.  “…talk with her here.”

“Is this conversation for your sake, ours, or Bristow’s?” Lucy asked.

“Can it be all three?”

“I don’t think it can, but maybe you’ll surprise us,” Lucy said.  “What do you guys think?”

She made eye contact with Avery first.

“Yeah.  I think more communication is good, almost always,” Avery said.

“Sure,” Verona said.  “Tash, come sit.”

“Maybe on a towel?” Lucy asked, visibly wincing.  “You’re still wet, and-”

Tashlit took the two steps to round the bed, then plunked herself down on the floor between the beds.

“-or that.”

The bed bounced as Lucy hopped up, grabbing bags, books, and things, and quickly sorting them out.

Verona put away the phone and feather where Nicolette couldn’t see either.

“Thank you,” Nicolette said.

“Don’t thank us yet.  I’m thinking.”

“Okay,” Nicolette said, still out in the hallway.

Avery was still sore, and as Lucy put one hand on the footboard, she could see Lucy’s ‘wounds’ from this conflict.  Fingertips dyed darker, cuticles frayed.  From the long exposure to the Nettlewisp.

“Can you see that this situation is bad?” Lucy asked.  “Nicolette?”

“I can.”

“Then can you see that we’re on guard?”

“Absolutely.”

“I’d like for you to give permission for John to shoot you if you do anything untoward.”

“I don’t think that’d change how people responded.”

“It’d change how spirits responded.  And maybe we could make an argument that dodges expulsion or something.  And keep John from being targeted.”

“I don’t think that would work,” Nicolette said.  “Spirits yes, the rest no.”

“It’d make me feel better.”

“Would it?  Bloodstain on the wall, the alarm of the student body?”

“Gainsaying my friend isn’t a great way to start us off.”

“Instinct,” Nicolette said, “sorry.”

“And I would feel better,” Lucy said.  “My inner self?  At the core of me?  I think that would be satisfied.  Even if everything else would be freaking out.”

“Then I’ll say it.  John may shoot me if I violate your hospitality.”

Lucy sat back down on the bed, beside Avery, then nodded at John.

John leaned back, opening the door.  Nicolette stepped in, and Lucy indicated the space by the desk.

Nicolette took that corner.  John shut the door, then adjusted his position, feet shoulder width apart, hands clasped in front of him, gun held with index and middle fingers resting on the barrel, a half-inch from the trigger.

Nicolette gave him a good long look.

Then she looked around, up, at where they’d put an augury-spoiling rune on the ceiling, and on the floor, where they had the broader connection block.

“Do you want a few tips on refining those?” Nicolette asked, adjusting her glasses.

“Is it working?” Lucy asked.

“Yes, but an imperfect diagram can be broken through by a fierce enough Seeing.  I see you’d be alerted if that happened, unless it was especially subtle, but Alexander could do that kind of subtle. Wye too, for that matter.”

“They’re both enemies of Bristow, aren’t they?” Avery asked, quiet.  “Is that what we’re doing here?  You’re nudging us that way?”

“It’s just how I’m thinking.  It would work against me and the others too,” Nicolette said. “I thought it would be a good way to show good faith.”

“If it works then let’s leave it alone.  The room’s warm with this many people inside, so maybe get to saying what you came to say?”

“I liked being friendlier, Nicolette,” Avery chimed in, because she could see the direction this was going.  “I’d like to get back to that.  Help us do that.”

“Can I talk with ‘Tash’ present?”

“Hold off on sharing anything specific to our hometown or situation,” John told her.  “She knows some.”

“You heard the man,” Lucy said.

Nicolette nodded, and adjusted her hair ornament.  Avery couldn’t really see it because Lucy and Lucy’s hair were in the way,and it was on the far side of NIcolette’s head, but it looked like blue feathers.

“Normally, when I’m working for Alexander, I’d approach a client with a few opening questions.  Making sure I have the lay of the land, and that they have the understanding of what’s going on that I think they do.”

“Isn’t it past tense?  You working for Alexander?” Lucy asked.

“This hard-nosed thing where you keep your opponent on their toes was a lot more fun when you were pointing it at Alexander.  But yes, you’re right.”

“Instinct.  Not sorry,” Lucy replied.

Avery didn’t miss Verona’s smile.  Smiling because… verbal barb?

Yeah.  She wanted nothing more than a nap and a snuggle with Snowdrop, and she was feeling worn out on a level that really felt like it dug into her chest and laid her heart bare and vulnerable, and whenever that happened she really missed having what her parents had, where her dad would look after her mom after a bad day, running a bath and stuff, or her mom would do little things for dad.

That, to her, was love.

But as low and lonely as she felt, she had to force herself to perk up here, to pay attention, because Lucy and Verona did their own very specific things when they were tired and vulnerable.

“First question, then.  What’s your understanding of the current situation?” Nicolette asked.

“Are you digging for information?”

“No, Lucy, but I have to diagnose the situation before I can address it.  If I show up to a client’s address, I want to know what the Other is, or what the disaster is.  I don’t want to waste time telling them what they already know.  Alexander, Wye, Tanner and even Chase would do something similar, in their own ways.  With Alexander it’s how you know he’s on your side… often because you’re paying him or he needs you.  It’s him getting down to business on your behalf.”

“Bristow lost the school a few years back, Alexander took it by establishing a Demesnes here.  Bristow turned up again, he had ways to get most of Alexander’s apprentices, one of whom is now forsworn.  Now it seems like Alexander’s busy managing his circle and can’t do much about the school?”

“Years ago, I was hurt by my brother.  I became vulnerable to Others, nearly lost my mind, and I found a way to survive, on my own.  Alexander seemed to see something in my abilities and natural talent, and he reached out.  I took the Belanger family name because I didn’t want to be a part of the family that let that happen to me and tried to shrug it off after.  He led me to believe that I could be a part of the family and rise in the ranks, but he never made any explicit promises.”

“And he didn’t live up to what he didn’t promise?” Lucy asked.

“No.  Seth came to the school after I did and got more of just about everything, including a spot in the inner circle. He didn’t try, he didn’t work for it.  He’d come here and go off to that little town you were in yesterday, to mess around, steal, and compete with some other guys over this girl that used to live there.  But he was blood, he was invited to Alexander’s study… I didn’t mean for this to be a griping session.  I got a better offer, from a group that does real good for the world.  They’re taking a system that’s been word of mouth and metaphorical bells tied to strings for centuries and they’re updating it.  Keeping tabs on really monstrous, dangerous Others, on perimeters that might fail.  Too many bad things happen if an old practitioner f- messes up, and other practitioners don’t know they’re dead or worse, when they had responsibilities we were all counting on them to do.”

“Like?” Verona asked.

“Like the perimeters.  Like protecting a population, or a specific object that would be catastrophic in the hands of the wrong Others.  Spirits can manifest as representations of a major city.  What happens to that human representation of Windsor can be extrapolated out to the city in general.  Just imagine what happens if that manifestation becomes regular, and goblins get their hands on it.”

“Or the wrong practitioners,” Lucy said.

“Or- yeah.  Probably more likely to happen, even.”

“Bristow found out about this group?” Avery asked.  “Brie said.”

“He knew them and has worked with them.  A lot of the school founders have, like Musser and Raymond, and the Lairs, the Ports… it’s not like I let my guard down.  Those connections were already there.  It’s just that one of them happened to be- they told me they wanted me to work with Bristow, as a prelude to my work with them.  My recruitment was contingent on joining them.”

“We kind of got that story from Brie’s reporting of what happened in Alexander’s office,” Lucy noted.

“Yeah.  Here’s the thing – this doesn’t have to be the end of the world.  Bristow isn’t my favorite person.  But there’s a possible outcome at the tail end of this that has him on top, that isn’t horrible.”

Lucy made a face, turning back to look at Avery and Verona, even looking at Tashlit and John.

“We can hear you out.  You helped Snowdrop, so we can do that much,” Avery said.

“The school is going to be a mess.  I think that happens even if Alexander takes charge again.  There’s no big magical fix that makes it bearable.  I think the senior students can strike a balance.  The students from families that have to be in this are going to find a way through because they need to.  And maybe that shuffles some to the bottom and some to the top, and it leaves a bunch by the wayside-”

“Including us?” Verona asked.

“Well, that’s part of why I’m here.  I talked to Lawrence Bristow about you three, and I have a few tentative deals to put forward.  He said he’d agree to them if you did.  The first being that you’d swear to a deal, and he’d be hands off.”

“This seems like it’s pretty close or identical to what he was gunning for from the start,” Lucy said, and her tone was chilly.  “Bullies like him treat people like crap and then expect them to act like stopping with the crap is some great huge favor.”

“I have to put it forward.  I hope you understand.  I have a sense of your priorities, and I made it part of this proposed deal.  I’ll get to that in a second.  You would be agreeing to be part of a broader network.  The kind of thing Alexander wanted to build, but this wouldn’t be held together by metaphorical shoestrings, gum, and implicit threats from an Augur who has studied your vulnerabilities.  There would be certain duties expected every year, dues to be paid, but rewards in kind.  Help, communication, networks, a sharing of books and libraries.”

Verona tilted her head.  Avery stuck her foot out, jabbing Verona’s shin with the toe of her running shoe.

“What duties?”

“Attending meetings, and an open-ended ‘dues’ system where you’d make three contributions a year.  One contribution could be a text to be submitted to the collective for approval, can’t be sloppy or rendundant, three weeks of labor from each of you or one of your apprentices, if and when you ever get to that point, it can be participation in someone else’s ritual, providing ritual components that can’t be easily acquired elsewhere.  Among other things.”

“We’re thirteen,” Verona protested.  “This sounds worse than paying taxes.”

“It is meant as a tax system.  He wants to have a network and a kind of lordship that extends over a region, instead of a city.  Wouldn’t supplant or challenge existing lords.  We’ve had a few scares with some pretty big forces in recent years, and a lawless system of us realizing that there’s a metaphorical wildfire blazing and it’s been blazing for months, then relying on volunteers to go and handle it?  He says it doesn’t work and I don’t think he’s wrong.”

“Is this something he truly believes in?” Lucy asked.

“I think so.”

“Enough that he would step down and let someone else be the person in charge?”

“Ah,” Nicolette said.  “No, that’s, uh…”

“Right,” Lucy said.

“He’d be a tyrant, wouldn’t he?” Avery asked.  “Letting stuff like today happen.  Underhanded, cutting, so long as it targets his enemies.”

Nicolette nodded a bit.  “One way to look at it would be to ask if a poor leader is worth enduring for a little while, if it means bringing civilization and society to ramshackle territories.”

“I’m not sure it is,” Lucy said.  “I kind of want to ask my brother what he thinks, but my gut says no, it’d start bad and get worse from there, not better.”

“I said a bit ago, I negotiated on your behalf, with some proposed ideas.  I told him I swore to stay out of your affairs, as part of events, I couldn’t share the details.  But I made the pitch that he’s spreading himself too thin, he’s at his most effective when he’s a hammer, and you three are enough of a natural foil to Alexander to be worth having on board.  He agreed.  He and everyone in his network would agree to what I agreed.”

“To stay out of Kennet?” Lucy asked.

“Yes, with minor provisions.”

“To avoid looking into it?”

“Yes.  Again, provisions.  You can invite people in, you can ease the restriction or invite people in as part of your payment, if you can’t pay your thrice-a-year dues.  And if something big enough happens that involves others…”

Like the Carmine Beast,” Avery whispered, under her breath.

“DId you say something?” Nicolette asked.

But Lucy had heard.  “This isn’t a good deal.”

“Designed to fail,” Verona chimed in.

“Exactly, it’s- more than that, a good, ironclad deal is probably going to be one where both sides have really strong incentives to keep the arrangement in place.  And now we’re building in this baseline idea that Bristow has incentive to take it down, and we lose our benefit?”

“I believe the notion was that you’d want to prioritize the dues.  While I’m listing other downsides and heavier things, you’d be expected to help in the event of a serious enough matter.  Volunteer basis just doesn’t work when the stuff we’re dealing with is scary enough.  If a team of experts agrees, then you’d need to drop what you’re doing and prioritize the crisis.  You’d have to have someone available to help with at least a day’s notice.”

“So no way the three of us go travel to Japan to study Oni or whatever?” Verona asked, looking at Avery.

“Kennet is our priority,” Avery said.  “By oath.”

“Not mutually exclusive.”

“This is making my head spin,” Lucy said.  “No.  It’s- did you take the deal?”

“The Augurs I’m working with did.  As a member I benefit from the group being a bit of a buffer between me and the deal with Bristow.”

“So no,” Lucy said.

“Not directly.”

“Then,” John spoke, voice heavy and sudden, almost like a gunshot in itself.  It got Nicolette to jump.  “is there an implication?  That if Kennet’s practitioners do not sign onto this contract, that he will come at them later, as enemies?  Is he that kind of tyrant, as Avery labeled him?”

“Yes,” Lucy murmured.  “He is.  With everything that implies.”

“Eventually,” Nicolette said.  “Which brings me to the second proposed deal.”

“Hoo boy,” Verona said.

“Walk away.  Go home.  You wouldn’t take a hand in this, you wouldn’t help the students who are rejecting Bristow.  You leave, and… it’s my understanding you want to protect that place, and you’re eager to learn.  We can give you access to the Atheneum Arrangement.”

“No idea what that is,” Lucy said.  “Raymond’s thing?”

“Like the library you’ve been using here, it’s a collection of books that virtually every practitioner can expect to have on their shelves.  Easy to acquire, some old or outdated, but… if you want general knowledge, it covers that base well.  There’s also a repository of articles, opinion pieces, scanned records, and photographs, and a ‘wait list’ of other books and pieces that haven’t yet been judged as having merit, and you’d want to be careful with those, because people do put traps and things in there.”

Lucy looked at Verona.  “Why do I feel like hearing that last bit about the wait list made you more interested in it, not less?”

“No comment,” Verona said.  “I like hidden treasure and I’m pretty good about traps.”

“Pretty good isn’t great,” Lucy said.  “Nicolette, it feels like you’re treating us like idiots.”

“Not my intention.”

“Is this athena-”

“Athenum,” Verona said.

“Is the arrangement thing a thing we’d have anyways?”

“Yes, eventually, but it requires a certain setup.  Raymond and his apprentices provide specialized keys and tools, depending on need.  There can be a wait.”

“So we leave, we step back and let him take over, we get access to this thing as a concession, what, how long would we normally have to wait?”

“Weeks or months.  But you’ve let slip that it’s important you have everything you need this summer.”

“This feels crappy, Nicolette,” Lucy said.  “We were friendly and it feels like you’re going full practitioner and you’re trying to… I wish I knew a good metaphor.”

“Giving us twenty bucks and trying to convince us it’s a fortune?” Verona tried.

“Sure,” Lucy said.  “And it’s manipulative and you’re hinting that you’re spying on us.”

“That’s not what I’m trying to do.  The others are spying some, yes, Alexander did and probably still does, I hear about some of this by happenstance.  And you would get something similar with Bristow that you had with Alexander.  I negotiated for that.  Five years without interference.  He gets to do his thing, he avoids Kennet, he has his network avoid Kennet, and you’re free to do what you need to.  Protect your space, negotiate, train… you’d renegotiate after the five years.”

“With Alexander it was five years or until we solved a certain mystery, whichever came first.”

“I left the latter part out,” Nicolette said, smiling a bit.

“Thank you,” Avery said.

Nicolette nodded.

Lucy shook her head, “We also talked to Alexander about doubling the time, because he let Bristow’s Aware attack us…”

“I tried to pitch that, it didn’t sell.  I did manage to get Bristow to let things go with the gainsaying of Verona, as part of this deal.  If you were willing to accept either deal, he wouldn’t push it.  Let the spirits and greater powers judge you gainsaid in the hereafter, maybe, if you believe in such.”

Lucy shook her head again.  “So we’re assuming that it’s five years, we have a truce, he can do his thing, and then what happens at the end of the five years?  We’d be eighteen, and we suddenly have to deal with the tyrannical Bristow and his alliance of practitioners poised to descend on Kennet?”

“I want to be fair to you guys, I do, but… if we’re talking about things you’d have already… isn’t that something that’s going to happen, no matter what?  You’d at least have time.”

“It might be worse to have time,” John said.

“Worse?” Nicolette asked.

“Right now, two primary groups are poised to descend on Kennet.  Alexander and Bristow.  Change the dynamic, make it us against Alexander, and both us and Alexander are preoccupied.  At least a little.  Bristow is free to amass an army, prepare, decipher our defenses, and study how we fight as we fight his enemy.”

“Maybe,” Nicolette said.

John went on, “The Aware that he sent.  Are their actions his?  I didn’t have the impression they were.”

“No more, I think, than your actions are the responsibility of these three girls, John,” Nicolette said.

“Exactly what I was thinking.  If a summoning on this campus causes harm because of error or lack of attention, willful or not, the practitioner may get in trouble, but it isn’t necessarily expulsion.  Yes?”

“Theoretically.”

“And this is how and why his Aware can currently run rampant?”

“More or less.”

“So he can swear to a truce, as Lucy put it.  A mutual nonaggression pact.  But if he then leaves or leads his Aware in the direction of Kennet and lets what may happen happen…”

“It could happen,” Nicolette said.  “I could ask.”

“I think he’s exactly the type of person who’d do that,” Lucy said.

“Let me ask, I’ll-”

“And tip him off?” Lucy asked.

“I’ll ask the cards,” Nicolette stressed.  She reached into her pocket, and John raised the gun.  She froze as her eyes stared down the barrel.

“Easy, John,” Avery said.  To her left, Tashlit rose to her feet.  The eyes all blinked out of sync, starting at the top of the head and rolling down to her feet, making an eerie wet sound.

“Divination cards,” Nicolette said, not moving.  “Not a weapon.”

“It’s okay, John,” Lucy said.  “But Nicolette, can’t the people you’re seeing tell that you’re doing any divination or augury about them?”

“They can, potentially.  It’s not always direct.  If you read someone’s future the act of observing it can help bring it to pass.  Once it’s one hundred percent guaranteed, it becomes capital-T Truth.  Next to inviolable.”

“Maybe we don’t want that reading, if it helps bring a bad case to pass.”

“I wish you’d trust me just a bit more.  I’m not your enemy, and I think we all want a resolution here,” Nicolette said.  “I’m good at this stuff.”

“Can we stop?” Avery asked, a little louder than she meant to.  Snowdrop stirred, sitting up.

All eyes were on her.  With Tashlit so close, there were a lot of eyes.

“Can we pause?  Reset?” Avery asked quiet.  “Put the gun away, John?  Put the cards away, Nicolette?”

“You can make that an order, you know,” Lucy said.

Avery frowned, looking at Lucy.

“You don’t have to make it a question.  You can be stern, if it brings you closer to the person you want to become.”

“I’m kinda ticked at you too, you know.  I’d be stern with you.”

“That’s fine.”

“Then… put the gun away, John.  That’s too much.  Nicolette, we’re not comfortable with the cards.  It already feels like we’re being made to go along with what others are doing, making us sit through a reading with maybe a little less control over things after isn’t great.  Lucy… go easy.  Nicolette did help Snowdrop, I don’t think she’s the enemy.”

John put the gun down.  Tashlit sat.  Nicolette held up her empty hands a bit.

“I’m the messenger,” Nicolette said.

“Bearer of bad news.”

Lucy,” Avery stressed, in the same moment Verona tossed a stray sock at Lucy.

“Sorry.”

Avery leaned forward, her elbows on her knees.  “I’m tired and I’m covered in mud and I’m shaky and sore… and maybe that isn’t the super confident Avery type thing to admit, but… mostly with the tired thing, I’m feeling like I’m lagging behind and it’s hard for me to jump into this discussion or say stuff when I want to say it, and I don’t like the way it’s going.  So can I take point, just for a bit?”

“Sure,” Lucy said.

Verona threw another sock at Lucy, for no apparent reason.

Avery took a second to gather her thoughts.  It wasn’t easy, with so many eyes on her.

That stray thought about her parents, about love and showing love and being cool to one another.

Starting from there.

“You keep saying, um, it’s not your intention, you don’t want this, you don’t want that.  You want us to trust you, right?” Avery asked.

“I know it’s a big ask, given what I did to you.  Stranding you on the trail.”

“Okay.  That’s a whole other thing but if we can stay cool then we can put it behind us.  With this, you showing up here, bringing offers, what is it you do want?” Avery asked.

“I wanted this to be easier than it was.  I had all these hopes, a plan in mind, that if I could thread the needle and balance my workload with Alexander without going over, I could do the big ‘I quit’ speech, throw down the gauntlet, and walk away.  I’ve been super careful about covering myself to make sure I’m not forsworn, keeping to my duties, and giving him no rope to hang me with.  And I didn’t get to pick my moment.  I’m…”

Nicolette trailed off.

“Are you okay?” Avery asked.

Nicolette’s hand went to her hair ornament, adjusting it.  She didn’t voice a response.

“I know you and Zed were friends.  And Zed bailed.”

“Yeah.  He’s not happy.  He’ll come back, because Brie’s here, at least long enough to pick her up.  Maybe to stay.  A lot depends on Raymond.”

“But putting Brie and Raymond aside… what about you?  Who do you get along with, here?”

“Zed,” Nicolette replied, meeting Avery’s eyes.  “And Eloise, a bit.  Liz, some.”

“Elizabeth Driscoll?” Verona asked.

“Yeah.  That was more of a work relationship.  But it was… we could talk the entire time we were working and it felt like we could keep going for hours longer, but we didn’t, so I always looked forward to the next joint project.  We found excuses to do them.  I think it was the same with her.”

“They’re all on the other side, now.  Or gone.”

“Gone, on the other side.  Yeah, both.  I was really looking forward to this summer.  Zed comes and goes, but he was going to be here.  Elizabeth studies at University and comes back for summers only now, Eloise is around more with Ulysse, but they get pulled away, and between me going to do jobs for Alexander or poking my nose into this weird protected territory at the top end of Lake Superior, and them having other projects, we’ve kind of been ships passing in the night.  If I’m here they’re not, or they’re just leaving or are busy, or the other way around.  More of a hi and a smile in passing.”

“That’s really disappointing.  And lonely.”

“It’s not great,” Nicolette said, terse.  She shook her head, then pulled off her glasses, to clean them with the bottom end of her dress shirt.  “I didn’t want or expect this to happen this way.  I thought I could leave and the friendships I’d made, at least, could be stuff I maintained after. And I haven’t actually gotten to leave and the friendships are…”

“Yeah,” Avery said.

“Maybe for the long run.  I was really looking forward to this summer.”

She didn’t seem to realize she’d already said that line.

“Have you had lunch?” Avery asked.

“Yeah.  Yeah, I ate in my room, then I tried to make Seth eat.”

“Do you want to stick around?  You could have tea while we eat, maybe?”

Nicolette put her glasses on, and her hand remained in front of her face for a second before she dropped it to her lap.  She’d taken that second to compose herself more.  She shook her head.  “Thank you for the offer, but I have things I have to do.”

“Okay.  Another time, maybe?”

“Okay.  Let’s try.  Thank you,” Nicolette said, standing and smoothing down the portion of her shirt she’d used to clean her glasses.  She adjusted her hair ornament, hair, and glasses.  “Thank you.”

“Sure.  We appreciate you trying to negotiate on our behalf.”

“I don’t want to end up on opposite sides of you three, as well.”

“It would be great if we could avoid that,” Avery said.

“Thanks,” Nicolette said.

John opened the door for her, and she gave them a brief nod before walking off.

John closed the door.

“Getting a better idea of Bristow’s plans,” Lucy said.

“An awful lot of broken friendships in this broader, more consolidated network he’s making,” Verona observed.  “A lot of divisions.”

“At least we’re okay,” Avery said, giving Snowdrop a stroke.

Tashlit put up her hand, and it took Avery a second to realize.  She gave Tashlit a fistbump.

There was no nap, in the end.  Avery grabbed a shower to wash off the Warrens, dressed, finished off a whole box of adhesive bandages, and emerged to find John waiting by the door to the showers.

Snowdrop was with him, wearing a ‘baby got back’ t-shirt featuring an opossum mom with 10 opossum pups on her back.  She looked more animated, holding the rusty fork in both hands, when it was barely a one-handed weapon.

“All set?” he asked.

“Yeah.  Were you on guard?”

“Lucy’s request.”

Avery nodded.  “And you, Snow?”

“Terrible, I’m going to die from being punched.”

“Being knocked out can be severe,” John said.

“It’s especially severe if someone like one of our goblins gets to you.”

“The goblins?” Avery asked.

“They’ll kill you,” Snowdrop whispered.  “Straight up dead, no humiliation or anything.”

“Oh, right, the marker thing.”

“I don’t need any markers,” Snowdrop said.  “I’m sufficiently armed.”

“We’ll look into getting you something of Verona’s.”

Verona and Lucy were in the room.  Tashlit sat in the chair at the desk, the loose face-skin that shrouded her head twisted to one side so she could feed an ear-bud through the eyehole.  Her head bobbed.

“What do you think?” Verona asked, handing Avery a slip of paper.

An order for a snack.  A cheese pizza.  ‘Regards, Lawrence, T. Bristow, esquire.’

“What happens?” Avery asked.

“Nobody’s really spelled it out in any detail, but they’ve said it’s bad,” Verona said.  “What do you think?”

“We were talking about possibilities,” Lucy said.  “Two things that concern me.  One is, well, what if it’s giving them any gratitude at all is the trigger?”

“Even someone else’s,” Verona clarified.

“Okay.  That’d suck.”

“The second thing?  Verona says that putting stuff to the page has wonky connection stuff happening.”

“What does that mean?” Avery asked.  She activated her Sight.

Sure enough, it was like a spiderweb.  From Verona’s face and hand to the page, where the word had been put down.

She wasn’t sure how to interpret that.

“You’re better with this than either of us,” Lucy said.  “You tell us?”

“I could only guess.”

“Guess.”

“Okay,” Avery said.  She reached out and gingerly touched it, peering closer.  The feather motif ran through the bands.  “First guess is that they could trace it pretty easily back to the source.”

“I think they could do that anyway,” Lucy said.  “They’d just have to ask spirits, right?”

“Second is… maybe Verona’s tie to this line is stronger than Bristow’s.  It reminds me what Miss said about entanglement.”

“Does me dropping this off and getting outta dodge help?” Verona asked.

Avery took the paper and walked back, motioning for Verona to walk.

It helped, but only a bit.  Maybe one in five of the connections faded out.  Avery shook her head.  The movement made her neck twinge and reminded her how tired she was.  She was sore from being tossed around, the tumbles and rolls on the ground, and the countless sudden changes in direction, straining her legs to alter trajectory, feint, and throw the plastic-bag-head Other off.

“When practitioners do stuff, they like to do it in threes,” Verona mused.

“And we want to break the connection between you and this.”

“Or strengthen Bristow’s.”

“Do we each do one, then?” Lucy asked.  “These things work better if we trade off instead of doing it alone.”

“Sure,” Verona said, glancing at Avery.

Oh god, Avery thought.  It was just like the Nettlewisp.  She wasn’t good at that.

But she was keeping Lucy’s advice in mind.

To be firmer, to be more sure about what she was doing.

“Okay,” she said.  “Let’s make it sting.”

Lucy nodded.  “Then… let it be said, Lawrence T. Bristow claims ownership of all that happens in this school.  Pain, chaos, and unfairness follow from his arrival, and he makes no apologies.  He’s wronged students, denying them their education and disrupting this natural order.  He wronged us, attacking our town for petty reasons, and this follows naturally from all of that.  He deserves it.”

Some of the connections and bands snapped or faded away.

Avery nodded.

Verona said, “he challenged me to make him regret his actions.  In setting out a challenge, he established an arena for us to fight in.  He and I are locked in competition, and more things are fair in the confines of an arena.  He invited me to make him regret it, I say we give him what he asked for.”

Some more snapped.  Not as many as with Lucy’s.

“He founded this school.  He had a part in setting up the arrangements with the buried ritual circles, the stones, and all the arrangements around the school,” Avery said.  “He had a role in putting a lot of this school together.  Including the arrangement with the Brownies.  What’s more poetic than bringing things around to the same?”

More effective than Verona’s, even.  Some remained, and some of those were heavy-duty.

“Nice one,” Verona said.  “How did you know he arranged it?”

“I said he had a role.  But I’m pretty sure it’s a big one.  According to the map, the kitchen doesn’t have servants quarters or facilities attached.  It would have to be staff living in the student area, here.”

“How does it look?” Lucy asked.

Avery reached into her pocket, got a bit of glamour, and began to illustrate, painting in the air.  Five strands, two of which were seatbelt-wide, a quarter inch thick, with images carved into them.

“That’s more than I expected,” Lucy said.

“It was a lot to start with.  There’s a good chance there’ll be a lot more going to Bristow, but right now we’re sitting in the middle of a connection blocker.”

“You think this kicks to life if we go outside the room?” Verona asked.

Avery shrugged.  “I think so.”

“Okay,” Verona said.  “And if the tie between this thing and Bristow is stronger than the tie to me…”

“It’d land on him, probably,” Lucy said.  “But remember that these things can bounce back.  When Hailey took our tape player and the cold tears guy went after her?”

“He could bounce it back,” Verona said.

“Then let’s hold onto it.  We drop this on him when he’s preoccupied enough he can’t do that.  Let’s assume he’s really good at stuff,” Avery said.

Both of the others nodded.

“Then, in the interest of that preoccupation… we’ve got a bit of time before Raymond teaches an afternoon class,” Lucy said.

Verona put the bit of paper into an envelope, licked it to seal it shut, then put a connection blocker seal over the licked part.

They got sorted out.  The disorganization of unloading stuff from Lucy’s ritual, packing up quickly, unpacking to get what they needed for showers and various projects, and now having to get ready with extra people in the room… it made stuff as simple as finding shoes a whole ordeal.

“You staying, Snow?  Getting some Zs?”

“I won’t help later,” Snowdrop said, as she lounged on the bed, brushing off some of the dried mud that had fallen off Avery during their conversation with Nicolette.

“We could ask the Brownies about a room clean,” Lucy said.  “After this thing with Bristow resolves.  It’s probably best if we’re not asking too much of them before that kicks off and settles.”

“I don’t want room service,” Snowdrop proclaimed.

“Too bad!” Avery told her.

Snowdrop flung the covers back with enough force that more mud flecks showered the floor, climbed in, and then flung the covers back over herself.

They went looking for the other students from Alexander’s contingent.  Or the anti-Bristow group, anyway.  Talos, Jorja, Tymon, Melody, Laila, and then two members of the trio of Eastern practitioners, Reese and Steyn, were all sitting on the grass.

A little distance away, Corbin and Mikey were kicking a soccer ball between them.  Avery itched to join in.

“There they are.  Catch a nap or something?” Talos asked.

“Getting sorted,” Verona said.

“Are you going to try to catch Raymond’s class?  He’s pretty no-nonsense, so I think it’s a safe place to be.”

“Sounds good,” Lucy said.  “We were thinking the same thing.”

“Hi, Reese, Mikey, Steyn,” Avery said.

“Heya,” Reese answered her.  “You should be careful with the more monstrous Others, while the Aware are around.  It’s not the biggest deal, I think most of them know, but…”

Tashlit gave Verona a pat on the shoulder, then started walking off toward the trees.  A monocle glinted from a bush.

“Yeah,” Verona said.  “Be good, be safe.”

Tashlit gave her a thumbs up.

Part of the reason Avery had reached out to Nicolette was because she’d thought of her parents.  How one parent could put everything aside to take care of the other.

Here, even if it wasn’t in a romantic situation, she could try to do the same.  She had a bunch of questions and she was sure Verona had a million things she wanted to ask the Eastern trio, but, that wasn’t the priority.

“Apparently you three are in the same boat as us,” Avery said.  “Not from an established family or anything?”

“We’re not wild, though,” Reese said.  “Fine line, but we stumbled into it.  No patronage, just lessons for payment.  Like finding a book in a library.  And then the thing escaped and we had to make do with what it had already taught us.”

“Huh.”

“Similar situation, though,” Steyn said.  “Nowhere to go except home.  No connections.”

“Are you managing?  Do you have a plan?”  Avery asked.

Reese answered, “Steyn’s parents can take us in for a bit if we have to leave.  Mikey and I haven’t been in touch with our parents in forever.  Back when the going was good, we had a key that’d take us to a huge empty palace.  It was easier to stay there than with parents.”

“Jealous,” Verona said.

“Don’t be. It got confiscated around the time things went bad.”

“What about tonight?” Avery asked.  “Because that seems like it’s going to be a make-it or break-it time.”

“We might actually leave, depending on how it goes,” Reese said.

Steyn nodded.

Avery could see Talos and Tymon’s expressions change at that.  Their postures, even, as they sat there.  A little heavier, shoulders dropping.

There was a detonation off to the side.  Avery, Verona, and Lucy all looked to the school.  The shockwave rippled past them, but it wasn’t like a wave of wind or a heavy punch.  It was sharper, like the ring of a bell.

John was frowning.  A few others had noticed something had happened, but they weren’t reacting like they’d felt what Avery had felt.

“What was that?” Tymon asked.

Verona jumped, and John reached for her, seizing her shoulder.  He plucked the envelope from her back pocket, then held it out.

The connection break mark was gone, the paper a bit burnt where it had been.

“Focused attention,” John said.  “With some power behind it.  I did something similar to you, Avery, once.”

When I spied on you.  The diagram burned out in a flash because you were so vigilant.

“It’s gotta be the Augurs,” Lucy said.  “They just busted right through our connection breaks.”

“They got curious about what we were up to?” Avery asked.

“Verona,” Lucy said, “Ave, do we?  We don’t have a lot of time.”

She moved like she was going to tear the envelope in half.

There was no hiding it.  The augurs would be able to read it and see what they were doing.  Either they used this or they scrapped the plan.

A plan they weren’t sure of.  Maybe it was 70-30?

Did they take the shot?

Either it complicated Bristow’s stay here, or it complicated their own.  They could leave, he couldn’t.

“Yes,” Avery said.

“Yes,” Verona said.  She seized the envelope, tearing the flap open.  She removed the paper.

“Then do it,” Lucy said.

“What the heck are you doing?” Talos asked.

“Making a move,” Verona said.  She threw the paper into the air, pulled out a spell card, and penned a dash to finish the diagram.  It released a gust of wind that bowled over Talos, who was sitting, and made Lucy’s hood pull back like a windsock.

She held the paper out, moving her hand.

Sending it straight into a room.

Lucy drew a line in the dirt between them and the school using her toe.

“We might need backup,” Avery said.

“What did you do?” Talos asked, standing.

The others roused as well.  Corbin and Mikey hurried over, Corbin carrying the soccer ball under one arm.

“Saying would be dangerous,” Avery said.  But we ordered a pizza under someone else’s name.  With regardsAdmitting it out loud would hurt the claim that it’s Bristow’s regards and not ours.

She wasn’t sure what she expected.  A stirring from the brownies, as they came at them for cheating?

A retaliation?  A big flash of light?

Kevin Noone’s girlfriend walked around the side of the school.  Really, really pretty, but she exemplified what Avery thought she’d seen in Matthew and Edith, but now knew was something else, Edith’s diminished humanity.

Shellie was with her.  She was carrying a bow, and had ten different arrows stuck through slits in her skin, only the shafts and feathered ends sticking up.

As a collected group, Avery, Lucy, Verona, John, and the other anti-Bristow students edged to the left, closer to the front doors of the school.

“They were sent,” Tymon said.  “Whatever you did, they just got their marching orders to respond.”

“Yeah,” Avery breathed the word.

“We still don’t know what Kevin’s girlfriend does,” Lucy said.

“We figured that one out.  She survives,” Melody said.

“Survives?”

“Intertwined aware.  Only the person most connected to her can hurt or hamper her.  Only Kevin.  Her fate was diverted and turned from what it was supposed to be enough times that it’s all entangled with his.”

Shellie the Bright-Eyed.  Rae the Intertwined.

Ted Havens.  He joined the other two, with Kevin in tow.  Kevin with the evil eye.

Kevin whispered something to Rae, who nodded, her eyes fixed on their group.

“I guess we set things off,” Verona said.

“Get inside,” Tymon said.  “Get to class.  Kevin can’t get at us directly, so long as we have the charms.”

Some of the others had made charms last night.  Eye symbols on strings, made of clay or carved wood.  It didn’t take much to divert the evil eye, but it was an easy weapon to deploy, and it just had to be timed for when they weren’t looking.

He probably knew the ins and outs better than they did.

“Go!”  A shadow passed over Tymon, like a cloud had passed over the sun, but the sky was overcast, a light covering of clouds that cast it in grey.  At Tymon’s back, a black scar appeared at his shirt and began to spread across his back.  He kept visible signs from appearing at his front.  He glanced at them and his eyes were bloodshot, but with black, not red.

They took Tymon’s advice.  Straight for the front door.

Shellie, Kevin, and Rae began to jog over.  Only Ted remained behind.

Avery wasn’t sure if that was alarming or not.

This is faster than we’d planned, Avery thought.

She was faster than most of the others.  John kept up with her, and Corbin was steps behind.

She got to the doors before anyone else, and was prepared to haul them open and hold them open, but the doors opened before her hands touched the handle.

Fernanda, backed by Yadira.  Backed by five other students.  Barring the way.

They looked up as John approached, but didn’t budge.

John could hurt you, Avery thought.  I don’t want him to, though.

But the Aware were chasing, the way was barred-

“Move,” Raymond called out, from the far end of the classroom.

Some students flinched, starting to move, until Fernanda touched one’s arm.  One of the Legendres, covered in small gouges and cuts, did much the same, urging them to stay.

“I won’t repeat myself here,” Raymond said.

The others reached the stairs.  The Aware were catching up.

A door emerged from the ground, as the front door of the school dropped down out of existence, leaving on the flat stone exterior.

This other door wasn’t set in anything, freestanding, but it was wide, and it looked into the classroom.

They pushed through, almost so rushed that they nearly bowled one another over.

Avery, being first to the front door, was last through this other doorway.  She turned, looking, as Shellie reached them, holding a large knife, eyes wild.

Avery took some satisfaction in slamming the door in Shellie’s face.  The exterior of the door broke away, hit the floor, and dissolved into glowing lines.  Leaving just the side of the classroom.

“Please take a seat,” Raymond said, from the front of the class.  “Except you, at the rear of the room.  You can stand, watch, and observe without participating, or you can leave, but I will not brook or encourage interference in my classes or students.”

Some stalked off.  Others remained, standing at the rear of the class.

It didn’t make Avery feel better, those eyes boring holes into the back of her head.  Even with John leaning against the wall, not taking his eyes off the other group.

“Text my phone.  Tashlit has it,” Verona whispered to Lucy.  “Warn her?”

Lucy nodded.

“Quiet, please!  Today’s lecture is on living items,” Raymond addressed them.  “Please settle, calm yourselves down.  We have a lot to cover.”

A long class.

Avery swallowed.

A long class was good, in that it meant they had more of a reprieve, in this makeshift sanctuary in a renovated church.

It was bad, in that they had to wait to see just what the aftermath of this move of theirs would be.  Bristow had definitely noticed it.

Gone Ahead – 7.5

Lucy

“…the Other that becomes an object, and the object that takes on an Otherness…”

Lucy watched as Avery’s leg bounced, nervous.

At the back of the room, students who had remained were restless, leaning against walls, their eyes boring holes into the back of the heads of those students who’d just escaped indoors.

Past them, windows on either side of the front doors showed Shellie and Rae peering through.  Shellie was talking and Rae answered.

The windows narrowed, then disappeared, becoming simple stone walls.  Lucy blinked, turning.  Raymond held a remote, not even breaking stride in his lecture.

“…and the line grows fuzzier as we introduce the middle ground elements.  An object of prominence has a complex spirituality.  In the right circumstances, sometimes something as simple as using particularly trained Sight, that spirituality may be made manifest with its own personality.  As an object is used, with history leaving its mark in minor wear and tear, damage, chipped paint, and whatever else, that spirit gains a memory.  It can pick up echoes, playing into the complex spirituality.  Where do we draw the line, then?  When can we say that this is simply an object that has witnessed life, and this is an object that has life?”

Ray walked across the stage.

Verona was paying rapt attention.  To look at her, and see her taking her notes in a cursive that had never felt easy or natural for Lucy to do, it didn’t even seem like the notion that they’d just poked the bear, their headmaster, and put themselves between Bristow’s students, his Aware and Bristow himself.

If this class wrapped up, they’d lose the protection that Raymond gave them.

Then what?

You wanted to do this, Verona.  I hope you’re on the ball.

A diagram flared, momentarily distracting Lucy.  Raymond had touched the keyboard of the laptop he’d placed on a lectern, off to the side.

A small bike moved away from the wall.  It squeaked a bit, disused, as pedals moved and it wobbled, nearly tipping over twice as it crossed the stage right-to-left, turned, heading into a near-collision with a shelf, then turned, crossing the stage again, left-to-right.

“Use your Sight if you’re not already,” Raymond said.

Lucy did.

The bike’s rider was like a stained glass window in the rough shape of a person, but the individual panels and what was viewable through them differed, and the edges were soft.  Some of the ‘staining’ in that stained glass mirror was especially evident at palms, at knees, at hands, even a spot at the cheek.

The squeaking of the wheels had changed.  She touched her earring, tilting her head.

“Hah hah hah, wheeeee,” the Bike squeaked out the words, faint and reedy and barely audible.  The ‘hah’s went along with pushes of the pedals, the ‘wheeee’ coincided with it coasting for a few times, the stained glass figure lifting its legs up.

“Pay attention to the movement mode of the living object.  Objects that can propel themselves, like this bike and its spirit rider-”

Raymond paused to give the bike a firm push as it looped past him.

“Wheeeeee,” the faint voice could be heard.  The figure on the bike lifted hands and feet away from handle and pedal, all four limbs lifted into the air, prompting a violent wobble as it corrected and made a right turn.

“-Simple enough,” Raymond continued.  “They move easily.  Virtually any power could be used to get them moving on their own.  Through that movement, they may perpetuate an action or help keep themselves going.  If they can’t, the energy may be spent. If there is unattended energy freely available, it may drink them in.  This particular complex spirit collected energy from unattended practices and things that had been set up to gather and bank power, then ignored.  It fed and gained clarity through attention.  Most weekends, the bike would roll downhill from the old eccentric’s house, then stubbornly and carefully make its way around back, avoiding all possible interaction and nearly spending itself of power before arriving at the property, refilling on its fuel, then repeating the process.  If it ran out, got too much innocent attention, or fell, chances are good it wouldn’t have resumed moving.”

He walked a few steps to intercept, then put a hand on the bike, jogging along with it, pushing it as he went.  It circled the stage with more vigor and energy.

“What, then, of other objects?” Raymond asked.

He tapped a key on the keyboard.  Another diagram flared on the stage, and a matching diagram on the ceiling made it possible to see what that diagram looked like.  Pretty simple, really.  A lot of ‘pluto’ signs in diamonds.

“A digression: those of you who have attended lectures on the habits of Others may recall that we can have Others who only exist in the context of their nature.  The ghul obitus is more ephemeral than many other types of ghoul, fleeting and vague, with a wide hunting ground and prerequisite for hunting that increase in scope as it gains power.  It simply does not truly exist in a real, physical capacity when it’s not active, with no hiding place and no bed, grave, or hovel it rests in where it may be hunted.  It is potential energy, an apple held in the air, waiting to be dropped, at which point it will take action for a short span of time, often days, before it makes its impact.  Ghouls live on the threshold of life and death, like spinning tops perpetually wobbling, and they keep themselves going by feeding on lives on the brink of death, or the freshly dead, as close to being still warm as they may hope  The ghul obitus holds off on existing, hibernating until someone passes through its sphere of influence.  This particular ghul obitus looks for young people who are slowly and inevitably dying and sufficiently detached from everything else.  It could be considered a vulture, circling.  Some unnerve or terrify the victim in their last moments.  Others simply watch, a recurring figure that eases the dying into the realization of what’s coming as they realize nobody else can see this dark figure.”

Raymond walked in front of the diagram.  As he passed, a figure appeared behind him.  A teenager with a leather jacket and goth makeup.  She held a cassette player to her chest.  She looked nervous.

“You’re safe, Musette,” Raymond said.  “We discussed you coming to my class, remember?”

Musette nodded.  She looked across the room.  She froze, staring at one part of the room, and Lucy twisted around, looking at a stricken Laila.

“Uhhh,” Laila drew out the sound.

“Musette, would you care to explain?  The-”

The bike circled around, and it cut its path across the diagram the ghoul was in, disturbing the chalk.  Raymond sighed.

The girl in the circle darted out, heading for the darkness by the shelves, off to the side.

Raymond crossed the stage, heading for that spot, stopped, then went for another section of shelves.  “The circle is for your own health and protection, Musette.  Trust me.”

He bent down, then slid the cassette player across the floor.  It stopped in the middle of the diagram.

He walked over, fixed the chalk with a chalk pen in his pocket, then straightened.  He gave the bike another push in passing.

“Whee.”

It passed the circle, and as it obstructed the view, the girl appeared again.

“Would you address the class?”

Musette straightened.  She looked around, then adjusted her headphones.  “Little kids like me.”

Raymond nodded.

“I used to hang out there, at hospitals with lots of kids.  But it’s easier to, eh, be, if I’ve got something to latch onto.”

“The cassette player,” Raymond said.  “You latched onto it.”

“Belonged to a girl I got along with.  She gave it to me.  Perdita.”

“Once you latched onto it, you would appear here and there, often to get collected and stuck in the lost and found.  But if there was a young boy or girl who fit the right profile…”

“Most are a bit younger than I look.  They don’t usually have family, or they don’t like their family, if they do.  Their friends have stopped visiting.  I try to be like a cool big sister, when they have nobody else.  Most often I’m a friend.  If they’re lonely, I’m company.  If they’re bored, I’m entertainment.  Sometimes I’ll check in a few times, then they get better, so I move on.  Once I’m sure, I give them this.”

She held up the player.

“You’re sure because…?”

“Because it costs if I give myself over and latch on, then I don’t get to eat.”

“And the rest of the process?”

“The closer they get, the more I hang out.  Until I’m there whenever nurses and staff aren’t.  If they have a place they want to be or a thing they want to do, I sometimes pay a bit of myself to keep… you said we were like spinning tops.”

“Yes.  Of note, I said that before you clearly manifested.  You heard.”

“Yes.  I keep them spinning for the last day or last few hours.  One day to sneak out of the hospital, go shopping, go to a movie, or maybe go to the beach.  Usually one thing.  The last one, I took her back to school, after hours, so she could sit at her desk again.  Then they go, I like to listen to music with them at the end.  Then I eat, I leave nothing behind unless they ask.”

“Are you the cassette player?”

Musette shrugged.

“I’ll give you my word, I have no intention of doing so, and I’d take drastic action to prevent it from coming to pass, but if someone were to attack the cassette player itself…?”

Musette hugged the device to her chest, eyes narrowing.

“It would harm you.  You and it are intertwined.”

“I guess.”

Lucy looked at Verona, with the full expectation that Verona would be on the edge of her seat, in love with this Other.

And maybe she was, a bit, but Verona’s attention wasn’t on the ghoul.  Instead, her focus was on a window.  So was Avery’s.  Lucy had to lean into Verona to get an angle to see.

Shellie was outside the window, pacing and peering through.  Ted was in the background.

John took a step away from the wall, saw, and tensed.  Lucy hesitated, then put her hand over his, to get his attention.  She shook her head.

The number of distracted students was apparently pretty obvious to Raymond.  He turned, looked, then gave the bike a push on his way to the laptop.  He spent a second typing.

Lines began to spread out, with long, narrow triangles fanning out across the ceiling.  Then, like the world was a broken mirror, each shard given its own context, images of a hospital with a very high ceiling began to phase in.

He typed more, and then an outdoor scene with rain falling onto a rural street appeared.  They added up until there was no view out through the window.  Or, presumably, in.

Raymond stopped pacing.  He remained where he was, glancing around, before he audibly sighed.  “I have three more things I came prepared to discuss, including a tea set with an echo in each cup, a tutelary statue of Ninomiya Sontoku from a foreign high school, and a darker choice in a sapient, death-defying mask… but it seems we’re all distracted.”

Nobody replied, but a few people nodded.

“How is a death-defying mask a bad thing?” Verona whispered.

Verona was the distracted one, Lucy judged.

“This is a topic close to my heart,” he said, giving the bicycle another push.  “The Others who reside in or around items can be some of the most secure.  They operate on more relaxed time scales, and as they lack the desperate edge that drives some Others, they are some of the easiest to get along with, or to study over the long term.  Technomancy is a passion, but this work is a cozy space to go back to when I need to get away from the worlds of static and electricity.  I hoped to impart some of that peace on students when I suggested teaching this today.  I’m sorry it doesn’t work.  Does anyone have any questions, or should we terminate the lecture now?”

“Can we keep class going a bit longer?” Zachariah asked.

“We could,” Raymond said.  “But keeping this going doesn’t fix anything.  Before we move on, Musette, are you comfortable?”

Musette stirred, as if shaken from deep thought.  What had she been doing?  She’d been looking at…

Lucy looked up.  John was still standing by the bench, hand on the backrest.

“You can leave if you want.  I can send you somewhere convenient,” Raymond said.

“This is fine for now.”

“Okay,” Raymond said.

“Everything okay, John?” Lucy whispered.

“She likes music, she’s young, she’s tied to… dark forces, I guess?” Avery asked.

Like Yalda?  A bit of a connection.

John’s eyebrows knit together for a moment, then he absorbed that and said, “Yeah.  Maybe.”

“This…” Raymond said, “If you’ll excuse the pivot in the subject of what I’m teaching here, is new.  As a technomancer by trade, I spend a great deal of time thinking about the new, anticipating the coming trends, and in the grand scheme of it all, where we stand today is still very new.  For thousands of years, practice was in the hands of a very small few.  Then it was in families, who most often kept a distance from one another, sometimes trading knowledge or intermarrying.  But our world is shrinking, our urban areas growing, the power we covet only grows as our competitors draw closer and multiply.  We find one another at each other’s throats.”

Lucy glanced back.  The few who remained at the very back were as still and quiet as the students at the front.

“I have no high aspirations,” Raymond said.  “I don’t want to be rich, powerful, or world-renowned.  I’m interested in my work, I want to maintain and pass on resources sufficient for my apprentices to do well, and I want to teach.  I find myself in an unfortunate position where I cannot take a side, because the moment I do, I become a practitioner that the greedy and ambitious have to take into- or out of consideration.”

“Just about all of us are facing some risk,” Lucy raised her voice.

“You are.  And in simpler circumstances, it could be worth it to put my neck out and take steps to handle something as important as what is happening to our school.  My problem is that my work has a global presence and I would make global enemies if I crossed certain lines or displayed any agenda.  I chose to stick my neck out already, consolidating information, creating marketplaces, and creating the infrastructure to bind and monitor the new Others out there in the digital landscape.  For me to act now wouldn’t be me sticking my neck out further, it would be allowing the guillotine to drop.”

“Is this supposed to be reassuring?” Tymon asked.

“No.  It’s only meant to be honest.  For reassurance, I want you all to know that although I take no side, I intend for my classes and my office to be safe.  If you are in danger, I will try to help.  If you need to get away and you don’t think you can get from here to home without being targeted, I can arrange safe transportation.

“May have to take you up on that,” Corbin said.

“Corbin,” Melody hissed.  She shook her head.

“You can come to my office at any point, or follow me there after class ends.  Feel free to talk amongst yourselves, if you need to.  I’ll answer any questions on the material, and may fill the silence with more lecturing before declaring class over.”

The students at the back of the class, except for a Hennigar and Jarvis, all left.

It was only in the pause, the burble of conversations, and everything else, that Lucy realized she hadn’t properly settled in for the lecture.  She still had her bag slung over one shoulder, sitting to her side.  No books, pen, or anything out.

She forced herself to relax, moving her bag and sorting out her stuff.

“Thank you for being here, John,” she said.  “I know it’s probably pretty low on your list of places you want to be.”

He was looking out, onto, and over the stage.  She wasn’t sure if he was staring at Musette, and had to lean over to get a better look at his face.

Staring at where the windows had been.

His voice was quiet and firm, his hand resting casually on his gun.  “It’s good I’m here.”

Lucy walked a circuit around the room, stretching, trying to get her thoughts in order.  It was hard to figure out what to do.  She’d given a recap of the brownie thing to their allies.  There was no fire or commotion at Bristow’s building, nothing to suggest the Brownie trick had worked, but at least the Brownies hadn’t showed up here.

That was a real worry.

Then she’d peeked through the window and verified the Aware were gone.  That was its own issue.

Avery was sitting in the narrow space between two bookshelves.  She’d gone to the washroom with John accompanying her to guard her, and they’d come back with Snowdrop.  Avery read.  A few paces away, Verona lay on the bench, book held over her head as she read, positioned so she could look between the aisles and follow what Raymond was saying and doing.

“Want more company?” Lucy asked Avery.

“For sure,” Avery said.

“Raymond said this space should be mostly clear from Augurs.  I’m not sure how much ‘mostly’ works.”

“Probably the same way that most things are weird with practice.  Can’t say anything for sure.”

“Mmm.”

“Come on, Snow, scoot.”

Snowdrop clambered onto and over Avery, taking what might have been the most annoying, circuitous route, which included climbing up and over the textbook Avery was reading.  Avery closed the book as soon as opossum tail and butt were out of the way of it.

Lucy took a seat in the little nook, beside Avery.  In the shade of the shelves, with the temperature control of the building, either magic or a really quiet air conditioning, the space ran cold, which Lucy liked.

“How’s the soreness?” Lucy asked.

“Nothing too bad.  It’s very all-around, except my neck.  I can’t find a good position to hold my head where I don’t feel like it’s pulling.  I tried lying on my bag-”

“I saw.”

“And on Snowdrop, but neither worked.  Kinda wish we could go back to our room and be safe there.  And I’d find a  perfect pillow arrangement and try not to move until tomorrow.”

“Hmmm.  Maybe we could go get Tashlit?”

“I think she’s spent, from what Verona said.  Or it’s like… she doesn’t know how much god-juice she has to spend, so she has to guess.  And if she gets it wrong it really hurts her.”

“Mm.  Can I help?”

“Don’t know how.  Unless you want to try holding your hands up for my head to lean against, like-”

Avery tilted her head.  Lucy tilted her own, providing a surface for Avery to rest against.

“That’s not… the absolute worst,” Avery said.

“I talked to my counselor this morning.”

“Oh yeah?  How’d that go?”

“It was good.  Shorter talk than I hoped.  But I got some things off my chest.  She said I should talk to you.”

“Did I screw up?”

“What?  No, not- I don’t know how to respond to that without getting into edge-case lies-”

“Oh swell,” Avery said.  Lucy could feel Avery’s half-chuckle from their head-to-head contact.

“Not what I meant.  I mean I’m sure you’ve messed up in similar ways to how we all mess up.  You’re doing good.  I don’t think you realize just how much you kick ass.”

“Uh huh.”

“When she said I should reach out, what I think she meant was… you keep asking if other people are okay.  Nicolette, then the other anti-Bristow kids.  But are you?”

“Like I said, sore.”

“But besides that.  Are you homesick?  Because I am.”

“I don’t even know if the home I left is going to be waiting for me when I get back.  Not like how I left it,” Avery murmured.

“Is it really that bad?”

Snowdrop climbed up Avery’s shoulder to wedge herself in between cheek and shoulder, like she was trying to offer support.  Avery gave Snowdrop a scratch.  “Probably not.  But the slim chance that it might be is really getting to me.”

“I don’t know what I’d do.  My family is so important to me,” Lucy murmured.

“I don’t know what I’m doing.  I want to punch something and keep punching it, I want to run until I collapse, I want to pull a Verona and escape onto a Path until this blows over.  Bonus points if time moves differently over there and I can skip most of this summer.  I want to save people.  And I don’t know what feeling is coming from what and I don’t think any one of those things alone would actually make me feel better.”

“Not even a bit?”

“Lots of things help a bit.  Snowdrop cuddles.  You talking to me, right now.  I was feeling lonely and left out, and this helps.”

“Do you feel left out a lot?”

“Some, and, uh, as I answer that, I think more than some.  I feel left out of my own family, I feel left out of friend groups, of you two, of school.”

“I could see about maybe making an appointment for you with Dr. Mona.  I’m sure if I asked my mom could pay for one session, and if you liked it-”

Avery shook her head, skull rubbing against Lucy’s.

“No?”

“Kinda did that with Mrs. Hardy.  She left me out too.”

“Left you out?  No, I think if you wanted to talk to her, she’d be open.”

“With another teacher present.  To protect herself.”

“And protect you, I’d think.”

Avery shrugged.  “It’s just another person in a long line of people that I don’t get to be close with.  Mom, dad, Grumble- I knew Grumble probably wouldn’t be cool with the whole gay thing even closer to the start of the year.  My siblings, our classmates, Mrs. Hardy.  Pam.”

“Mm.”

“Jessica.  But it’s just like… suck it up, Avery, right?”

“Is that right?  I’m not sure.”

“The world’s saying suck it up.  Guilherme’s saying it, I need to suck it up and grow as a person so I’m ready when the next chance comes along.  Maricica basically says I should either change into someone else or stop whining.  Toadswallow’s all… I don’t even know, but I’m betting it’s like, roll in this, rub this on yourself, and now you’ve got musk.”

“Musk,” Lucy echoed.  “Musk to turn girls’ heads.”

“It doesn’t even have to be a girlfriend.  A family member or a friend I didn’t have to cheat and use a magical ritual to tie to myself would be pretty good.”

“You think that’s why we’re friends?”

“We awoke together so we’ve got to stay together, right?  Miss put us together and we went with it.  Is that really genuine?  And Snowdrop’s my boon companion, so that’s part of why we get along.”

Snowdrop peeped.

“Hush,” Avery muttered.  She gave Snowdrop a scratch.  “I love you, Snow.  But I did cheat the system to get you.”

“That’s not fair,” Lucy said.

“Isn’t it?”

“We’re friends, Ave.”

“But not natural friends,” Avery replied.  “Not- not like- you were in my class for half a year and you basically never talked to me.  It was only when magic happened that we got stuck together.  Didn’t you- didn’t you say that you wondered about the Wallace thing?  About our classmates, when they rated you low on the ranking app?”

Lucy sighed.

“Right?  It’s just like that, I’m sorry, I really don’t want to hurt your feelings-”

“No.”

Avery’s voice was an intense hiss, as she put emphasis to words at the same time she tried to keep quiet enough they weren’t overheard.  “But how is it different?”

“I don’t- I really don’t know.  Because I’m stuck on that myself.”

“Okay, sorry, this is making my neck worse.  Sorry,” Avery said, shifting position, moving the book out of her lap and onto the shelf, then holding onto Snowdrop as she got to her feet.

“Ave, I do know you’re great and I’m so glad I’m your friend, and-”

“I’m going to- I can’t walk or go for a run, because we’re closed up like this, but just let me-”

“No,” Lucy said, reaching up.  She got hold of Avery’s wrist, then tugged.  It took a bit of force to get Avery to bend low.  Avery stumble-crouched down, and tilted hard into Lucy.

“Ow,” Avery said.

Lucy wrapped her in a bear hug, tight.  It probably hurt, it was so tight, but Avery didn’t protest, let alone move.

Verona had sat up at the noise.  Lucy motioned for her to lie back down, then moved her hand and bumped Snowdrop.

“Go to Verona,” Lucy said, giving Snowdrop a bit of a bump with her hand.

Snowdrop went, bounding across the floor.  Verona’s hand dropped to the floor, and the opossum climbed up it.

Avery sighed.

“I had a dream, while doing my ritual,” Lucy murmured.  “I didn’t actually tell Verona this, exactly.  A glimpse of a future.  It was my wedding, to some practitioner dude.  And sure as shit, you were there, okay?  You were there, and you brought a plus one and you rocked that same sort of look you had at the party.  And I was so happy you were there.”

No reaction from Avery.

“You were a traveler.  You’d picked up that little sliver of coolness Mrs. Hardy has, where she’s traveled a lot and knows a lot and she’s collected a lot of little things from India and Africa and Europe and whatever.  All over her desk.  I just knew your entire life was like that desk.  But magic.  And you had some badass tattoos.”

Avery shifted position slightly, like she’d been holding herself a bit rigid and a bit off the ground, in a tense way, and she wasn’t putting up that fight anymore.

“It doesn’t matter how we met.  What matters is I had terrific fun getting ready for the party with you.  I want to help you with everything you’ve got going on.  Your family, the practice, all of that.  Don’t look at this as you cheating to join in.  Look at it as this being so right that magic had to happen to make it so.”

There was no response.

“Can I get a noise from you?” Lucy asked.  “Just so I know I didn’t accidentally knock you unconscious or stab you on something when I pulled you off your feet?”

“Unf,” Avery’s voice was muffled by Lucy’s shoulder.

“Thank you,” Lucy answered.  “We’re a good set, us three, I think.  Still some stuff to figure out, so we’re including and understanding each other, but people keep saying how well we get along.  We work together well.  And yeah, it’s not perfect.  I’m… I’m not good at being a friend, maybe.  I made, like, one real friend in my life, before all this.  So I’ve got to get better.”

There was no response.

“Feeling pretty low, huh?” Lucy asked.  “Beaten up a bit, family stuff, not sleeping right, not eating right, far from home?”

Avery nodded, her head rubbing against Lucy’s shoulder.  Then she mumbled, “Bit better now.”

“Yeah.  Me too.  Was feeling pretty down.  Just a bit better, now.”

“This isn’t helping the sore bit of my neck,” Avery mumbled.

“Want me to let you go?” Lucy asked.  She moved her head a bit, judging.  “I think I’d drop you on the floor if I did.”

“Don’t,” Avery said.

“Don’t drop you on the floor?”

“Don’t let go.  For another minute or something,” Avery mumbled.

Lucy maintained the bear hug.  She leaned her head back, resting it against the wall, then looked sideways.

John was sitting on the edge of the stage, by the magic circle with the cassette ghoul in it.  He held a headphone to his hear while she played the music.

At the bench, Verona lifted her head up.  She made a hand gesture.

Lucy nodded.

A moment later, Verona went from being on the bench, Snowdrop and a book resting on her belly and chest, respectively, to being a cat, bounding forward while a bewildered Snowdrop tumbled to the bench, poked her head up, then followed.

I didn’t okay the cat thing.

But opossum and cat both came over, crawling into the laps of Lucy and Avery.

It got a chuckle out of Avery, at least.

Lucy watched as Raymond checked a computer, then turned a blocked off hallway into a point of entry.  Durocher stepped across the threshold and crossed the room.  Conversations ended and didn’t resume again, all eyes on the woman.

Avery sat with Snowdrop, and Lucy sat with cat-Verona in her lap, and a heavy textbook in her lap.  She’d picked the textbook from the shelf primarily to gently squish Verona, only to discover that her friend seemed to like it.  There were no protests.

“Ray.  Students are complaining about the kitchen not taking orders.”

“The brownie situation.  I don’t know how Lawrence managed that one.”

“I don’t think he did, Raymond.  In any event, I wanted to report that he’s staved them off for now.  But dinner fast approaches and we don’t have kitchen staff.”

An animal growled.

Lucy looked over at Snowdrop, wondering if Snowdrop had snored or something, but Snowdrop was awake and placid.

She lifted up the textbook, and Verona blinked a few times.

“We have a kitchen.  And Lawrence has several students new to his service.”

“I can’t imagine Chase has cooked himself a meal once in his life, I’ve seen Tanner put lemon and milk in his tea, Seth is a poor choice, and Nicolette…”

“Lived on her own for some time.”

“Largely homeless.”

“Knowing you, you came with an idea in mind.”

“Let’s slum it, Raymond.  We’ll order in.”

“For fifty students?”

“I’ll figure something out, if you can make sure Lawrence has things in hand.  If he dies, this will be a riot.”

There was another growl.

Oh.  Was it Durocher?

“What’s wrong?” John asked, approaching.

Lucy touched her ear, shaking her head.  “I think-”

The growling got more ominous.

“I think Durocher’s dangerous to be around with enhanced hearing.”

“The Augurs are around her with enhanced sight,” Verona said.

“Yeah.  But maybe there’s a trick.  It’s worrying.”

“Who do we talk to?” John asked.

Raymond strode from the room.

“Students!” Durocher called out.  “Your attention please!”

Raymond paused, then resumed moving.

Disoriented and wary, the growling filling the room, Lucy backed up a bit, and bumped into the bookshelf.

“Please return to your rooms.  Maintain the peace, keep to yourselves.  Dinner should be served in a couple of hours.”

There were some sounds of protest.

Raymond had committed to holding a ‘class’ until dinnertime.

“Circumstances have changed,” she addressed the room.  Not quite as powerful as before.  Tired?  Distracted?  “Go now.”

People weren’t used to saying no to Durocher.

So they went.

“And you three?  Stay.”

She’d indicated Avery, Verona, and Lucy.

“What’s going on?” Avery asked.

“Stay.  Your, ah, boon companion?  And the soldier?  They should go.  I want to address you three and only you three for now.”

“Why?” Lucy asked, frowning.  “What is it?”

“Do you want us to go?” John asked.

“No, I really don’t,” Lucy said.

“I insist,” Durocher said.

Other students were now leaving the room.  Some shot backwards glances at the three of them.

“What’s going on?” Verona asked.

Durocher held up one finger.  She walked over to Raymond’s laptop at one side of the stage.

“Are we in trouble?” Avery asked.

“I know about the business with the Brownies.”

“I overheard,” Lucy told her.  The growling was obnoxious, sticking around even when Durocher was done talking.  “Mr. Sunshine said he’s on their bad side?”

“Mr. Sunshine knows very little about many very important things,” Durocher said.

“Such as?” Verona asked.

“Your level of responsibility, for one thing.  And how very fragile technology can be.”

The woman put a hand on Raymond’s laptop, which was perched on the lectern.  She moved it, and it slid easily.  There was a computer housed within the wooden box of the lectern.

Then, in a singular motion, she tossed laptop and lectern from the stage.  They crashed into a bench.

All around them, parts of the room flickered, darkened, brightened, and returned to being that crafted image that was composited of slices of hospital, outdoors, and schoolbuilding.

Durocher looked around.

“Why’d you do that!?” Lucy challenged her.

“Because, girls,” Durocher said.  She leaped from the stage onto the pile of rubble, and landed in a crouch, atop the damaged laptop and bits of computer.  She kicked it violently.

The scene flickered all around them.  She looked around.

“Cease,” John said.

She kicked again.  Slices of Faerie court appeared alongside the hospital and hillside.  It looked like Ray had flattened out parts of the hill for a better presentation, but the non-flattened hill was still there on the computer, and those slices and fragments were impossibly tall, like pillars thrown around here and there.

John fired the gun.  An intentional miss.

The woman didn’t even bat an eyelash.  She straightened, looking around.

A flickering bit of wall that couldn’t decide if it was hospital or a slice of sunray from the outdoors was ninety percent of the room’s lighting.  It made for an inconsistent flashing, as the scene jarred its way from one scene to the other.

She looked around.  “Good.  No way in or out for now.”

“Has she lost it?” Avery asked.

“Oh, dear,” Durocher said, stepping forward.  She shook her head.  “I lost ‘it’ a long…”

The flickering light shaft swept over her.  When it went dark, she stood in the shadows, hair in her face.

“…long…”

A brief flicker took her face, replacing it with another.

“…long…”

It flickered again.  The piercings appeared.

“John!” Lucy called out.

He fired.

The woman reeled, her ‘Durocher outfit breaking first, revealing Shellie’s outfit from earlier, instead.  She stepped back, then she dropped.

She turned to dust on hitting the ground.

“Glamour,” John said, his head turning to scan the surroundings, gun pointed at the ground ten feet in front of him.

“…long time ago,” Shellie said, from nowhere in particular.

“Why us?” Lucy asked.

“Because you’re strong, you’re unpredictable, and you’re not falling in line, and because I wanted to see how this goes.”

“How what goes?” Lucy asked.

“In a matter of minutes, he’ll finish making his case with the kitchen staff.  And when a thing sent is returned, it is returned with interest.  It’s my self-appointed duty to ensure the three of you are in no way capable of handling it when they make their arrival.”

Gone Ahead – 7.6

Verona

The bullet that had penetrated the body of “Ms. Durocher” skittered across the floor as if kicked.  John pointed his gun in the direction it had been kicked from, but he didn’t pull the trigger.

“No hesitation in pulling the trigger,” Shellie said.  Her voice came from everywhere and nowhere.

“No.”

“You’ve killed before.”

“Yes.”

“So have I.  My last was a pretty little Fae thing, challenged herself by working her way up in human society.  For them, it’s like swimming up a waterfall, because our world isn’t for them.  She made it as a patron of the arts, picking musicians and funding them.  My brother sniffed her out, I told him to ignore her.  Then I found her and I made sure there wasn’t a square inch of her skin that the glamour could hold on to.  Then I sat with her for a week, offering her fruitless hope in exchange for information.  She didn’t take the offer.”

“Was she evil?” Lucy asked.  “Did she really deserve that?”

“Can you afford to be asking questions?  The way this works is that I do the stalling, telling interesting stories to see if you bite, and you rush through a series of plans to try to find me and defeat me so you can escape or prepare.  If you’re asking questions, you’re flipping it around.”

Verona was listening without listening, her eyes switching easily over to the Sight.

In the movies, it was the cloud of flour thrown into the air that betrayed the movements of the invisible hunter.  The paint on the floor.  Every movie with something or someone invisible had that scene, which never really sat right with Verona.  Bending light was wild and complex and it always felt like a huge oversight.

“Since when do you care about story conventions?” Lucy called out, her head turning.

“I don’t!”

But here, like this?  She felt like it should work.  Her Sight cast a loose sheet over everything, a wisp of cocoon, a sheet of foggy plastic.  Seeing past the veil was a hidden trick she’d had from the start, just for her.  Lucy had her earring.  Avery was sensitive to seeing fine movements.  John had spent a bit of time talking about  being watched by Augurs and burning through connections with Avery.

Verona nearly jumped out of her skin when something darted through the broken, shattered space, Lucy made a pained sound, flinching, and John whipped around, pointing his gun at air, head turning.

Lucy held hands to her lower face, and Verona saw a flash of blood beneath fingers.  She’d been hit in the face.

Verona’s hackles raised.  Nada.  Nothing.  She felt like the flayed things that hid under benches and by bookshelves should be perking up and looking. Not so.

Lucy normally liked to meet things head-on.  Avery flanked.  Verona had had it in her head for a bit now that that would be how they’d organize one another whenever they were in doubt.  Lucy in front, Avery circling around.  Verona just had to hang back, support the two of them, and work on getting answers when they didn’t need the support.  Like hanging back to get the answers from Brie, flinging the occasional flash card out.  Or figuring out how to get past the defenses of Zed’s car.

But their opponent was on her turf, invisible, and there was nothing for Lucy to face directly or for Avery to flank.  That loose system of organization fell apart.  Verona’s world narrowed to focus on the triangle of space between Lucy, Avery, and herself.

Lucy was bleeding.

That really, really bothered Verona and she didn’t like being affected on that level.

“Aren’t you going to keep asking questions?” Shellie asked.  “Throw out quips.  Like, oh, you’re so much worse than they were, Shellie.  And I can tell you that no, I’m trying to be worse.  Or bring up Daniel.  I’ll give you fifty-fifty odds on it being a thing I can laugh off or something that makes me flip my lid and go off on you.”

“Wouldn’t the best way to change up the narrative be for you to surprise everyone by changing your way of doing things and having a rational discussion?” Avery called out.

“That’s a good quip.  Congratulations.  You found the magic words.  Yes, that would be a way to be random enough the Fae couldn’t get me.  You’ve solved the Shellie riddle and you win!”

“Aaah!” Snowdrop shrieked.  There was a clatter as Snowdrop fell and a bench fell over.

Shellie slipped out from behind one sliver of altered, programmed reality in this space she’d broken with Ray’s computer, ducked low around in between Avery and John, and gripped the fabric at Avery’s shoulder to control where Avery was in the moments John had her in her sights.  He couldn’t put a bullet through Shellie without risking that it would pass through and hit Avery.

“Avery!  Don’t move,” John barked out.

But Avery stumbled back, trying to pull away from the hand that gripped her, and Shellie slipped in behind, arm lashing out with a blade in it, not to cut but to strike the side of Avery’s neck with a forearm, and block her retreat with the blade.

Now behind Avery, controlling her movement, moving fluidly despite the fact she, a grown woman, was crouching to match her height to a thirteen year old.

“How good is your aim, soldier boy?” Shellie asked, taking Avery hostage.

“Good,” John answered.  He pulled the trigger twice.  The second shot came so fast Verona didn’t have time to cover her ears before the sound blasted out.

So painfully loud.

Shellie’s knife hand shattered, the blade flying away from Avery’s neck with a violence that matched a spray of blood.  As Shellie pulled away in the opposite direction, she seemed to move directly in the way of the second bullet.  It clipped her eye, shattering bone.

Shellie fell, draping herself over the back of a bench, hand and upper left region of her face in ruins.

The ruins disintegrated by the second, like they were a careful arrangement of dominoes that had been tipped, or a house of cards that had started to collapse on the one side.

The fake Shellie disintegrated.

“Glamour kindly and unwittingly provided by the Vanderwerfs and by generous donors such as yourselves.  Are you kids old enough to have taken science classes?  Now, don’t get me wrong, I didn’t have the most well-rounded education.  I didn’t even get a bed of my own to sleep in, a lot of the time.  Poor little Shellie Alitzer, younger than you kids when she was released back into your world and told to find interesting, relevant things that her Faerie masters could then decipher or sell.  Can’t get caught by the authorities, can’t leave a trail, not a dollar to my name, but if I could pick the right things to steal, make it back in time, then maybe they’d let me sleep at the foot of another slave’s bed, curled up around a woman’s cold feet, borrowing the end of the covers.  Or they’d remember I’m actually a mortal who needs to eat, or they’d give me some cash to make my next trip out easier.”

The way she’d stepped out from behind the scenery.  It was like how animated shows used to work, with layers of clear plastic and things drawn on each sheet, but her sheet was out of order.  She was behind the stack more than she was invisible.

Was there a flayed human Shellie lurking behind the film?

“My education was breaking into someone’s house while they were out, sitting on their living room floor, and watching Backyard Science Club with Sciencella.  Furiously devouring snacks and studying, so I could go back with some Backyard Science Club tapes and walk a Faerie through making some tapes with similar vibes.  To trap other kids like me.  There was a principle I covered and I have no idea if they teach it to you guys in third grade or tenth, but conservation of energy?”

The last of them to speak had been targeted.  Lucy had been attacked, then Snowdrop and Avery.  They were silent now, while Shellie rambled, from that everywhere and nowhere perspective.

Except wasn’t that a trap, too?

“You throw around this glamour without realizing it’s still out there.  It might change forms but it doesn’t just disappear.  Like all this I’m hearing about glitter and microplastics?  It’s out there. Stuck in the ceiling of that place you were sleeping.  In your rooms, in the grass and in the woods.  And just like this Brownie trick that Bristow’s about to turn back on you all?  It’s way more effective if you take glamour that’s been taught how to work with three little witches and use it against those same witches.”

“You’re just out there on your hands and knees with a glamour magnet, sucking up all the glamour-y iron filings?” Verona called out.

Shellie laughed.

She’d broken the silence because they had to, it felt like.  But also because she sensed that Shellie wouldn’t repeat herself by going after the person speaking three times.

The fact she was going with her instinct on that and in a way protecting herself from being targeted and hurt felt cheap and unfair.  Like she was betraying her friends by not provoking the next attack.

She had to refocus.  What were her options?  What was here?

That bike was there, but she didn’t think she could use it.  Complex spirit.

There was the tea set, echoes, but… they weren’t hostile.

The cassette player with the ghoul attached was still sitting on a shelf.  Musette was unsummoned, the circle wrapped up.  Too specific to turn against Shellie, so she couldn’t hope to bait Shellie inside and then flip it on.

Flipping things on…

Verona fixed her eye on the broken computer on the floor.

“I had to learn to use this stuff.  The leavings and dust of other people’s work.  In a way, the fact you leave it behind makes me hate you.  They didn’t give us clothes or shoes.  We had to spin those things together out of dust, or I’d go to the lost and found at some school or kid’s gym.  They’d drop us back into our world, knowing we had to come back, for various reasons.  For me, that was Daniel.”

Lucy’s bag was in that nook where Lucy had been with Avery.

Verona backed up a bit, then ducked down to grab Lucy’s bag, and Avery’s too while she was at it.

“No bed, no home to call our own.  If another one of the scavengers they were training shared bread with me, that was something they could use.  The next time I was too slow or too unproductive, or if I couldn’t think three steps ahead and figure out what the other four scavengers were bringing back on this trip and avoid bringing the same things?  They’d punish her instead of me, take her solidity and form and leave her a writhing bit of shapelessness, and drop her into a box with the other scraps and snippets for a weekend, to latch onto and lose her grip on bits of bug, bits of animal, bits of horrifying faces until they gave her her shape again, a bit worn out and misshapen because something nonhuman had been wearing it and stretching it out.  Because I’d been slow and she’d made the mistake of being friendly to me a month ago.”

“And?” Lucy asked.  “Do you want us to feel sorry for you?  Because I do.  I won’t lie.”

“It’s how they get your soul. They get you by holding onto something you can’t let go of.  For me that was Daniel.  But your soul?  They pry that from you.  And the brownies that are due to come?  What do you think they’ll do to you?”

“I figured they’d make us eat something grotesque,” Verona said.  “Or something so delicious it makes all other food pale in comparison.”

Shellie laughed.

“They’ll treat you worse than my captors did me.  They’ll take you three and turn you against one another.  You don’t even have any conceptualization about what they are and how they’ll act.  You’re so far off I love it!”

Shellie laughed again.

“I love it!”

The computer on the floor was broken.

What if she broke it more?  Or broke everything?  They had the jammer.  The big red button they’d confiscated from Brie back when she’d come back to Kennet and the goblins had brought her into custody.  They’d just used it to free Avery, that morning.

She dug it out.

She pressed the button, firm.

Nothing.

She viewed it with the sight, and peered past the now-translucent button to the lifeform within, withered, curled up into the foetal position. and drawing in energy.

It still needed to recharge, apparently.

Verona brought Lucy and Avery’s bags, and headed back to Lucy’s side, perpetually looking around.  John flinched as Verona passed into his peripheral vision, like he was ready to hit her or turn and shoot her.

She found Lucy’s wallet, and in the wallet, the card with the red centipede printed on it.  Same one they’d used to break into Sharon’s computer.

“Got a plan?” Lucy asked.

Verona shrugged, holding up the card for a moment.

Lucy nodded.

The card with the computer bug?  It helped pull things out, helped hack.  Could she use it to hack the broken pieces of the computer into a semblance of working order?

Problem was, it was on the other side of the room, by the stage.  And Verona was on this side of the room, halfway down.

She passed Lucy her bag, then reached for her own.

Hat.  Cat mask.  Cape.

Three things that each made her a bit stronger.

Being closer to Lucy made her stronger.  Lucy was donning her stuff as well.

Avery moved closer, hopping up onto a bench to walk on it, giving her a higher vantage point.

Avery wasn’t joining them in putting on her mask, hat, or cape, though.

Verona’s eye fell on the charm bracelet.

Hat, mask, and cape were bound up into charms.  With glamour.  Avery’s hands were tied, unless she wanted to start slinging glamour around the Bright-Eyed Shellie.

“Got any assblasters?” Avery asked.

“No.  Used them saving Daniel!” Lucy raised her voice with those last few words.

They used Daniel to entrap me.  You think that wins you points?” Shellie asked.

“We’re not in the Faerie realms, Shellie,” Lucy called out.  Her upper lip had split and was still bleeding.  “We’re on Earth.  Where doing someone a favor and being kind tends to get a thank-you or a favor in return.  I’m not going to force you to do anything, but-”

Lucy stopped.  She turned a bit, and Verona could see where a metal blade, like a fine knife, was sticking out of her arm.

“Ow!  What the heck!?”

“Careful,” John said.  “Don’t pull it out or it will make the bleeding worse.  The blade is filling the wound.  Put pressure around it.”

Verona’s eyes darted this way and that, searching for any sign.  She had to refocus, staring out past the things on the surface.  How deep was Shellie, moving beneath all those layers?

Was she breathing something that wasn’t air?  Was she drinking and breathing glamour as she moved through the literal background?

“My line of thinking is that we need to make a door,” Avery said.  “It’s part of why I asked about the assblaster.  I figured a goblin firecracker could bust open a way.  But we might need to draw something.”

“Her entire plan right now is not letting us.”

“I know,” Avery said.

“Ronnie?”

“She’s listening,” Verona murmured, searching.

“She’s better at this than some,” John said, doing much the same.  “I could beat her in a fight, but she wouldn’t fight just me.  She’d go after you.”

“What are those brownies going to do to you, once Bristow sends them?” Shellie asked.  “Sell you, like I was sold?  Worse?  I could imagine them turning you into food.  Cutting into you every night, to serve you to fellow students.  And every morning you could spring back to a mostly-whole shape, never quite intact enough to get away…”

“Hey Shellie!” Lucy raised her voice.  “You do realize that Bristow’s manipulating you?  He’s manipulating Ted, he’s messing with Daniel… keeping you on the hook using rent and other magic tricks!”

There was no response.  But it felt like there should be one.

“Eyes!” Verona called out.

She reached for, marked, and threw a light card, inscribed with a circle.  It flipped up into the air, then activated.  A bright flash to consume the entire room.

She’d hoped for a shadow, a glimmer of something.  It did disrupt the visual effect of the computer, that hid the door, hallway exits, and windows.

She’d timed it based on instinct, like, according to the way this had gone, it felt like Shellie would attack right then.

But Shellie maintained her own tempo.

It would be so easy to burn through essential resources.  And what happened when the Brownies came?

She wasn’t sure she had a great answer to give them.  A way to turn them back on Bristow again.

They needed a way to get to the man.

“We need out,” Verona said.  “I can think of one possible way, besides Avery’s.”

“The-” Lucy started.

Shellie reached out from under a bench, grabbing Lucy’s ankles.  Lucy toppled as she was pulled.

“Lucy!”

John leaped over the bench, then over the next, as Lucy was pulled toward the other end of the room.

Avery went after Lucy and John.

Verona hesitated, then headed in the opposite direction.  For the computer.

She’d trust them.  She hated this, she hated it, she hated it.  She didn’t believe in abandoning Lucy, but was it abandonment if they were helping?  It wasn’t like Verona was the type to catch up.

Computer.  And there was a disk drive.

She booted it up, then popped the drive open.  She slipped the card in, then slapped it closed.

The centipede slithered out of apertures in the computer, winding its way around.

“Don’t!  Don’t!” Lucy called out.

“What are we supposed to-”

“Don’t!  Don’t talk.  Where’s- where’s Verona?”

“Here!” Verona called out.

“Shhh!”

Avery and John weren’t moving.

The laptop screen was cracked, and it threw up a blue screen, an error screen in white text on a black background, then another blue screen, in rapid succession, followed by the centipede in red against a crimson background.

“Come on, come on, come on,” Verona whispered, adjusting her witch’s hat.

“You’re a puppet, Shellie!” Lucy raised her voice.

“Don’t provoke her,” Avery urged.

“Bristow’s got you dancing on his strings.  You’re right back where you were, except you’re slaving under someone who is way less cool than any Faerie!”

Come on, computer, give me access to Raymond.  Or Zed.  Or shut down these doors.  Give us an escape route.

“Lucy!” Avery’s voice was a hiss.  “Not while-!”

Not while what?

Verona looked at the computer, saw progress bars with bends and curves in them as the centipede got them.  She saw windows popping up in sequence, doing their own twisting and winding.

She had no idea if it was almost done or one percent of the way.

But Lucy…

She grabbed the laptop and clambered up onto the stage the laptop had been thrown onto, to get a higher vantage point.

Lucy was sprawled against a bench.  The Nettlewisp was back, needle-lined vines wrapped around the same arm, and around the end of the bench.  Trapping her arm there against the wood.  The flower was there too, bristling, with four spiky needles the length of Verona’s arm sticking out.  One at Avery, one at John, one at Snowdrop, and one at Verona.

Verona set the laptop down on the makeshift lectern Raymond had been using, making sure it was still running.

“You’re just one cog in his machine!  It’s pathetic!” Lucy raised her voice.  “You have to know it!  That you’re just another servant for another arrogant tool, while you’re working for him!  Just like how Daniel and Clementine and Ted and everyone else is serving him!”

“She’s trying to draw attention from you two onto me,” Shellie whispered, into Verona’s ear.  Verona jumped a bit.

“Yep,” Verona answered, without moving.  The laptop buzzed and flickered at her right.

“While you’re tooling around with this computer, and Avery over there is subtly trying to draw out a magic circle, using her toe to indicate where, while the opossum does the drawing.”

Verona nodded.

“Look at the screen, so they don’t realize we’re talking.”

Verona didn’t take her eyes off of Lucy.

Lucy went on.  “You’re gutless!  Attacking kids for a cut on your rent!?  Then you say you don’t care, it’s predictable what we say?  That’s not a way of arguing against us or our arguments, Shellie!  That’s a clear frigging sign that you can’t even argue it!”

“Look at the screen, hands on the keyboard.”

Something sharp pricked Verona in the lower back.

Verona obeyed.

“You act like you’re above it all, you’re divorced from the stories, but then you go and act like you’re putting on a show!  Seems like a pretty obvious and bad performance, Shellie!” Lucy called out.

“What will she say or do when that barbed charm goes off and chooses you or your friend to sting?  Or worse, one of the Others?” Shellie whispered.  “One of you dead or maimed by her hand?”

“I think she’d be very upset for a very long time.  I don’t think it makes a good story and I don’t think it makes a very good anti-story,” Verona said, stiff.

“That’s not a good way to convince me when it’s exactly what I want,” Shellie whispered in her ear.  “Did you know there’s a little trick to that charm?”

“A trap,” Verona murmured.

“Yeah, a trap.  Did the Faerie who passed it on to you tell you?’

“Yep,” Verona murmured.  At the very least, Avery was drawing.

“Then that makes this hit much harder. The only way to get rid of it is to have it go off.  You could slip into another world or travel halfway across the globe.  When that goes off, it should take one of your lives, at a minimum.  It drinks the bitterness that follows.  That’s why the glamour stirs so readily into that prepared little charm, don’t you see?  It waits for the chance to create a situation like this, just like the Brownies and their warning not to give thanks.”

“Yep,” Verona said, swallowing.

“And if we don’t get rid of it, then she’s stuck there.  Caught on a bench for a few Faerie lifetimes.  Can’t cut that bench apart.  You’ll find a subtle little vine in the woodwork and once you sever it, the rest sets off.  And the closest one to her?  Skewered.”

Verona nodded, staring at Lucy.  Her eye moved to Avery, who stood by a bench across the aisle, stricken, and then to John.

“Why us in particular, Shellie!?” Lucy called out.  “You said you did this of your own free will, which I really don’t believe.  But you picked us.  Why?  Because we’re friends, and you’re friendless?  We’re kids and you didn’t get a childhood?  I’m actually sorry that happened to you and Daniel-!”

Shellie talked over Lucy, whispering, “She thinks if she says the right words that my position will unravel.  That I’ll realize how wrong I was and I’ll concede.  Or I’ll show some vulnerability you can use, or I’ll hesitate when it counts.”

“Yeah,” Verona mumbled.

“It’s so arrogant, to think that way.  My position won’t change.”

“Maybe not,” Verona answered.

“I don’t think she could run from the brownies at this point.  So I can go back to my landlord and say I’ve done my job.”

“You could also go suck on a wet fart,” Verona said.  “It’d be a cooler thing to do than what you’re doing right now.”

“You’re not tormented enough by this.”

“A little bit dead inside, maybe,” Verona answered, eyes still forward, body still not moving, as Shellie dwelled somewhere behind or around her, out of sight.

“Or maybe… do you think someone down there is expendable?”

Verona avoided glancing at John.

“Not the little one.  No, Avery there was too upset when I pushed her.  Not Lucy.  It couldn’t be Avery.  And I don’t get the sense of a deathwish from you.  The tall, rangy soldier boy with the wounded look in his eyes.”

Verona didn’t budge, her eyes going to the screen.

It looked like the centipede had more of a hold on things than before.

Was it almost done?

Would Shellie realize?

“Thank you for telling me.  I’ll deal with him.”

Verona remained silent.  Absorbing the emotional hits, keeping it together-”

“…But I’ll deal with you first.”

Shellie seized her.  Verona seized Shellie’s wrists, then twisted around, fighting to avoid being shoved or tossed.  Her back was pressed against the lectern.  Shellie was more than six inches taller than her, adult, and stronger.  Verona was just barely over ninety pounds, and just a hair under five feet.

“John!” Verona shouted.

Shellie ducked behind the lectern, pulling Verona on top of her.

“Do you know how-?”

Verona managed to dig her elbow into Shellie.

“Do you know how I set up that Nettlewisp charm so easily?” Shellie asked.

Verona pursed her lips.

“It’s really simple.  Repetition makes things easier, at least when it comes to glamour.  Keep doing stuff and it responds better.  Did your Faerie teacher tell you that?”

“Yeah.  Less to me directly, more to my friend.”

“I do believe there’s another trap you’ve overlooked.”

“Two big ones, apparently.”

“The wisp’s shadow was on her arm, and you… you smell like cat.”

John’s footsteps were approaching, running as he tried to get around or onto the stage so he’d have a clear shot at Shellie.

“I saw this with a pet werewolf.  When someone changes often enough, it becomes trivial to make them change.”

Shellie’s hand stroked Verona’s face, hair, neck, the fur at the ruff of her neck.

“If you like being a cat so much, why don’t you become one?” Shellie whispered.  “And stay one for a little while!”

She threw Verona.  Verona flipped through the air, upper and lower body twisting independently as she caught sight of the ground and then locked the fluid motion of her body to it, twisting, adapting, using her tail to help control…

John caught her.  She’d been thrown directly at him.  He fired the gun, and she nearly jumped out of her skin.

In any other circumstance, that shock would have jarred her back to reality.  In this circumstance, it just made sensitive ears hurt, and she lacked the hands to easily cover them.

Okay.  She’d adapt.  She’d wanted to live like this and now she had to, at least for a few minutes.  There were priorities.  The laptop-

Crashed to the ground.  It had been thrown not long after she had.  She watched as it went to pieces.  Fragments of monitor scattered along the ground, along with casing, keyboard keys, and the fan part of an internal fan.  The CD drive popped open, and the centipede card sat within.

Her head twisted around to Lucy.  Lucy had her one free hand gripping the spikes of the Nettlewisp, holding them back.  The inside edge of one of her fingers was bleeding.

Verona yowled.

John started moving, carrying her in the cradle of his arm.

“You’re using glamour now, Verona?” Lucy asked, panting for breath.

“It didn’t seem as if she choose to,” John said, voice hushed.

To indicate, Verona shook herself as violently as she could, in an effort to shed the glamour.

No luck.

“Same as me, then,” Lucy whispered.

If Lucy was okay, then…

Avery was in the benches on the other side of the aisle.  Snowdrop at her feet.  Shellie behind her.

There was a danger in making too much noise if it might set off the Nettlewisp.  If the nettlewisp was real, but Verona was willing to believe it was, after the cat thing.

But their collective reaction seemed to tip Avery off.  Widened eyes, shifts in stance, alarm.

She moved, and escaped Shellie’s reaching hand with the piercings driven through and under fingernails, and through the small bits of webbing between her fingers.

Shellie ducked down, and what followed was… something of a chase.  Avery stumbled, crashed into a bench, fell, stumbled…

Scrambling back.

Until she ducked to one side… and emerged at the far end of the room.

Using the fact the black rope didn’t work if she was being observed to know if she was in Shellie’s sights.

Verona hopped from John’s hand to the nearest bench Lucy wasn’t on, then hurried over, jumping down to where Snowdrop was crouched, holding a piece of chalk.

If she could finish this-

She took chalk in her mouth, and it turned out cat teeth and mouth-parts were horrible for the task, putting aside the bone-shuddering that resulted when her rasp-tongue ran against the chalk.

“Pull the trigger, big guy.  What’s the matter?  You seem like the type who’s shot more than a few different friends.”

John was tracking the ongoing skirmish.  Someone that was pretty much invisible chasing someone who could teleport if she could slip out of everyone’s sight.

Verona decided not to make the task any harder.

She judged the diagram in progress, then began drawing with chalk, as best as she could.

Snowdrop, who was about as graceless in movement as cats were graceful, traipsed her way around, trying to get in Verona’s field of view.

Verona scratched the floor with a single claw.

Snowdrop became human and chased the scratch with a line of chalk.

Verona drew, scratching when she didn’t trust her way of holding the chalk so that Snowdrop could follow.

It was a copy of Jessica’s diagram to open the way to the Ruins.

Which was a problem.

But there were a lot of problems.

John shot the gun.  Both Verona and Snowdrop flinched.  Both Verona and snowdrop messed up their lines.

He’d shot while sitting on the bench beside Lucy.  Ready to take the needles.  From the shadow on the back of the bench, she could tell that two were aimed right at his torso and stomach, pointing at Snowdrop and Verona, respectively.  The other was pointed at Avery, with his elbow stuck in the way.

It wouldn’t work, Verona was pretty sure.

He wanted to throw himself on this particular grenade and it wouldn’t work.  If it had gone off, those needles might have punched right through him to get at them.

And…

Verona leaped up onto the bench, her entire body working to carry her aloft, four feet and fluid joints catching her on the landing, nearly as soft as a feather.  She was pleased, even as she was tense.  She hopped up onto the top of the bench in front of her, and nearly slipped.  Less pleased.

There was no needle pointing at John anymore.

She hissed, looking around.

John looked at her, then turned.  He leveled the gun-

Lucy caught the side of his shirt, clutching.

She shook her head.

“Two of you, tied up in a neat little bow.  I had to borrow this needle so it wouldn’t choose you to gun down, Mr. Soldier.  Our cat here seems to think you’re expendable.”

Verona shook her head.

John could die and come back.  If that was the cost of lifting this hostage situation and getting Lucy back on her feet, that was good.

“I’d like to get the third before they come.  It’d really annoy them.  But you’re slippery.”

While Avery paced, moving away from Verona and Snowdrop again, Verona resumed drawing.

“I’m good on my feet.  It’s a strength of mine.”

“You dress yourself up in strengths.  To me, it looks like you stuck a whole lot of motivational posters and post-it notes on yourself.”

“Are you really one to talk?” Avery asked.

Verona kept drawing.

What to do?

When this portal opened, if it opened successfully, then it would probably disturb all the glamour.  That could break the nettlewisp, and make it target a victim… it’d get wet, it’d explode, and it’d skewer at least one of them.

No.  This had to be the way to go.  Making an exit.  Then they had to go after Bristow, and find that key weakness.  Bristow talked a lot, which…

Verona wanted to reach for her phone, but she didn’t have a phone, nor hands to reach with.

They just had to escape this.  Then maybe there was a chance.

It was like a nested puzzle.  One thing after another.

And at the top, if they could finish this diagram…

She hurried.  It was a crescent shape, with craggy raindrops nested in side the crescent.

She leaped across the aisle, onto the other bench, and landed beside Lucy.

“Careful,” Lucy whispered.  She looked scared to even breathe.  Her fingertips were black and trembling, and every minute movement radiated out to the flower, the harpoon-like stingers quivering.

Verona looked from Lucy to the diagram, to the flower.  Diagram to flower, flower to diagram, she met Lucy’s eyes.

“John,” Lucy whispered.

Avery was still dodging Shellie.

Lucy’s whisper was urgent.  “John, when it goes off, it’s going to wash away glamour.  And when this nettlewisp gets washed off, it’ll fire, I think.  Or it’ll get way worse and then it’ll fire.”

“What do you need?” John asked, tracking the skirmish.  Avery being evasive.

There was a crash.  Avery’s bag had fallen to the ground.

A little creature, goblin-ish, but uniform, with coppery hair and four eyelids all coming together to blink into an ‘x’ shape, a mouth full of needle teeth, had dragged the bag down.

There was another already inside it, butt and legs sticking out.

Snowdrop hissed.

Verona’s senses tracked the other creatures.  Her ears twitched, her whiskers catching the sensation of wind, like doors were opening and being closed.

More were scaling the bookshelves.

“I don’t know,” Lucy said, head turning.  “Just preparing you.  Can you shield one of the other-”

Verona shook her head.

She believed what Shellie had said: that that wouldn’t work.

Bouncing up to the back of the bench and ventured perilously close to the Nettlewisp.  The flower turned to remain poised where it could aim at her, Snowdrop, and Avery at the same time.

Balancing on back legs, which was hard considering she’d spent the majority of her life as a biped, Verona put her front paws out, forming an ‘x’ over the Nettlewisp.

“Block it?  Cover it?” Lucy whispered.

Verona nodded, dropping her paws.

“Keep it dry?”

Verona nodded again.  She raised a paw and extended a claw.

John pointed a gun at the nearest brownies.  They didn’t seem to recognize or care what it was, because they didn’t stop pacing, circling around as their numbers grew.  More were crawling out every second.

They’d fixated on Lucy because Lucy couldn’t move.  It seemed like they hadn’t realized Verona was Verona, and they were more focused on getting arranged by the dozen than they were in actually chasing down or catching Avery.

Shellie had changed tacks, though, making some use of the shrinking territory Avery could safely navigate.  Avery couldn’t use the black rope anymore either, so she was using her shoes.

But the shoes weren’t infallible.  The shoes had wind spirits in them and they could pull the rug out from under Avery at any moment.

Avery’s shoes squeaked on the stage.

And Shellie turned, striding toward Verona, Lucy, and John.

John raised his gun to shoot again, and Lucy shook her head.

It was almost certain the Nettlewisp would fire off with the next disturbance.

In the background, Avery was crouched, tense, watching as the Brownies circled her.  More were circling Lucy, but because John was there, they were taking the back routes.  Moving along the back of the bench, climbing up, sneaking.

Verona had only a few free moments.  Shellie was striding this way.

She went for her bag.

With her teeth, she pulled out her phone.  Punching her two front paws rapid-fire against the phone, she got past the lock screen.  Internet app.  History button.

She’d looked up stuff last night.  She hoped it wasn’t too much scrolling.

Stupid checks of her email, to see if Jasmine had reported anything on her dad.  Stupid searches for Jeremy.  Stupid browsing of artist Spottr galleries, stupid videos.  More searches of her email… it was so slow to scroll.

Shellie whistled.

All eyes went to her.

There were the language and translation apps, helping neurodivergent kids communicate.  Voice transcription and notetaking… she saw an app in the latter category and set it to download.  Stuff from when she’d been working through stuff with Tashlit.

Not what she needed right now but she liked it and she might want it later.

“The phone-obsessed cat is Verona Hayward,” Shellie said.  “I know your type don’t like cats, but cats do not act that way.  Get over it and get what you’re due.”

No less than fifty coppery, x-shaped eyes went wide, the four triangular eyelids pulling back to create bulging spheres.  Mouths went wide, baring tiny teeth.  There were women and bearded ones, little ones and elderly ones.

They chattered.  The language like nothing humans spoke.  They approached,but hesitated here and there as she met their eyes.

Why did so many Others not like cats?  It was so unreasonable.

“Mess with my friends…”

It was Avery.  She’d pulled on hat and cape.

And she’d taken to the air.  Or the wall.  She’d leaped, her shoes working to keep her aloft, and ran across the wall, to circumvent the ground that was festooning with Brownies, now.

“…And you get the prongs!”

Avery leaped onto Shellie, mask in hand, smashing the antlers of her mask across Shellie’s head.  The landing was a heavy one.  Avery stumbled as her feet met ground.  Shellie stumbled too, but was faster to recover.  Some of the prongs had caught on piercings and pulled them free.

Shellie’s thumb hooked on a ring that was sticking through her skin near the wrist and pulled.

About five feet of silver chain that was beneath her skin slithered out, slick with blood.

She whipped Avery with it, drawing blood at the shoulder and neck.  It was relentless, not even finishing a full swing of her arm before flicking, reversing direction, making the fine chain seem to hover in the air, tip dancing and producing violent impact.

Avery stumbled back, into the waiting hands of Brownies.  They seized her lower legs, piling on each other to work.  They were fast.

They opened doors behind her, fingers gripping shoelaces.

“No prongs here!”

Snowdrop stabbed Shellie’s calf with the rusty fork, went small, ducked through Shellie’s legs, and went human again, her bulk making Shellie stumble.  Snowdrop caught Avery’s hand and yanked her away from the Brownies.

Verona scrolled through her phone with cat paws.

This is in a really intense, meaningful way, she promised the spirits.  Don’t give me a karma hit for doing this.  She had to use her nose and slide the phone across the floor, batting at it with paws as she tried to simultaneously escape the encroaching Brownies and navigate.

She punched the icon.

Washing of the lonely walls…” the phone blared.  “…Shaking of the tower falls…

She was risking breaking Shellie’s tentative innocence in this but she was pretty sure there wasn’t much to break.

“…Shall we walk cross the crack-ed sways?…” the phone chanted.  “…beneath the rains of yesterdays?”

Shellie marched closer, limping slightly.

Verona turned, hissing.

It wasn’t for Shellie, but for the Brownies.  They scrambled back at the sudden aggression, getting a bit in Shellie’s way.

The chant she was using was the result of searching in texts, but this place didn’t really put much focus on the Ruins.  She wished she’d saved or recorded what Jessica had done.

Avery hopped up to the wall, then leaped down, hard.  Landing just in time for the ritual to erupt.

Brownies hesitated, then ran in.

Some were getting dangerously close to Verona.

Getting dangerously close to Lucy, who John couldn’t even properly defend as water sprayed up and cascaded down in a heavy rain.

Verona dove in.  Because she was useless like this.

Being a cat wasn’t sufficient if she wanted to help Lucy.

Into the diagram.

Brownies seized her, hesitated as she became human, then dug needle-sharp claws into her.

“It’s not enough,” Avery sounded distant.

Need-

Verona concentrated.

“Dad.”

Her dad was fresh out of the shower, towel around his waist.  He leaned hard into the sink to peer into the mirror as he rubbed shaving cream over his face.  His face was red, his eyes redder.

“Dad?”

“Not right now, Verona.”

She hesitated.

There was a thunk from the other side of the house.  She turned, then turned back to her dad.  His face was redder than before, and he looked like he was in pain.”Dad… what’s happening?”

That look of pain crept across his face by increments.

Until he crumbled.  Shaving cream on one cheek and on the roll of his neck, he sat on the toilet, and he began to cry.

“Dad…”

She gave him a hug, tight.  He hugged her back, sobbing.

“What’s happening?”

Another thunk.

She rubbed his back as he cried.

“Dad-”

“Ask her!” he barked, loud enough she jumped.

Verona pulled away.

“Ask her!  Make her tell you!  Ask her what she did!”

Verona backed away.

He shouted between sobs, and it was a broken back and forth of sad and angry that made her own eyes well up.

“Ask her!  Ask her why!”

She went.

Across the house, down the hall.

To her mother’s room.

“Hey honey.”

Her mom bent down and gave her a kiss on the forehead.

“What’s happening?”

“Your father didn’t say?”

Verona shook her head.

“Well, don’t blame him.  He and I are taking a bit of a break.  I’ve been busy with work, we’ve drifted apart, I suppose I’ve been unfair to him.  And to you.  I do love you, you know.”

“I love you too.”

Her mom put folded clothes in a third thing of luggage, closed it.

It thunked, loud, as she set it down.  Because the luggage was big and her mom was small.

“I don’t understand,” Verona said, quiet.

“Do you know what a separation is?”

“No.”

“Do you know how a break-up can sometimes happen between a boyfriend and a girlfriend?”

“Yes.”

“It’s like that.”

“A divorce?” Verona asked.

“It’s not a divorce.  It might become one, but for right now it’s not, it’s something different.”

“Oh.”

Her mom lifted up some more luggage.  She put papers and stuff in that one, first.  Books.

“So you’re going to come back?”

Her mom put some books in the luggage.  Then some more papers.  Then some plates, which she wrapped in t-shirts.

“I’ll…” her mom started, trailing off.  “I will always be here for you if you need me.  I’ll always be your mom.”

Verona nodded.

“But you’re going to come back?”

“No, honey.  I don’t want to get your hopes up, but I don’t think I am.  But that doesn’t change anything about you and I, okay?”

A door slammed upstairs, on the other side of the house.

Verona helped her mom get books and bring them to the luggage.  Her mom pushed Verona’s longer hair behind her ear, then kissed the top of her head again.

“Can you be here tonight, then?” Verona asked,

“I think that would be hard.  I can talk to you dad about it, but I think it would cause more stress overall.”

There was another slam.

“I don’t think he wants to talk.”

“No.  Do you want to spend the night with me?  It’ll be at a hotel, we can talk everything out.”

“You’re going to stay at a hotel from now on?”

“No, no honey.  Just until I get an apartment.  For now it’s a bit like a vacation, isn’t it?”

Verona shrugged.

“Yeah.  Not really, I guess,” her mom said, giving her head another stroke.

Ask her what she did! her father’s voice rang in her head.

Verona put books in the luggage.  Her mom reorganized how they were arranged.

Verona didn’t put any more books in the luggage.

Make her tell you!

“Do you want to come?  I’ll pitch it at your dad.”

Ask her!

Ask her why!

It felt like leaving would be a betrayal.  And staying would be more convenient for her mom.

“I think I should maybe stay.”

She saw a flash of something like hurt or something in her mom’s eyes, which her mom promptly covered up.

Had she been wrong, about this being more convenient for her mom?  Or was it something else?  Or what?  What was it?  What?

Ask her!

Verona was silent and still as she watched her mom finish.

“I wish I had more boxes.  I’ll have to arrange a way to get the rest of my stuff. Figure out the rest later.”

Tears welled up.  Verona wiped at her eyes with the heels of her hands.

Her mom gave her a hug.

“I’ll be in touch.  Nothing changes between you and me, okay?”

Verona shrugged.

“Nothing about this is easy.”

“No.”

Her mom dragged the luggage across the floor.  Verona brought the one case.

As she got closer to the front stairs, she could hear her dad.

“Don’t blame him,” her mom said.

“Okay,” Verona said.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

She watched from the door as her mom carried the luggage out to the car, one by one, because taking them down the stairs required both hands.

Her mom drove off, stopping to wave.

Ask her what she did!

Verona waved back.

She shut the door.

The house seemed so dark.  Usually at night, the living room lights were on and her mom was working at the dining room table, in her makeshift bedroom-office, and the kitchen lights would be on and the upstairs lights would be on.

Now it was just upstairs, and only partial light.

She walked down the length of the hall to her dad’s room, where the television flickered.  And he was there in bed, on his side, back to her, sobbing.

She sat down on the edge of the bed and rubbed his back.

“Did she explain?”

“Some.”

“I bet she did.  You okay?”

“Some.”

A nonsensical answer.  But it got a nod from her.

She wasn’t very large for her age, but there wasn’t a lot of space to sit between the edge of the bed and his back and butt, so it was an awkward perch where she had to stick her foot out to stay where she was, her back to his, her hand stroking his back while he cried.

Her own eyes on the wall, looking at nothing in particular, her thoughts in bewilderment and numb at the same time.

They fell amid broken floorboards, where rain was torrential enough to pool in the dips and bends of the shattered floor.  Benches littered the area around them.

Musette stood in the background, so pale she seemed to glow in the dark.

“Why did we go deeper?” Avery asked.

Verona pointed.

The Brownies were here.  They struggled to pick themselves up.

She shoved some away, moving quickly so they couldn’t bite, but they were sluggish.  When they fell, they seemed to have a hard time rising up again as the rain drummed down atop them.

Snowdrop growled at some and they overreacted.

This isn’t their turf.

Good.

But the real world was, kind of, and Lucy was still there.

Snowdrop turned human.  She shook herself violently.

“Okay, that works for now, but we’ve got to-” Avery started, at the same time Verona said, “Lucy’s still-”

The downpour became a drenching, like a dam had broken and the force of a river poured down on the center of the space.

Shellie hurried across the street.

“Watch it!” a bird-headed woman snapped at her.

Shellie bent into a curtsy.

Past some goblins in glamoured makeup who were cooing and pretending to be pretty.  She had to pause, then time running between the feet of a passing elephantine, so it wouldn’t kick or step on her.

There was a new stall with row after row of human skin draped out.  Some supple, some diseased.  Old and young, in all sorts of colors, shapes and sizes.

“Selling fates on credit.  Exchange your fate!” a barker shouted from the corner.  “If you don’t like the outcome, you can have your money back!  We trade up, up up!”

“We sell tours in the circus, so you can technically tell the children that if they run away with you, they can join the circus.  Sell them on clowns, candy, interesting people.  It’s an escape…”

“Help me!  Please, help me!” a mouse in a cage begged.  “They feed us to the expensive birds and snakes like we’re a delicacy!”

She made a face, pressing a hand to her heart, turning around to face the mouse as she walked past it.  It was the closest she could come to expressing sympathy.  They kind of didn’t like it here if someone made a prayer sign with their hands, and that would’ve been her first instinct.

“Shellie, Shellie!” Basil called down from a window.  “Meet me downstairs!”

“I’m coming in!”

“Perfect perfect!”

Basil was short for a Fae, with hair like white wool, a tiny mouth, and eyes spaced too far apart, black as night in the light and like fish’s eyes in the dark.  He paid a lot of attention to light and shadow.  He came down the stairs, buttoning up his vest.  His shop was so narrow that she could touch the shelves on the left and right side at the same time.  Customers who came had to do so at even hours of the clock, and customers who went did so in the odd hours.  Anything else led to issues in traffic.  Real estate on the creek-lit road from Spring was precious and Basil made the most of what he had.

“Make the girl some tea, Nascence.  And bring her some cake.  Nothing owed that you weren’t already going to give me, Shellie.”

“Thank you Bas.”

“I wanted to make a proposal.  I’ve been keeping track of trends and everything and I do think that if a concerned adult were to follow you through certain passages…”

“Bas, no.  It costs too much.  There are fees, the responsibility commodified…”

“There are certain roads you could take.  They aren’t patrolled often, I can cover some of the costs if you get caught.  We could use more fodder.  There are people who would buy.  You could buy your freedom weeks earlier.”

She changed in the middle of the store, kicking off her slacks and pulling off her vest.  She took the tea from the overly-long-limbed Nascence midway through changing.  “I could also condemn myself to debt.  The Wild Hunt April is on the prowl for trespass and smugglers.”

“I wouldn’t dream of smuggling a dear thing,” Basil said.  He picked up the cake, popping spoonfuls of cake through gaps and into her mouth as she pulled the corset over her head.  Her dress was a maze of interlocked leather belts.  “But if some buffoon were to happen to follow you and you happened to take certain roads and he or she happened to arrive at my storefront…”

“We’ll see, Bas… perhaps we’re more likely to see if a certain door cost a little less to open?”

“Five baby’s sighs.”

“Bas.”

“Three false winks.”

“Two,” she said, taking the plate and cake.  That was heaven.  With the tea, it was like it had been stale and it had become freshly baked in her mouth.  A journey like that, but freshly baked had been the starting point and the tea elevated it to something more.

“I’m being generous as it is, giving you a certain discount for a possible deal.”

“A possible deal is a foothold to a scoundrel like you,” she said.  She took a bone splinter and arranged her hair.

“My dear.  I’m a businessman.  And you and me, we have a relationship.”

“Cheater and willing victim.”

“I think of you as a friend.”

“And I am presently thinking of you as an alicorn’s horned manhood.  It means nothing.”

“It certainly means something if that is where your mind goes, my dear.  Certainly!”

She drank her tea and ate her cake as they walked, with Basil holding up a hand to let her rest her plate on as they walked down the hall.  Doors and wagon wheels and manhole covers riddled the back end of the very narrow, winding shop that had been erected between two buildings that hadn’t been set up to have a shop stuck between them.

She finished dressing herself up.  It wasn’t strictly necessary, but it made the difference between her being a stranger in a strange and hostile land and her being a stranger in a strange and hostile land that was dressed in a way that made her stick out as a tourist or guest.

“Give it some consideration.”

“It takes time to take other routes, Basil.  And time is so precious to mortals.”

“I can’t remember what your original face looks like-”

“Nor I, Basil.  I imagine it’s traded hands so many times it would be nigh impossible to track down.”

“And you wouldn’t want to wear the thing even if you could.  Who knows where it’s been or what enemies it’s made.  What I was going to say was that the face you’ve ended up with-”

“-for the time being.”

“-for the time being, yes, it wears those years well.  And I do think there’s a part of your mortal self inside that does impact that.”

“Thank you for saying so, Bas.  All the same.  It takes time and I don’t have all that much time.  So it has to be an especially tempting deal.”

“We’re business partners.  We’re friends.  We have tea together.  You can’t extend-”

“I can’t, I can’t.  And I only have a few turns of the wind before I have to be back to get my next contract and ensure I don’t lose my claim on my dingy one-room hovel.”

“My dear, you always have a hovel here.”

“At such costs, Basil.  Not sighs, mutters, wails, or tears, but costs all the same.  You’re greedy.”

He gave her a pat on the cheek.  “Enjoy your so-precious time.”

She smiled.

He hauled open the obsidian door.  She slipped two glass beads with the promised winks within, reflected only in the right light.  He shot her a look, and she tapped her head.

She’d think about it.

After the bustle of the fae market, the other side here was… stark.  Quiet.

Light snow fell on black cobblestones and black buildings.  Figures glided more than they walked as they went this way and that, dressed largely in black.

“Shellie.”

She smiled, turning, searching.

She looked right past Daniel in her attempt to find him.

He’d changed so much.  Gained some height.  His hair was darker, his expression darker still, even as he smiled.

“Daniel,” she greeted him.

They hugged, and she hugged tighter than necessary.

“I thought I’d meet you here.  It’s usually you making the time to come see me.  I can manage this little.”

“It’s such a nice surprise,” she told him.  “How is the singing?”

“We invented an escalation of the dissolution of form on the spur of the moment.  That was so fun, and it embellishes things nicely.”

“Pads them out, I imagine.”

“Imagine!  But hush!  One wouldn’t pad out such a great epic, years in the singing.”

“I’d never,” she said, with great insincerity.

He shot her a warning look.

“I brought you a present,” she told him, conspiratorially.

“Did you!?  What joy.  You’re too kind, sister.”

They walked over to a bench.  Daniel dusted off the temperature-neutral snow and sat, playing at being eager.  She drew out the process of retrieving the present.

She handed it to him.  Amazement crept across his face.  He met her eyes.

“You shouldn’t have!  You’re the absolute best, really!”

“I got batteries as well.  Of course.”

“Amazing.  You’ll have to remind me, they go…”

She showed him.  Then she showed him how to put the batteries in.

Her eyes bored into his face, as he stared down at his gift.

“It’s got switches, and buttons to press.  That’s so grand.”

“Daniel.”

“Yes?” he asked, looking up at her.

“You’re supposed to ask about the cartridges.”

“There’s more parts to it.  I’m dazzled.  It’s so great.”

“You do know what it is, don’t you?” she asked.

“I- It is very plastic.  And it has glass.  And buttons and switches.  And batteries, and more parts to it.”

“Daniel.  It’s an advance gear.  You used to own the color gear and you loved it.”

“Did I?  I vaguely recall-”

“Do you?” she asked, quiet.

“I have shadows of memory, you have to understand, I’ve been singing extra this week, and the escalation we devised is- I won’t say it’s padding, it does make things easier, but the improvisation as we launch into it-”

“There were days, I remember, where it was all you talked about.  Color gear this and color gear that.  You’d stay awake at night playing.”

“Then this is an especially lovely gift.”

“Do you know how to turn it on?” she asked.  “Here’s a game.  You slide it in… there.  And turn it on?”

“One of these buttons on the front?  The cross, I have to imagine.”

He fiddled.

She put her hands over screen, over his thumbs, making him be still.

“I’m so sorry, dear sister.  I’m not myself this week.”

“And I’m an especially rude sister this visit, I’m afraid.  I need to leave.”

“So soon?”

“Terribly soon.  I know.”

“If you’d walked all the way to the amphitheater then you wouldn’t have had more time to say anything but a hello, here’s a gift, and goodbye.  This is scarcely more than that.”

“I know.  But… but the situation calls.”

“You, ah, you’ll have to tell me more stories next time to make up for it.  It’s so important that you stay sharp, even as my head fills up with music and distraction.”

“I know.  Yes, more stories of our old life next time.”

“Be well, Shellie.  Be safe, be sane, be whole.”

“You too.  Try,” she said.

They gave each other kisses on the cheeks.

Then she fled.

Through that obsidian door.

“Who is- no entry in even-numbered hours, if you’d wait just another fifteen- Shellie?”

Shellie stumbled in, closing the door behind her.  There were customers in the winding path of the shop, with Bas at the counter and Nascence doing the business.

Bas had to climb on the shelves to get over and past them all.

“My dear-”

Shellie dropped to her knees so she could hug Basil, dissolving into sobs with her face buried in his shirt.

Shellie rose to her feet as the rain poured around them.  What little light there was glinted off her piercings.

Brownies didn’t rise.

“I’m so sorry that happened,” Avery said.

“And how will I feel after I cut your throats and leave your bodies in this dark ditch between realms?  I don’t think I’ll be sorry in the slightest.”

“Cool.  That’ll be fun,” Snowdrop said.  “I like you.”

Verona was quiet, drenching wet, watching, thinking.

In the time since they’d first had to come here to the Ruins with Jessica, she’d wanted to come ready with emotional memories, because they were contracted to return and help look for Jessica’s cousin.  She’d had to think back to bad moments and realize that numbness was an emotion unto itself.  From there, she’d dug up that memory.  Numb and a bit sad but mostly she’d filed it away under ‘numb’.  Emotionless, except not really.

But it was possible to paint the line between that old her and the her of today.

Shellie… Shellie was so different.  And she couldn’t see where things had veered off track.

“Are you really Shellie?” Verona asked.

Shellie began whipping the chain around.  It glinted in the dark, slashing through raindrops with every upward pass.  “What do you mean?  Is this another sad attempt to riddle your way out of this situation?  Decipher Shellie, find the right thing to say, and she’ll bow to you, she’ll be your friend, she’ll crumble unde the weight of emotion?  One of those?”

“I mean… maybe the key phrase or solution to figuring you out is that there is no key phrase.”

“And here I’ve been insisting the sky is blue and someone finally admits it.  Do you want applause?  Because this is so blatantly obvious you should be ashamed of yourself for taking this long.”

“Are you really Shellie?  Or are you Shellie… as part of Bristow’s arrangement?”

“What’s the arrangement?” Avery asked.

“Like Daniel and his singing, everyone playing a part.  The way people like Bristow or Kass work is they give some signifier to people and objects.  I don’t- I don’t think I’m breaking a lot of new ground for you Shellie, am I?”

“We all give signifiers to objects.”

“It’s like each person, broken down into arbitrary labels and symbols, colors and whatever, can be assigned a number and a suit.  Or whatever, but let’s say it’s numbers and suits.  And by having the right arrangement of people… he can kind of make a straight.  Or a full house.  Or whatever.  This is from books I read while Lucy did her thing.”

“Is your goal to get me to fall asleep?” Shellie asked.

“You’re part of a set right now.  And I think the metaphorical hearts and clubs and swords and wands are getting mingled.  You and Ted and Kevin and Rae.  And you’re complementing one another.  Bits of one another are shoring each other up.  Lucy asked why you were after us and maybe a bit of the intense jealousy of a guy so jealous his eye messes people up… maybe that’s it?”

“And Ted?” Avery asked.

“Single-mindedness?  Or maybe how incredibly competent Shellie is is getting a boost from him?”

“Or both,” Avery said.

“If you want to needle me, girls, then you’ll need to remember that we’re in a dark place, you have no friends here, and I’m armed.”

“I’m not,” Snowdrop said, brandishing the fork.

“I don’t want to needle you,” Verona said.  “But I will challenge you.  I think the reason you’re so hard to budge is that you’re not you.  I bet you’re borrowing strength and you don’t even realize it.  I bet you’re borrowing bitterness and jealousy and it’s pretty clear you’re not strong enough to fight it or recognize it for what it is.”

“Daniel had the same thing happen,” Avery said.  “Bristow mixed in some Clementine and some Sharon into him, to make him wilder and more out of control.”

“You can’t step in?” Verona asked.  “This time, at least, you’re in a position to help him. Fight Bristow!  Fight Bristow or you’re a bad sister!”

“You think I care!?” Shellie shouted, through the rain and the darkness that drenched them.  The only thing around them were broken floorboards and crumbling church walls.  A yawning darkness filled with rain extended out in every direction past those walls.

“If you don’t care then you’re not a very good sister,” Avery said.  “And if you’re not a sister then all you are is…”

“An awful, violent, half-person,” Verona said.

“…I was going to say weak,” Avery said.  Rain dripped off her hat-brim and beaded her deer mask.

“And if I thrash you some more with this chain, proving I’m stronger than you, then what are you?”

“Right now?  Going to help my friend like you’re failing to help Daniel,” Verona said.

She dashed into the darkness.  Snowdrop and Avery followed.

Shellie chased.

She found an upward slope and climbed it.  Avery got her toes in further and ascend, helping Verona climb.

Shellie was nimble, but when the slope was broken up only by wet roots and mud, the extra helping hand or the reach of two people contributed a heck of a lot more.

It only took a couple of minutes, but they made their way up.

Up one level.

Her legs were sore before they found another ramp.

Shellie reached the entryway to this deeper level, accessed with Verona’s memory, just as they found their way up to the Ruins shallows.  Some brownies were waiting for them.

Some brownies weren’t a huge threat, in small numbers.

The real tide was up there.

They escaped past with only minor cuts and scrapes.  Back into the church.  Into reality.  With only a minute of head start on Shellie.

Getting down had helped shed some of the brownie pursuers, but there were a hundred more here, waiting, perched and standing outside a ring of fire that John or Lucy had managed to set.  It was loose, haphazard, and there were gaps, but not many brownies wanted to brave those gaps.  John could kick at or throw aside any that did.

John and Lucy both were sweating.  Lucy coughed.

The Nettlewisp twitched, finding its targets.

Verona went for her bag before the Brownies could converge.

She needed a good way to do this, a way to buy time until, ironically, Shellie could catch up.

She had cards.  Stuff like what she’d used in the practice duel before the weekend.

Just had to wait.  Had to hop up onto and over a bench.  Kick a brownie who came for her.

One moved a section of wood in the bench, and her foot disappeared into a space far below.  She strained the inner thigh of her other leg and scraped her shin as she fought to keep from dropping through.

Tiny hands grabbed her.  She kicked as they tried to wrap chain around her ankle.

She had illusory cat cards, but she also had ideas, and it felt like it might be more important to hold onto those cat cards, just in case.

Verona reached for the glamour she could scrape off illusory objects she’d put into cards.  Glamour drawing an object that could spring to life if she’d needed it.  It had taken time.

She used it now, not for the object, but for that glamour.

To smear her own face.  To smear Avery’s.

Turning their faces into smudges of color and texture like a painter’s easle.

She did the same for Snowdrop.

Shellie stepped through and Verona was ready.

Shellie, head ducked low, water streaming off of her, hadn’t even raised her head when Verona’s spell image hit her.  A lot of that image dissolved when it came into contact with the drains-image.

But enough aspects remained.

It didn’t have to be great.  It just had to be the best available target.  And it probably helped that she’d just attacked Shellie’s self.  Just made Shellie out to be less, or mixed up with the others.

Verona’s own face, stuck out in front of Shellie.

Giving Shellie glamour, yes, which could be manipulated, yes-

With time.

“Nettle-!” Verona shouted.

But Lucy had already acted.

Activating the nettlewisp, moving her hand into the drains water that had settled on the bench and breaking the glamour.

The needles were so eager they went for the first visible target they had.  The fake Verona.

The placement of the image didn’t line up with where Shellie’s real head or heart were.  But it did slam into her shoulder, driving her back and into the wall.  The chain dropped from her hand.

Brownies had hooked chains on Verona’s belt loops.  Onto her shoelaces.

More floorboards had been moved away to reveal reddish, lantern-lit spaces below them.  More brownies milled this way and that as they prepared.

“John!” Lucy shouted, coughing.  “Try to bring us with you!”

John charged the diagram of the Ruins.

The water gushed out, expanding, washing Brownies aside and buying Verona, Lucy, Avery, and Snowdrop the opportunity to follow.

Verona glanced at Shellie before disappearing into the darkness once again.

“You are a child and your heart is heavy,” John sang.  “I want to fly, fly so high.  But they want to cut my wings off…  I’m your son, I’m suffocated, and I beg your pardon…”

Yalda sang along in Pashti.  Her voice was way better, and the song was way better in the original language.

John scrubbed a dish and handed it over.  He switched languages, and it flowed far better, but the singing still lacked.

But he smiled.  Yalda, standing on short stool, smiled back.

Their voices joined together.

They had to dive deep to emerge somewhere safe.  Students from Bristow’s contingent surrounded them.

A door appeared in the side of the school.

Raymond stepped out.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Bit beaten up,” Lucy said.  “Got bitten about ten times.  Those teeth are… tiny.”

Brownies were appearing all over the field, and out of the side of the school, crawling out of the garden.  Stones were moved aside like they were secret passageways.

“As de-facto headmaster of the school, I’m telling you now,” Raymond said.  “You have no ground here.  The rules are explicit and whatever Lawrence Bristow may have told you, you have to run it by the headmaster first.  I must be informed.  It was a flimsy claim to justice to begin with, and you’ve forfeited it by failing to adhere to the rules.”

A brownie with a beard growled.

“Do as you will.  But do it with justice,” Raymond said.

The brownies withdrew.

“Is that number three?” Lucy asked.

“No.  You sent once, and with my help, you rebounded once.  Bristow rebounded the original sending using Ted Havens, in much the same way I just rebounded it.  He’s looked over the contract, I provided him the documents as I could not fairly refuse them, and he’s got a refutation ready.”

“We’re two for two?” Avery asked.

“We’ll see what unfolds next,” Raymond said.  “Whatever possessed you?”

“I figured it would be an inconvenience,” Verona said.

“It is,” Raymond said.  “For everyone.”

“Speaking of inconveniences,” Lucy said.  “You may have a small fire, flooding, a bit of damage from gunshots and a whole lot of dead and wounded brownies…”

“And a broken laptop,” Verona said.  “Tried to get in contact.”

“Tymon!” Ray called out.  “If you would, the main classroom.  Find a way in.”

“We used the Ruins,” Avery volunteered.

“Use the same then,” Raymond said.  “Here I was trying to hack my way in.  It was evident there was a shell around the place.”

“Broken laptop,” Verona said, again, pulling out her phone.

“Nothing to hack.  That’ll be a task to clean up.  I imagine some artifacts might erupt from the jagged mess there.  It will take a while to get things in order.”

Verona looked down at her legs.  There were so many cuts and scrapes.

Lucy had a wound at her arm, wrapped with a scrap from John’s t-shirt.  More cuts, and bites at her arms and legs.  They’d tried to make her move.  She coughed periodically, and it looked like it hurt, especially with her split lip.

Avery had been clawed at, but most of it was from being shoved around and stuff by Shellie.  A lot of dark bruises.  The chain had cut her, with long and thin cuts here and there, barely skin deep, at the side of her neck, her shoulder, and her forearms.

“I cannot intervene or take a side, more than I already have.  Ted Havens said ‘no’ and that was enough to scatter them the first time, sending them to you.  I don’t think that trick will work again, nor will my knowledge of the rules.  You’re on your own for the third round.”

Verona joined Lucy and Avery in nodding.

She saw Shellie emerge from the main classroom.  Limping in the direction of a group of students and others who were emerging from Bristow’s little building in progess.

“Be ready for the third round.  He’ll come at you directly, with some of his soldiers.  While you’re working out your plans, please spare me from having to explain to non-practitioner parents what happened to their practitioner daughters.”

The three of them nodded once again.

They joined the other Anti-Bristow group, and then retreated to the woods, where the other Others they’d brought waited.

Gone Ahead – 7.a

Interlude

Ulysse sat at the ‘adults table’, at the end of the bench where the sun shone past the canopy, the sun shining on him and making his simple engagement ring and his stupid golden hair glisten and shine.  He stared off into the distance, looking vaguely bored as kids ran off into the woods.

What was the saying?  Women wanted him, and men wanted to be him?

The ring was a platinum gold in a mobius twist, bearing a single black gemstone set slightly off-center.  There was a tiny scuff mark where it had banged against something.  A scuff like a flaw, a scratch that could be the first of many.  No relationship was perfect, and no matter how lucky a kid like that could be in the looks department or in getting a sweet position in a place like this, he couldn’t avoid the fact that people in a relationship were people.  And people could do a lot of damage with little comments and assumptions…

There.  A shift in the light, a little bit less of a shine.  More flaws stood out.

Ulysse dropped his hand from the table, shifting position.

Then, slowly, as if he knew and he’d known all along, the golden-haired kid in a skintight black tee and ripped black jeans turned to make eye contact.  Staring the bull down as the horns were leveled his way.

Kevin smiled with one corner of his mouth, leaving the rest of his face stone cold.

Ulysse looked away.

Kevin’s gaze drilled into the little flaws in skin…

Rae took a seat beside Kevin, resting her head on his shoulder.  He looked away from Ulysse.

“You hungry?” he asked.

“Always,” Rae replied.

“That just means you’re losing weight,” he told her, giving her arm a light pinch.  She met his eyes, then looked away.  He smiled, and even though she was looking away, she smiled back, reflexive.

“At least the food here is great,” she said.

“Lucky kids,” he said, his eye returning to Ulysse.  “Great food, summer school in the great outdoors, fancy building… do you ever wish you could be a kid again?  Relive your life knowing what you know now?”

“I don’t know,” she said.  “I was an ugly duckling.”

“You became one heck of a swan, babe.”

She smiled, still staring off into the woods, head turned slightly away.  “Thanks.  I had braces, baby fat, and you know how my mom is.”

“I know how she was.”

“Yeah.”

Rae’s mom had been legal counsel and administration for a hospital at seventy-one years of age.  A proud lady, perpetually… furious, if he had to pick a word.  That was the vigor with which she had tackled the world, her enemies, her romances.  Like there was a fire lighting every single one, propelling it.  She’d joined clubs and boards with a kind of recklessness, until anyone watching had to think this would be the one that broke the camel’s back.  This would be when she had to scale it all back.  But she’d always risen to the occasion.

Until a moment, while he and Rae had been visiting for dinner.  Bam.  Stroke in the left hemisphere of the brain.  They got her promptly to the hospital, of course.  Anything else would be negligent.  It hadn’t helped.  Of course.

That fiery old hospital admin had lost all ability to communicate.  It came out as infantile babble, so she’d ceased trying.  Simple words and ideas had to be communicated five or more times to her before they reached her through the damaged regions of the brain.  Rephrasings of a question, like whether she wanted a glass of water, or that they were leaving now.  She lived her days alone in her big house, now, shuffling from room to room and gardening while playing music without lyrics.  The regular visitors and old friends had fallen away when her condition hadn’t improved.

When he and Rae visited, the old woman had a way of glaring at him, like she knew he was somehow responsible.  Which was fine.  What would she do, really?  It wasn’t like she was equipped to exclude him and Rae from her will.

He rubbed Rae’s arm.

“Would you?” she asked him.  “Go back to being a teenager again?”

“Oh yeah,” he replied.  “But only if I could bring you with.”

“Even if I was an ugly duckling?”

“Even if,” he lied.  Then he kissed her.

He wondered if there was a way.  He’d made deals and arrangements, along the way.  Their landlord, Lawrence, was clearly in the know about a lot of the culty stuff that was going on in the background.  Stuff that worked.  Now and then, Lawrence would point Kevin at a target, and Kevin would see a bit behind the curtain.  And if Kevin was poised to look in on things from a certain angle as a powerful person fell from power, then he could see a bit more.  Like what that power was.

Like a woman who had a past older than she appeared to be that caught up to her after Kevin crossed her path.

Pretty good hint that there were ways to be young again.

Or the guy who’d been trying to arrange some big real-estate claim or something.  Lawrence had sent Kevin as his representative.  The guy had closed the door to his room at the end and when the door had opened again he hadn’t been inside.  And he hadn’t existed as more than a reference in papers, a blurry image in the background of photos.  That hinted there were ways to rewrite reality.

There had to be ways.

If Kevin did enough work for the right people in the right positions, knocked certain individuals from their positions at the top so that others could rise and bring him with them, then there could be a day when he got invited behind the fold.

Being here, around all these teenagers, he’d come close to settling on the idea that he’d want this.  Youth and privilege from the beginning.  To be a young man amid the next crop of Raes, the ones who hadn’t been ugly ducklings.  To have a whole life ahead of him, without the dismal periods being inflicted on him.  The most important years of his life taken from him by his parents’ bad decisions, so busy trying to survive and deal with the shame of living in a shelter that he couldn’t even be a kid.

To do that and to get there, he had to work.

He stood.

“Where are you going?” Rae asked.

“Bathroom,” he lied.  “Stay.”

At the end of the other table, Ulysse rose from his bench.

“I don’t need an escort,” Kevin said.  “I can hold my own dick.”

“I’ve been asked to keep an eye out for trouble.  I’ll do as I’m told.”

“Do you really want me to return the favor, Ulysse?  And keep an eye out?”

Ulysse turned, facing Kevin directly, eye contact and all.

“You’re proud,” Kevin said.

“Justifiably,” Ulysse said.

“Kev,” Rae murmured.

He didn’t move or react.  It was too important to not give ground.  Especially because he had things to do and he couldn’t do them without this guy dogging him.

A hand reached around Kevin’s head, fingers covering his left eye.

“Ted?”

“Interesting that you knew it was me,” Ted said, from behind Kevin.

“Your hand is massive, the callouses scratch, and you never make noise when you walk.”

“I do sometimes.”

“When you want to.”

“Yeah.  Let the boy go.  We were told to try and leave him and his friend alone.”

Kevin turned around.  Ted withdrew his hand.  Kevin looked up at the big guy.  Ted wore yoga pants and a loose-fitting shirt like he intended to lounge around all day, but with a build like that and some natural good looks, he could turn heads with a Hawaiian shirt and jorts.

“If he wants to be left alone, he can back off.”

“We’re all fulfilling our roles, Kevin,” Ted told him.  “Ulysse’s role seems to be to serve.”

“Serving the woman teacher,” Kevin noted.

“Yes.  And others.”

“Well, my role is that I’m heading into that school there.  Your role is what?”

“Keeping the peace.  You and Shellie have your own ways of causing chaos.  I can keep it from getting too bad, if it starts going that way, though I think we’re going to let it get worse before it gets better.  Shellie was just on a rampage and nobody nudged me to tell me to step in.”

“Maybe you’re wrong about your role, then.”

“I’d be surprised if I was.  I’m confident about this sort of thing.”

“What if I said I was going to go take a peek inside the school, and I want you to keep that kid from following me?”

“If I did, it would help keep the peace,” Ted said, looking at Ulysse.

“Would it?” Ulysse asked.  “Is it really that peaceful?  Generally?”

“You and I are peaceful enough,” Ted replied.  “Let’s not test that.”

Ulysse nodded, smiling.  “Then get out of my way.”

Ted shook his head.

“It’s a contradiction, Ted.  It makes things a whole lot less peaceful when and if an allegorical David smashes Goliath’s brains out,” Ulysse said.

“I know,” Ted told the boy.  “Believe it or not, I was David, once.  And my Goliath… she was big.  I haven’t known peace since I delivered the killing blow.  As much as I’ve searched.”

I’m having trouble following this.  Ted’s killed someone?” Rae whispered in Kevin’s ear.  She’d risen from the bench despite him telling her to stay.

Kevin shook his head.  He pushed Rae lightly in the direction of the bench as he took a step toward the school.  Ulysse took a step closer, to follow, which made Ted place himself between them, blocking Ulysse’s way.

You don’t win this, Kevin thought, staring Ulysse down.

He began to focus on the flaws, considering the options.  Ulysse tensed.

Ted’s hand reached back, a single finger placed over Kevin’s eye.  “I have this, Kevin.  Don’t interfere.”

Kevin stepped back, away from the finger that was touching his face, and this time, Ulysse didn’t advance to keep the distance between them consistent.

Ted’s whole aura was like a karate master in the movies, from the good old days.  It was like the guy who seemed ill-suited for a fight, who walked easily onto the scene, not wearing anything threatening, eerily calm, like he already knew the outcome.  Then he handled everything easily.

Ulysse was well suited to being the brash teen punk who couldn’t read the situation and picked the fight anyway.

Except in this case, Ted had that atmosphere and he looked like he’d be a beast in a fight.  He made Ulysse look small, and Ulysse was more athletic than ninety-nine percent of teens Kevin had paid any attention to.

Kevin smiled.

“Stand down, take a seat, dinner is about to be served.  Enjoy it,” Ted said.

Ulysse placed one knee on the bench, bowing his head, and reached under the table.  He looked up at Kevin and Rae.

“What?” Kevin asked.  He smiled.  “Are we holding you back?  Are we not supposed to see?”

“You’re walking a fine line,” Ulysse said.  “You more than any of the others I’ve met, from among Bristow’s collection.”

Kevin nodded, smiling.  “Yeah, probably.  See, Shellie, something baaaad happened to her, and she froze in place.  Doesn’t want to budge.  Ted’s too much of a man to freeze, but he doesn’t want to get any closer to it, so he walks away, I guess.  And Rae…”

“Hm?” Rae asked.

“In denial?” Kevin shrugged.

“No I’m not.”

Ulysse dropped his head, bowing it, and whispered something.

When he stood, he held a wicked looking bit of metal.  Too fancy to be a mace or any kind of medieval hammer, but it was big, it was iron, and it was studded.  It looked like it weighed a ton, even if it was hollow.  Ulysse held it easily.

“If you really want to fight, I won’t say no,” Ted told Ulysse.  “I waive any protections as guest, those watching can pass that on.”

“I can but I won’t,” Kevin said.  “Neither will Rae.”

“Yeah, I won’t either,” Rae said.

“It’s fine.  It should still help,” Ted declared.

“Should it?” Kevin asked.

“For reasons I’ve seen hints of, but, like you said, I walked away before I got the explanation.”

Kevin chuckled.  “Rae?  I think they want to go all out.  Look away.”

Rae frowned.

“Now.”

She turned her back on the pair.

Ulysse’s weapon began to glow like it had been sitting in a fire.

“What gods do you worship?” Ted asked.

“Only one I won’t tell you the name of.  By his gospel, the one we came to name Prometheus had peers, and it was not the one who tried to seize the original Fire, but many.  All who tried, succeed or fail, were punished.  I found my deity nine miles beneath the surface of the earth, thoroughly protected so none might disturb his eternal punishment.  Had he succeeded, our campfires might not be wood we’ve set alight, but something else entirely.”

“Your god’s a loser?” Kevin asked, sneering a bit to drive the question home.

It did seem to nettle Ulysse.  “He was the greatest of them.  So they placed the most obstacles in his way.  Now he is my god and I am his sole worshiper, his champion.”

“It’s my understanding that if you pick this fight and lose, your god’s power will dwindle.”

Ulysse nodded.

Then he sprung forward.  It looked like a practiced movement, bounding into the air in a leaping strike, weapon thrust down and forward.  It clipped Ted, setting Ted’s shirt on fire and grazing skin, and it had enough heft to make the man stagger.

Ted pulled his shirt off in one fluid motion.  The big puckered scar across his back and chest was clearly visible.

“You’re good enough to dodge that.”

“Maybe.”

Ulysse approached more tentatively now, weapon held out in front of him like a rapier.  He swiped.

The swipe clipped Ted’s chin.  The wash of hot air that followed made Kevin blink hard, and it set Ted’s hair on fire.  Ted pressed the bundled up shirt to the burning portion.

“What are you doing?” Ulysse asked.

“In two thousand and fifteen, I met you.  We fought then too.  It was my fault, that time.  I wanted what you had.  I learned my lesson very quickly.”

“What lesson was that?”

“That a direct hit with that tool of yours will go through flesh like butter.  And an intended strike that misses will punish the person who won’t meet the blow by raising their temperature.  Three or so misses and they should pass out from internal fever.”

“Three to five, yeah.”

“I have a high natural body temperature, so I’m susceptible.  It’s easier to take the grazing hit than to dodge or take it directly.”

“How do you know that much?”

“Because you and I have met, several times.”

“Damn it.”

“I tried to take your tools, the first time, in two thousand and fifteen.  I learned my lesson quickly.  I then tracked you into that hole in the ground, where you met your god.  Later, I met your god before you did.”

“That makes no sense,” Rae said, her back still turned.

“How’d he take it?” Ulysse asked.

“He burned me alive both times I ventured down there.  Others had claim over me.  In another lifetime, toward the end, we became friends.”

“And how did that one go?”

Ted shrugged.  “It wasn’t the recipe for success.  I realized toward the end that I couldn’t do it alone.  I went looking for the right combination of key people.  You, obviously, since you don’t remember, weren’t part of that combination.”

“And my other tools?” Ulysse asked.  He closed his hand, then opened it.  He held a burning metal orb between two of his fingers.  Something like a narrow snake squirmed, dark, within the red-white metal.

“I know about them too.  In some ways, better than you do.  If you would like to call it a draw now, we can excuse it by saying the esteem and power your god holds reaches to deeper places and times.  I wouldn’t have this knowledge if he wasn’t strong.  I came prepared.”

“I’m not sure that’ll fly, Ted.”

“Sit, let’s wait for students to arrive and for dinner to be served.  I’ll tell you things about your tools that you might not know.”

“My mentor won’t like that.”

“She’s been hinting at her interest in my story.  We can pacify her if I let her ask some questions.”

“I think you’re wildly overestimating how easy she is to pacify.”

“I might be.  In the course of my journey, there were many people important enough that I came to know them intimately in the course of my journey, many who… well, my memory isn’t perfect.  I can’t recall everyone I met.  And then there were some who were like your mentor.”

“Different?”

“Deliberately out of my reach.”

“Huh.”

Kevin touched Rae’s arm.  “Want to come?”

“To the washroom?”

“Come now,” he lowered his voice.  “It’s not really the bathroom I’m so intent on.  Why do you think we wanted to escape the kid?”

“Oh.”

“You have to stay sharp in a place like this.”

‘Sorry,” Rae answered him.

He kissed her.

They walked away.  Ulysse watched them, tense, but didn’t follow.  When Ted sat, he reluctantly sat too.

I’m free.

The front door of the school was still sealed.  It sealed off the central classroom and front hall.  That left the dorms of the east wing, along with the kitchen, showers, and similar facilities, and Kevin and the others from Sargent Hall had all been asked to steer clear of there.  Strangers and kids.

But his interest was in the western wing.  Where the permanent teachers and senior students slept.

The door was locked.  He reached into his pocket, pulling out his wallet.

“I’ll watch out,” Rae said.

“Thank you.  Stay outside?  Give me some advance warning.”

“Alright.”

It was weird.  Rae was useful, and smart, and dangerous, but something about her had come to unsettle him, and he couldn’t put his finger on it.  He’d even tried to get rid of her at one point.  It hadn’t stuck.

Still, in a circumstance like this?  He had a chance to get another peek behind the curtain.  Maybe more than ever.

All in general orders.  Lawrence had talked about things he wanted to do, things he was interested in.  Stuff like disrupting some of the more rebellious students, getting more information on certain things, and throwing a wrench into Alexander’s plans.

Never explicitly stated, but… he made it clear.

He used lockpicks at the door lock.  It seemed the staff and students of this wing had been asked to lock the doors as they came and went.  It would be easy for Lawrence to ask some of his loyal students to ‘accidentally’ leave a door open, but he hadn’t.  He had to have his reasons.

Lawrence revealed more about his reasons to Kevin than to anyone, as far as Kevin could tell.  Even his family members, who he used as staff at the apartment building.  Who was the latest one?  Like a puppy dog with neon green braces?  It was a white trash name.  Barbie?  Arbie?  Darling?

He shrugged.

She called him sir, which he liked.  Way better than the last one, the snarky kid.  But she had no clue.  Even Ted didn’t want to listen if Lawrence wanted to talk about certain things.

The lock popped open.  Kevin let himself in, closing and locking the door behind him.

The western wing was nice, with painted images on the walls that seemed to hint at who the residents of the nearby rooms were.  Nooks aplenty, with small tables and vases of plants within, and he didn’t recognize many, which surprised him, because they looked nice and he had an eye for quality.

That was the thing that he kept going back to.  That Lawrence trusted him with information and certain tasks.  He shared an appreciation for things of value, and if Lawrence wasn’t keeping the company of fellow weirdos from the same families as these kids at this school, he would sometimes invite Kevin.  To taste some brandy, to go to a show or sporting event, or attend a quiet party where everyone present was an artist, musician, or something fancy.

That trust and that companionship was because they were fundamentally similar.

“Hello.”

He stopped in his tracks.

She was the librarian, if he remembered right.  Slim, her large glasses slipped a bit down her nose, slightly European fashion that was modest and hard to pin down.  Her black hair was in a ponytail that looked like it had been hastily pulled up, and she carried a stack of books.

“Access to this wing is currently restricted,” she told him, peering around the stack.

“Let me help you,” he said.

“No need.  I’m very good at managing these things.”

He still took a few books off the top of the stack.  “What are you up to, here?”

“Escaping.  It’s my job to look after the library, but things are so awful right now.  I’m taking one of my breaks, enjoying some tea, and reading.”

“Your escape from the library is to sit and read?”

“Of course,” she said, smiling.  “Do you read?”

“Some.”

“I think you have an inkling of something in you, where you got a book, perhaps Infinite Jest or something Umberto Eco, and where others wouldn’t read them, you saw it as a challenge to finish it when others wouldn’t.  And it spoke to you on some level.  You keep telling yourself you should dive into a work like that again, but you can never find the time.”

“Nope,” he said.

“No?  Perhaps you’re not there yet.”

“It was The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles.  Have you read it?”

She smiled.  “Yes.  Gosh.  It’s interesting.  Some deep themes to dive into.  Not an easy read for many.”

“Sure.  Some guy who goes looking for a cat and ends up hiding at the bottom of a well to escape the world.  There have to be themes, or it’s just really dumb.”

“Don’t run from what it made you feel and think.  It spoke to you, didn’t it?  We’d all be better off if we read more and took away lessons from what we read.”

He followed her to one nook with two armchairs set on either side of a tea table.  The nook was backed by three large windows, giving Kevin a view of the new building where Bristow currently was, in his own words, ‘dealing with a nuisance’.

He set the books down, then turned the top book on the stack around, and turned the cover.  Belanger Compiled Notes, Vol. II.

“Ah!” she started.  She put a hand over the cover.  “I’m afraid I can’t let you read that.”

Now he wanted to read it more.  “Why not?”

“Because it’s from a private collection.  I got special permission, and I thought I had privacy to enjoy it.  I’d read in his study but it’s not the most comfortable place right now.”

“In… Alexander Belanger’s study?”

“Yes.  I’d be happy to share the reading with you, but you’d need permission, and that’s-”

“Easy,” he cut her off.

“Is it?”

“Yeah.”

Shellie was outside.

He left.  And he didn’t lock the door behind him as he headed outside again, walked past Rae with a hand gesture to get her to stay put, and circled around to where Shellie was, outside the new construction project.

With one eye on the window, he approached.

Shellie was hurt.  She rubbed at her shoulder, which was a little red, and she had cuts near her hairline where she’d threaded silver wire through in a complex braid pattern, until it looked like she had an ornate hairpins inset into scalp.

“You alright?” he asked.

“Do you really care?”

“I want your help.  So yeah.  It matters if you’re too hurt to be useful.”

“Nice try.  You pretend you don’t care, Kevin.  You bury it all inside.  But these things curdle inside us.”

“I’m curdled enough.  Come on.  It annoys Lawrence’s enemies.”

“Does it annoy Lawrence at the same time?”

“I don’t think so.  If this works on any level, I think he’d be tickled pinker than he already is.  Why?  Would him being annoyed make you more or less likely to help?”

“Neither.  I just like the context.  What do you need?”

“I remember a year ago, it was one of the first times we met-”

“We met plenty of times before a year ago.”

“But we talked, and we worked on that thing. I wanted access to a startup CEO.”

“Yeah.”

“He hired a professional, someone who specialized in infiltration, phishing, catfishing, but the company was good.  They were pretty on the ball, we couldn’t find any cracks.  Then he said okay, let me call one of your neighbors.  Just… be prepared for people to get very hurt along the way, now.”

“They did,” Shellie said.

“One of the staff might’ve died.  I never looked into it and I never saw anything in the news.  Not that I follow the news.”

“Mm hmm.”

“And it was easy.  We sent you in, the absolute opposite of a guy in a clipboard who social engineers his way into places he shouldn’t be.  A brash, punk girl covered in piercings, with wild… your hair was blood red then.”

“Are you going somewhere with this?”

“I want access.  The librarian needs permission before she’ll let me look at some books, and I’m wondering if there’s a way into Alexander’s office.  That was my original goal.  I thought stealing stuff that looked valuable could ruin his day and make Lawrence’s.  But the librarian just let slip that the old headmaster still has books he’s very protective of in there.”

“His place of power?  It’s harder to break into than you think.”

“Let’s try it and see?  I’ve got a little bit of experience messing up those who think they have power.”

“Is the door open?”

“Yes.  West wing, there.”

“Good.  Then wait five minutes before following.”

He nodded, letting her go ahead.

Lawrence’s enemies were liable to look at Ted as the big threat.  Which he was.  Kevin had next to no idea what Ted’s deal was, but he’d pieced together enough to know there’d been time travel or something.

Which was another little piece into the puzzle that suggested that going back was doable.

He let Shellie go ahead, and then walked lazily around the building, glancing now and then at the librarian, who was visible through the back window, oblivious to the world as she paged through a book so quickly it was hard to believe she was digesting any of it.  Here and there, she would take a sip of tea, pulling the books well away from the cup before she tipped it back, to keep them safe.

Was Lawrence a version of Kevin who had access to people like that?  With the sage wisdom and deeper understanding of the world and of people?

Kevin, when he was operating at his best, found himself tapping people as resources, like he was doing with Shellie now.  Like Lawrence was doing, by bringing them here, or like when he wanted Kevin to target the kid of a random woman in local politics.  The woman’s kid got into legal dispute, that dispute could find the news, and a friend of Lawrence would ascend.

He didn’t know why Lawrence didn’t handle all that himself, and a part of him hoped that it was because Lawrence was raising him up to be an apprentice or something.

A more realistic part of him knew that people didn’t get breaks like that.  They had to take them.  Usually from someone else.

As he walked around the corner, Rae went from looking the other direction to staring at him, the moment he was in view.  It wasn’t that he’d made noise.

It was like she just knew he was there.

Last year, he might have walked over to say hi, to kiss her, to talk.  She was a ten out of ten, as looks went.  But over the years, little moments like that had stacked up.  And now…

…Now he was a bit afraid of her.

He remained where he was, a hundred feet separating them, his eye on the window.  She kept looking out.

He wanted this.  He wanted it to work.  The apartment was fine, he was good at his job, he had a stunning girlfriend, and he had a special power.  With minimal effort, he could bring the high and mighty low.  A deep, focused look, and he could wound them.  Or worse.

His neighbor who revved his truck engine at eight in the morning on Saturday, doing endless builds and rebuilds of the engine?  Four fingers lost as the diesel tank exploded.

His demanding old boss at his last workplace had gone to jail for fourteen years for embezzlement.  Kevin had done the embezzling, kept the money, bought a new car, and set the rest aside for buying a cabin.

The girl at his workplace before last had dated him.  He’d stretched the truth a little when talking about his past, and she’d stretched it more, to an unfair degree, when gossiping to their workmates.  He’d gotten his justice when a rumor about her and the boss’s seventeen year old son had gone around the workplace.  She hadn’t been aware, she’d made a comment, and cemented the rumor as truth in people’s minds.  She’d lost her job.

The neighbor’s kid who rode his skateboard back and forth underneath Kevin’s window all weekend had tried jumping the stairs and now had his jaw wired shut.

The guy who lived two apartments down from Kevin had a parking spot next to Kevin’s with the obnoxiously expensive Tatra ’81 sports model.  Worse, he liked to stand by that car and ever morning he’d annoy Kevin with conversation about work, at way too early an hour.  They worked at the same place.  Then he’d hit a family with that expensive car.  Nobody dead, but he’d had to sell the car because insurance wouldn’t cover the restitution costs.  The parking spot sat empty.

But in most of those things, it got complicated.  Rae had become creepy, over the years.  The neighbor who’d lost fingers had started a new project, less focused on the truck and more on creating and certifying handicap-accessible modifications to gearshift and steering wheel.  After the embezzling thing, the company had gone under.  Kevin had had to use the embezzled funds and then some to cover costs while he looked for another job.  The kid with his jaw wired shut just hung around the apartment building now.  His mom had taken away his skateboard, and every time Kevin rode the elevator, the kid would seem to be in there, breath whistling past the wiring and teeth.  His boss insisted on him bringing the coworker who was now carless into work, and he wasn’t in a position to refuse, unless he wanted to go looking for another job.

The rumor thing wasn’t as easy to put a finger on.  There was a bit more of a nasty, defensive, wary culture at the workplace.  He’d nearly been bitten by that twice.  He’d dealt with one such bite by pre-emptively using his eye on one of the big gossipers, but that had only made the atmosphere worse.  He had to avoid the staff lunch room now.

Lawrence had implied there was a trick to this.  Sometimes Kevin would bring up these things, and Lawrence would laugh, wrinkle his mustache, and make comments.  He rarely seemed surprised.

He made those same comments in passing about Kevin’s neighbors.

Kevin wanted to know.  Whatever threshold he was supposed to meet to get ‘in’, he was grinding his teeth with the desire to get there.

It had been at least five minutes.  He returned to the building, entering through the back door, with a glance and a nod to Rae.  He walked down the empty hallway.  At the far end, the barrier to entry had fallen away.  He could hear people in the classroom, and he could see the damage Shellie had done.  Smoke, water, fire, broken wood, scattered pages…

He kept out of view, even though he was fairly sure it was Lawrence’s group that would be handling that.

“You have your permission, sir,” the librarian said.

“There’s supposed to be something important in there.  I was told I’d know it when I saw it.”

“I couldn’t say.  In- oh!” she put a hand to her mouth.

“Yes?”

“You’re friends with Ted Havens.  He’s the large fellow.”

“I am.”

“I can make the connection now.  I had to use what I’ve been learning about the digital landscape to organize it.  If Ted has any problems the school can help with, there may be clues in there.  Ask me if you need help sorting through it.”

“In the study?”

“Yes.  Do you have permission to enter?  I’d have to double check before I pulled anything out for you.”

“No need,” he said.  He didn’t want to test whatever Shellie had done.  “Thanks, and excuse me.”

Ted?  What was going on with Ted?  Was Alexander in communication with the man?

Whatever it was, this felt like the sort of thing Lawrence would want handled.

He went to the door of the study, checked the librarian wasn’t in a position to see, and then bent down.

“He’ll have protected and secured it,” a man’s voice said.

Looking into the shiny doorknob, Kevin could see a tall man with orange-red hair that had streaks of grey at the sides, his face lined a bit with middle age.  Looking over his shoulder, he saw Shellie, smiling.

“Conventional lock, it looks like,” Kevin said.

“Even if you get past that, I don’t think you’ll get any further,” she told him.  She rubbed at the red spot on her shoulder.

“If you’re hurt, you shouldn’t rub at it,” he said, as he used the lockpicks.  It was an old fashioned lock, carefully maintained, with a weight to the individual components that would have made for a very satisfying, chunky ‘click’ when locked and unlocked.  It threatened to bend his picks out of shape.

In the end, he took out more picks, held them so they were beside the first set, and used them doubled-up for the rigidity.

The lock turned.

He pulled on the knob.  It resisted, like someone on the other side was pulling in the opposite direction.

“Told you.”

Kevin straightened.  He pulled out his phone, and dialed.

Shellie made an amused sound, pacing.  He could hear some of the piercings, clacking against one another.

“Hello?” the voice on the other end asked, wary.

“Sharon.  It’s Kevin.  Shellie’s with.”

“I know.  Phones do this thing nowadays where they tell you who’s calling.  What I’m wondering is why?”

“You sound testy.”

“I’m being tested.  Our landlord sent three of us on a trip to the middle of nowhere, an all-expense paid trip for me to do a video, and after some locals went bananas and pulled guns on me, Clementine decided to be the opposite of helpful and go along with their crap.”

“It sounds like you came out unscathed.”

“I got bludgeoned over the head.  They messed with my work and you’d think that someone else who works online would realize how sensitive these things can be, but Clem was as stupid as I’ve ever seen her.  We’re not best friends anymore, and I’m sorry Shellie, but Daniel played along with it.”

“He does that,” Shellie said, rolling her eyes. “You had to know he would.”

“My boyfriend broke up with me, my online following is… it’s better than ever, frankly, but it’s taking more of my time to manage until all the fights and arguments die down.  Whatever you’re doing or whatever it is you want, I’m pretty sure my answer is going to be not now.”

“It’ll take a few minutes, max,” Kevin told her.  “And I’ll make it up to you.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Door lock, it’s unusual, and the guy who the door belongs to, he likes traps and tricks.  I’m putting you on camera phone.”

“Whatever.  Sure.”

He did, and he turned the camera toward the door lock.

“Show me the rest of the door?”

He did, moving the phone around, to show everything that there was to show.

“I don’t see anything.  I don’t deal with a lot of traps, but occam’s razor says it shouldn’t be trapped.  Do you have the key?”

“Just the picks.  Give me a second.”

“How are you making this up to me?”

“One second,” he said.

“Who does the door belong to?” she asked.

Kevin shook his head, then handed the phone to Shellie.

“Alexander Belanger,” Shellie said.

“I’ve heard that name before.”

“Old rival of our dear landlord.”

“No, there was someone by that name talking to Clementine this morning.  He was asking questions and touring the place.  Some people thought he was a prospective tenant.  That middle aged woman in 212 who’s been widowed six times was making eyes at him.  He didn’t seem impressed.”

“You’d think someone who can land six husbands could land a seventh,” Kevin commented.

“Seven,” Sharon said.  “The seventh didn’t die, but he’s in a vegetative state.”

The lock clicked once more.  He pushed on the door and there was no resistance.  It swung open.  The kind of trick that didn’t always work.  It helped that he and Sharon had a working relationship, and she had some breaking and entry skills of her own to get into the sites she did haunting videos on.

“I’m in,” he said.  “No obvious traps, yet.”

Not that he really expected there to be any, but they had to keep the narrative up for Sharon.

He motioned.  Shellie turned the phone around, the screen showing the view that Sharon got.

“Swanky.  Geez.  Mrs. 212 really missed out.”

Floorboards creaked dangerously as he crossed the room.  Papers lifted up in a breeze, one end pinned down by a book, the other raised up.  He avoided the sudden motion, and a paper sliced at his arm as he passed it.

As he stepped back, the floorboard creaking peaked and floorboards dipped, like it was about to give way and let him drop through.

“Enough!” a man’s voice raised.

Kevin turned, surprised.

Shellie.

When he walked in further, the creaking wasn’t as bad.

Really swanky,” Sharon commented, from the phone.

“What can I do for you, to thank you for your time?” Kevin asked.

“What sort of thing do you do for our landlord?”

“I’d rather not go around broadcasting the particulars about that.”

“Illegal stuff.”

“Remember how Richmann was running for the post, touting a lot of electoral reform?”

“She didn’t make it.”

“Because her kid got into legal trouble.”

“I remember certain things about you coming into some money, buying a new car, around the time your boss got into legal trouble, too.”

Kevin didn’t comment.  He paced around the study.  There were three sections and he couldn’t remember there being three floors when he’d viewed the area from outside.  At the ground level was the study, which almost flowed out to be something of a living room, filled with leather-covered chairs and seats.  Bookshelves lined the wall.

No television though, but there was a desk with a computer.

“I’m looking for something digital,” he said.  He booted up the computer.  It was an old thing.  What a contrast to Lawrence, who always had the newest machine with the most ostentatious interfaces.

The door slammed, making him jump.  Shellie was with him, though, and she didn’t jump.  She just smiled.

Through a door and up to the second level, up half a flight of stairs, there was an area more for living, though the ‘study’ bled out into it.  A counter and an arrangement for food and drink, a bed at the back, behind a half-wall, and couches.  A laptop and scattered papers about students and classes covered the table and some parts of the couch.

Kevin ventured up the stairs.  Each step creaked more as he walked up, protesting.  His sleeve caught on the railing, a blunted, protruding bit of brass sticking through the eyelet for a button at his wrist.  He extricated himself.

If the study was where the man faced his students and staff, and the second tier area was where he retreated to to rest and recuperate, then the third area was where he retreated to when he wanted to work in private.

It was a workshop, and everything here felt like it was in motion, even when it was still.  A large eye-shaped table dominated the center of the room, and in the center of that table was a recreation of Sargent Hall, complete with mini-figures representing the occupants.  The recreation was surrounded in triangular pieces of black metal with dovetail teeth along the edges, and by black and white pictures of Sargent Hall, taken from elsewhere.

There were cards laid out, and chalk drawn between cards.  There were books, narrow notebooks, from waist height down, and there were filing cabinets inset into the wall, a bit further back than the short bookshelves, so the tops of the bookshelves could be counters.  A ladder on wheels allowed traversal up to the cabinets.

“Our landlord is very, very interested in this school,” Shellie declared.  “He wants it so badly.  And on the other hand…”

Sharon’s voice came through the phone, “Our Alexander Belanger is very interested in Sargent Hall.”

“You know,” Kevin said, bending down to look into the apartment building.  He could see through windows and make out the people.  “If you wanted to interfere with whatever Alexander is doing with our Clementine, our landlord would probably appreciate it.  He might throw you a bone.”

“Like you said you would?”

“You know what I can do.  Name a name.”

“Want to travel to Hungary?”

No,” Kevin replied.  He reached into the building and pulled out the figures representing Arlene and the creepy guy with the bad breath that handled the night shift.  It would be right about now that they were changing over shifts.  “No, I don’t want to go to Hungary.  Local only.”

“I’ll figure someone out.  And I can’t interfere.  They left.”

“Clementine and Alexander?”

“And a few others.  Not Daniel, don’t worry, Shel.”

Shellie made a noncommital sound.

“Huh,” Kevin mused.  “Even telling him that much might be good.”

“I’ll phone him after.  Where’s my room?”

Shellie carried the phone around.  “Are you sitting in your armchair as you talk to us, Sharon?”

“…That’s a good sign I’m spending too much time in this chair, nothing else.”

“Uh huh.”  Shellie managed to sound very smug as she replied.

“Great to know we’re being spied on.  I wonder how he recreated this.  Drones?”

“Sure, Sharon,” Kevin answered.  “I think we’re going to let you go.  As you said, you have a lot to deal with.”

“Wait, no, I have questions, and I want to get some footage, this is great creepy-”

Shellie hung up.

“Do you think you can make it work?” she asked.

“No idea.  How would it work to begin with?”

“I’ve seen things like this get made.  But they were dangerous.  I could see this being dangerous too.”

Kevin walked another circuit around the room.  He looked at the cards this time.  Arrangements grouped together, laid on a chalkboard-like surface that was blacker than any chalkboard he’d ever seen, wet or dry.  Lines were drawn out so crisp and bright that they seemed to float on the glossy surface.

He stopped at one set.

Ted — Kevin — Shellie — Rae

They were surrounded by numbers, by markings.  Arcs were drawn between cards, and notes were made beside the arcs.  Respective to their names were cards and numbers.  3, 7, 13, 19.

His own name sat at the top of his part of the arrangement.  Below was a card, black with gold-inlaid markings depicting a lizard.  It was captioned ‘The Basilisk’.  Noose in one corner, connecting to Ted, coin in the other, connecting to Shellie.

A circle had him at the leftmost part and Rae at the rightmost part.  Three cards were spread at the upper half, three at the bottom half, and he couldn’t make heads or tails of them.

But he could read the notation.  ‘Noone will die at his girlfriend’s hand’.

“Rough luck,” Shellie observed, looking over his shoulder.

Kevin snorted, but he felt the worry in his heart, like he’d known.

There were more.  The skull pointed to dates.

The space they were in creaked violently.  It felt smaller than it had, before.  There was nothing visible, but Kevin couldn’t shake the notion that the boards that made up the wall were bending inward, like they were preparing to snap.

Nothing had moved, by his ears and eyes, but he bumped into the corner of the eye-shaped table as he stepped back.  It hurt.

Like things were being moved or moving of their own will whenever he wasn’t looking.

He traced the line from Ted’s card, a giant with a boulder in gold on a black background, to another card, which was more traditional and colorful, an inscription of an open book wrapped in chains.  ‘The Epic’.

Shellie sorted through black and white pictures.  There was one of Clementine in a car with Alexander.  One of a student.  Another of three girls in animal masks.  Shellie paused at that one.  Kevin stopped her as she got to one.

“What?” Shellie asked.

“Nah, stark resemblance to an old crush,” he said.

“Writing on the back says… Laila Throop.  Was your old crush a Throop?”

“No.  And the age, I don’t think it’d be possible for them to be directly related.  I’m not that old.”

“Was she special?”

The girl had been condescending when he’d tried to ask her out.  He wondered how his life would have gone if she’d said yes.  If he’d had a girlfriend when his brother had graduated, if he hadn’t gained this power then.  Or would he have gotten something else, other than the ability to bring people to ruin with an intent enough look?

“Nah,” he said.

Shellie smirked, like she knew something he didn’t.

He moved the picture of Clementine and Alexander.  They were in a ludicrously tiny truck.

“Alexander interviewed me once.  I think… it might have been about bringing me to a place like this.  Letting me into a space where I’d get taught what all of this supposed to mean.  If it means anything.”

“But he didn’t let you in.”

“I wonder what answer I was supposed to give.  Or what I was supposed to do.”

“Who knows?” Shellie asked, and he couldn’t escape the feeling that she was being ironic.  Like she knew.

But that feeling was constant when Lawrence brought groups of them together like this.  Nobody really talked about this stuff.

What would his story have been?  He touched the card with the book.  Simultaneously, he heard the computer chime from the other room, and the entire space they were in creaked.

Shellie looked up.

He tapped it firmly, and again, he heard a sound from the computer.

“Hm,” he grunted.

“Go.  Leave me here, I’ll mess around, see if anything jumps up,” she said.

She put the photos down, and they were showing similar scenes to before, but slightly different.  The image of Clementine and Alexander in the little truck had put trees in the view of the far window before.  Now it was open field with scattered trees in the distance.  The girl that looked like his old crush was standing, not sitting.

He tore himself away from it all.

What connected this computer to Ted?

It didn’t take long to find.

612,142 texts, divided into 814 ‘journeys’.  As Alexander’s notes outlined, each journey was a separate overarching approach.  Some were two texts long, and some were in the length of thousands.

He hit the arrow key, and the page turned, from Alexander’s notes and foreword, aimed at his apprentice, to Book 1, Journey 1, Page 1.

Year 100, sixth life, as far as I can count.  My memory isn’t perfect and I’ve met so many people and seen so many things I lose track of things in the shuffle.  Decades can pass in what felt like days if I stop paying attention.

In my efforts to try to organize my thoughts and keep track of the ground I’ve covered, I aim to write of my journey.  I do this knowing that when the clock turns back and I find myself born anew, my writings will be consigned to oblivion.

He turned back to the foreword and notes.

The librarian can at times uncover those works that have been lost.  The great unfinished works, the books of which no known copy survives.  This requires power and to these ends I’ve spent a fair share.  But retrieving the texts themselves from distant oblivion is not the full story, nor the full burden.

Each text links to hundreds of individuals and events, some of whom do not wish to be found or disturbed.  The works themselves are a trove of detail on people, especially those in the Maritime provinces and the major cities of Canada and the northeastern United States.  They, at times, venture worldwide, to distant locales, though there is less detail there.  To crack open a text is to demand a rendering of these many connections and their implications, and penetration of those passive defenses, looking into those things which reality had thought safe.

With this in mind, as I progress and as my apprentices and successors take up the task, should they be so inclined, it is important to be organized.  At an initial look, entire ‘journeys’ of Ted Havens’ adventure are left without written feedback and are not included here, and more are rendered into his own unique language or shorthand, which requires its own decoding.  There are sections where he seems intent on turning to faith and belief to rewrite his existence, concocting an alternate reality where he is free of the loop and giving whole lifetimes, age 0 to 35, to this belief, rejecting all observable reality.  The data from these experiments can be reduced down to an amusing anecdote that it appeared to start to work, necessitating intervention and some nudges from the powers that set Havens’ task into motion.

There was a prompt.

As he started typing in it, the foreword skipped ahead.

Courtesy of Raymond, the prompt is yet unfinished, but each pull from the coda of texts will help it improve.  For the time being it will do its best to list texts that may be relevant.

Kevin thought, then typed out: He went looking for groups of people.

Some two hundred pages popped up, appearing in a grid.  The last few took ten or so seconds each to pop up.

He clicked on a few.  Each one turned up an error message.

Insufficient Power.

“He wanted us to find this place.”

Kevin looked up.

Lawrence Bristow stood in the doorway.

The place groaned and complained as he entered.  His mustache turned up in a smile.

Ted was behind him.  Rae behind Ted.

“You’re not keeping watch?” Kevin asked.

“I’m sorry.  Mr. Bristow said-”

Lawrence cut her off.  “It said it was fine.  Everyone who matters is preoccupied.  Alexander, I think, wanted us to find it because there may be traps here, not in the sense that a blade may jump out of nowhere, I don’t think, but the wrong information in the wrong person’s mind.  What are you doing at the computer?”

Kevin turned the monitor a bit to the side.  Lawrence approached.

Kevin looked over at Ted, but Ted didn’t seem to know what this was.  Or if he did know, he wasn’t interested.

Rae had sat down and was looking at papers.

The place groaned, protesting.  There was a sound of glass cracking.

“It’s a place he’s invited people, so it’s a place that accepts our intrusion more easily.  More so because he thought we’d come here.  I think he thought it was more important that he hurry after the silver bullets that he might use to shoot me, metaphorical, than securely lock the doors and windows behind him.  He was in a fury, that night.”

“I remember,” Ted answered.

Lawrence read some of the foreword, flicked forward, then flicked back.  He navigated back to the page Kevin had been on.

He hit the enter key.

“Doesn’t work, there’s not enough power-”

It worked.

Ted Havens’ diary pages from text 611,048 loaded up.

I’ve seen you around, I told him.  You’re one of those faces that keep turning up, but I can never find you when I go looking.  I scare you, somehow.

Yes, he replied, smiling like a grandfather greeting a grandchild.

Why now, then? I asked him.

That’s your first question?  Of all the possible ones?

I replied: I want to find a way out.  It’s important to figure out what changes things.  Are you one of the ones who imprisoned me?

I wish, I really do, he told me.  It would make me great and powerful.  This was an arrangement of a court of judges in this region, who saw the danger and reached out to everyone in the area to ensure they had the power to set this into motion.  The short answer is that very specific things fell into place.  You recently became something other than what you were.  You’ve transformed in this way and this label before, but this one makes you essential to me, as I may be essential to you.

Essential how?  Do you know how I escape? I asked the man.

With my assistance, of course, he replied.  I am a collector of people.  If you’ll take my help, I’ll point you to certain people.  But the moment you’re free, if it has anything to do with my help, I want your assistance after.

A collector of people.

Ted met Kevin’s eyes as he looked over.

Rae was there too.  He felt a chill as she met his eyes and smiled.

Lawrence had gone upstairs already.

Maybe this was the dangerous information that Alexander had intended for them to stumble on.  Would telling Kevin any of this make him more likely to leave?  To betray that deal?

Or something else?  Would Shellie rankle at it?  Or Rae, somehow?  Would this precipitate her murder of him, somehow?

Kevin wasn’t sure how he felt about it.

“Kevin!” the call came from above.

Kevin lifted his head away from the screen.  He closed the window, and he ascended the stairs.

Back to the workshop.

The image of Sargent Hall was gone.  It was a diorama of cars around a gas station.

“Alexander once considered bringing you on board,” Lawrence said.

“Yeah.”

“He thought you were too dangerous to.  He likes students and scholars.  They can only do what they’re taught.  And that can be a lot, but it’s something he can monitor and control.  You are… you’re a force of nature, Kevin Noone.”

Kevin swallowed.

Was this it?  Was he in?

Lawrence used a stick to move a figurine closer to Kevin.  A young man with glasses and red-brown hair.  Similar to Alexander.

“He,” Lawrence said, moving the figure over to the side of the gas station.  “Is currently relieving himself.  This device, empowered by this space, makes a fine lens.  Alexander has invited each of his apprentices to use this table at different times.  If you were of a mind to, you could make some use of it now.”

“To do what?  Who is that man?”

“Wye Belanger,” Shellie said, from the far end of the table.  She tossed a photograph.  It showed a man with glasses standing at a urinal, from shoulders-up.  Sure enough, the name was on the back.

“You don’t want to target him or any of the others like him.  Wye and Alexander are too careful,” Lawrence said.  He picked up and investigated the figurine.  “Wye here has Pendants at his neck and wrist.  Warding him against the eye.  Just a curiosity, this.”

Shellie leaned forward, photograph held up, and prodded figures at the gas pump.

Not Wye directly, but… them?

“I have to ask,” Kevin said.  “Could this be the trap he set?”

“I have no idea what you mean,” Lawrence said.  “I’ll leave it to others to explain.  Alexander’s study seems to be fine.  Carry on looking around, if you’re curious.  Or do whatever.

Those last words took on a vaguely dangerous tone, even as the short man smiled.

“Where are you going?” Ted  asked.

“I must go talk to some students about their mischief around the staff.  They tried to organize an insurrection and should be dealing with my reply now.  Come with me?”

Ted nodded.

Lawrence left.

“It could be a trap,” Shellie said, looking closer.  “There are things he could do to retaliate.”

“Like?”

“Can’t say.”

Kevin frowned.  It was just the two of them again.  Rae on the couch downstairs.  He could hear her talking to Lawrence.

It made him nervous, now.

“You’d be especially vulnerable if we targeted him or one of his subordinates directly.  But we won’t.  For now, before our man is out of the washroom and aware of what is going on…” Shellie mused.  She picked up the photograph, looking.  “…Nevermind.”

“Nevermind?”

“He’s aware,” Shellie said, turning the photograph around and pushing it across the table.

Wye was at the bathroom door, frowning, it looked like he was moving fast.

“It’s your choice,” she said.  “Lawrence wouldn’t think less of you if you chickened out.”

Kevin leaned down, staring at the figure at the pump.  The background blurred, the details of the figurine shifted.

He looked closer, then closer still, until he could make out the expression, the lights in the eyes.  The distraction, kids in the car.  All cast under a green tint.

Holding the pump with one hand, he reached into the car to take a plastic toy from the hands of squabbling children.

Plastic generated static electricity, and static electricity became the spark.

The scene brightened, and Kevin was left blinking the bright orange light out of his eyes.

Shellie straightened, and very quickly gathered up the panels.  She tossed the photographs Kevin’s way as she worked, boxing up the gas station.

He looked.

The photographs were singed, wrinkled with heat.  He couldn’t make out details.

“Kids,” Shellie said, her voice dark.  “Children, Kevin.  What’s wrong with you?  They were right there.

He didn’t move, looking at the photos.

She snorted as she unfolded the box.

It was the same gas station, but cotton painted in orange and yellow and grey was stretched out to make fire.  Figures lay broken, cars had rolled, and the front windows of the gas station had shattered.

“Seems he took cover behind the car,” Shellie said.  “He’ll be harder than that to stamp out.”

The Wye figurine lay there by a crumpled car, one arm broken.

Kevin prodded.  It looked like the kid were maybe alive as well.  Scared and upside down and close to flame.

“Want to do another?” she asked.  She tossed photographs his way.  “Gotta find the ones who aren’t protected enough.  Or who are in the wrong places at the wrong time.  Or have you lost your nerve?”

“I haven’t,” he answered, while staring down at the scene.  It wasn’t quite like being ‘in’, like he’d hoped.  He didn’t understand much more than he had.  But being a bit like a god sure was a rush.  Terrifying and thrilling at the same time.

Shellie looked back at the diagram of cards with their names on it.  “I might be rubbing off on you.”

He remained still, looking over the photos and the scenes.

He wasn’t really focused on all of that.  He watched as Shellie folded things up and broke them down again.

The kids rescued, the father with the plastic of his figurine boiled and burned.  Wye hadn’t moved far.  He nodded slowly.

Lawrence might be doing more than we think, with all of this, Kevin thought. He couldn’t shake what he’d read in how Lawrence had reached out to Ted.  Had started making connections and gathering soldiers even that far back.  How much of this did he plan or arrangeDid he know I’d end up in this room when he brought us here?  Or was this luck?  Or skill?

He had to have seen the thing about Rae and what Rae would do to Kevin.  Was that part of the plan or something he’d intervene in?

So many deeper meanings, signs, and hints, and he had none of the equipment or know-how to interpret it all.  He’d never had the chance to learn.

He just knew that he wanted to be a god, capable of smiting those who stood against him, and one student named Laila Throop was on the opposing side and had a really strong resemblance to someone from his past that he hated.

“Her next.”  He tapped her photograph, and Shellie began putting the box up around the diorama, to set the scene.

Gone Ahead – 7.7

Avery

Avery leaned against a tree, her arms folded and ankles crossed.  Snowdrop leaned against Avery, adopting the same posture.

It felt better to be in the deep woods than it felt to be at the school, but not by much.  At least the people here were ostensibly friendly.

“Sit, sit!” Toadswallow urged the other kids.  He moved with vigor.  “Sit, make yourselves comfortable, young gentlemen, ladies, and esteemed guests.  We’ve carved out this dank little corner of the woods, and you’re welcome to it.”

Liberty sat herself immediately upon a rock, acting every inch the good little girl she might’ve once been, when she was half her age.  Lesser goblins gravitated toward her.  Only Gashwad and the unconvincing Goblin Sage with his plastic bag beard hung back.

“Hey Snow,” Avery murmured.

Snowdrop looked up.  Lucy looked back over her shoulder.

“The little dude with the beard.  What’s the deal?”

“He’s not very old, and he’s not very wise.”

“Oh?  Toadswallow and Gashwad seem to treat him as the leader.”

“Definitely a leader,” Snowdrop answered.  “He hasn’t been around for long, and he lives a very carefree life for a goblin.  Doles out responsibilities to others, collecting goblin-relevant magazine pages and stuff.”

“Magazine pages?”

“And nice Christian books out in the woods.  Nothing rude.”

“Ohhh.

“It sucks that he’s around.”

He’s a Cherrypop-tier goblin with a fake beard.  Am I the only one who sees that?

She looked at Lucy, and Lucy rolled her eyes.

Okay, great.  I’m not going crazy.

“What are you up to, Toad?” Lucy asked.

“Nothing, nothing, only being hospitable.  I love to teach wayward young souls, and it’s clear you’re very wayward, all of you.  Beleaguered, hungry, chased into the woods.  Speaking of!  Would you like to eat?  I do think Gashwad killed a goblin-deer-rat type thing in the shallow Warrens.”

“Mine!” Gashwad barked.  “It’s mine, you saggy bunghole.”

“Come now, Gash.  This is the same mindset that kept you from becoming one of my goblin apprentices.  A minor service done now…”

“It’s friggin’ mine!”

Toadswallow sighed and shook his head.  Like a dog shaking, the side-to-side motion traveled the length of him, to neck, then chest then belly.

“If you want,” John said, “I can go hunt.”

John was hanging back, his attention out in the direction the Blue Heron practitioners were likely to come from.  Tashlit was out there too, but she was in the water, protecting two of the other three directions that trouble could come from.  The last direction, at least, they had a fairly clear view of.

“Maybe after?” Lucy asked.  “Let’s make sure we’re safe and things are okay here before we split up?”

“Alright,” John said.

“Thanks.”

“Sit, sit.  Squat a rock, squat a log.  There’s enough seats for everyone and then some,” Toadswallow said.  “You’ve been deprived.  You came for classes and what’s happened?”

“It’s a bit frustrating,” Verona said.  She was drawing up some anti-augur stuff in the dirt.  Not that it had really held up even when they’d had half an hour to get all the details right.  This was more rushed.

“I think I have some-” Toadswallow half-crawled over a tangle of branches, his butt and legs in the air as he reached down.  “Gremlin candy.  Like socks lost in the dryer, they’re the bits eaten up by vending machines.  No promises there aren’t screws or springs in there.”

Liberty Tedd clapped her hands.  Toadswallow threw a bag at her, the plastic wrapper so generally damaged and aged it had lost most distinguishing features.

“And…” Toadswallow’s voice was strained as he bent down further.  His legs kicked.  He threw some dusty wrappers over behind them so they landed in the middle of the clearing.  “Wall treats, vent bites, and bed nuggets.  Kids find hiding places for candy and things they shouldn’t have, in the walls, heating vents, and under their beds, and then they forget them.  Shoplifted gum, excess Halloween candy, cookies they snatched from the jar, and treats from gram-gram.”

A lot of the candies looked like they’d partially ripped and torn, the candy leaking out of or becoming one with the wrapper, or the weird environments they’d been stored made dust bunnies and paint chips adhere indelibly to the wrappers.  The ones that didn’t look outright cursed only made Avery more wary.  It’d probably look like an ordinary chocolate bar up until someone took a bite and got a mouthful of chocolate-covered hair.

Snowdrop started forward, reaching, and Avery caught Snowdrop’s by the back of the collar.  Snowdrop made a small choking sound.

“Don’t eat that,” Avery said.

“Geez, I can’t eat anything!”

Don’t eat it.”

“It’s fine, it’s good.  Puts hair in your armpits,” Toadswallow declared, as he dropped back down to the ground, throwing a few more wrappers out.  “Something to tide you over until John can hunt and cook something for you.”

“What’s the deal?” Verona asked.  “Being all nice, making us at home, feeding us- are you aiming to take over for Bristow as headmaster?”

“Doing a better job,” Liberty said, around a mouthful of chocolate.  She sucked on, then spat out a tooth that wasn’t hers.  A smaller goblin scrambled to snatch it up, popping it into its own mouth.  “Let it be known, Sir Toadswallow is a better headmaster than friggin’ Lawrence Bristow!  They’re even similarly proportioned!”

“I dare say I resent that, Liberty dear,” Toadswallow told her.  He was getting settled on a short, flat rock.  “Not that you’re privy to all my proportions.”

“Don’t start playing off each other or anything,” Lucy said.  “You’ll ramp each other up and we won’t get anything done.”

“Quite right,” Toadswallow chuckled while Liberty laughed a bit.

Those two were so easygoing, but some of the other students who’d come with were looking like they couldn’t relax enough to sit, or even stand still.

Avery started to reach out, hesitated, then kicked herself for hesitating.  She touched Laila’s arm.  Laila jumped a bit.

“Relax?” Avery said.  “John and the smaller goblins are keeping an eye out.”

“This is the first time I’ve been… when I haven’t really known what might happen,” Laila said.  “The closest I’ve come is when I was pushed into going after Melody.”

Melody and Corbin were another two who hadn’t quite settled.  Both stood over Verona, watching her draw her diagram. Melody bent down to give some tips, and handed over some nearby stones for Verona to set into the diagram.  Corbin turned and went looking for more little stones.

If the students’ past experience with combat situations and true danger were any indication of how easily they could take the opportunity to settle and rest, then Liberty was head of the pack, uncaring.  Talos, Tymon, and Jorja joined the three Eastern Practitioners and Brie in being able to at least make themselves sit.

Xerxes and Erasmus had done okay in the duels, but looked out of their element here, in the deeper woods beyond the Blue Heron Institute.  Zachariah and Salvador hadn’t done okay in the duels and looked even more out of their element.

“I’ve only been in… I’d guess six or seven really serious, dangerous situations, since I awoke this spring,” Avery told Laila.

“Jesus pete,” Zachariah said.

“I’m not- even if that’s unusual, it’s been recent enough I can remember what it was like, at the start.  I get it,” Avery elaborated, trying to find her stride.  “But I’m going to use a tortured sports metaphor here…”

Verona turned, perking up.  “If you like your sports metaphors so much, why don’t you make one your familiar?”

“That’s not even clever,” Avery told her.

“It’s a little clever.”

“Bite her,” Avery said, giving Snowdrop a push.

“No- no, I’m drawing!  I’ll bribe you.  Have some scary candy!”

“Do not feed my opossum scary candy!” Avery warned.

“Ahem!” Toadswallow raised his voice.  “You’re being disruptive, Avery, Opossum.”

Snowdrop froze, wearing her opossum form now, her teeth set on Verona’s neck without breaking skin.

“Sports metaphor,” Avery told Laila, ignoring the faint ‘heh’ from Verona.  “As you play a sport more seriously, you realize the moments where you’re not on the ice aren’t just moments you’re supposed to catch your breath and rest.  You use that time, to talk, to get your head in the right place, to figure out strategy, remind yourself you’ve got friends, and listen to the coach.  Ideally, anyway.”

“I like how you started talking about sports as a thing in general and immediately went to ‘ice’.  It’s obvious what your favorite sport is.”

“Shut it, Verona.”

“You weren’t in the NHL, you played junior league hockey.  What’s all this high level stuff?”

“Says the girl who barely pays attention in ninth grade gym, or eighth grade gym, or seventh grade gym,” Lucy cut in.

“True.”

“I’m not the most athletic,” Lucy said, “But I like that high level stuff.  Are you saying you don’t look at the super high-end art stuff, or practice stuff and want to chase it or copy it?”

Verona made grumbling sounds, ignoring Snowdrop as Snowdrop mock-bit her neck and shoulder.

“Yeah?” Lucy prodded.

“Yeah, sure, sorry,” Verona muttered.  “Take Snow?  I need to wrap this up.”

Lucy did, lifting Snowdrop away.  Snowdrop stayed bitey-mode for a few seconds, until some full-body scratches made her settle.  Verona resumed work on the diagram.

“Gotta use these moments,” Avery told Laila.  “I think that’s the difference between top practitioners and lesser ones.  Top athletes and lesser ones.  Probably top business types and the people who don’t rise in the ranks.”

“Helps to be a sociopath,” Lucy noted.  “Which is, I guess, a big reason why we’re squatting on rocks and logs in the woods as it starts to get dark, hungry.  Two people fighting to be in charge, tied into the worst parts of this practitioner culture and power games.”

“Do you want me to remedy that?” John asked.

Lucy looked around.

“You keep bringing up food,” Verona told Lucy.  “Hungry?”

“Yeah,” Lucy said, voice soft.

“And,” Toadswallow cut in.  “Yes, it’s dark, yes, you’re hungry, yes, it’s violent.  But one other thing is that you came to this school for education and now it’s my time to educate.  Sit.  Sit.  Listen to me as I stand in as coach and teacher.”

“Are we going to regret this?” Lucy asked.

Toadswallow snorted.  “The brownies are coming.  I’ve dealt with Brownies before.  And as a matter of fact, I’ve dealt with men like your Bristow, and I’ve faced down goblins not unlike your Musser, who collects tools.  I’ve dealt with various things similar to the Bright Eyed vandal, Gashwad being among the least of them.”

“Go gag down a cow plop, fish tits,” Gashwad growled.

“Gashwad is like Shellie?” Avery asked.

“Slip in, wreck things, pick fights?” Toadswallow asked.  “Yes.”

“And Ted?” Lucy asked.

“I know a certain oversized Faerie who you wouldn’t want to fight fairly against, and who is hard to corner into an unfair fight.  I’ve been around to various courts.”

“Hit us with that brownie knowledge,” Verona called out.

“Do you interrupt your human teachers this much?” Toadswallow asked, hands on his hips.

Verona pressed her hands together, pleading.

“Brownies come from the crossroad Goblin and Fae, Summer and Fall.  That’s the reason for their cross-eyes, you see.  They were a common fairy who found a good trick. Do a task, help with a quest, or grant a wish, but tie it to a restriction.  The markets boomed all of a sudden.  It seemed as if every other boy who was tired of sweeping the barn was getting an offer; his chores would be done for him every day, but if he ever lifted a hand to do a chore in the future, the help would stop and he would feel the task twice as bad.”

“How big of an idiot do you have to be to mess that one up?” Verona asked.

Toadswallow waved her off.  “A girl who thought if she met the local lord’s son, she could win him over, was told the meeting could be arranged, but she would have to choose a curse to wear: her nose would become that of a pig, she wouldn’t be able to speak, or her clothes would secretly be as fish-hooks digging into the skin for as long as she wore them.  If she could win him over, the curse would be lifted.  In some versions of that tale, three sisters each choose one curse.  We don’t hear much of the failed experiments, but some stories persist.  The Broomfield Wager.  The full tale of the Wee, Wee man.  Black Crack Anne’s Barrow.  Efforts by powerful Fae and a few rare goblins to make a great play for land, power, or lives.  But the small efforts aimed at small, lower-class dopes prevailed.”

Toadswallow rubbed his hands, smiling.  It looked like the students were listening well enough.

“They worked out a system and then they locked it in enough they became locked in as a group.  Chandlings, in some tongues, of which Brownies were a large subset.  Guilds of brownies with fences and sellers for the lives, happiness, and other qualities taken as part of the bargain.  Families of the little blighters would compel the their lot to work family service into the deal.  ‘I’ll milk the goats,’ one will say, ‘and if you wish it I’ll have my brother tend to the kitchen.’  Done enough and the numbers stop adding up, and the family grows.  That’s one part of how the little peckers got organized, see?  But the other?  The best deals they could offer were ones tying to high society.  Lord’s sons, ladies, the chance to be noble.  To taste wealth, to get an education or to see the world beyond the hamlet the peasant schlub was born in.  The better the offers and arrangements they could make, the better they could do.  But all good things come to an end.”

“Was it really a good thing?” Lucy asked.

“For them it was.  I’d even say it’s a good thing for mankind.  Even if the deals are unfair, it’s a chance for those who had none.  None at all.  For most, the station of life was a crushing, unavoidable pressure.  Born a peasant schlub, die a peasant schlub.  No time or chance to do anything else.  The deals gave a way.  Or they did.  See, to start with, your practice and most things Other like to build things or destroy things, but it doesn’t like to downsize.  The forces we operate by?  They like a good pitch, a good show, a rising star, and a dramatic fall.  But if we say our family of brownies is too large for the amount of work there is?  They don’t have a language for downsizing.”

“You can send your extras off to die in a pointless war,” Liberty said.  She was still acting like the teacher’s pet, young and eager, and it was dawning on Avery that it wasn’t a joke.

“You can, Liberty sweet.  But they can’t, not easily, as Brownies are not the strongest fighters.  It’s why they worked with goblinkind.”

“Makes sense.”

“And in fact, the ability and even the very propensity for goblins to cull our own numbers with outside violence is why we can grow in number without too much risk.  Faerie courts can’t and I’ve heard suggestions that more Faerie Courts have crumbled over their own hubris and scale than over specific plots and designs and I believe it.  And the brownie guilds and clans?  Closer to the Faerie in that.  Many crumbled when travel became easier and the allure of travel to another place faded, and when the lowliest schlub had more time or stood closer to the lords they were once so tempted by.

“How does that help us though?” Avery murmured to herself.

Snowdrop, back at her side, looked up.  “Toadswallow doesn’t know.  He’s dumb.”

Avery pressed her lips together.

“Brownie business is going the way of the bloomer, and many large groups of brownies are becoming dust.  They’re a one-trick group of blighters, see, but there’s less of a market.  The cost of setting up is higher, the organization just isn’t there.  It changes things.  Before, they focused on the rules.  Setting up the pattern, maintaining respect as organizations.  Now they need the payout.  You could have argued your way out more easily before.  They would have gone home empty handed.  Now you have a task.”

“How long do they have?” Verona asked.

“Abandoning their staff duties here?  They’ll want that payout,” Toadswallow said.

“But how long?  Hours?  Days?  Weeks?  Centuries?”

“Not hours, not centuries.  They’ll chase you for that payment they’re owed.”

“But if I ran?  Or stonewalled?”

“They’d call in help.”

“Which adds to their desperate situation?  Is there a chance they’d refocus on Bristow?  Distance helps with entanglements.”

“So does power, and that man has power.  This is not about you and the brownies, Verona.  It is about you and that man.”

“I know.  I’m just working out possible plans and options.  I can stall, maybe?”

“You can.  Fresh green wood, egg, milk, and wheat will serve if you need a circle.”

“Or the Ruins-gate,” Verona said.

“Or that, indeed.  The critical thing to recognize is that this group is large.  They’ve been surviving when others failed.  And if a share of their number were to die, they’d weep, gnash their teeth, sure, but it culls their number and makes the future easier to navigate.  You won’t scare them off with violence.”

“They get their payment or pretty much nothing,” Lucy said.

“Indeed.”

“Good to know,” Verona said.  “I didn’t think it would be so high-stakes.”

“They’re fairy and they’re goblin.  Excess should be expected.”

“Speaking-” one of the three Eastern practitioners started.  He stopped and put up his hand.

“Speak, boy,” Toadswallow said.

“Speaking of fairy and goblin… I was taught once that labels don’t matter as much as we think they do.”

“They matter exactly as much as we all think they do,” Toadswallow told him, pointing one clawed finger at him.  “Your name?  Who and what are you?”

“Davion Reese.  Reese for friends.  Oni knife throwing.”

“Oni,” Toadswallow said.  His face settled into a smile that was widened by how his chin sank into his neck, so the roll of chin extended the corners of his mouth.  “Yes, that explains it.  Knife throwing?  Did an Oni teach you one or two tricks and you made that your entire plan?”

“No,” Reese said, defensive.  “…four tricks.”

“Labels, by their very definition, matter as much as we let them matter.  That’s not to say it’s weak or flimsy.  Money makes this world go round, even if it only has value because we think it does.  Oni tried to shuck and confuse labels and got saddled with another one instead.  Brownies and Chandlings benefit if the uninitiated can get a feel for what they are in their hearts, and are then open for the discussion and deal, but they’re also tied down.  When the rubes stop lining up, they lose their raison d’etre.  The poop for their scoop.  But that’s good to bring up, Reese, boy.  Labels.”

Toadswallow’s mouth and head emerged some from his neck, but his smile remained wide.  “I said before, I’ve seen these things before.  Things and people like who you’re dealing with now.  And the big one you all seem to be getting stuck on?  I don’t think you deal enough with the Aware.  They’re kicking your little patooties.”

“We’re kind of managing,” Zachariah said.

“I said I’ve dealt with things like Bristow.  I’ll tell you, the leaders of those crumbling Brownie guilds?  The goblin warlords who try to gather armies and seize places for their own, like Bristow here is gathering students and taking the school?  They take on a responsibility.  It might even be as much as if they awoke them.”

Verona, done drawing the diagram, milled around, looking for a spot to sit before deciding there wasn’t really any that wasn’t just sitting on damp ground.  She walked over to lean against a tree between Avery and Lucy, messing up Snowdrop’s hair a bit, and prompting a lazy few seconds of play-fghting from Snowdrop after.

“What’s your plan?” Avery whispered.

“To start with, buying time until Alpeana can arrive.”

“You think she can help with the Brownies?”

“I dunno.  But she’s comfortable in the Ruins and they’re weak to that.  But mostly-”

Verona stopped as Lucy joined their huddle.

“Don’t stop for me,” Lucy said.  “I heard the first bit.”

“Right.  Mostly, I’m thinking if we buy enough time, it becomes night.  A whole bunch of options come up.  Like Bristow needs to sleep-”

“So do we,” Avery said.

“-and so do his students.  Like Kass and Mccauleigh.”

“You want to reach out?”

“I want to try.  I’ve got four ideas and I figure if we can make three happen we can weaken him and bounce the Brownies back his way with prejudice.”

Avery shook her head.  “It’s a long, long time until it’s nighttime or bedtime.  It’s six or so now and the sun doesn’t set until, what?  Eight thirty?”

“Nine or something,” Lucy said.

“Girls!” Toadswallow raised his voice.

They stopped, looking over.

“You’ll want to hear this part.”

They shifted position, giving him their full attention.

“I’ll build on what I was just saying, I think we run into lesser Aware more than we think we do.  If you’re an Other lurking enough around non-practitioners, you’ll find one in ten or one in twenty might trip you up, depending on where you go and how much you should be there.  Want to go after a villain of a man or a kid who throws rocks off a bridge?  Way’s mostly clear. Mostly, because some are Aware.”

Avery put up her hand.

“Yes, girl in the deer mask.”

Avery hadn’t even realized she was wearing it.  She pushed up the mask so it sat on top of her head, pulling off her hat in the process.  “Kids and the sick?”

“No, no.  Those are still innocent.  Their eyes are open but there’s no guarantee they’ve seen anything or been given any nudges or powers.  No, some of those people who trip you up?  There’s something that makes them different.  Usually it’s a little something.  A kid you can’t ever seem to sneak by because he’ll pop up awake.  A lady with fifty cats and a good idea what they’re communicating.  And it’s almost always minor.  The Aware are weak.  They’re easy pickings for any pickers, directionless, and so busy trying to keep afloat they can’t do much of anything, except ruin some days or ruin some lives along the way, usually.”

But Bristow’s Aware aren’t like that, Avery thought.

“Bristow’s group doesn’t act like that,” Lucy called out.

“Very true, yes, they don’t,” Toadswallow smiled.  “They’re strong, driven, and they work well together.  The power they display is essentially his.”

Avery had to sit with the fact that Lucy had voiced her thought.  She was pretty sure it wasn’t mind reading.  Just similar experiences.  But if she’d spoken up…

She admired Lucy, being that forward, that confident.  She wanted that.

“What does that change, if true?” Tymon asked.  “You’re saying the Aware are his responsibility, so they’re a weak point, and if anything really bad happens to them he may have to own it.”

“Mayhaps,” Toadswallow answered, adjusting his monocle.

“…But at the same time, their power comes from him.  Is it really a difference if we change our outlook from the Aware being obstacles we’d have to get past if we wanted to go after the man, to instead being weak points that aren’t so weak because we’d have to get past them to go after the man?”

“Lad, I dare say it’s critical.  You’ve already laid some of the groundwork as a group.  Now it’s time to discuss operating as goblins operate.”

There were titters and whispers from the lesser goblins.

They like the idea,” Toadswallow said.  “Having some big boys and girls to give them muscle, access, and help.”

“Sir Toadswallow,” Liberty said, “I don’t disagree with anything except does it really matter if they like the idea?  Some of them have got brains the sizes of pencil erasers.”

“It’s not the size of what you’ve got in your bone dome, Liberty.  It’s how you use it.  And when all else fails, scarcely-bridled madcappery, malice, and a willingness to do as you’re told by those bigger and smarter than you will do quite nicely.”

He smiled, showing off teeth.  Smaller goblins followed suit, where able.

Avery spoke up, “Verona thinks the way Bristow set this up, the Aware are all interlinked.”

“Goblin warlords will do this.  Goblins tend to come random,” Toadswallow said, getting to his feet with a grunt.  “But if you pick out a good assortment that looks like they belong together, all with similar faces or matching names or… I don’t know, a farter-light, a spitter, a belcher and a big guy to match the four elements.  It starts to look like this crapsack world of ours is starting to bend to your will.  Goblins are random but you’ve got a nice matching collection?  Must be meant to be, so you better get on board, little nuggets.  Then the more they believe it…”

“The more it actually happens?” Avery asked.

Toadswallow nodded.  “Same with your man, I’d think.”

“I think it’s more planned than even that,” Verona spoke up.  “The traits bleeding into one another.  If you get something like ‘really good at stuff’ from Ted and give it to the others, and then Kevin’s assholishness…”

“Levers their master can pull to get them to move as he likes,” Toadswallow said.

“Maybe,” Verona said.

“If they’re that under his control, should we really hurt them?” Avery asked.

“Yes,” Liberty said.  She looked at Toadswallow.  “Yes?”

“Hurts can heal,” the goblin said.  “But if you want to agree not to take their lives, we could set that rule for the little ones.”

“The little ones being?” Brie asked.

“The goblins,” Toadswallow said.

“Okay, because I think- maybe her big brothers will override me, but Jorja should maybe sit this one out.”

“No objection,” Tymon said.

“I think we should spare the Aware, for sure,” Lucy said.  “Even Shellie.”

She looked at Avery as she said that.

“Absolutely no objection.  Why do you think I’d object?”

“Girls,” Toadswallow cut in.

They stopped.

“You’re smart, you’re good, you’re strong.  We’ll get you squared away.  But for right now I want to hear from these others you’re working with.  We’ve got two jobs right now, and I don’t have many ideas about the first.  Yours.  So I want to make sure we’ve got a plan for bringing the big man on campus low.  That’s for them.”

He indicated the others.

Lucy, Avery, and Verona nodded.

“Liberty?”

“I love you, Uncle Toad.”

“I’m counting on you for this.  We don’t want direct confrontation.  We nettle, we harass, and we use the little ways we’ve found to get inside.  I’d surmise that right now our enemy is going to be thinking about meals.  The brownies are going after the headmaster and they’ll be coming back our way.  While they’re doing that, they’re not cooking.  Kids are going hungry.  He’s going to want to look after that, and we’re going to want to get in his way.”

Liberty nodded with enthusiasm.

“Gashwad,” Toadswallow said.  “Your turn.”

“Wha?”

“Talk.  Plan.  You’re good at this part of things.  Doing damage and stirring things up.”

“You then.  The boys,” Gashwad said, pointing at Tymon and Talos.  “What do you do?”

“We’re callers of urban drink and drug spirits,” Tymon said.  Dreg crawled up to his shoulder.

Talos’s perpetually drunken naiad had flown up to the trees above John and then turned human.  She sat there, hair perpetually damp, swaying, and keeping a look out.  She twisted around.

“But what do you do?  I don’t care about what you call yourselves.”

“Be nice, Gashwad,” Avery said.

Tymon glanced at Avery, then Lucy, then Verona, before answering, “We use divine channels to access greater spirits that don’t really recognize or pay direct attention us.  We call down slivers of their greater whole, flood areas with their power, uhhh…”

“Simplify!” Gashwad barked.  “Some of those little abortions have brains the size of pencil erasers.  You’re going to be working with some of them.  Speak on their level.”

“We summon big drug awfulness,” Tymon said.

“And alcohol badness, here,” Talos added.

“Big booms,” Tymon elaborated.

“Can you do small?” Gashwad asked.

“We’ve got some tools.  I’ve got a taproot.  It’s actually a torn-up bit of steel pipe, but you stick it in somewhere and it bleeds out.”

“I know what a taproot is,” Gashwad’s tone was derisive and offended.  “Good.”

“Our familiars can channel some of the power.  Taints what they do.”

“Taint is a good word.  Alright, next!   I know you’re the knife thrower.  What about you?”

“Damaryon Steyn.  I can summon stuff.  Most of it’s from a catalogue of Western Others.”

“You’ve got four tricks?”

“I’ve got a bunch.  But it costs a lot.”

“Hmm.  We’ll talk.  And you?”

“I’ve got a couple of Oni tricks for fighting.  And a sword I stuck a big spirit into,” Mikey said, patting the tube-shaped case he was carrying across his back.

“Lame, but at least you can fight.”

“I’m still working on getting experience in actual fights.  Part of why I came here.”

“Then you’re very lame.”

“Be-” Avery started, at the same time Lucy raised her voice, “Gashwad!”

Lucy glanced at Avery, and with a small motion of her head, gave the go-ahead.

“Be nice to our allies here, or we’re going to have differences, Gash.  No treats, no games, no fast food…”

Gashwad spat, then looked at the two Hosts.  “Next!  You?”

Lucy was nodding, seemingly satisfied that Avery had laid down the law.  It felt good.  Avery just wished she hadn’t needed the go-ahead to do it, this time.

“Erasmus. Host of a warrior spirit.  She sleeps inside me, we change places sometimes.”

“Stupid name, sounds real friggin’ cozy,” Gashwad growled.  “You can fight?”

Erasmus nodded.  “I’m okay.”

“And you?”

“Xerxes.”

“Stupid name.”

“Same deal, but I host Bloody Money.  Like the urban spirits Talos and Tymon have, but much smaller.”

“Much,” Tymon said.

Xerxes gave Tymon the finger.  His arm changed, skin ‘flipping’ like othello tiles, revealing bloodstained dollar bills.  The bills became a sleeve, and his hand became so inkstained and bloodstained no skin showed.  His fingers were longer like that.

“Can you fight?”

Xerxes shook his head.

“You mess with money?”

“Oh yeah.”

“If they’re ordering that food, you can do something?  Can you let it out?”

“For short times.”

“Next!  You.”

“Laila Throop.  Large-scale curses.  I can’t use them on the staff or students, really.  Bristow would expel me and my parents would- it wouldn’t be good.”

“Curses are fun,” Gashwad said, crawling partway up a tree to get a better look at her, his already small eyes narrowing.  “You hit big groups?”

Laila nodded.

“If you can’t use it on the school, that leaves two things-”

“Three,” Toadswallow said.

“Three things!  Two things too, but there’s also a third.  Either go for the delivery drivers and people in the nearby town, stir some shit up…”

“The karmic backlash could eat me alive.”

“Or the Brownies,” Gashwad said.  “Slow them down some.”

“Or the Aware,” Toadswallow said.  “Small group, but still a group.”

“We need to deal with the Brownies,” Gashwad said, moving from tree to tree like a chimpanzee.  When he disappeared into the shadows his tiny eyes glowed red.  “We don’t have many good options for that.”

“We don’t.  You’re right,” Toadswallow said.  “I’m listing the options.”

“You had your turn to speak.  You two!”

“The Kierstaads,” Lucy said.

“Generalists.  We do a bit of a lot of things,” Melody said.  “I do a lot of practice stuff and do what I have to to make it stick around a bit longer, make it harder to crack.”

“I do sneaky stuff, make practice and stuff harder to detect,” Corbin said.  “Same deal, big bag of tricks.”

“I’ll use you both.  You!  I know you!”

“I’m guarding the kids,” Brie said.

“Or,” Gashwad said, “You can eat people.”

“Or I can guard the kids.  Thank you.”

Toadswallow left the conversation, and he approached the three of them, motioning.  Liberty hopped to her feet, following.  Toadswallow pointed at Laila, directing Liberty to the girl.

They joined John, who was still watching out, his eyes scanning the woods.  He didn’t turn to look at them as they caught up.

“How’re you managing?” Lucy asked.

“Me?” John asked.

“Yeah, you.”

“I’ll let you know when this is over and I give myself the chance to decide how it sits with me.  I’m thinking a lot about my old comrades in arms.”

“Other Dog Tags?”

“Yeah.  I don’t want to shoot anyone and I think I’ll have to at some point, the way this is going.”

“I hope you don’t have to,” Avery said.

“So do I.  But I’m being realistic.  Kids are being threatened, and I might not enjoy shooting the living like some of my old comrades did, but I’ll still do what’s necessary.”

“Sorry we roped you into this,” Lucy said.

“No.  It’s good I’m here.”

“What were they like?” Avery asked.  “Your friends?”

“Many weren’t friends,” John said, touching the tags at his neck.  “Comrades in arms.  Some were scary, some quiet, some funny.  Many didn’t have faces.  They didn’t get the chance to grow into individuals, and were closer to being shadows of people.  Yalda would-”

He looked over at Brie.

Avery swallowed.

“-She brought out what little was there.”

Toadswallow adjusted his vest and tie.  Behind him, Laila and Liberty joined the group.

“If you want me to step in, John, I can deliver the final blow.  I can’t promise it will be humane.”

“I’ll make do,” John said.  “And I might be making do soon.  I think they’ll come soon.”

“You see something?” Lucy asked.

“No.  But things feel quieter out there.  It’s not the same as when the Augury hit, but it feels meaningful.”

“You guys know Toad for real, then?” Liberty asked Verona.

Verona hesitated.

“It’s nothing against you, Liberty,” Toadswallow said.  “Someone like your father wanted me on a full-time basis.  A complete and total binding, maybe as a familiar.  I wasn’t interested, so I had to drop away.”

“It sucked, seeing that the pages for summoning you were missing from the books.”

“I’ve missed you and your sister.  We’ll find a way to stay in touch.  Catch up.”

Liberty nodded.

“She’s out there?” Toadswallow asked.

“Or she’s in the big building Bristow is building.  I think she’s fully bound,” Liberty said.  “Keeping her out of the way.”

Verona nodded.  “Gashwad has a way of getting into the building, and we can get others into the school, same way we got Alpeana in.”

“Get organized.  Leave us to talk,” Toadswallow told Liberty.

She gave him a pat on the head, then went back to the main group.

“You want to buy time?”  Toadswallow asked.

“I think if we do, there’s a chance we can do stuff,” Verona answered.  “But if we don’t buy time then I don’t know what response to give or what to do.”

“Ruins circle?” Avery asked.

Verona nodded.  “Works, and it’s also an escape route.”

“It’s one they know about,” John warned.

Verona hesitated, then conceded, “True.  But what else works?  They have to expect the Warrens.”

“Avery,” Lucy said.  “You’re better at making portals, right?”

“A bit.  I think because I’ve walked the Trail.”

“Do the core bit?  And I want to do a starburst around it.”

“Tidal wave?” Verona asked.

“Something that pushes them back, buys us time.  I really hope your ideas are good, Verona.”

“It’s more like they’re not good, but I have four.  Three mediocre ideas together works, right?”

Neither John nor Toadswallow volunteered an answer.

“Let’s hope,” Avery said.

They split up.  John stayed on guard.  Avery looked for a clear spot nearby and found one big enough to do a circle that was about fifteen feet wide.  Snowdrop pulled weeds and stomped on the earth to flatten the ground.

Sweat rolled down Avery’s back, and it wasn’t all the summer heat.  Bugs settled on her and took off after getting a bite of her.

Lucy took a minute longer with John, then came to do the starburst.  It seemed like she was stuck using the earring’s decoration style as part of the diagram style, but she was faster in drawing out and spacing out the points, like rays of a sun, but geometric.

“You’re getting along with John,” Avery said.

“Yeah.  It’s nice, having him around in a bad situation.  With Verona and even you sometimes, sometimes I want to slap my hand to my face because I feel like we’re on different wavelengths.  Like, life or death situation and you’re having Snow mess with Verona?”

“Laila was anxious.  I guess I thought a little bit of lighthearted messing around might help.”

“I don’t know if it did.  That might be me.  I guess I like a bad situation to feel under control.  John’s like that.  Reliable.”

“Would you take him as a familiar?”

Lucy looked over.

She didn’t immediately respond.

Avery focused on drawing the rough teardrop shapes inside the crescent of the moon that was most of the diagram.  “Whatcha thinking?”

“That I’d worry I was always trying to measure up to Yalda.  I can’t sing, for one thing.”

“Neither can John.”

“I can’t do it anyway, until you guys have made your choices for the big three.  It unbalances things.”

“That was just an idea.  If you fit…”

“I don’t know if we fit.  So maybe I’ll sit on it for a while.  You guys pick your demesne and familiar, then when we start making our second choices… I guess he’s a big consideration.”

“Gotta get him through this Summer, though,” Avery said, quiet.  “If he takes over as Carmine, pretty much everyone seems to think he won’t hold that spot for long.”

Lucy nodded, her expression serious.

“Maybe, um, if you take him as familiar, it rules him out for that?”

“If it does, you two are going to need to decide fast,” Lucy answered, drawing out the lines by pouring out thin lines of chalk from the bag onto dirt, pressing the bag down to tamp it down so it wouldn’t blow away.

“Hey Toadswallow?” Avery called out.

Toadswallow was observing Gashwad and the other group.  He hurried over.

“About familiars and implements…” Avery started.

“I’m touched at the notion you would think of me, dear Avery.”

“Uh, sorry.  No.”

Toadswallow smiled, more smug, somehow, at being rejected.

“Musser’s out there, we haven’t seen a lot of him.  There’s only some notes about his family and his kids.  Who are also out there.”

“The tall one with the woo-woo hair and fancy clothes?”

“Yeah, you crossed paths with him for a moment.  Do you have any ideas?  He has multiple familiars and a lot of implements.”

“Some familiars pair up naturally.  If you get a tweedle dee and a tweedle dum, you’ll get the set, because they’re linked.  Same for a Black Jack and Lily White.”

“We already know about that.  But I don’t think that’s what he did.  Blackhorne and Drowne aren’t part of a set, I don’t think.  And the implements…”

“I do have one idea on what it might be,” Toadswallow told them.  “An approach some Goblins use, but Guilherme could tell you more about it.”

“What’s that?” Lucy asked.

“Set up the right sort of duel with the right terms… you can take next to anything you want as a prize.”

“Including someone’s implement?”

“I wouldn’t rule it out, and I wouldn’t pick a fight with him while you have that pretty little thing at your ear,” Toadswallow told Lucy.  He looked down at the diagram.  “Anything else?”

Avery shook her head.

“Then here.  It won’t last long, but it’ll buy us time to do what we need to, at the start,” Toadswallow told them.  He held out two bits of what looked like wet lint.

“Do I want to know?” Avery asked, making a face.

“Up the nose.”

“I didn’t want to know.”

“What does it do?” Lucy asked.

“It makes you smell something that’s between wet dog and hot garbage,” Toadswallow told her.

“As a side effect?” Avery asked.

“Nope.  It’s the desired effect.”

“And we’d do this why?” Lucy asked.

“Because I’ll flood the entire area with something much more malodorous,” Toadswallow told Lucy.  “Smelling wet dog and hot garbage will be a relief.  Just don’t open your mouth if you can help it.”

“Does that malodorous smell wash off?” Lucy asked.

Toadswallow cackled.  “With enough scrubbing.  Now I should go tend to Liberty.  She misses her sister, and she’s also an envious type, if things haven’t changed.  I can’t remember which sister it was, but one made the other eat sand from a sandbox another child had peed in, because their father spent five dollars more on birthday gifts for the one than the other.”

“Geez,” Avery said.

“And that was before I got to teach them anything.  Such good girls,” Toadswallow said.

“We’re not done talking about the stink you’re going to make,” Lucy told him, but she said it to his back.  He was already walking over to the other group.

“I didn’t tell you,” Snowdrop talked as she carefully picked her way across the diagram, lifting her feet higher than necessary.  “He’s a bad teacher, and he’s dumb and lame.”

“It’s a little startling,” Avery admitted, quiet.

“Feels less like he’s been that knowledgeable about stuff all along and we’ve ignored it, and more like he’s been keeping a lot up his sleeve.”

“That’s unfair,” Snowdrop told Lucy.  “He doesn’t do that sort of thing.”

“Seeing more of this world like we are, I’m feeling like it’s a necessary thing for survival,” Lucy said.

Avery nodded.  She looked at Snowdrop.  “Maybe we’ll keep your tricks secret for the future, just in case?”

Snowdrop smiled and nodded.

Avery drew some more lines, then stepped back  It felt right, at least.  But the fact it was the Ruins made her nervous.  It’d be their third time using this diagram.

“Verona wants to time any moves around what the other group or Alexander are doing,” Lucy said.  “When Bristow is busy.  That’s not one of her four arguments or plans, but it’d help if we caught him off guard.”

Avery nodded.  She fixed up a part of the diagram she’d brushed with her hand.

When the drawing was done, she was left to study it, seeing the countless minor deficiencies.  Places where the lines were thicker than on the opposite side, or where a teardrop was a little square.

She fixed some, but left others.  Bending down was starting to make her arm and upper chest hurt, where Shellie’s whip had slashed her across the collarbone.  It felt like she was pulling at it.

The quiet only let the anxieties and stresses of the past few days land.

Snowdrop gave her a one-armed hug, ducking her head and shoulders under Avery’s arm, then holding onto her wrist to keep Avery’s arm there, returning the hug.

One by one, conversations died down.  People prepared in silence.  Mikey was running his katana along a whetstone, back and forth, then the other way.  Then that sound stopped.

Like how the woods had gone quiet.

Goblins moved without needing a signal.  Disappearing into cover.  Where they found their perches and hiding spots, red eyes peered out of the deepest patches of gloom.

Further down the closest thing there was to a path that led down to the school, dots of red-gold appeared, then became ‘x’ shapes.  Some opened wider, into orbs, but mostly it was the ‘x’ shapes.

They appeared in many of the shadows.  Then in most, down the path.

More followed, at the flanks.  Behind.  Nearby, far away.

Hundreds of pairs.

They didn’t charge in, and they didn’t try anything.  They only stared, and they turned every hiding place in the immediate vicinity and then some into a place an enemy was laying in wait.

“Ready?” Lucy asked.

“I wish I could give you a confident yes,” Verona said.  “This may seem a little crazy…”

“The whole Brownie thing was pretty out there.  Some of the sub-plans sound workable.”

“This one won’t seem workable, but it might buy time.”

Avery looked down at the lint in her hand, then shoved it up one nostril.

It smelled way worse than hot garbage and wet dog.  She coughed.

Verona seemed to suffer too.  Lucy was better at rolling with it.

Three men were coming down the path.  One short and squat and dressed like he was a teacher going to get his picture taken at school for picture day, one tall and stylishly dressed in a way Avery sorta wished she could emulate, and one bodybuilder-muscular, dressed in relaxed clothing.

Lawrence Bristow, Ted Havens, and Musser.

Eyes winked out as the men walked by them, then opened elsewhere, sometimes crowding in, two to three to a hiding place.

“Don’t waste breath trying to convince Ted about how he’s being manipulated,” Lucy said.  “I think we’ve tried that three or so times, and it never really works.”

“Maybe four times,” Verona said.  “Daniel, Clementine, Sharon, Shellie.”

“He’s a really scary guy who’s stuck in a rut and he’ll roll us over if he can catch us in that same rut,” Avery said.  “He’ll be nice about it if it’s convenient.”

Lucy nodded.  Verona was very still, her expression blank.

The ‘x’ shaped eyes were all over the place now, to the point the dark recesses seemed brighter than the patches of dappled late-afternoon sunlight that came down through the trees overhead.  They didn’t reveal much about the brownie’s faces though.

John raised his gun.

“Not one step closer!” John shouted.  His voice echoed through the woods.

They kept advancing.  Musser raised his hand, wrapped in a leather glove that left the fingertips exposed.

John fired.  It might have been a warning shot.

Musser’s hand jerked.  The bullet hit him smack dab in the palm.  He flinched, shaking his hand, and dropped the lead.

John fired three more times in quick succession.

He wasn’t aiming for Musser’s hand, but all three bullets hit the same spot.  The third even flashed visibly as it struck and sparked off of the second, as the second bounced off.

“Don’t waste bullets,” Lucy said, quiet.

John lowered the gun a bit, holding it in both hands, and retreated some.

“Verona Hayward and associates,” Mr. Bristow addressed them.  “Let me open by saying I have no regrets yet.  Where do you stand?”

“In your way, a bit, I hope,” Verona told him, sniffling a bit.  “But I’m willing to make a concession.  If you’ll let the other group go, I’ll let you win that little competition.  You can gainsay me.”

Verona,” Lucy hissed.

Oh yeah.  Verona had said she had one idea that was crazy.

But how was this a good idea?

“I don’t need that.  I’ll win without your concession and it’ll be all the better,” Mr. Bristow told her.  “But it does give me an edge in this tug of war between us, that you’re willing to admit losing is a possibility.  It’s good of you to do so, when I have no intention of doing the same.”

The other group was hanging back, behind a partial cover of trees.  Toadswallow had the stink trap planned.

But it still felt like a bad thing that the three men could approach like this.

“Nicolette passed on my deal, didn’t she?  I thought it was gracious,” Bristow said.

“Was it?” Lucy asked.

“Considering that you three are so much of what we’re trying to put behind us, in practice?  Even Alexander doesn’t know what to do with you, and my views are different from his.”

“Are they?” Lucy asked.

“Are you stalling for time?” Bristow asked.  He smiled, mustache turning up.  “It’s fine.  Alexander likes problem solving.  He thinks that if he can elevate great minds and put them together, the knowledge and solutions will make their way down to the people on the ground.  But we’ve been doing that here and there for centuries.  He tears apart his own for advantages then wonders why it’s not sustainable.  My way?  It does work.  It does give us the organization and means of stopping what needs to be stopped, and building what needs to be built.”

“You talk so much,” Verona said.

“And you’ve provoked a force of brownies two hundred strong, then given me grounds to gainsay you in a small way twice over.  If I can come back to you a third time and tell you that I have no regrets, that I’m happy to inconvenience Alexander?  Will that matter?  If I’m glad that I’ve thrown you into disarray, when you’re an equivalent to barbarians, at the same time I’m trying to bring civilization to the practice?  Will that decide things?”

Avery paced, because she couldn’t bring herself to sit still.  She kept close to the diagram.

“Stay, stay and be ready,” Gashwad urged the others in the back.  He was hiding from the Aware.

“Alexander comes in an hour or two.  Then things should end promptly.  He thinks so, and so does my new collection of Augurs.  The only difference is that we disagree about what the outcome will be.  All of my Augurs, the forsworn one excepted, seem to think he’s finished.”

“Stay!” Gashwad barked.

Avery looked.

He was saying it because Laila’s nerve had broken.

Laila ran for a gap between the brownies.  A pretty obvious trap.

Avery ducked behind a tree, tried to black rope, and failed.

The damn brownies!

She chased.

Hands reached out, trees shifted, and bark parted.  Brownies converged on Laila, who was a straggler.

Avery’s Sight helped her keep track of brownies and the running girl.  She weaved between reaching hands as more brownies chased her.

Laila was heading for the water.

“Tashlit!” Verona shouted, a bit nasal.

The water bubbled and boiled.  Tashlit emerged, twenty feet downriver.  Avery headed after Laila, little hands grabbing at her hair and shirt.  She used what she’d picked up in Zoomtown to slip between them, used her shoes for boosts of speed when she was confident she wouldn’t hurl herself into a tree trunk or branch.

With her Sight, she could see the mist getting darker, the connections around Laila more tattered, like acid rain was pouring down around her and eating into things.  Every inhalation felt poisoned but that was Toadswallow’s nose-plug.  It made it hard to breathe.

Laila ran down a slope, and she didn’t manage to stay upright.  She fell, and Avery couldn’t reach her.

Laila hit the rocky riverbank, hard, five feet from Avery’s reaching hand, five feet from Tashlit, as Tashlit rose from the water at the bank.

Bristow said something in the background.

The darkness and melty-ness dissipated.  There were just the tattered connections now.

Brownies were still chasing, and Avery had to whip around, her focus in five different places at once.

Tashlit slapped a hand against the water, getting Avery’s attention.  Then she pointed, urging.

Go.

Avery didn’t go.  She looked back, watching as Tashlit laid a hand on Laila, then pulled it away.  There was no glow, there was no healing.

Tashlit shook her head.

Was that on purpose?

Was Kevin there, in the woods?  Avery looked, aware the brownies were closing in, that chains were being dragged out and stretched out along her escape routes, trapdoors opening.

They were so much more numerous than they’d been in the school.

She touched the pendant she wore, with the dog tag for summoning John and the protection against Kevin’s evil eye.  She halfway expected that protection to be disintegrating in her palm.

Tashlit slapped the water again.  Avery didn’t need to turn around to see this time.

Avery broke into a run, hurdling a chain with her wind shoes, ducking under a branch.  She weaved through hands, and tiny nails scratched her.  She pressed on and her eyes started to sting, and she would have blamed the nose-plug and that choking smell, but she could see the brownies slowing down.

Musser, holding Lucy with one hand, was covering his lower face, coughing.  Avery picked up speed, then leaped, pulling her mask off her head and using it as a weapon again.  She would have shouted something to drive it home, but she didn’t want to open her mouth while Toadswallow was doing his thing.

He caught her with that gloved hand, a complex rune flashing at his palm and wrist.

He threw Avery aside.

Directly into Ted’s way.

The man looked so sad as he stood over her.  He didn’t choke, he simply seemed to be holding his breath, his eyes watering a bit, as he looked down at her.

Snowdrop hurried to her side, grabbing her arm.

There was no speaking in the midst of all of this.  Verona probably would have quipped something about Bristow not being able to talk and that being good.

But it felt oppressive.  Brownies, cloths around their lower faces, were starting to forge forward.

They’d bought a little time, and now what?

At least- it looked like the other group had run.

Ted grabbed her by the shoulder, firm.  She fought back, but he pushed her hand aside what felt like three times, for two quick scratches.  Two more times for one punch, trying to break his hold.  Like he was putting her two steps off position for everything she tried.

Something slashed out, and he pulled his hand back, freeing her.  He almost immediately went for a grip again, and caught her shirt collar

Something caught the back of her collar, like she’d caught Snowdrop.

Lucy, holding a cane or something.  Pulling Avery back, over to the side.  Her shirt, already torn a bit from Shellie’s whip, tore from Ted’s grip.  Lucy put a foot on Avery’s hip, then kicked.

Avery tumbled.  Into the middle of the Ruins diagram.

And that chant that opened the gate started to play from Verona’s phone.  Verona was looking too.

Snowdrop jumped in as the water exploded out, washing over everything around, and swallowing Avery up, taking her elsewhere.

Brownies chased and they seemed a lot less bothered by the Ruins this time around.

Giving her no choice but to descend.

Descending into a scene fresh in her memory, watching a fellow student slip and fall down a riverbank, head and face smashing into rocks.  What would Fernanda think?  Was spoilt rich girl Fernanda the type to crack, when faced with that?

Enough to change sides again?

What would Laila’s family think?

What would Avery’s family think, if she went off to camp and never came home?

The scene washed over and around her, the fruitless chase after one person who hadn’t had the courage to stand her ground.

They’d chucked her in here alone, because things had gone bad.  Sending her out alone, ahead and away from the rest of the group.  They probably saw it as salvation, a chance for them and their group.  But she couldn’t help but feel it was a kind of rejection.

She fixed her collar as best as she could.  The tear wasn’t that bad.  She’d liked the shirt.

It gave her something tactile as ghosts haunted her.  One off in the distance looked like Laila, following.

If she squinted, she could imagine a Gabe.

She searched, zig-zagging, looking.

Snowdrop meandered, splashing through water with rain boots and a shirt that had a prone opossum on it, crawling with text assuring the person looking that she was very, certainly, undeniably and unquestionably dead and deceased, not fainted.  Even Snowdrop looked a little down, a little jittery as the twentieth ghost or gaunt figure came at her from the darkness.

“What are you doing all the way out here?”

Avery pushed tired legs into a run.

Jessica.  Who didn’t even like her, probably.  But Avery crashed into a hug, and Jessica didn’t push her away.

“Avery,” Zed said.

“I was looking,” Avery answered Jessica’s question.  What are you doing all the way out here.  “I thought if I could find your cousin-”

“I’d come back?”

“-it might make things better,” Avery said.  She hadn’t thought things through that much.

“I take it Bristow’s winning?” Zed asked.

“Or he’s won already,” Avery answered.  “Brie was okay, last I saw, but…”

She wasn’t sure how to end that sentence.

“But?” Zed pressed.

“Everyone’s okay,” Snowdrop told him.

“A student just died,” Avery clarified.  “Laila.”

“Okay,” Zed said.  “Shit, okay, okay, I’ve got to go back, then.  Jessica, I’ll try to come back another day to help with-”

“I’ll come,” Jessica cut him off.

Avery squeezed Jessica harder.

“Can you endure the return trip?” Jessica asked.

“She’s a wimp, and she’s tired,” Snowdrop said.

Avery let out a half-note chuckle, then nodded.

“Then let’s go.”

Gone Ahead – 7.8

Verona

“Stay!” Gashwad hollered.  A hundred ‘x’ shaped eyes narrowed or moved.

Verona crouched, trying to watch Bristow, Musser, Ted -why did she keep wanting to call him Tedward in her head?- and the countless Brownies.  At the same time, she tried to make sure she didn’t miss what Avery and Lucy were doing.

Because Avery and Lucy were good at doing.  Verona was good at the practice but not so good at the hairy situations.

They looked so determined, Lucy with her mask and cape and hat on, eyes burning red behind the eyeholes.  Avery with her mask pushed up, game face on, hat on a string around her neck, cape flapping.

She’d promised Lucy that she would back her up, and the best way she could do that would be to solve this whole damn mess.  Which was looking less and less likely as Ted and Musser and Mr. Bristow all got closer.

To watch for that precise use of language.  In any conversation, she was always tensed, poised to catch that extra loophole, that stray word.

God, this noseplug made it hard to think.  Like a soggy dead cat’s matted armpit lint, filling her nostrils.

Avery broke into a run, cape following behind her.  Verona turned to look back and figure out why Avery was running, and saw Laila running for it.

Verona hadn’t been thinking much about the other group.

Verona’s Sight flashed on, and she could see meaty things doing a wacky arm-flailing thing, all frantic and overworked, like a cartoon mom running around with wobbly noodle arms while children waited for a fire rescue team to get them out of that second floor window.  Except without running around.  Or the funny.

Avery stumbled badly, scraping her leg.

Verona couldn’t go.  That was- it wasn’t going to work on five different levels.  She wouldn’t be any faster than Avery, for one thing.  She couldn’t run, either, both because she just wasn’t a fast runner, and because she had to be here, by the Ruins circle, dealing with Bristow.

Avery dipped out of sight.

But if not Verona herself, then maybe… Verona raised her voice, shouting with a volume that felt like it could rupture her lungs or push the noseplugs out of her nose.  “Tashlit!”

She held her phone in one hand and her arm in the other hand, and fingernails bit into her forearm as she willed power and connection to Tashlit.

“No tricks!” Musser shouted.

Verona twisted around, facing him.

“This brownie thing is about us, not them.  Let the other students go,” Lucy raised her voice.

“This is about so much more than you,” Bristow said.

John hung back, side pressed to a tree, gun held in both hands.  Behind them, lurking in cover, Toadswallow was holding an egg that looked like it had barnacles or tumors on it.  The entire thing practically throbbed, and to Verona’s sight, had something meaty and diseased to the point of being black writhing beneath a translucent, already cracked surface.

Toadswallow gestured, and the others broke into a run, heading into the deeper woods.  Which immediately got the brownies in the trees moving.

Musser started forward, and Toadswallow dropped the- The bad egg?  About as fast as it took Verona to turn from looking at Toadswallow to looking at Musser, Musser drew a gouge into the dirt between himself and Toadswallow.  A straight line.  As part of the same motion, he pivoted, ducking behind a tree.

Ted followed Musser’s lead, a beat late, but didn’t draw the line.  It wouldn’t do anything for him anyway.

And Bristow stepped back, indicating the brownies should move in.

Verona didn’t smell what they smelled.  Brownies bent and crumpled, hands to their faces.  Even Musser sagged.  Ted didn’t.

Musser had a handkerchief.  He pressed it to his lower face.

“Walk away, Bristow!” Lucy called out.

“Why should I do that?” Mr. Bristow called back.  “You’re doing harm to students and faculty, I have to act my part!”

“You brought some metaphorical mad dogs to campus!” Verona called out.  “And-”

She coughed.  Just opening her mouth had let the smell in.  It coated the inside of her mouth, sucked out the moisture, and turned that moisture into something gross.  Like a homeless person with bad teeth had vomited into her open mouth.  She shielded her mouth against more, folding her arms around her face and shouting into the crooks of two elbows.  “You haven’t kept them in line.  Funny how they’re mostly or totally going after people you don’t like!”

Had to get him talking.  It was something she’d already establsihed as a weakness.

“You-” Bristow started to respond, waving with his hand.

Musser started forward, one hand holding the handkerchief to his lower face, other outstretched.

Bristow didn’t continue.  Musser didn’t continue.

Brownies stopped in their tracks.  Meaty wobble-arm things that danced inside trees and from the foliage above went still.

The smell cloyed inside Verona’s mouth, punishing her for talking.  For speaking.  And she’d gotten nothing out of it, because Bristow had fallen as silent as anyone.  She hadn’t gotten him talking.

Something had just happened.

“What a pity,” Bristow said.  “She had promise as a student.”

Avery?  Verona felt her blood run cold.

No.  She would have felt something.  They were tied together.  Laila.

What the hell?

“I suppose this lends a degree of justice to what I do here,” Bristow called out.

“Fuck you!” Lucy shouted, before coughing.

Bristow was far enough away to not be caught in the worst of the stink-cloud, and he was, shitty as he was about so many things, really good at projecting.

If Verona were a little more mentally agile in this moment, she’d have a quip ready about that.

“I suppose I’ll quell the rebellious students, you, and that will be a recent victory to remind the spirits that I’m not to be trifled with.  Alexander is coming, and I’ll meet him, fresh off the back of several recent wins and one gainsaying.  It should be a good result, borne of good instinct.  You probably didn’t even realize you were helping me more than hurting me with this brownie ploy.”

Musser twisted around, looking back at Bristow, holding the handkerchief in place.  His eyes alone communicated more than most full expressions.

“Yes, let’s end this,” Bristow said.  He waved his hand.

Musser stepped forward, head ducked low, face covered, and fast-walked forward.  John immediately opened fire, one shot, that Musser caught out of the air.  Or the bullet went to his hand, as all the ones prior had.

Catcher’s glove?

John charged in.  Playing defense, buying time.  He had a combat knife, and Musser caught that too.  But stabbing wasn’t the intention on John’s part.  He gave up the knife and punched Musser in the neck.

It was a weird exchange.  Like neither cared nearly enough about what the other was doing.  Musser’s automatic catch, the trade of giving away/taking the knife with the punch.  Then the next exchange of moves; Musser stabbed John in the upper arm, as John snatched the handkerchief.

The wind tore the handkerchief from John’s hand.  He backed away, hand going to the knife that was embedded in his arm, while Musser staggered and coughed.

Verona made sure her phone was set, switching over to the automatic translation of Jessica’s ruins-chant.

The brownies were recovering.  The second wave was coming, and they’d wrapped cloth around their faces for the smell.

John went after Musser again, and Musser did the line-draw.  Verona reached for her back pocket, pulled out a paper, and threw it, letting the spirits carry it true.

It didn’t fly true.

She’d been gainsaid.

If anything, it only few in a mostly straight line because Musser had used that glove, because it flew straight there and Musser caught the paper out of the air.

John stopped short of crossing the line, as Musser tore the paper, doing his best to cover his lower face.

“You can’t cross a line in the dirt?” Lucy asked.

“Not if the line is from someone strong,” John said.

“Then go after Bristow!”

John ducked off to the side, where his bag was stowed, and reached inside.  He paused for a second, then retrieved a spare gun.  Gun in one hand, bag in the other, he made it about one step before Ted was there.

Musser, again, didn’t seem to give three rat craps about John, and came after them.

The man held one arm to his face, and he went after Lucy.  Lucy pulled out a pen-sword, using her ring.

A cracking sound made Verona jump.

John and Ted fell to the ground.  The bag John had been carrying was damaged, and it smoked from a hole in the side.  John and Ted were bleeding.

“John!” Lucy shouted, sputtering and coughing.  “If you don’t stop it with the sacrificial plays, I may have to kick your ass!”

“The man doesn’t die,” Toadswallow said, from the bushes behind them.  “Miss Hayward!”

Verona twisted around.

He reached up out of the bush.  A bit of roadkill dangled from his hand.  It looked like about twenty large ticks were stuck to its hind-end.  “You can still use trinkets and items.”

“What do I-”

“Smack things with the butt-end, dear girl.”

She gripped the roadkill by the head.

“Musser,” Bristow said.  “You’re adept in War Magic, aren’t you?  You know how to bind a vicious dog such as this?”

“Busy!” Musser growled the words.  He coughed.

He was better at fighting than Lucy was, but Lucy wasn’t suffering from the smell.  Not as much.

Verona, meanwhile, did what she could to guard the Ruins diagram against the brownies.  She had the ugly stick, but she didn’t want to destroy them.  That was… she’d use it on Musser or Bristow.

So she smacked a few brownies with the gross, limp, and unidentifiable animal carcass.  Flies and fleas and all kinds of other things erupted out around them, leaving them flailing and running.

They were being surrounded.  It had been the sides, front, and back, but now the bushes between them were seeing those eyes appear.  They seemed to be avoiding Ted’s attention, but he was down and taking a bit to recover.

A brownie grabbed Verona, and she had to throw it off her.

John, on the other hand, was already on his feet.  He headed after Bristow, who jumped a little as he realized.

Bristow ducked behind a tree, as John opened fire.  Wood splintered.

Bristow drew a line in the dirt, as Musser had.  John opened fire, tearing up the ground where the line was.

“If the staff would please-!” Bristow shouted.

Brownies threw themselves at John from above and the sides.

They’re strong and Ted’s getting up and we need a win.  I can’t use the tricks I was going to use to fight back against the Brownies, not yet.  If we waste it, that’s it, there’s nothing, Verona thought, her mind racing.

Lucy fended off Musser with sword swings.  He caught and let go of the blade three times in quick succession.

Avery threw herself out of the trees, going after Musser with her mask in her hand.

He caught the mask, then bodily threw her back and behind him, so he could focus on Lucy.

Avery landed in front of Ted, who had just risen to his feet.

Verona wanted so badly to communicate something, to encourage, to steer this or strategize, but her throat was caught up with gas.

They were losing.

Toadswallow was in the bushes, protecting some of the Ruins diagram, fending off the encroaching brownies.  They were supposed to have Laila as part of a multi-stage defense.  To hit them with stink, then curse them while they were down, because curses would work better if they could get a bit of coup in first.  If they could be standing while their enemies were coughing and sputtering.  Then they’d make their dashing escape, after having bought time for the others and making the necessary time to talk to Bristow and surrender the gainsaying.

Snowdrop and Avery fought to escape Ted.  Avery scratched with fingernails to break his grip on her shoulder, and he deflected her groping hand with the back of his, then a push at her wrist, then a smack, to drive her hand down closer to her hip, so it took time to raise it again, and he could use that time to deal with Snowdrop, pushing her back.

Verona hit the button on her phone.

To start the ritual.  The sound file started to play, but it wasn’t immediate.

Get Avery out,” Verona whispered, her voice strained with the way she wasn’t breathing much.

Lucy made the same kind of play John had.  Turning her pen-sword into a cane, then using the cane to hook Avery, pulling her back.  A sacrificial play, because Musser was then able to grab her arms.

It wasn’t the right trajectory, so Lucy gave Avery the boot, a light kick-push to send Avery into the diagram as the chant began.

Avery looked so wounded, somehow.  Because of Laila?

Lucy caught Snowdrop’s hand and swung her into the same area.  Snowdrop knew what she was doing, and she belonged with Avery, so that maybe helped get her where she was going.

The circle erupted.  Water splashed out in every direction, like a bucket had been upended on the circle from high above and now it had to go somewhere.  It washed over and past them, soaking Verona through clothes and seemingly to the very bone, and with it came that startling, too-bright, too-caring emotion, direct from Avery.

Pain, loss, confusion, and a bit of shock.  But shock for Avery wasn’t a numbness that bought time, it was a shake around the collar, that told her body move and really failed to do the same thing with her brain.

Maybe if she had better instincts in a pinch, like Avery, she’d be able to deal with it, but for right now, she fought uselessly past the brownies that had managed to get a grip on her.

That Laila had died.

The feelings rolled over Verona and she wasn’t really equipped for it.  She thought of her dad and how she’d left him.

She was running and she was far enough away from things that the brownies weren’t drenched from the splash or choking from the smoke, which may have been mostly cleared up by the water, because they weren’t choking or suffering.

Brownies were grabbing her and hooking fingers into soaking wet clothes and she wasn’t a fast runner and-

Was this karma?

She grabbed the dog tag from her neck and instead of pulling it over her head, which might have been impossible with the brownies clinging there, she tore it from her neck until the chain snapped.  She threw it down.

If she could get John away from there and over here, deal with the brownies, reassess, flank…

A brownie caught it before it could hit dirt.

Verona slipped, too top-heavy with something like seven brownies clinging to her arms and hair, her shoes wet and the ground still muddy in places from last weekend’s heavy rain.

She landed on roots that were sticking up out of the ground, and felt more hands on her.  They climbed onto her and pinned her, leaving her lying on uncomfortable ground, knobby and bulging, her face half in mud and half in grass.

Was it really karma?  Was this the punishment she deserved, for abandoning her father?  The spirits held to old ways and one of the ten commandments was to honor thy father and thy mother, and that sure seemed like old ways.  They probably hadn’t even invented awful dads way back then.

Her dad had been sick and suffering and he’d asked for help.  And she’d said no.

She’d left to attend classes and learn more cool magic stuff and in the end she hadn’t gotten much of that.  She’d put her dad out of mind and passed the job on to Lucy’s already busy mom, and that didn’t feel right.

Brownies picked her up as a group, with broomstick-narrow limbs and knobby joints, heads shaggy with manes, sideburns, braids, and beards.  Her head hung until brownies gripped it and held it up.

If she’d taken another path- if she’d stayed home, bit her tongue, got her dad that frigging flat ginger ale, changed the sheets, and let her friends go back, maybe let them go back without her, she could have helped out more at the perimeter.  Maybe when things went bad, she could be the true backup.  Let Lucy and Avery be the doers, Verona as the backline type.  Getting things set up in Kennet, so they could send more Others here when things got bad.  Do an actual rescue, instead of sending a shocked and disoriented Avery into another realm with hopes she could help later.

Lucy wasn’t loving this and Avery wasn’t happy and they’d been having chats and Verona was stuck doing what?  Putting on a brave face?

Not so brave now.

“Can we make a deal?” Toadswallow asked from the shadows of bushes.

Brownies hissed.

Verona raised her head.

“Brownies are of summer and fall.  I believe I could scrounge up some royal mead if you gave me the time.  Having some of that on your shelf is a veritiable status symbol.”

They ignored him, except to hiss when he got too close.

Toadswallow emerged from the bushes to pick up the weapon, the animal carcass, that she’d dropped when she’d gotten hit with the watery explosion.

“If you’re of Fall, you might want to buy or trade.  If you’re planning on selling her at auction in markets, let me jump the queue.”

Brownies standing between Verona and Toadswallow shook their heads.

“Thought not.  It was worth a try, considering you could be low on funds, maybe I’d hit the mark.  A good trade at a good moment of need,” Toadswallow told them.  He tightened his grip on the animal carcass he held.

He was going to fight them.

There were maybe fifty holding Verona and thirty or forty more that Verona could see.  She was being held with her nose or chin a couple of inches above the dirt, and the hair that wasn’t being held against the sides of her head by tiny hands that needed something to grip was a curtain on either side of her face.  And she could still see thirty or forty around Toadswallow.

He was going to fight them and it would be disastrous.

“You’re faerie-related, right?” Verona asked.

They ignored her.

“You’re faerie-related, and you like a good show.  Let me put on a good show.”

They continued to carry her.

“You want to score a win?  I’m a reckless practitioner with barely over a month of practice under my belt.  He’s a big kahuna.  He’s Lawrence Bristow, with people he’s in charge of and power and all that good stuff.  He’s got magic items and fancy clothes and Others he can summon, I’m betting.  He’s got some dude that’s lived for hundreds and-or thousands of years serving him like a slave.  Some students follow him and he’s got worldwide connections.  I knew going in that I was the underdog.  And don’t dramatic types love an underdog?”

Toadswallow followed alongside, giving them some space as they carried her.

“If you want the karmic motherload, he’s your guy.  If you want a trade in the markets, I’m betting a guy of his power and background would sell.  If you want a laugh or you want to be sadistic?  He’ll be way more fun to go after than I will.  I just shut down, guys.  He’ll probably puff and rage and shout and try to deal and you can mess with him for years, I bet.  I don’t think you’ll get that much out of me.”

She watched the ground slowly move beneath her nose.

“All you have to do is give me a shot.  Give me until- until when?  Ten o’clock tonight?  I don’t need long.  Or wait, midnight!  Midnight’s a classy time, it-”

“No,” Toadswallow said.

“No?” Verona asked.  She struggled to get a look at him, but the angle of trees, path, and the fact she couldn’t turn her head with small hands gripping her hair made it hard.

“You conceded ten as a time.  You can’t negotiate up from there.”

“Ten,” Verona said.  “Until ten.”

She could smell the kitchens.  She could see glimmers of light, like the ones that had shone through trapdoors.

Their kitchens.  Their places.  Like various parts of this forest were secret trapdoors leading there.

She snorted and the whiff of dead cat armpit flooded her brain.  She gagged, then snorted again, this time to push the wad of lint out of her nose.

A moment later, Brownies crowded her face, and the progress of how they carried her slowed.

One with one eye and a thick braided beard held a very shiny apple.  Others jabbed at her cheeks, pushing them between her teeth, until her mouth opened, and the one with the beard pushed the apple into her mouth.  She twisted her head to the side.

“Don’t friggin’ fight it,” Toadswallow said.  “And don’t swallow any of the thing, either.  Let it be.”

She took the advice, twisting her head around, this time more to make it less uncomfortable.  The apple felt like it would tear her lips from the stickiness or break a tooth from the hardness.

Her teeth sank in as the apple was pushed into place, and she had to fight to keep it from dragging in the dirt, which was so close to her face, twisting her head to the side and lifting her head up.  It was a honeyed apple, so sweet she saw stars behind her eyes.  The contortion included keeping her tongue from touching it.

“It’s good,” Toadswallow said, quiet.  “You got your deal.  Now they want you to shut up and put up.”

She would have nodded, but she wasn’t able.

They carried her down the path.  There wasn’t a perceptible change of direction.  Toadswallow disappeared into shadows.

“And here she is,” Bristow said.  “Would you deal with her hands?”

She scowled at him.

Brownies dropped her, then, after a moment, slid bags over her hands, tying them there.  It felt like they were filled with sand.

“You’re essentially gainsaid, by our deal.  As this rebellion on Alexander’s behalf wraps up, I’ll finalize it.  Still, let’s keep you from practicing.”

“I’ve got a cut lip or something,” Lucy spoke up.  “It hurts like heck, can we skip the gag?”

“Let’s be safe,” Bristow said.  “Lips can heal, pain will pass.  Your rebellion and games will end soon after Alexander’s arrival, and I can bring things back into order.”

“What if I swore to not do anything in that department while I’m in your custody?” Lucy asked.

“I intend to be headmaster for some time, Lucille.  All of my students are technically in my custody for as long as they are here.”

“I don’t want to be a student under you anyway.  You’re not a very good teacher and you’re an even worse headmaster.  If you end up in charge in any capacity I want to be far away from that.”

Lucy, my best friend.  So good at making friends.

It was nice she could be sarcastic in her thoughts, at least.

The brownies brought the apple, smaller than a normal one, golden, with a kind of candied-but-honey-ish exterior.  From the way a hole in the apple’s exterior leaked a blob of the coating, it looked like it was either filled or it came naturally that way.

“You’re such a pretender!” Lucy raised her voice.  “You talk about civilization and pretend to be civilized but you’re a brute, doing this!  You’re crude, you’re blind!  You pretend to be a leader but you barely lead, you just insinuate and hint and you don’t own up to a single thing you’re doing!  If this is the practice then I can’t imagine much worse than it becoming more widespread!  Your entire end goal is-”

She fought a lot harder than Verona had, as the apple was pushed into place.

“Of course you’re unhappy,” Bristow told Lucy.  “You’re losing.  But this is the way things trend.”

“Don’t bite through or eat any part of the apple,” Musser said, from the sidelines.

John.  Had John escaped?  Or-

She had to flop over a bit, and Ted’s foot went out to stop her from flopping over the entire way.  The bottom of his boot was gritty against her elbow and side.

John was sitting inside a circle drawn in the dirt by Musser, disarmed, looking very casual, one wrist resting on his knee, other knee touching the ground.

“I thought the brownies would carry you off, Miss Hayward,” Bristow said, as a brownie crawled up to his shoulder.  It hissed.  “And you made a challenge.”

She glared at him.

“With a deadline no less.  I would have pushed for midnight.  It’s a classic, but that’s just me.  Your generation is so rushed.”

Damn itDamn it, damn it, damn it.

“Things are in order,” Bristow said.  “Would each of you bring one of the girls?  We need only to wait.”

Ted stooped down.  He looked Verona in the eye.  “May I carry you?”

Bristow loomed over Verona.  She twisted her head around.

He took her mask off, then threw it into the woods.  He did the same with her hat, then her scarf.

“Magic trinkets.  Always a good bit of amusement” Bristow said.  “When the dust has settled, I may see about getting these.”

I’m a student, it’s my property, you can’t!

He took her stuff.  Her backpack was on, so he took the strap apart so he could simply pull it away without sliding it down her arms to her bound wrists and bagged hands.  The ugly stick, the hot lead, two bags of glamour, the rat-skull lockpick, her quill, and the big red button they’d confiscated from Brie.

He took her phone, the spell cards, the glamour cards, the pen she kept in her right pocket, and the twenty bucks and crumpled receipt from her left.

She couldn’t speak to challenge him.

He turned to Lucy, took her hat, and dumped the stuff he’d gathered so far into it.  “Do you like earrings, Musser?”

“Not particularly.  Nothing that low quality.”

Lucy grunted.

“Raquel maybe?”

“She’s not a real member of the family, she’s not privy to our methods, and, funnily enough, I wouldn’t make her wear that thing.”

Bristow walked over to John, leaving it to Musser to divest Lucy of all her stuff.  He reached through the circle and John seemed to let him.  Bristow touched the tags, sorting through those that remained.

“Which is yours?  Norman Nescio?  Noakes?  Roe?  Stiles?”

Bristow’s eyes turned to burnished gold as he stared John down.

He pulled a tag free.

“Your choice.  Be bound temporarily to this tag for twenty minutes, stay with the two girls, and if we are somehow waylaid around the time the binding ends, you can be free again and in our midst.  Or stay here, and Musser uses what he knows to grind you down.  There aren’t enough hands who can carry a young teenager, so the brownies will have to bring one.”

“Bind me temporarily, then.  I follow the accords of Solomon.  I would forfeit too if I lied about such and that would hurt them and me more than any lie could benefit, if I could lie.”

“Sometimes his kind emerge naturally,” Musser said, his arms folded, “and they won’t know what’s happening, they’re too aggressive, many don’t even have faces.  Just… blurs, dirt smudges.  They won’t even know what the accords are, they just grandfather into them.”

“Mm hmm,” Bristow said.

“This kind of knowledge doesn’t come with the package, or with the clarification as they refine their Self, as if they were taking progressively smaller chunks of clay out of their raw Self, to create more detail,” Musser said.  “He’s either killed practitioners, or he’s seen others of his kind get bound.”

“The other tags,” Bristow said, pulling them over John’s head, wrapping them around his hand.  “One or both of the girls had them too.”

“I’ve already agreed,” John said.  “Do you intend to draw this out?”

“Mr. Musser is shedding some light on you as a being, Stiles,” Bristow said.  “You’re fascinating.  Very interesting.  Be bound, then, twenty minutes and then freedom if you aren’t inside my property and secure in a prepared diagram.  Starting now.”

Dirt, leaves, and dust picked up around John and filled the circle.

Only John’s eyes, dark and sad, remained, staring out of the storm.  Metal glinted here and there in the midst of the dust.  Clothes, skin, and hair took on a camouflaged pattern to fabric and paint, respectively, and then the camouflage got lost in the shuffle.

The dust dissipated, the tag Bristow held out swayed as if pulled by a magnet, then swung back, catching the light and losing all tarnish as it dropped limp again.

Bullets, flecks of metal, bits of chain and bits of dog tag littered the bottom of the circle.

Bristow gave the little tag a swing.  He spun it in a circle, tossed it into the air, then caught it.

“Careful.  There’s a lot of power driving that one forward,” Musser said.

Lucy twisted around, kicking while the man was distracted.  Musser caught the foot one-handed, grabbed her by the shoulder, and lifted her over one shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

“May I carry you?” Ted asked Verona.  “If it’s not me, it will be whoever or whatever carried you from wherever you ran to, to here.  They’re much slower, I don’t think it would be as comfortable.”

This way, at least, she’d have more time at the destination to try to make things happen.

She nodded.

He picked her up, then practically threw her into the air.

Positioning her so she sat on one shoulder.  He reached up to hold her elbow with one hand and stooped low to clear her head of branches.

“This is for the best,” Ted told her.

She stuck her shoes out, then kicked down at his chest with as much force as she could manage.

“And that, if you do it again, will lead to you being carried in a much less comfortable way,” he told her.

She didn’t do it again.  It was still satisfying.

“I’ve seen things, out there.  Evil, wrong, destructive.  When the next big evil comes, we’ll need to be ready.  Lawrence Bristow’s methodology gets the world ready,” Ted told her.  “I looked around, I got a lay of the land, tried to figure out what there was out there that could help me, or help with the next big evil.  If we don’t address this now, then we won’t be ready.”

He pulled a dead branch from a tree and used it to push another branch out of the way for Verona.

“I know what he’s doing and most of how he’s doing it.  It’s necessary.  Everyone else is too complacent, too selfish, too wrapped up in what they’re doing.  Even you.  I have to ask, if you knew to the point of certainty that the well being of the world hinged on working with a man like him, would you?  He’s good at heart, but he’s also equipped with the tools and motivations necessary to organize the infrastructure, and those often conflict and override the goodness.  It will take time and education and meeting the right people to get him to a better balance.  Losing the right people, even.”

Bristow turned his head to glance at Ted.

“We’ve talked about this, Lawrence,” Ted told him, placid.  “This shouldn’t be a surprise.”

“We have.  And it isn’t.  But I’d rather you not prophecise that.”

“I’m only a man who’s been around for too long,” Ted told Bristow.  “I can’t see the future.  I see only a great deal of one piece of history.  Some of those who cannot learn from the past and apply that learning are doomed to repeat it, you know.”

“I learned from past encounters with Alexander, and you’d better believe I’m applying it,” Bristow said.

“We’ll get there.  So please understand,” Ted said, to Verona.  Or to Lucy, who was slung over Musser’s shoulder, lifting up her head to glare at Ted.  “We need a tyrant for a moment, and he has it in him to be a true hero.  I know this in a way I couldn’t possibly convey to you.”

The glare softened as Lucy turned to look up at Verona.  It was less of a glare now and more… accusatory?  Or whatever sentiment went along with ‘you better know what you’re doing’.

Which Verona didn’t.

Not anymore.

But she could look down at the top of Tedward’s head and then look at Lucy and shake her head slowly.

Lucy smiled.

“What a shame,” Ted intoned.  He’d seen or felt the motion.  He sounded so sad.

Good.

A music box played a full concert in plonky, artificial instrument sounds.  America hummed tunelessly along.

Verona had seen the clock on the wall before they’d been brought in here, into a building in construction with tarps on parts of the outside and plastic sheets on the inside.  Windows and walls were open and a breeze blew through, but they were on the second floor, and wards protected against intrusion.

Dolls the size of people moved in degrees appropriate to the length of each bit of music, percussion for the feet, string instruments for the arms, a bit of wind for the heads.  Each stop brought the respective doll to a halt.

Patrolling the space to the sound of the music box.

Estrella sat facing them, studying them, a wand laid across her knees.  Hadley had put three chairs together and lay across them, picking at dirt and blood from under her nails with a toothpick.

America, Lucy, and Verona sat in chairs with no ropes to bind them, no more apple-gags, no bags of sand over their hands.

Only music that kept them from moving until the performance was done.

John was off to the side, sitting in another circle.  Olive branches were laid out in a circle, and a magic circle surrounded that.

Verona couldn’t see the time, but she could see it was getting dark.  She’d seen a clock on the way in, telling her it had been six thirty, and she’d counted while the music box played to get the measure of the song.

Each song was nine minutes, thirteen seconds long, more or less.  The same song every time.  It always skipped for a second or two at the end, which made the dolls fall to the floor.

The nine-ish minute intervals allowed her to keep track of the passage of time.

They’d been here for sixteen plays of the song.

Bristow’s every intention was to keep them here, under constant watch and secure guard, until such a time as they ran out of time or were rescued.  But this place was a fortress and there had been no rescue attempts that Verona was aware of.

Not that anyone on the outside knew the exact deadline.

Ten o’clock.  It fast approached.

Hadley stuck a foot out, and one doll collapsed violently and prematurely.  The rest followed suit a few seconds later.

“Don’t be mean!” Talia said, from the doorway.  She stormed her way into the room, going to help the one fallen doll.  Even though all the others had fallen too.  Her canopy jar doll familiar helped.

It reanimated as the song started anew, and Talia stood back, huffing a breath, then started smoothing out hair and clothes, apparently satisfied.

“My mom used to use this box on me if I threw tantrums, or if I crossed a line.  My familiar hated it because she’d have to dance along, back before she was a familiar,” Talia said.  “If I got two hours to watch TV, it meant two hours, and if I went a second over, then I’d have the same two hours with the music box, which usually meant a cold dinner, after.”

“I think we’re well aware of how horrible your mom is,” Hadley said.  “Poor you.  Come, sit.”

“I don’t think I will,” Talia said.  “And my mom is not horrible.  I have a roof over my head, food, education, practice, and opportunities, thank you,” Talia said.  The reply sounded automatic.

Hadley stomped her foot in time as the music played.  Wooden doll feet clacked against the floor.

“I hate this song,” Talia said.  “So, so much.  It makes me want to cry and I don’t know why.”

“Your bell, my dear Pavlovian dog, has been thoroughly rung,” Hadley said, stretching on her makeshift bench of chairs, feet on the ground, head on the verge of hanging off the other side.

“I’m not a dog,” Talia told Hadley.

“You’re absolutely not.  You’re right,” Hadley said.  “My siblings are dog-like.  They bite a lot.  Do you want a hug?”

“Not from you,” Talia said.  “I barely know you.”

“You know Mccauleigh.  A little older than you.  About the same age as them,” Hadley said, pointing at Lucy.  “Mccauleigh is cool.”

Verona moved her focus to the very corner of her gaze, looking in Lucy’s direction, and saw Lucy doing the same.

Not that they could do anything about Mccauleigh and what they knew there.  Alpeana had seen Mccauleigh in dreams, having nightmares and doubts about the family, apparently.

“I’ve got someone to hug,” Talia said, hugging her familiar.

Her familiar hugged her back, then gave her two perfunctory pats on the back and two on the head.  Talia nodded and straightened up again, again checking no hairs were out of place and that her clothes weren’t wrinkled.

Estrella remained where she was, with near-white hair, hands on her lap, fingertips at her wand, feet and knees together.  She’d moved less, probably, than America, Lucy, or Verona.

America’s humming changed, going out of tune.

Hadley reached over her head, sticking out a finger, and poked Estrella in the side.

Estrella didn’t react.

“Tickle tickle.”

Estrella swung her hand down, lightning-fast, for a full-faced slap on Hadley’s face.

Hadley shifted feet around and sat up, looking at Estrella, bewildered.

“None of that,” Estrella said.

“I guess I found a vulnerability.  Don’t like tickles?”

“You shouldn’t touch someone without asking,” Talia said, prim.  “The bodies of the living belong to them and you should respect that.”

“I like how you specify ‘the living’,” Hadley said, rubbing her cheek.

“The dead can be touched as necessary.  But it should be respectful and mindful, not just of the quality of any materials, but of the sentiment for the dead.  One day we shall be dead and we should be so lucky as to be made useful after, and treated with respect in the process.”

“Geez, kid.  I don’t think this music box is good for you.  You don’t usually sound like this.”

“I hate it.”

“Then why are you here?  I refuse to believe you’re our relief shift-”

“No.  No.”

“Which isn’t for another twenty minutes,” Estrella said.  “Timed to fall in the middle of a song.  One just ended around the time Talia arrived.”

“We’re being harassed and bothered by the other group of students.  They’ve been breaking in and making messes, and people are worried they might have Jorja talk to me and try to sway me.  But I think it’s more likely I could get Jorja to change sides.  Especially since they’re losing.  Then we could be friends again.”

“What’s the status on the siege, then, Talia?” Hadley asked.

“I don’t want to start another argument, but the last time I heard from those downstairs, the majority seemed to think that this didn’t qualify as a siege.  Sawyer was arguing it was.”

“Not a siege,” John said, from the binding circle.

“It’s a siege, man,” Hadley said, sitting up.  Estrella tensed, one hand going up, wand at the ready.  Hadley held both hands up in plain view. “Supply lines were cut off, delivery guy came and we could fucking smell that shitty pizza.  And he wouldn’t let us have it because he thought our money was no good.  Now they’re out there, they’re forcing us to watch-”

“Hadley,” Estrella said.

Hadley stopped.

“Don’t volunteer information.”

“It doesn’t matter.  I’m not going anywhere until I was freed, and if I was freed, it would probably be because the situation is over, your win, or my side has broken into or taken over the building.  In either case, doesn’t matter.” John said.  “It’s not really a siege.  Sieges are primarily military.”

“You want to play games, soldier boy?” Hadley asked.  “Siege gets used for hostage situations and other stuff that isn’t military.”

“You should look at where those police forces are getting their equipment from if you think so.  Some is from the military.  The police are militarized and they’re trending more in that direction over time.”

“Bull.  It’s a siege.”

Verona kept track of the song as the debate continued.  The seventeenth play of the song finished, and the dolls clattered to the floor.

“God!” Hadley said.  “Hate that.”

Only Talia and Estrella hadn’t reacted.

“There’s people in the hall,” Hadley observed.

“They came up with me.  We were told to stick together.”

“You’re a bit suspicious.  Estrella, is there any chance of glamour-?”

“No.”

“Or trickery, or disguise, or-”

“No.  Stop, Hadley.  Accept a no.”

The wind blew strong through the room.  John looked down at the olive branches and sighed.

Yeah John.  It’s pretty ironic, Verona sympathized.  Olive branches.

“Hey Estrella?  While I’m accepting that no, can you accept something from me?”

“No.  As a matter of principle, I don’t accept questionable gifts, verbal barbs and insults, middle fingers, or weak comebacks, Hadley.”

“Okay, fair enough.  All I’m saying is my family knows people.  Some great doctors especially, who can put kids together after they’ve taken a battle axe to the face, no questions asked.  And if you needed help from a certified proctologist, to haul the twisty, blunted icicle I’m imagining wedged up your asshole and small intestine…”

Estrella shook her head.  “No.”

“Or your hoo-ha.  The health of hoo-has is so important, Estrella.  You can’t have icicles up there.  It’s so important.”

“And sexual harassment is so not funny,” Estrella said.  ”

Verona looked to the window.  She could see beyond, into the gloom, and with her Sight, she could make out the people crossing the field.

Avery, Snowdrop, Zed, and Jessica.

The others were there too.  Some of the Oni kids.

Verona jumped a bit despite herself as something slammed into an invisible wall.

A knife, black as night, almost invisible against the dark blue sky, except for the fact it was glossy.

John stood.

“Jesus,” Tanner said, as he stepped into the room.  He put a hand on Talia’s shoulder, moving her closer to the door.  “That-”

There was a second knife.  It slammed into an invisible barrier instead of flying between the struts of the building where there was no tarp, plastic, or material.  It hung there in mid-air.

A firework or very sparkly flare went off.  Small with a long-lasting light as it drifted.  Verona only watched, unable to even smile.

“Watch out!” Tanner called out.

Hadley was running across the floor.  She looked to Tanner, down to the floor-

Too slow, for how fast she was moving forward.  Her foot intersected the shadow of the knife that was cast by the light.  She didn’t step onto the shadow.  She kicked a three dimensional object made of shadow.  It split the toe of her boot and shed a mess of blood across the floor.

“Music box,” Tanner said.  His eyes were blank from corner to corner.

“Got it,” Estrella said, hurrying over.

There were two knives and two shadows.  One shadow moved through the room, not high enough to touch the chair legs or, fortunately, their feet.  Not low enough to hit the music box or the table there.  They left a furrow in the floor as the shadows traveled.

Very cool, Verona observed.  A little trick to get past barriers, since the shadow could extend through.  Kind of played off of ideas like how if a superhero on TV had a forcefield that let light and sound through, it shouldn’t protect against sonic or light based attacks.

Shouldn’t, but it often did.  Stupid.

Estrella made a swirly gesture with her fingers.

The music box sped up, taking on sharper beats, and doubled in volume.  The dolls got a lot more aggressive.

Hadley, with one ruined foot, had both hands and one foot planted on the floor.  She sprung forward, hop-running to minimize how much she walked on her damaged foot.

She hurled herself into the open, glass-less window in construction, bracing herself in the windowframe for a second before throwing herself to the right.

Verona blinked as the third knife slammed into Hadley’s head.  She and the knife dropped.

“She could have caught it but she wanted to show off,” Estrella said.  She cupped her hands and created a floating light that shed flakes of white.  It erased the shadows from the two knives that were still up there.

Hadley, on the ground four stories below, screamed her declaration of war.

Oh.  The knife hadn’t hit her.  She’d thrown herself into the incoming knife, to remove it from play.

Two more knives hit the barrier.

“Stop at three like a self respecting practitioner,” Estrella declared.  She sounded legitimately annoyed.  She lifted up the light and walked closer.  The knives disappeared as the light swept over them.

She swept her arm to one side, and the open spaces in the wall, which were really deceptive with the barrier there, all disappeared.  It became a white lace against a black surface instead.

If Avery had thought about using Lucy’s trick and trying to become the wind, she could have slipped into here.

But at the same time doing a Faerie trick while a master Faerie practitioner was present was probably a bad idea.

There were noises in the wall.  Scampering, clattering, dropping things.

Estrella paced, her eyes half lidded, head turning this way and that as she identified the sources of the sound.

As she’d done with the exterior wall, she remodeled the interior one.  It was the same surface as the other, white lace on black, but flowers appeared here and there.

She gestured, and two more flowers appeared.

America didn’t seem to care, tunelessly humming.

Small noises were coming from the wall.  Estrella closed her eyes and exhaled fogged breath.  She reached up to touch it, controlling its movement through the air, until there were only three horizontal lines of concentrated, fogging breath.  In summertime.

“Mmmfph!” Verona grunted.

Estrella looked at her, and Verona gave her best eye roll.

“Good winter magic isn’t easily disbelieved.  If you’re lucky, it may pass you over without paying any mind to whether you exist or not,” Estrella said.

She flicked all five fingers out at once, and the three lines impaled the wall as icicles.

Two of the impaled bits of wall bled, blood traveling down the length of the fine icicle and freezing there.

“Talia, would you go somewhere safe?  And send some help my way.  This may be a rescue attempt.”

Talia fled the room.

Another firework went off, and shone through the wall as if it were paper thin.  Estrella’s head snapped around, looking at the wall, and it immediately went solid, thick, no sign of the flare-firework visible.  Like a chastened child straightening up.

“Ah!” Talia retreated back into the room.

Two small goblins had crawled forward.  They’d been out there in the forest.  One immediately headed for the music box, the other climbed the doorframe.

Estrella waited until there was a gap, then sent Talia back through.  She went to defend the music box, one eye on the goblin at the wall.

A sharp stomp of one high-heeled shoe crippled the goblin on the floor.

“Again!” it cried out, voice high.  “Again, please!”

The one on the wall, female, just spat a gobbet of something.

It landed at the back of Estrella’s head.  She touched it and pulled a string of gum back away from her styled, bleached-white hair.

“Gum?  You made your way past the barriers that were supposed to be on the field, past the building’s temporary outside barrier, past the building’s security system, past soldiers…”

The little goblin nodded with enthusiasm.

“Made your way, I presume, up four flights of stairs, when you’re barely the size of a milk carton.”

The goblin nodded again.

“To spit gum in my hair.  Is that your sole contribution?”

The goblin shrugged and nodded.

“Is it at least magic?”

The goblin shook its head.

She cast out a handful of glamour.  The goblin froze in place there.

One of the Legendre boys, covered with dime-sized injuries from last night, came to the door, followed by Austin, Songetay and Sutton.

The Legendre boy was Milly Legendre’s brother.  Mid-teens, not all that impressive to look at, with a curly mop that had been buzzed to near baldness at the sides and back.  The Legendres were the binder and goblin exterminator.  Good skill to have.

Austin was a necromancer, Songetay a war mage and summoner, and Sutton an alchemist.  Sutton was shaking a thermos.

The three came through just after the Legendre guy.

“Where the heck is the window?” Songetay asked.

Estrella gestured, and part of the changed wall reverted.

Legendre was the first one there.  He took up the entire window, hands on the sill, elbows out, said, “Crap,” and fled the room.

“Nice trick, windows and walls where you want ’em,” Songetay said, as the boys headed to the window to get a view of the outside.

“I suppose if you ignore that it was earned with centuries of work and alliances,” Estrella said.  “It’s a ‘trick’, sure.”

Estrella glanced at Tanner, who stood off to the side, and the two of them nodded.  She crossed over to where the music box was, then touched her ear, touched the box, and then the table.  Tanner took up guard at the door.

She carried the box over to the boys, leaving the music playing where the box had been.  It was a surprise attack, as she created a blade of silver and pressed it to Songetay’s neck.  Once he realized what was happening, he backed up, hands in the air, and retreated, blade to his throat in what looked like a very careful placement, like Estrella knew exactly where the blade should be to do the most damage.

“What the hell?” Austin asked.

“Stand down,” Tanner told him.

“Your discipline sucks,” Estrella addressed the three boys who had just come in, as she pushed Songetay back.  He landed hard in Verona’s lap, sprawling into Lucy’s as well, and nearly fell to the floor.

She held the music box there, just over his face, and adjusted the position of the small silver blade so it wasn’t against his throat with tip at his jugular, so much as it was directly above his jugular, like a sword about to drop point-first.

She held the music box so the little dancing man turned right before Songetay’s face.  Then she lifted him by the collar, off Verona’s lap, and forced him into a sit.  He remained frozen, entrapped by the music, which kept skipping back to the beginning instead of going to the final stanza.

She slapped him, and Songetay became Corbin.

“Shit!  Where’s Songetay, then?” Sutton asked, no longer shaking his thermos.

“Don’t know, don’t care.  If you three failed badly enough to miss that he was abducted and replaced to infiltrate our group, I do hope it’s painful, to drive the lesson home,” Estrella said.  “Zed was out there with Jessica.  Both travel.  Expect gates.  Do we have any barriers, any summonings that guard ways?”

Corbin shook his head.

“Who does?  I’ve been busy with special projects, I don’t pay attention to the incomings.”

“I don’t- Palaisy?  Gardener, he-”

“Go find the man, you tit!” Estrella told him, giving the boy a push. “And make sure it’s actually him.”

The separation of music box and music had let Estrella sneak up on Corbin in his Songetay disguise, but it had weakened the effect.  Estrella immediately set to fixing it up again.

But the weaker effect let Verona turn her head.  She looked at the others.

America’s discordant humming rose in volume, her eyes widening as she made eye contact, head moving in a slight nod.

Verona began to match, trying to follow along.

Lucy picked it up too.

America shook her head.

Lucy switched.  Not adding strength to what America was doing, but being more discordant.

Verona picked up, doing her own tune, trying to drown out the music.

“Stop,” Estrella said.  “Or this blade is getting plunged into the thigh of the next girl to hum.”

She moved like she was going to stab, and Verona and Lucy stopped.

America continued.

Estrella stuck a narrow silver blade into the middle of America’s thigh.

America stopped.

“And here we are.  Please tell me that concoction is useful, Sutton.”

“Should be.”

Estrella remained where she was, looming over Verona, Lucy, and America, watching their every move, so still it barely looked like she was breathing.

The commotion outside continued.

“They hit the main building, broke into the brownie kitchen.  I think they just wanted food.  Or to limit our access to food if the brownies started cooperating.  That was an hour ago.  We scared them off into the woods, but they kept circling around, taking weird routes,” Sutton said.

“I was there, remember?” Estrella asked.  “Before my shift here, babysitting three people while this inane music plays on loop?”

“Yeah.  Yeah.  Just… filling silence, I guess.”

“Don’t.  Silence is useful,” Estrella said.

As if to insult or prove the worth of that statement, goblin giggles could be heard in the hall.

“How many of you got in here?” she asked, toeing the crushed goblin on the floor.  It tried to kiss her shoe.  “How many of you goblins?”

Two goblins entered the room through the doorway.  They had what looked to be Bristow’s tighty whiteys on their heads, the two goblins standing three feet apart, one with no nose and big blunt teeth smiling while the elastic from the pair of underwear pulled on the left side of his head, the other skinny and tall with a droopy nose standing with the elastic pulling on the right side of his head.

Estrella turned and saw them.  She immediately began doing something with glamour.

Verona motioned with her eyes.

Music box.  Music box.

“I hate goblins so much,” Estrella said.

The goblins charged the table.  Dolls intervened, the goblins bowled through the first dolls, started to pick themselves up, and headed for the table again.  Estrella had to tackle them to protect the music box, and in the process, they wrapped Bristow’s underwear around her face.

She hit one with glamour, and it froze where it was.  She threw the half-frozen underwear to the ground, and part of it shattered.  The other goblin was free and sprawled, scrambling to get the door, where another goblin ran down the hallway with a fire.

Liberty’s shouts could be heard.

Estrella took up a position at the door.  “Sutton!  Guard them!  How is this so out of control?”

“It’s easier to attack than defend,” Sutton said.  “We’re trying to find their ways in.  Every time we set up a defense, they poison it or infiltrate it.  And Bristow is more focused on preparing for Alexander than on managing this.”

She shook her head.

America took up the humming again.

“Stop them from doing that,” she ordered.  She cast out some glamour into the hallway.

Verona picked up the off-beat, random humming.  Corbin and Lucy did the same.

Dolls danced around them, slowing and getting sloppy as they got close to the humming.

“Tanner or Sutton, stop them from doing that.”

Sutton took up position in front of Lucy and America, and he held the heavy metal thermos over his head, like he was about to use it as a bludgeoning weapon.

America kept going.  So Verona did too, one eye wincing.  If Lucy got hit, she’d- she didn’t know what she’d do.

But it wasn’t pretty.

The humming loosened the effect of the music box, which freed their heads and shoulders.  America started headbanging with increasing intensity.

“Stop them!” Estrella ordered.

Sutton lowered the thermos.  “I’m not that kind of guy.  I don’t hit helpless people younger than me.”

“Move,” Tanner said.  He reached for America’s neck and held her firm, making her stop the headbanging.

But Corbin, Verona, and Lucy had just started it.  And each swing of their heads freed up more of their bodies.

The glamour shattered.  Verona rose to her feet- or tried.

She and the chair fell hard.

“Ow!  What the hell!?”

She was tied to the chair.

“I like to be doubly sure.  Why would I trust a flimsy music box to handle everything?” Estrella asked.  “I just thought you’d be more comfortable if the restraints were glamoured away while you were bound.”

“You’re a scary woman,” Tanner said.

“I’m pissed off.  Every hit to my glamour slows me down.”

Verona lay on the ground, hands in bags behind her back.  She could feel abrasion now, and she was pretty sure her hands were buried in salt.

One of the bags had loosened a bit in the fall.  She struggled, scooting around, and Tanner stepped on her chair to keep her where she was.

Lucy’s foot settled on the bag.  Verona pulled a hand free.

She’d been gainsaid, but it was the second of three, really.  She hadn’t practiced in a bit, but this had to be worth some cool points that made up for losing a bit to Bristow, right?

She scraped her fingernails along her arm, digging in.  At her back, until she probably had red tracks there and skin under her fingernails.

If she was vulnerable to Shellie enough to be turned into a cat-

She made the hand-motions to manipulate glamour.

She didn’t need to be a cat, but-

“Meow, meow, meow,” Verona said, deadpan.

“Stop,” Tanner said.

“Don’t try to sound intimidating.  You’re too nice to hit the captives,” Lucy said.  “You won’t hit us now.”

“Don’t tempt me,” he said, still holding onto America’s throat, holding her firm in the chair.  “Sutton!”

Sutton was dealing with Corbin, who hadn’t been tied up beneath the glamour.

“Meow meow meow,” Verona said, making the hand gestures.

“Heads up!” Sutton shouted.

Verona’s hand changed.  One large cat’s paw, very nice, and cats paws had claws, and claws could cut binding.  Or maybe not, but she was riding a high and buying her own bullcrap and it worked.  The claws cut through the cordage.

Tanner straightened, and she went straight to him, points of her claws going to his neck.  She used him as cover against anything Estrella might pull.

“Whatever,” Estrella said.  “I tried, I fully intend to tell anyone who asked, I tried.  If you’ll deal with me I’ll deal with you.”

“Deal?” Lucy asked.

“If Bristow wins this clusterfuck, tell him I tried here, I did a stellar job, it was their fuckups.”

“Hey!” Sutton shouted.

“And if Belanger wins, or I end up captured or cornered or you’re trying to decide what to do with prisoners, I get clemency.  You argue on my behalf.  I want an oath from all of you.”

“Oaths with a faerie practitioner?” Verona asked.

“The other option is that we fight, both sides get hurt, both sides get pissed off…”

“I agree,” Tanner told Estrella.

“You’re on my side, you loser!” Estrella raised her voice.

“I still agree.  Fighting isn’t worth it.  Bristow has my loyalty, but I’m not going to risk dying or being maimed for him,” Tanner said.

“What do we get?” Lucy asked.

“I leave, I’ll only protect myself, nothing aggressive unless I must, and I’ll avoid seeking out circumstances that force my hand.  I’ll get my younger brother and we’ll step down from any fighting for the time being.  I so swear.”

“We can let you be if you allow us,” Lucy said.  “Clemency and a report of… you were an effective jailer, I guess.  I’ll swear it unless the others want to-”

“I want to interject!” America raised her voice.

“Oh god,” Estrella muttered.

“I interject, you stabbed me in the leg.”

“Justly.”

“And I want to stab you in the boob.  Sorry hon.  That’s my condition.”

“You could stab me in the leg to make it even.”

“I don’t want to make it even.  I want to stab you in the boob.”

Estrella shook her head.

“Or I’ll chase you down and stab you in the boob anyway.”

“Just… fine.  Don’t go overboard.  One stab, shallow.”

America walked over, pulled the knife out of her leg, took a lighter to it, and then jabbed Estrella.

“Ow.”

America nodded, satisfied.  “There is justice in the world.  I swear to what she said.”

“Same,” Verona said.

“Such lazy oaths.  Whatever.  Thank you.”  Estrella turned and strode from the room.

“I can’t swear the same, I made direct oaths to Bristow,” Tanner said.

“Me either,” Sutton said.

Lucy walked over to the music box, picking it up.  She looked at him.

“I’m not a fighter,” Tanner said.  “I predict events.  I do long-distance seeing.  Sure.  Take me out of the fight.”

“Alexander’s close?” Lucy asked.

“With a few of Mr. Bristow’s tenants.”

Lucy stopped the music box, closed it, and it shed a bit of glamour in the process.  She opened it and started it, holding it in front of Tanner’s face.

He stopped moving.  She pushed him down into his seat.

Sutton took a seat as well.

“Is this anything cool?” Verona asked, kicking the thermos on the ground.

“No, not yet.  But it’s getting there.”

“Damn.”

Lucy set the music box down, hesitating.  “Wish we could bring this, or leave the music behind while we retreat…”

“Let me have it,” America said.  “I’ll hold down the fort here, send goblins up to me if you see any.  Then I can keep the thing and goblinize it.”

“Right.”

“You tits took way too long to catch on about the humming,” America said.

“It’s been a long, long day, America,” Lucy said.  “Don’t give us any crap.”

“And thanks for the rescue, I guess,” America said.  “Really really slow-to-catch-on rescue.”

“Long day,” Lucy said.

Verona scooped up all the spare Winter glamour she could, while Lucy kicked a hole in the binding around John.

“Don’t you dare use that glamour,” Lucy said, as she and John joined Verona.  “I’d be worried it’d make a lot of permanent glamours a lot more easily, from what we’ve heard and read.”

“Maybe.  But to get down to the ground-”

“Old way,” Lucy said.

Old way was elementary runes.  Simple weight-reduction air runes in a diamond, extended to their bodies.

They jumped from the window and floated into the darkness.

Verona saw Avery come running.

She braced for the incoming hug better than Lucy did.

“Oof,” Lucy said.

Avery had Lucy’s hat with the rest of the stuff folded in.  Their masks were stacked on top.

“I rescued your stuff and Toadswallow got the goblins to grab the other stuff from the woods, but I couldn’t get to the upper floors.  I thought about Pathing in-”

“You’re as ridiculous as Verona sometimes,” Lucy said.

“-but I didn’t have any precise landing points.”

A light flickered overhead, and Verona stumbled back into the safety of darkness.

But it was a fluorescent light, flickering overhead.

One of many.

The field became a room, slightly transparent, like the walls were made of tinted glass.

“They planned for me and acted against Raymond,” Zed said.  “I’ve been here for the emotional support more than any fun tech.”

“Where is Raymond?”

“With Belanger and Bristow,” Avery said.  “So’s Durocher, and most of the teaching staff, Nicolette, and a lot of the students who retreated from the fighting.  Bristow was putting a lot of resources into making sure you were staying put, but that was about it.  They gave us the lower two floors after a bit, made the staircase disappear-”

“Stop, stop,” Lucy said.  “Easy.  There’s a lot of ground to cover, but, after.  Verona has a deadline?  Bristow said.”

Verona nodded.  “Ten o’clock to bounce back.  My phone?”

Avery pulled Verona’s phone out of the hat.

Verona hit the power button, then mashed the other buttons.

Totally dead.

Zed, wearing his power glove, gave it a tap.  The battery icon flashed on and then went to full.

“Thank you.”

There wasn’t much time.

Which was good.  Fantastic.  Because it was showy, to cut the line close.  It was dramatic and drama made the spirits sit up and pay attention.

She just had to dig into the phone, find if she had what she needed.

She’d let Bristow do his thing and gainsay her.  Hoping to hear some key words.

Or rather, to use the apps that she’d bookmarked after trying to open lines of communication with Tashlit.

One of them was speech to text and text to speech.

And on that app, sitting on her phone, was Bristow’s statements to her and the others as he’d caught up with them.

“Zed?” Verona asked.  She’d hoped for more.  For a key word to drop.  And the fact it hadn’t made her worry.  “I need a thousand percent marks on presentation here.”

“What are you thinking?”

“Broadcast?  I want to reach a lot of ears.  And not just human and Other.”

“Give me a second,” he said.

He pulled out a computer and set on a table, with enough force the table buzzed and fritzed, glitching like a bad computer graphic.  He opened it up and began typing.

“I can put your voice in every phone nearby.  Or just magnify.”

“Both?” Verona asked.  “Or what about a photocopier?”

“You’re all over the place, Ronnie,” Lucy said.

“What do you need from us?” Avery asked.

Verona gave Avery’s arm a squeeze.

She hated that she didn’t have anything more concrete.  She’d wanted Bristow to say some key words, so she could get it on her phone in text, to manipulate and abuse.

With her quill pen, she moved writing from phone to paper.

It’s good.  Gracious.  I have no regrets.  I’m happy.  I’m glad.

She’d hoped for a thank you.  It’s why she’d let him gainsay her.  In hopes his overly talkative self would spill the word as she handed him power just before he was supposed to deal with Alexander.

So she could take Bristow’s words again, crystal clear, and give them to the brownies.

But he hadn’t given her anything great.

The best was that line toward the end.  You probably didn’t even realize you were helping me more than hurting me with this brownie ploy.

She’d use it.  The man talked too much and she’d use every little finger-hold and toehold she could to scale this wall.

“You’re up,” Zed told her.

“I, Verona Hayward, and my colleagues, wish it to be known…” Verona intoned.

Her voice reached many phones.

“…Lawrence T. Bristow expressed his great pleasure for the activities of the staff brownies tonight…” Verona continued.  “I have it in written form before me.  He was grateful for the victory he thought he had because of them, in a roundabout way for the edge it affords him against Alexander now…”

She hesitated, trying to find the words.  She was sore, muddy, and tired, and she had about six different cricks in her neck.

“…I ask you, Lawrence,” she addressed him directly.  Her voice echoed in the various phones nearby.  “Will you concede that you regret crossing us?  That you have some form of regret?  You said you wouldn’t, and we made that a contest between us.  Recanting would mean you’re gainsaid at this critical juncture, and I do believe the timing is bad, with Alexander in front of you.”

She swallowed, looking to Avery and Lucy.

“Or are your words true, and you’re pleased at this final outcome that you got with the help of the staff?  You, grateful to the brownies, with all the implicit danger that comes with that expressed pleasure and happiness?”

She let those words hang in the air.

There was no way to know what he was doing.  He might even be sending people her way.  Kevin or Ted.

“I demand…” Verona spoke into the phone.  She hated public speaking.  She hated it, she hated it, she hated it.  She couldn’t even do a presentation on frogs in front of the class.  So stupid.

Avery touched her arm.

“I demand satisfaction and answer now, or I’ll consider you forfeit.  The timing might be inconvenient for you, but you forced that inconvenience by capturing me and allowing me to go free at this recent moment.  I’ve wanted to do this for hours and have acted at the first opportunity.  The brownies have indicated that they expect resolution soon.”

Because of the deadline she’d set for herself, but she didn’t need to elaborate on that for their audience.  Bristow might, but that was fine.

She paused, looking in the general direction of the parking lot and front of the school.  The dark school building separated her and her friends from the front steps where Bristow and Alexander were no doubt facing off.

“This is my first of three challenges put forward to you, regarding our back and forth,” she told him.  She hung up and ended the message.

[7.8 Spoilers] Can We Talk About The Girls?

The cafe was dark enough it could be mistaken for being closed.  But there were people inside, and staff bustled from table to table, delivering drinks and small cakes on platters.

Most of the illumination came from candles on tables and the display cabinets that stretched along the right side of the cafe.  On the left side of the store, a projected image of a clock provided some diffuse light.  A trio of couples were sitting here and there.  Two twenty-somethings and a vibrant elderly couple.

A laugh from the elderly woman and the faint sounds of dishes being washed in the back cut through the relative quiet.

There weren’t many tables that sat more than two, and Jasmine picked one further in.  It was hard not to feel like she was underdressed even though she’d picked one of her nicer shirts, a wide-sleeve, wide-neck top that almost fell from the shoulders, and airy, summerweight pants.  Maybe underdressed was the wrong word, though it wasn’t entirely wrong.  It was as if she were intruding on this intimate setting.  She hadn’t picked the location, and she wouldn’t have, if she were familiar with this place and given the choice.

She ordered tea and a brownie à la mode, got her tablet out, and got some work done while she waited.

“Hello?  Hi, are you Lucy’s mom?”

Jasmine looked up.  Avery’s mother wasn’t underdressed, and looked surprisingly at home in this place.  She had makeup on, her hair was up, and she wore a lightweight blue blouse, skirt, and a silk scarf at the neck.

“Yes, I’m Jasmine.  Hi!  It’s so nice to meet you,” Jasmine said, with some genuine cheer.

Avery’s mother took a seat opposite Jasmine.  “Hi.  I’m Kelsey, Connor’s parking the car.  We’ve nearly crossed paths a few times now.  There was the school event, I think you were leaving just as we arrived-“

“Work, yes.  My schedule is all over the place,” Jasmine said, wincing.

“-and a wave from a window.”

“Yes, absolutely, yes.  I actually stepped outside my house to say hi but you’d moved on.”

“Did I?  I’m sorry, I didn’t realize.  Gosh, that’s embarrassing.”

“I didn’t mean-“

“No, no.  I didn’t mean anything by it.  I don’t know.  That might have been the time Kerry was crying in the back seat, or my father was needing the facilities.  I do that a lot, actually.  I get so caught up in things I lose track.  I’m really glad we’re doing this.  Connor!”

Connor was a trim man in just about every respect.  Short red hair, short beard, well-fitted clothes on a lean body.  He’d dressed up too.  Kelsey was lucky.

“Hi!  Hi, Jasmine, if I remember right?  We had a conversation on the phone,” he greeted her.  His handshake was two-handed and effortless, like he casually shook a lot of hands.

Jasmine nodded  “We did.  Thank you for having Lucy over.”

“I apparently snubbed Jasmine.  By accident, I promise,” Kelsey said.

“It’s really okay.  I- with Booker, my oldest, I was all over the place.  He started running before he could walk and every time I thought, um, one year or two before he gets into girls or gets curious about drinking, he’d surprise me by a considerable margin.”

“Rowan was the same.  More about getting into trouble.  He was more careful with girls,” Connor told her.

“Ah yes.  They were in the same cohort, weren’t they?  Or even the same classes?”

“In the last year,” Kelsey said.  She looked like she was in a good mood, leaning forward to practically beam at Jasmine.  “Rowan wanted to at least try high school, make sure he was on the right track after all the homeschooling.”

“He was sick of us,” Connor said.  “Rightly so.”

“No!” Kelsey said, laying a hand on Connor’s chest.

Jasmine missed that.  That easy company and companionship.  She still smiled. “Booker turned out well, though.  I was worried for a time.  Now he’s off to school and struggling a bit with the culture shock of the city and the expectations of one or two classes, but he’s doing really well.”

“That’s so great,” Kelsey said.  “Rowan’s taking a year to figure things out.”

“Part of that is the long goodbye with his girlfriend,” Connor said.  “It took them five seconds to fall in love and it’s taking a year to part and go their separate ways.”

“Heartbreaking,” Jasmine said.  “Was it like that for you two?”

“The first part, yes,” Connor said, looking at Kelsey.  “As for the second part, different era.  I strongarmed Kelsey into following after me.  Made it up to her after.”

“Keep making it up to me, mister,” Kelsey said, mock-stern.

“So are you two familiar with this place?”

Kelsey beamed.  “I love this place.  I know it’s an odd choice, but Connor has to twist my arm to get me to choose another location or activity for our date nights and anniversaries.  We don’t get many chances to get away, especially while I’ve been traveling for work.”

“I know that pain,” Jasmine said.  “Traveling out of town for work.”

“Yes, absolutely.  I thought if we’re making plans to get away from the kids, why not cheat and treat ourselves?”

“It’s great.”  And a little pricier than I would have gone for on my own.  She thought of Verona’s dad and wondered what he’d think.  “Verona’s father may not be able to make it.”

“Something about the hospital?” Connor asked.

“Yes.  It’s been a little under a week, I’m not sure how mobile he feels.”

“And her mother?  Can I ask?” Kelsey asked.

“I called, we had a long conversation.  Did some catching up.  We were friends, before, as much because of the girls putting us in close proximity as anything.  She thinks if she had more notice and if we do this again, maybe without her dad present, she’d like to come into town and catch up.  She feels starved for information on Verona.”

“I can’t help but read between the lines there,” Connor said.  “Acrimonious?”

“I don’t want to dive into other people’s business-”

“Of course.”

“But I think I would avoid-” Jasmine started, turning her head as the door to the cafe opened, bell giving a single ‘ding’.  Verona’s dad loomed in the doorway.  Far from trim, looking tired, he wore a work shirt and khakis.  “-the subject of her mother.”

“Good to know, thank you,” Kelsey said, voice quiet and serious, in contrast to how she smiled and waved to Verona’s dad.

“Hi, Brett Hayward.”

“Kelsey, and this is Connor.”

“Hi.”

“And you know Jasmine, of course.”

“I do.  Thank you for looking in on me, Jasmine.  I didn’t know what to do with myself.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Good.  Managing.  Let’s see…” he plucked a mini-menu from between the salt and pepper shakers.  He looked for about two seconds before saying, “All of this looks good enough I think I can justify using it as a trial run for my stomach.”

“I’m partial to the apple crumble,” Kelsey said.

“I’d go easy, Brett,” Jasmine said.  “I’m not a doctor, but if your stomach is still inflamed-”

“Then I’ll suffer for it later.”

“Can I suggest plenty of water and half a portion size?  That’s not medical advice, that’s me as a concerned friend, trying to mitigate the damage.”

“Water’s a good compromise.  But when you’re as big a man as I am, unfortunately, I think a regular portion is a half portion,” he said.

Jasmine frowned at him, and almost said something about Verona being concerned, but she didn’t want to betray that trust, and both Kelsey and Connor looked uncomfortable, talking with one another about their orders.

“Do we order over there, or do they come to us?” Brett asked.

“I waved a waitress down when I ordered.  Are you two decided?” Jasmine asked.  She gave Brett a warning look, her eyes flicking to the menu.

“Yes, absolutely,” Kelsey said.

“She decided before we left the house,” Connor said, laughing.

They ordered.  Apple crumbles à la mode for Kelsey and Brett, strawberry rhubarb pie for Connor, and some coffees, with water instead of coffee for Brett.

“What do you do, Brett?  I feel like I’ve seen you around the office once or twice.”

“I think so.  I was going to say.  Our real role is specialized systems for departments.  Too many office environments and official environments are running off of systems designed in the 90s, with java or basic.  We’ll do a specialized system for H.R., or for I.T. tickets, or email streams.  But our fallback bread and butter is installing server architecture, handling everything internal.  Then I moonlight a bit at a second job, a group of smaller newspapers pay me to translate articles to the web and maintain an analogue with a paywall, keep everything running.  It’s automated, they mostly forget I exist until something goes wrong, at which point all hell breaks loose and inevitably it’ll be when there’s freezing rain, trees taking down phone lines, and hell breaking loose at the office of my first job.”

“When it rains it pours,” Connor said.

Brett nodded, “Absolutely.  Too much of the job is cleaning up after others.  The younger generation is here and I wish they had more training or education.  They come from Thunder Bay or Toronto or Ottawa prepared to change things before they’ve even seen how things are done or why.”

“What about you, Jasmine?” Kelsey asked, cutting in.  “You travel?”

“I’m still a registered nurse,” Jasmine said.  “Not with a hospital.  For right now I’m working with a pharmaceutical company, I travel to patients homes, make sure they know how to store and use the medication provided.  It’s serious medication, and the number of clients are relatively small, so I make triply sure they know everything they need to know, sit with them for the first few injections to make sure there’s no reaction.  It’s not the work I’d choose.  The pay is… doable.  But the scheduling is entirely dependent on the clients.”

“I was wondering why it was so hectic,” Kelsey said.

“What would you do?” Connor asked.  “Given the choice.”

“Working with patients at a hospital.  The scheduling wouldn’t be perfect, necessarily, but at least I wouldn’t be driving two hours, sitting by a sleeping patient’s bedside for three hours, then driving home to get back at one in the morning.”

“Oh gosh,” Kelsey said.

“If you want, I can put in a word,” Connor said.  “I know people.  My brother does insurance with the hospital.  I can tell them to keep an eye out for you.”

“I- I definitely wouldn’t object.  If it’s no trouble.”

“Not at all,” Connor said, waving her off, like it was the simplest thing in the world.  “It’s how these things happen.”

“We have nine to fives- or a nine to five and an eight to four, but we have to do so much juggling, what with my dad and the various kids and their schedules.  And then summer hits, half of them are off doing their own thing, and I miss it.”

“Kelsey’s traveling to Thunder Bay every other week to move the main office,” Connor said.  “But at least when she’s here, we can reconnect a bit.  Do stuff like this.”

“We can’t do this when all the kids are around,” Kelsey said, laughing.

“You don’t bring your kids here?” Jasmine asked.

Kelsey laughed.

“I don’t think the business would survive it,” Connor said.

“How many?” Brett asked.

“Five.  Oldest is twenty, youngest is six,” Connor answered.

“It’s exactly as chaotic as you imagine it,” Kelsey added, tittering.

“I guess that makes you the parenting experts at this table,” Jasmine said.

Kelsey laughed, looking almost scandalized.  “No, no, no.  Definite no to that.  I think when Kerry is old enough to leave for college, I’m still going to feel like I’m learning the ropes.”

“Is Verona an only child?” Connor asked.

“She is.  I’m happy it’s the case.  I barely manage, I don’t know how you manage five.”

“We don’t!” Kelsey declared, through a laugh.

“We get by on a day by day basis,” Connor said.

Kelsey leaned over the table, simultaneously laying a hand on Jasmnie’s arm.  “Before you boys arrived, I was telling Jasmine that I’m so glad we’re doing this.  Our girls became such good friends, we should at least know each other.  It’s so much easier when they’re young, or if they’re part of the homeschooling curriculum, because there’s more events that force the parents together, but like this, all the different work schedules…”

“Don’t even get me started on work schedules,” Brett told her.

“Brett,” Connor said, affecting a very serious tone.  He held his coffee cup up near his face, leaning over the table, and wagged the index finger of his other hand.  “If you’re not going to do it in the here and now, when will you get the chance?”

“Haha, sure.  I’ll keep that in mind then.”

Jasmine’s smile was a tight one.

Kelsey turned to Jasmine.  “You had to leave the one school event, and I think at one point you said all three were at your apartment but you were off to work?”

“Yes,” Jasmine said, a bit wary.  “I figured they’re either out wandering and there are parts of town I wouldn’t want them to do that in-”

“Of course,” Connor said.

“-It’s better if there are four walls around them.  As long as they have a television and computer, they can occupy themselves, and Lucy’s very responsible.  Worryingly responsible.”

“I think you could put Verona in an empty room and she’d be happy as can be, off in her own little world,” Brett said.

“Maybe,” Jasmine said, and the smile wasn’t tight, this time.  “She’s a great kid.  Avery too, she’s a gem.  I’m so glad they connected.”

“Yes!” Kelsey said.  She had a bite of apple crumble in her mouth as she exclaimed, and covered her mouth as she spoke.  She hurried to swallow.  “Mm!  I was so relieved.”

Brett adjusted his seat in his chair, laying a hand on his stomach.  “Verona hid Avery away when they came by, the last time.  I think she’s at that stage where she’s embarrassed by her dad.”

“Yes, it’s so tough, it’s hard,” Kelsey said.  “They’re trying to find themselves, and that means pulling away.  Are we okay with the topic, by the way?  Can we talk about the girls?  I think if we get onto the subject, we might end up going down memory lane, and it might be hard to find the off-ramp.”

“I wanted to talk about them, yes,” Jasmine said.  “Nothing serious.  Just touching base.”

“I suppose,” Brett said, sighing.  “It’s tricky.”

“You’re talking about Verona pulling away, Brett,” Kelsey said, “disconnecting from the parents, becoming independent-”

“Rebellious.”

“-rebellious, even.  I’ll be upfront, I think we messed up with Avery.  She had such a hard time, moving from homeschool to regular high school, and we missed it.”

“Kids change,” Brett said.  “It catches you off guard.”

“It caught us off guard,” Kelsey said.  “A teacher had to tip us off that Avery wasn’t doing well.  She didn’t feel comfortable telling us.”

“It’s humbling,” Connor said.  “So much of how we’ve approached parenting is- you come home with your first kid and you’re terrified.  They’re so small, so fragile, and all you can do is act like you know what you’re doing, be confident, fake it until you make it.  The more confident you are, the more fluidly it all seems to go.  Until you run face-first into a wall.”

Jasmine nodded, holding her tea in front of her mouth with both hands.  “I’ve smacked into that wall.”

“We’ve done it twice now in a matter of months with Avery.”

“We’re not sure about the second,” Kelsey said.

“Sheridan pretty much confirmed it.  I look back and I think, how could I not have seen the signs?  How could I not have been paying attention?  So many assumptions, the stupid confidence…”

“You can do everything right and they’ll still find ways to surprise you,” Brett said.  “Not that I’m doing everything right.  Just the opposite.  But I’ve got to salvage my ego where I can.  It’s hard, when you have a kid as imaginative as Verona or headstrong as Lucy-”

Jasmine raised an eyebrow.

“-she is headstrong, Jasmine.  And- sorry.  Verona hasn’t introduced me to Avery.  But every hint I’ve managed to get has suggested she’s a stellar kid.”

“She is,” Connor replied, with a smile.  “How is she getting along with the others?”

“It’s so hard,” Jasmine said, “Lucy and Verona have known each other since they were five.  That’s eight years of history and being on each other’s wavelength to break into.”

“Is she getting along with either of the two more?” Connor asked.  He looked at Kelsey, who frowned.

“I couldn’t say,” Jasmine admitted.  “But I don’t see any sign she’s not getting along with either of the other two.  She’s upbeat and helpful if I have Lucy and her helping me put dinner together.”

“We tried that with our kids, but it ended in tears and chaos so many times…” Kelsey added, wincing.  “We gave Rowan a crash course in adulting this year, now that he’s talking about moving out.  That may be the policy for the rest of them.”

“She does just fine.  They seem to get along.  The hardest thing is trying to keep them in one place for longer than it takes to feed them before they run off to do who-knows-what.”

“Maybe I could have Avery over more,” Brett said.  “I could do with that good cheer rubbing off on Verona.”

“Not so good?” Kelsey asked.

“No.  Not good.  Verona’s moody.  I’d chalk it up to hormones, but there’s a guy at my office who is all about weightlifting and I’m pretty sure he gets some chemical help, and there’s none of that with him.”

“What’s the problem?” Jasmine asked.

“It’s like her skin crawls if she’s in my company for more than five seconds, she runs off to her room or leaves the house at the next opportunity.  I can talk to her in the most reasonable tone, as level as the tone I’m using with you now, explaining matter of fact things, and she’ll respond with literal screams.”

“Sheridan’s had her moments,” Connor said to Kelsey.

“This was weeks of moments,” Brett said.  “I was looking things up and thinking about oppositional defiant disorder.”

Jasmine asked, “Could it be what you’re saying?  Even if it’s reasonable, the wrong things might-?”

“I don’t really think so, Jasmine.  I can’t talk to her about my work, basic household needs, school and homework… and the longer it goes on, the harder it is to talk to her at all.  I can’t help but feel like we’d be best friends if we could just have a single conversation without the screaming, door slamming, or her finding some excuse to run off.”

“What was she like before?” Connor asked.

“So clever in many ways that she outsmarted her way out of doing well in school.  She took up habitual lying…”

“Oh yeah,” Jasmine said.  “I remember that.”

“Jasmine knows.”

“It’s that imagination,” Jasmine said.  “She had no outlet.  She stopped art, and she had nothing, so she started telling stories.”

“The teachers caught on,” Brett said.  “And teachers talk to one another.  I think it impacts her classes, because they don’t trust her from day one.  I can’t even blame them when I have to pause to double check if what she’s saying lines up with reality.”

“It’s been a while since she did that,” Jasmine told him.

“It comes up now and then.  Nothing about Verona has been easy.  Except, I suppose I’m lucky she’s slow to develop.  She’s the most kid-like of the three, I think.  A late bloomer.”

“Not that late, Brett,” Jasmine said.

“Oh no.  Don’t tell me that.”

“When she and Lucy were old enough to know how to navigate the web but young enough to not know about internet history, let’s just say the searches I saw raised a few eyebrows.  Only when Verona was there.”

Brett put his face into his hands.  Kelsey laughed.

“I had filters in place, but Verona and Lucy are clever.  They would have been about eleven.  And I’ve seen more hints lately.”

Verona’ sketchbook.  She’d shown Jasmine a picture she was drawing of Booker for Lucy, and some of the pages she’d flipped through… unabashedly into drawing figure studies of boys and men.  Some women, but it was a ten to one.  And then there was the app.

“What about Lucy?” Connor asked.

“Has little crushes, I asked when the class photo for picture day was delivered, she made me guess, and I guessed wrong about four times.  Just, um, Brett, before the conversation moves on, if you haven’t had the conversation with her about the birds and the bees, because you think Verona’s a late bloomer, you should.”

“I gave her a book.”

“Um, okay, but if that isn’t enough, you know, talk to her-”

“I can’t,” Brett said.  He looked frustrated and flustered.  “I can’t talk to her about anything right now.  I’ll admit it, I’m a bad parent.  I failed, I screwed up raising her, with everything going on.  I’m so busy, nothing’s easy.”

“She’s a good kid,” Jasmine said.  “She is.”

“Teenage girls are hard,” Connor said.

“I didn’t understand them when I was a teenager, and we didn’t have the internet then, or these social dynamics.”

“Reach out?” Jasmine asked.  “If it’s about the talk and you don’t want to direct her to her mother-”

“Ha!”

“-I’m happy to teach her the essentials.  With your permission.  And you know, there’s therapy.”

“If only I could afford sending her to therapy.”

“For you and her both, Brett.  It’s a two-way street.  You find a way.”

“I thought about one of those wilderness survival retreats.  You know those?  Send the kid out into the woods to rough it, disconnect from technology and outside influences, make them build their own fires, teach them self-reliance and discipline, respect for authority?”

“I think that would be like putting a penguin in the desert,” Jasmine told him.

“That’s the point, isn’t it?” Brett asked.

“Avery would probably love that,” Kelsey said.  “If there was teamwork, nature…”

“They can be problematic,” Connor said.  “It’s hard enough handing your kids off to a school, but something like that, where there’s no checks or balances?”

“It ended up being a moot point anyway,” Brett said.  “Since they left for another thing, this summer.”

“I meant to ask about that,” Kelsey said.  “Where-”

“Excuse me,” the elderly couple from a few booths down interrupted.  They’d finished and were getting by.  Verona’s dad was heavyset, and sat with his back to the aisle.  The couple had to navigate by.  He scooted in, then winced.

“You okay?” Jasmine asked.

He nodded, but he was flushed and sweating.

“Sorry, you were saying?” Jasmine asked Kelsey.

Kelsey snapped her finger a few times, eyes roving, trying to remember.  “Oh!  I’m not sure if this was it, but while we’re talking about influences, sorry, I came armed with a few questions.  I hope you don’t mind.  I haven’t been able to get a straight answer out of Avery.”

“Me too,” Jasmine admitted.  “My own questions.”

Kelsey flashed her a smile.  “The influences and people our kids are around.  Names came up.”

Jasmine nodded.

“Matthew and Edith?  Ring any bells?  Relatives of yours?”

Jasmine shook her head.

“No,” Brett said.

“What was the context?” Jasmine asked.

“I don’t know.  But I’ve overheard bits now and then.  When Lucy and Avery were getting ready for the party.”

“Classmates?” Jasmine asked.

“Not on the class list.  They aren’t teachers at the school either. Their teachers last year were Lai, Sitter, uhhh, Bader-”

Jasmine made a face.

“Saw that,” Kelsey said.  “I want to ask about that.  Um, and Hardy.”

Connor sighed at that last name.

“And I heard that,” Jasmine said.

“I’m having trouble keeping up,” Brett said.

“Ummm, putting this… what was it?  Matthew and Edith?”

Kelsey nodded.

“Putting them aside.  Bader was… not the best with Lucy.”

“He’s been a really solid coach for Avery.”

“I believe you, but separate from that, he singled out Lucy all semester.”

“She can be hard to get along with,” Brett said.

“Excuse me?”

“I don’t mean that in a bad way.  I mean that she has a strong personality and she doesn’t budge easily if she thinks she’s right.  It’s like with Verona and the chronic lying.  Teachers have so many students, they rely on shorthand.  And first impressions set the starting point.  If that starting point isn’t great…”

“Lucy’s instinct was that there was something race-driven about it.  The fact that he fixated on her washing her hair, refused to hear different, and was resistant to my input on the matter until I threatened to go to others… I do believe her.”

“Has he said anything specific?  Or done anything?” Kelsey asked.

“No, I wish it were that easy.  And so does Lucy for that matter.  No.  But even if you take race out of the equation, he was still singling out a student and that’s not great.”

“Is it possible she did something wrong at the start of the semester-?” Brett asked.  He stopped as Jasmine looked at him, frowning.

“Brett.  Remember that conversation we had, way back when, a little awkward?  Verona and Lucy were on the play structure, Verona with the kitty hat, Lucy with the neon pink coat.  And Lucy was so mad at you and-” and your wife.  She turned to Kelsey and Connor.  “-she’d slept over, had a bath with Verona, they washed and blow-dried Lucy’s hair, and it was a-”

“Disaster.  Yeah,” Brett said.

“Poor girl,” Kelsey said.

“I don’t blame you, Brett. Hair types vary.  Lucy’s is different from mine.  We had a few misfires before figuring out the best approaches.  But you asked, you were upfront-”

“About being an idiot about these things.”

“This is one of those cases you wanted me to get out in front of, tell you straight.  Lucy’s instinct is that Mr. Bader’s first impression of her was her skin.  She might be young but she’s been around that block a few times, she got bullied by some older kids at the lake.  Some classmates picked on her until others put them into check.  She kicks herself and dwells on stuff if she gets it wrong, it’s why she’s overly mature and way too serious sometimes.  If there was something that set off Mr. Bader like you’re implying, I think she would have fixated on that.”

Brett nodded.

“Trust her instincts?” Kelsey asked.  “Is this something we need to act on?  Mr. Bader?”

“I don’t know, I don’t think so,” Jasmine said.  “I talked to the school.  If they’re aware of it and he’s aware of it hopefully the next non-white student that walks through the doors gets it easier.  I just hate that- it impacts Lucy’s confidence, you know?  It puts her on the defensive.  Would Avery have found sports like she did if she was having to hold back?  Or if her teachers were fixating just a little bit more on what she did wrong than on what she was doing right?”

“Avery’s wobbled,” Connor said.  “Confidence-wise.  She’s had rough patches.  I can imagine the wrong comment or a bit more resistance tipping her over, or pushing her into giving up.”

“Or running away,” Kelsey said.

“Yeah,” Jasmine answered.  “That’s it, isn’t it?  Life can be hard.  A little bit more difficulty can turn a speed bump into a wall you have to scale.”

“I wanted to ask,” Kelsey said, “the day Lucy first came over?”

“Yeah,” Jasmine said, pursing her lips.  She’d anticipated this.

“What’s this?” Brett asked.  “Verona doesn’t tell me these things.”

“It was just Lucy and Avery.  I imagine Verona got filled in,” Jasmine said.

Kelsey shook her head.  “What happened?  We only got bits and pieces.  They left laughing, leaving Sheridan drenched in ice water, and Avery came back shell-shocked.”

“Lucy ran into the man who would have been her stepdad.”

“Paul?” Brett asked.

“Yeah.”

“I liked Paul.  Still run into him from time to time.”

“What happened?” Kelsey asked.

“He broke all of our hearts when he left.  I didn’t realize how much Lucy was holding onto it.  And then with everything about Mr. Bader, about the way the world is…”

“Pent up?” Connor asked.

“I’m not even sure that’s the right word.  Unresolved?  Unanswered?  These things happen and she’s just had to let them go.  But sometimes when you let things go, that doesn’t mean you’re free of it.”

“Then Paul,” Connor said.

“Then Paul.  He wanted to go, she wanted resolution, it was the last straw on the camel’s back.  She couldn’t let it go.”

“Ah,” Connor said.

“If the gas station attendant had called the police or if Paul had been- I don’t want to say less kind, because the dick couldn’t even give her a straight answer, but if he’d made an issue of it, she could have gotten into deep trouble,” Jasmine sighed.  “I got her into therapy, she knows what she did was wrong, we’re doing what we can-”

“Is she okay now?” Kelsey asked.

Jasmine shrugged.  “The therapist said that- um, this was the old therapist, not a good fit, we changed, but he wasn’t entirely wrong either.  He said that as much as I or Lucy might want to look at this as a resolution, a release, it isn’t.  All of that stress and worry and lack of resolution is still there.  It’s not fixed or better.  She’s certainly not happier or healthier in the wake of it.  We put supports in place. She’s got the girls- I hope she’s got the girls, that this doesn’t change things.”

“She’s so good for Avery,” Kelsey said.

“I couldn’t separate her from Lucy if I tried,” Brett said.

“Okay, good.  Yeah, we can work on coping mechanisms.  But all of that is still there.  I still think back to moments when I was Lucy’s age.  When my mom was shamed in front of me.  That, um-” Jasmine picked a tear out of the corner of her eye with a thumbnail.  “-It sits with you.  It changes how I act as a mother with Lucy and Booker.  You know?”

Kelsey and Connor nodded.  Brett had a concerned look on his face.  He looked uncomfortable, one hand at his stomach.

“It doesn’t go away.  These things accumulate and unless the world drastically changes, they’ll always be factors, always unresolved or left as questions unanswered.  I’d love to tell you she’s better, you don’t have to worry, but I really don’t know.  I don’t know if she’ll blow up again, or what she’ll do if it gets to be too much.”

“I hope us meeting like this to compare notes at least helps,” Kelsey said, laying both of her hands over Jasmine’s.

“It does.  They’re pulling away, far too soon, they feel so distant.”

Brett sighed.

“I think if we do this again, we need wine, to drown these melancholy feelings,” Kelsey said.

“Please,” Jasmine said.

“It’s a happy sort of melancholy, isn’t it?” Connor asked.  “They’re growing up.”

Brett groaned.  “Give me the ten year old Verona back.  She was so happy as a kid.  Less screaming, for one thing.”

“It’s good, Brett,” Connor said.  “Part of the process.”

“I’m gonna- dessert isn’t sitting so well with me,” Brett said, rising from his seat.  “excuse me.”

“I told you,” Jasmine told him.

“Yeah, yep, sure.  You sounded a lot like your daughter with that line.”

“Good, I’m glad.  As much as I worry, I adore her, top to bottom.”

“Mm,” he grunted.  Still halfway through getting up, he paused, not moving, like any movement at all would be too much.

“You alright?”

“Mmm,” he grunted.

He walked off.

“I wanted to ask about Julie Hardy,” Connor said. “Going back to the subject of influences-”

“Don’t,” Kelsey said.  “Please let’s not.”

“What’s this?” Jasmine asked.

“She helped us a lot, tipping us off that things were wrong,” Kelsey said.  “I brought it up earlier.  Connor and I have been divided about her role with Avery.  I have no complaints, myself, she’s been very upfront, there are rules about teachers counseling students.  She’s been kind, caring, and considerate-”

“I don’t disagree with any of that,” Connor said.  “Really.  I don’t.  But I personally think back to when I was a teenager.  I was awkward and struggled and I tried on a lot of different hats and explored a lot of different identities as a way of diagnosing and trying to fix what was wrong with me.  When it was just regular puberty.”

“It’s not a hat, Connor,” Kelsey said.

“Hear me out.  Okay?  Avery was drowning, and Julie Hardy was like a life raft.  So she clings.  Mrs. Hardy is traveled and talks about her travels in class and Avery starts talking about wanting to go globetrotting when she’s old enough.”

“That sounds great,” Jasmine said.  “Interest in the world?”

“She was always going to be someone who wanted to travel,” Kelsey said.

“And then the tattoos- Julie has tattoos, so Avery expressed interest.  Other stuff?  I worry that the homeschooling may have left her without defenses.  Kids want to be like their mom and dad, and then as they go to school they meet more adults and the world slowly broadens, but she jumped in with both feet first, straight to high school-”

“She does that.  Can we let this go, Connor, and talk about it later?”

“Just, do you see where I’m coming from?  The degree of influence, when a kid is vulnerable?”

“Which she’s cognizant about and taking all appropriate steps with.  I don’t think Julie Hardy will even be teaching her next year.”

“She might be, and if she isn’t, she’ll still be at the school.  I’m just trying to figure out-”

“Can we not argue?” Kelsey asked.  “People are noticing, and I like this place.”

Connor frowned, looking around.

“There’s a lot going on,” Kelsey told Jasmine.  “It complicated things.  This is… secondary to the big questions.  We have to have a massive discussion with Avery later.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

“No, no.  There’s nothing we can do until we’ve talked to Avery,” Kelsey said.  She raised her eyebrows, forehead wrinkling, as she looked at Connor.  “Figured out what we’re doing.”

“Yeah.”

“We’ll have to meet like this again.  We may go over it with you later.  Um, but, Jasmine, you said you had something on your list, a serious question you wanted to ask?  You didn’t get a straight answer.”

“Right, yes,” Jasmine said.  “Right, um.  So there are a few open secrets and other secret-secrets that go around.  The kids as a whole get up to stuff.”

“Right, yeah,” Kelsey said, frowning.  “I worry sometimes.  It’s why we had Connor doing the homeschooling, at first.  But we let our kids be free-range.”

“You have to.  You absolutely have to,” Jasmine agreed.  “So this is touchy, because I don’t want to violate confidences.  There’s things I can’t get into-” like the fucking app. “But I’m sure you were aware of the party at the end of the year.  They went to your place to get ready?”

“Yes.  Yep.  There were older kids chaperoning.  We were told no drinking, no drugs.”

Jasmine made a face.  “From what I found out from Booker a few years back, that can vary.”

“We told the girls that if anything happened, if they were uncomfortable or anything, we’d come get them, no questions asked, no fuss raised,” Connor said.  “I hope that wasn’t overstepping.”

“I said something similar to Lucy,” Jasmine said.  “But what happened?”

“Well you read the paper, didn’t you?” Kelsey asked.

Jasmine shook her head.  “I don’t have the time.  I listen to the news, but that’s usually when I’m driving out to a client, and the radio stations are more for the general area than Kennet.”

“Okay, wow, this is delicious, weird, and worrying, but… some man crashed the party, apparently high as a kite…”

“I don’t miss that part of things,” Brett said.

Kelsey and Connor were bickering a bit beside their car.  The topic had turned back to the Global Studies class and the teacher Avery had a crush on.  Avery had told her before she’d told her own parents.  It made the entire discussion hard.  She didn’t want to violate confidences.

Jasmine folded her arms.

Kelsey got into the car, slamming the door.  Connor didn’t get into the car, standing there.

Fuck.  Fuck.  Jasmine could have spit.

“How are you?” Jasmine asked.  “Stomach okay?”

“No,” Brett said.

“You okay to drive?”

“Got to, can’t leave my car parked here,” he said.  His stomach audibly burbled, and a look of pain crossed his face.

“Drive safe.  Go see a doctor if it’s not better in the morning.”

“Okay,” he said.

“I mean it.”

He raised a hand in a wave, climbing into his car with a glacial slowness.

She’d promised to report in to Verona and Lucy, but she wasn’t sure how to report on this.  Would she say Verona’s dad was better?  Or was he not, but being an idiot?  He was out of the woods, but she was worried at the same time?  Lucy was anxious and Verona had an active imagination and she had…

…She had no idea where they were at mentally, right now.

Brett drove off.  Kelsey started up the car.  Driving off, leaving Connor on the sidewalk.

He meandered over.

“Want a ride?” Jasmine asked.

“No.  I’m going to walk.  Clear my head, think about things.”

She nodded.

“This was nice.  Thank you for arranging it,” he said.

“We should do it again,” she told him.  “When we can get schedules to align.”

He nodded.

She gave the roof of her car a pat, wondering how to disengage.

“About Brett,” Connor said.

“Hm?”

“Avery has expressed some concerns to her mom.  I was hoping to get a clear picture about why, but… Brett’s take is only half a picture, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“How worried should we be?  You know him.”

“I don’t know.  Lucy stopped going over to spend the night and I nudged her into following her gut.”

“You talked to Verona’s mom?  Get any clues there?”

“I talked to her, but nothing in the way of clues.  She’s- before you arrived, Kelsey talked about getting so caught up in things she’d lose track.”

“Oh yeah,” Connor said.

“It’s like that.  But it wasn’t one semester at school.  It’s been ongoing.  She’s more in the dark about these girls than any of us who were at the table tonight.  It’s hard to figure out where to assign the blame, there.”

“I assign myself a lot of blame for that one semester Avery slipped through the cracks.”

“But it’s not that cut and dry.  Verona was as mad as a wet cat after the divorce, her dad whispering in one ear, her mom not pushing back or doing the same back.  She pushed her mom away, her dad pushed her away, she was busy, had a lot of opportunities, and nobody but her seemed to want her to stick around, so she went.  Now she’s out of the loop.  She said Verona asked about her moving back here and letting her move in-”

“Chance to reconnect?”

“But she wasn’t in a position to.  She’d have to quit and she wouldn’t have a job lined up here.  The closest would be Brett’s company.  So…”

“No middle ground?” Connor asked.

“I don’t know.  I really don’t.  I- I don’t know how she phrased it or what other considerations went into it, I don’t know any of that.  Verona takes in stuff and digests it privately, and her mom’s similar to her in that.  The thought processes behind the scenes can be impenetrable sometimes.”

“And we don’t know about Brett?”

“We know it’s not great.  We’re all- me, teachers, Verona, Lucy, we’re aware of different parts of it.  We keep an eye out, try to piece together a picture.”

“I guess you’ll have me and Kel as part of that.  Does he play any sports?”

“No, none.”

“Or- does he go to the bar?”

Jasmine shook her head.

“I’ll try to contrive some excuse to hang out.  Dad and dad.  Sound things out.”

“Thank you,” Jasmine said, looking in the direction Brett’s car had gone.

“Nights like tonight are good.  They help.  What, um- was there any one thing that made you want to do it?”

Jasmine shook her head.  “A bad feeling.”

“A bad feeling?”

“Like I don’t know how Lucy is.  The last time I felt that distance widening, she blew up at Paul.  Now it feels wider than before.”

“Another blow-up incoming?”

“I don’t- therapy’s equipped her with better tools.  What I was saying before, about how frustrated she is at the state of things?  Big and small?  That’s there and I don’t know how she’s sitting with it, I don’t know where she stands, if the kids and staff at camp are being good to her or if there are Mr. Baders and Paul incidents stacking up, unbeknownst to me.”

“Wasn’t it a summer school?”

“Thank you!” a member from the cafe called out.  They were locking up.  “Have a good night!”

Jasmine and Connor waved.

“I just-” Jasmine started, stopped, shook her head.  “If she’s going to be pushed to take action, I want it to be later.  When she’s equipped, educated, grounded and secure in herself.  Change the world, you know?”

“Yeah.”

“And if you don’t have those things, that grounding, education, preparation, what happens?  Another Paul incident.”

Connor ran his hand over his head, through short hair.

He didn’t have an answer.  If there was an answer that could have come that easily, Jasmine probably would’ve already been able to manage.

“About Avery,” she said.

He looked at her

“She’s so terrific.  Whatever it is you’re so stuck on… things have to start and stop at her happiness.”

“I just want to make sure it’s her happiness, and not some teacher’s take that she’s been inspired by.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works.  She’s a good kid, Connor.  I think you should trust her instincts.  She knows her own experience better than anyone.”

He nodded.

“You sure you don’t want that ride?  It’s a long way.  I’d stay and chat, but I’m getting chilly.  We can keep talking in the car.”

“I’ll walk and think, I think.  You should go.  Thank you.”

She nodded, climbed into her car, and started it up, leaving him there.

“Can we talk about the girls?”

“We have to, don’t we?”

“End of summer.  The judges will force John to take the Carmine seat.”

“It’s a shame.  I like John.  But we have to-”

“Destroy him.  I will.  I don the furs, I deal with him, I take the seat.  Then that’s it.  Everything falls into place, Kennet is taken care of.  The rest of us are taken care of.  The only thing is-“

“The girls.  Miss picked some scarily good ones.  I keep being surprised.”

“Can we deal with them?  I don’t want to kill them.”

“We’ll avoid it if we can.  Let John be the only casualty.”

“I wish we hadn’t let them go to that school.  They’ll come back with a lot of knowledge.”

“Miss again.  Is it bad if I hope this school incident leaves them… less capable of mustering their full strength?”

“I don’t want them hurt any more than I want them killed.  They’re playing their part.  Let’s put our energy into playing our parts well enough that everything goes smoothly.  Counteract, distract, whatever we need to do.  We all need to be on the same page.”

“I’ll pass it on.  You just be ready.  Depending on how this ends, they either come back soon or they come back educated.  Both pose their own problems.”

Gone Ahead – 7.9

Avery

Last Thursday: Can We Talk About the Girls?


“Take this,” Jessica told her.

Avery looked up.

They were in the little building with wood paneled walls and fluorescent lights that had gone up in the middle of the sports field.  Half of the anti-Bristow forces were within, getting treated for injuries and figuring out their plan.  Jessica held out a wrapped- Avery took it.  A wrapped, chocolate covered protein bar.

“I don’t want to take your supply, it’s-”

“It’s fine,” Jessica told her.  “I like those for energy, but if you don’t like it, I’ve got other stuff.”

She reached into a pocket, pulled out two chocolate bars, then put them back, pulled out two more.

While she did, Snowdrop reached over, took the protein bar, and opened the package.  She put it into Avery’s hand and moved her hand to her mouth.

“Is- did you make your raincoat supply you chocolate bars?” Avery asked.  She bit the bar.

“I’m self-taught.  I picked up what I did through trial and error,” Jessica said, taking a protein bar of her own.  “When I get a chance to learn or do something new, I start with the essentials.  Stuff that lets me stay in the Ruins longer.  Because not much ruins my day more than seeing a glimpse of what I’m after and then having to leave it behind because I have to come up for air.  Or food.  Or light.”

“So… no?” Snowdrop asked.

“I rigged one of the pockets to supply me with rations, yeah.”

Avery wanted to reply, but the protein bar, with raisins and almonds and sunflower seeds all compressed together into a dense honeyed mass and layered with chocolate, was very chewy.  It took some work to get it out of her mouth and into her throat.

Snowdrop lowered her head to where Avery’s hand rested with one thumb hooked into the pocket of her shorts, and she took a bite.  Avery let her.

Wary of the way past conversations with Jessica had gone, Avery ventured, “I do that too.  Focusing on basics.  For me, it’s running fast.  Whacking stuff.”

“If it works, it works.”

“Those glimpses?  That’s stuff like your cousin?” Avery asked.  Was the cousin a touchy subject?

“Other things too.  Power concentrates, down there.  You might see something bright or something that still glimmers, when so little can.  Sometimes that’s an echo, or a bird in a rusty birdcage that some skinny guy is carting around.  The trick that lets me ‘lose count’ of my snacks and never run out was one of those things.”

Avery nodded, taking another bite.

Jessica sat there, watching Zed talk to Brie, the two of them chewing.  Over to the side, Lucy and Verona were figuring out the papers of Bristow’s they wanted to distribute.

Snowdrop bent down to take another bite from the half-eaten protein bar that rested on Avery’s knee.

“If she wants one of her own, I have more,” Jessica said.

“I don’t mind,” Avery told her.  “I have enough siblings I got pretty used to it early on.  Feels a bit like home.”

“That’s important,” Jessica said.  “Feeling at home helps heal the Self, which you need after a stint in the Ruins.”

Snowdrop said something with her mouth full.

“Chew, then talk, you savage,” Avery said, poking Snowdrop in a bulging cheek.  Snowdrop flipped her the middle finger.

Jessica smiled a little.

“Why are you being nice to me?” Avery asked.

“Was I mean before?”

“You weren’t… this.

“You came.  You went looking.”

“We said we would.”

“A lot of people make promises to me,” Jessica told her.  “It doesn’t mean a lot, a lot of the time.  Deals to do something they put off until the last minute.  Or they track their own bullcrap in with it.”

“I don’t want to be dishonest, I wouldn’t give it the weight you are.  I was rattled, tired-”

“That’s it,” Snowdrop said, to Avery.  “Convince her she shouldn’t be nice to you.”

“When things get this bad, the bullcrap peels away and we show our real selves,” Jessica said.  “Yours is fine.”

“Thank you,” Avery said, voice small, not sure how else to reply.

“Your friend’s scares me.”

Avery looked at Verona.  Aside from being tired, frazzled, a bit bruised and scuffed up, her hair even scruffier than usual, Verona looked weirdly fine.

“She’s, uhhh…” Snowdrop snatched the rest of the bar out of her hand.  “You brat!”

Snowdrop ducked back out of Avery’s reach, and Avery winced, touching the horizontal cut Shellie had made at her collarbone and shoulder.

“Let’s get that fixed up,” Jessica said.  “I’ve got some medical stuff.  Sit.”

Avery sat back,butt against a table, feet on the floor.  Snowdrop hung back out of reach.

“You’re supposed to be backing me up, Snow.  Support me fixing up my Self.”

“I’m not sorry,” Snowdrop told her.  “Here, have it back.”

She handed Avery a bar.

Avery looked at it, and something moved under the wrapper.  Avery nearly dropped it, and Snowdrop caught it.

“Is that Toadswallow chocolate?”

Snowdrop cackled.

“Do you have another shirt?” Jessica asked, pulling some supplies out.  She handed Avery another protein bar.  Avery opened it.

“In my dorm room.  I liked this one, dang it.”

“Mm.”

“Can’t help you there,” Snowdrop said, with her mouth full.  Avery kicked out in Snow’s direction, aiming for a light kick to the shin.

“Yeah?” Avery asked.  “How does that work?”

Snowdrop hopped up onto the table, switching to opossum form, masticating the remnants of the protein bar, crawled around behind Avery, and became human again while behind Avery.  She wore a short-sleeved shirt over a long-sleeved shirt, and shorts.  The short sleeved shirt was pink, had an winking opossum with makeup on, two paws over the end of her nose.    An dotted-line arrow  extended to the right, to where her eyes were, winking.  ‘Eyes over here’.

“That might be the first one I don’t get, Snow,” Avery admitted.  She looked at Jessica, who shrugged.

“Don’t wear it,” Snowdrop said, pulling off the one shirt, keeping the long-sleeved one on.

“I’m confused both about the shirt and the weirdness of wearing something that’s technically you, Snow.”

Jessica wiped something cold along the length of the cut.  Avery shivered, full-body.

“Do you want to try to salvage this shirt, or can I tear it some?”

“I guess tear it.”

Jessica’s face was very close, and her expression was very intent, and she was being caring and even though Jessica wasn’t the build she really liked, the rest of those things were enough together to get her attention.

Avery jumped as Jessica tore the shirt to get more access to the shoulder cut.

“No cracking, no veins.  You don’t feel heated or chilled?”

Avery shook her head.

“No hallucinations?  Any figures at the corners of your vision?  Whispers?”

“Does she count?” Avery asked, indicating Snowdrop.  “Or her weird shirt?  Does the shirt make sense to people who aren’t possessed?”

Snowdrop cackled.

“I see and hear her too, and half those shirts don’t make sense to me, don’t worry.  I assumed it was an internet thing.”

“Some are.”

“I’ll put on some cream for scarring.  I don’t think you need stitches.  Maybe here and here, but I’m going to use some sterile glue.”

“Okay,” Avery said, taking the shirt from Snowdrop, who tried to steal the second protein bar as she handed it off, draping it over one leg.  She jumped again as Jessica touched something cold to the big cut.

“You’re turning blue,” Snowdrop said.  “You’re getting cold.”

Avery’s face felt warm.  Was she flushed?

“Hey, Snow?” she asked.

“Hm?”

“I’m not sure if you’re trying to cheer me up or change the mood, but, uh, not now?”

Snowdrop swiveled around, scooted over, and sat on the table, her back against Avery’s.  She wasn’t that much shorter than Avery.  The back of her head rested against the back of Avery’s neck, like they meshed.

“You’re the same as you used to be,” Snowdrop said.

“You too, you know,” Avery said, grateful for the distraction from Jessica’s proximity.

“Pinch,” Jessica said.

Avery pinched her own skin together.  Jessica adjusted, then nodded.

“The Avery I got to know from the start wasn’t the sort who’d think that stuff was fun,” Snowdrop said.

“I think the Avery who you got to know from the beginning wasn’t one who’d dealt with the Wolf.  Or seen someone die.  Gabe, kind of.  For a certain meaning of death.”

“Alright then,” Snowdrop said, shifting position, her back pressing against Avery’s.  “I know just how to adjust, then.”

“We talk, Snow.  We communicate, we listen.  And as part of the communication, you can tell me what this shirt is about.”

“Whatever you do, you can’t ask Toadswallow.”

“Toadswallow isn’t here.”

“Ave,” Verona said, hurrying over.

“Yes?” Avery asked.  She was probably still flushed, because Verona grinned.

“Bristow’s coming, we’re going to mobilize.  He’s walking, so we’re going to run.  Can you catch up?”

“Probably.  What’s the plan?” Avery asked.

“Are we covered?” Verona asked Lucy.  “For Augury?”

“I think so?”

“We’re not covered but we should know if they look,” Zed said, as he walked over.  Brie followed him.  “Why?”

“Discussing the plan.  Move number two of my hits against Bristow.  I want to burn his new place.  I think as far as coup, claim, screwing up the power he has here, it’s a pretty good move.  And it’s really hard to deal with Alexander while also handling the blaze, and it’s big, dramatic.”

“Can’t,” Zed told her.

“Okay, maybe it’s complicated to do, but-”

“But you can’t.  It’s worked into the runes below the place.  Believe me, technomancy is about places, and I was just scanning the place, less than fifteen minutes ago, to figure out the weak points.  After the recent fires in the library and stuff, I think they were extra careful.”

“Can we blow it up?” Verona asked.  “Where are the goblins?  Or the elementalist kids?”

“It’s pretty sturdy, Verona,” Zed said.  “Seriously.  He was expecting a fight.  He fortified it.”

Lucy stepped forward.  “It’s one hundred percent off the table as a plan?”

“Probably not one hundred percent, but… I think you want to find another tree to go barking up,” Zed answered.

The three of them paused.  Jessica moved Avery’s hand.  “Pinch.”

Avery pinched her own wound shut, again.  Jessica adjusted, then glued.

“You had four ideas on how to hit Bristow, Ronnie?” Lucy asked.

“Yeahhh.  Had.  Now I have three.  One that I just used.  And I just committed to hitting him three times.  Because it’s a good number.”

“Classic number, but maybe outline your other plans?” Zed asked.

“I wanted to hit him where his power is.  Three challenges that weaken or gainsay him, or make him a lot weaker against Alexander.  The last one, I challenged his word.  Challenge idea number two was the building.  If he loses his place on campus, he loses authority, he loses power, he loses standing, any stuff in there.”

“Not doable,” Zed said.

“He’s walking over here to challenge you.  You wanted to scare him enough he had to run.”

“And to get him to huff and puff and look less sure of himself, because he’s not a runner, yeah,” Verona said.  “Idea three was his Aware.”

“Which I’m very skeptical about,” Lucy told Verona.  “Every single time we try…”

“But Bristow is here, and so is Alexander.  If we can corner them into saying something, that-”

“Won’t do,” John said, from the background.

“No!” Verona exclaimed.  “Why won’t do!?”

“Guilherme thinks the Aware couldn’t be budged as things stood when they made their last move against us.  There’s no reason to think it could happen here.”

“But if we can go after one in a fight…” Verona said.  “We don’t have to convert them if we knock ’em out and hold them hostage.  Make him say he’s willing to let his hostage die in front of the others.  Even if it’s a small hit, if we can get three minor wins-”

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” John told her.

“No!” She echoed, frustrated.  “Why?”

“Same principle as the building.  He brought them here knowing they’d be an obvious target.  He reinforced them.  I haven’t seen any true openings and I have a fair eye for these things.”

“It’s like you theorized, with how Shellie was affected,” Avery told Verona.

“We had four ideas,” Lucy said.  “Now we have-”

“Three,” Verona cut in.  “Attacking his oath was used, that leaves this one as a maybe, if we can hit his power base enough, weaken the way he set them up-”

“When hitting his power base is the goal?” Zed asked.  “That’s like saying you can move the queen piece where you need it if only you get the king into checkmate first.”

“Help me,” Verona told him.  She turned to Lucy, then Avery.

“What’s idea four?” Avery asked.

“You don’t keep your third in the loop?” Jessica asked.

“She’s off running around a lot, so she wasn’t there when conversations happened, or we were worried about being listened in on and we couldn’t say,” Verona said.

Avery frowned a bit.

“Sorry,” Verona said, quiet.

“Fourth is the students,” Lucy told her.

“Kass and Mccauleigh,” Verona said.  “Maybe others.”

“Fernanda,” Avery said.  “After Laila?  They were friends.”

“Maybe, yeah.”

“How?” Zed asked.  “On short notice?”

“Knock them out, set them up… hope for two out of the three as they come to?” Lucy asked.

“It might not be that simple,”Jessica told them.

“But it’s not impossible?” Verona asked.

“I could help.”

They turned.

Jorja.  The younger sister of Tymon and Talos.  Her Bogeyman was behind her, hovering.

“With the knocking out part?” Jorja added.  “It’s okay if I get expelled.  I lost my friend, I don’t want to come back anymore.”

“I think we should get your brothers to sign off on this,” Brie said.  “If you get involved at all.”

“Your big problem is how you present this,” Zed told them.  “You don’t have to get expelled.”

“I don’t care.”

“We do,” Zed said, glancing at Brie.  “Here’s what we do…”

“Ave,” Lucy said, while Zed talked to Jorja.  “You good to go?”

Avery nodded.  “I don’t suppose you can tell me what this shirt means?”

She held it up for the other two.

They shook their heads.

Snowdrop snorted, her back still to Avery’s.

“Or you?  Boon companion?”

“It’s a short, easy explanation…” Snowdrop said.

“No time,” Verona said.  “We split up?  Take one each?”

“I don’t have the juice,” Jorja said, to Zed, raising her voice.  “The binding lesson, I used a lot of it.”

“It’s that limited?” Verona asked, turning back.  “One shot, once a week?”

“A month?  Maybe every two months,” Jorja said.

“We’ll cover you,” Talos said, from the sidelines.

Jorja looked at her big brother.

“We got you,” Tymon added.

Jorja smiled, and the smile faltered as the lights flickered.

The lights went out, turned red, and then the ceiling went out, showing them the roof above, and then the walls went out, fritzing as they went.

A machine that hummed in the corner popped audibly, then began to smoke.

The building fell away.

The group of them adjusted their positions, eyes adjusting to darkness.

Bristow had rounded the corner and now approached.

“Want me to stay?” John asked.

“Go to the woods, talk to the Others, get us set,” Lucy said.  “Please.  You have the anti-Kevin charm?”

He nodded once, raising his hand, where a little, blue-painted ‘eye’ charm dangled from a cord, an inch below the wrist.  Then he went.

Jessica gave the bandage at Avery’s shoulder a pat.

Avery quickly pulled on Snowdrop’s shirt, reached under to grip the existing shirt, and ripped it the rest of the way, before pulling the remains off through the armhole of the new shirt.  She looked at Snowdrop, then poked at the cord at Snowdrop’s neck, checking Snowdrop had the charm too.

Snowdrop drew a kitchen knife and rusty fork from her pockets.

Avery grabbed her stuff.  Hat on, mask on, cape on, bag slung over one shoulder.  She adjusted her charm bracelet and found it empty.  The Ruins had washed away the glamoured objects.

“On my signal,” Verona said.  She backed away a little as Bristow approached.  He had Rae and Ted with him, and a few students trailed a bit further behind.  “Jorja?  Talos, Tymon?”

“Ready,” Tymon said.  “We, uh, can’t protect you from what Jorja does.  Not on short notice.  Your opossum might not be as affected.”

“Damn,” Snowdrop said, quiet.  “I’m not okay protecting these three.”

“Here we are!” Bristow raised his voice.  “Made me come to you?  I’ve left poor Alexander waiting.”

“And here’s my second of three challenges!” Verona shouted, pumping her fist into the air.  “Now!”

Avery pumped her own fist into the air.  Lucy followed suit a bit later.

“Downer downpour!” Jorja called out, her voice high.  Her brothers had her back, each with a hand at her shoulder.

The Drugstore Cowgirl loomed out of the shadows.  A raver girl, drawn out tall and exaggerated, who arrived with vague clouds in multiple colors, and an expanding rain of pills and pellets.

“Tranquilizing Truce!” Jorja shouted.  “Let’s put a big pause button on the fighting!”

Making it a truce, affecting both sides, to get past the rule about harming students.

The pills changed, all to white and blue capped types.

A pill hit Verona like a bullet fired from sky to ground, and Verona keeled over.

One bounced off of the brim of Avery’s hat and off of Snowdrop’s head.  Another punched through, without leaving a hole.  It slipped into her, flooded her mind, and she was out.

“They used to think the Paths were dreams.”

The voice had an off-kilter edge to it.  Like how a hacksaw could make different sounds on the push and the pull.  Pushes for some words, pulls for others.

“Then they thought different.  They’re far-flung realms, the cliff’s edge of the world, so ragged that the pieces flake off.”

The Wolf stood opposite Avery.  Old, hunched over, but big, wearing a startlingly red dress.  Laila laid at the woman’s feet.

The Wolf put her foot under Laila’s neck and lifted it.  Toes worked their way through Laila’s hair.

She stomped.  The head made a sickening, familiar sound.

Avery flinched.

“The Paths are dreams, Avery,” the Wolf said.  “And they are the edge of reality.”

She raised Laila’s ruined face, lifting with toes gripping hair, and then stomped again.  The sound repeated.

“Both at the same time.  The world’s dream, your dream.  One and the same.  Humans make up the world and that has its border.  Its sharp edge.”

She stomped again, then again, with a faster tempo.

“Your world, your dream, your edge of sanity.  I’m here, Avery.  I haven’t left.”

The stomps repeated, drumming wet, until they defied sense and reality.  The head going to pieces, the original chunks becoming pulp.

The exact same sound was there, behind it all, repeating over and over again.  The sound of Laila’s head hitting rock.

Avery’s hand clutched her shirt, over her heart.  The shirt Snowdrop had given her.  It helped, just a tiny bit.  But she needed even the tiny bit.

“How long would it take you to get home, to mother, father, family, brothers and sisters, a nice warm bed?  How long, if you decided to run?  To ask for help and drive it?  Hours and hours.” the Wolf asked, against the backdrop drumming of sick, violent sounds.  “How long would it take for you to get to me, if you wanted to?  Less than an hour.”

When there was nothing left for the Wolf to stomp, what happened?

“How long would it take me to get to you?”  The Wolf laughed, and it was an eerie sound, that hacksaw effect all the more pronounced, decorated with blood spatter and a foot pounding its way past broken bone.  “How long?  Seconds, once the way is clear.  I’m closer to you than home is.  I want to embrace you more than anyone or anything else does.  The briefest of embraces, before I tear you to pieces.”

Avery swallowed, and it took effort, made her head shake.  She didn’t break eye contact.

The Wolf laughed again.

The Wolf’s foot came down, and it slipped, turning sideways, scraping to the side in the red gore.  A look of surprise crossed the Wolf’s face.

The look of surprise became a toothy smile, ear to ear, her eyes dark.

She lunged, moving with long, gnarled limbs and a reaching hand with long, broken fingernails.

Avery, keeping to the rules, didn’t back up.  She ducked left, avoiding the reaching claw.

A hand gripped her neck, and terror seized her.

“Aye, thar ye are.”

Alpeana.  She recognized the face.  The second or two it took to process the realization were more than enough time for the Wolf to get her from behind.

Alpeana pulled her into the dark woods.

Avery woke, scrambling, pulling away from the shadows of Alpeana’s darkness.

“If you’re unconscious as I arrive, that’s a failure to meet,” Bristow said.

“I’m conscious,” Verona said.  All around them, people had collapsed.  Only the Others, Jorja and her family, Brie, Zed, and those of Bristow’s contingent that had come with were unaffected.  Snowdrop crouched nearby, brandishing her weapons at Ted.  “A brief lapse.  If you’re focused on that, you’re not paying attention to the challenge.”

“Help,” Alpeana whispered.  “I cannae work so fast.”

Avery gripped Snowdrop’s shoulder, then started running.  Ted lunged, reaching, and momentarily got his hand on Snowdrop.  She swiped with the fork and he let her go.  He didn’t run after.

Lucy was already running.  Not as fast, but running.  Circling around the western end of the school.

“Fernanda,” Avery huffed.

“I dinnae know tha names, lassie.”

“Daughter, prissy, our age, pretty, skinny.”

“I dinnae pay much mind ta faces, either.  Prissy covers a wee bit under half tha lot.”

“She lost a friend.  Her friend died.  Hit the rocks, because- we think it was Kevin.  The evil eye.”

Alpeana’s darkness roiled, chasing, buoying.  It pushed Avery, encouraging her forward.

She ran by the woods.  And she saw the goblins trying to match pace.  Gashwad was faster.

Gashwad sniggered.

“What!?” Avery asked.

“The shirt!” Gashwad raised his voice, before laughing.

“Focus!” Lucy barked.  “Cover us!”

Alexander was there, amid the workshops and other external buildings, his back to the parking lot.

So was Clementine, unconscious.  So were some other adults Avery didn’t recognize.  Alexander was waking students.

“I got Kass!” Lucy shouted.  “We talked about her, Alpeana!”

“Aye, I remember!  Direct me!”

Alpeana’s amorphous, multi-limbed, multi-faced form grew and divided.

Fernanda.  Avery saw.

“Can’t-” Alpeana said.

She peeled away.  The darkness dissipated, hands, faces and black drain-guck hair-smoke pulling back.

Rae, hands in her pockets, walked down the stairs.  She was a woman who could have been a model or celebrity, except she looked so tired.  The woman held out a hand, and a pill bounced off of it.

“Weird,” Rae said, her voice hollow.

Lucy was dragging Kass off to the side.  As she got Kass out of sight, Alpeana was free to work.

If we can get the Aware to split up… that’s another challengeWe need three wins.  Three wins against Bristow when he and Verona are going back and forth on the Brownie thing should tip things in our favor.

They had two challenge ideas, one of which they’d managed okay.  The second was the students, and Rae was in the way of that.  The third could be the Aware, but that wasn’t likely to happen.

“Rae,” Avery said.

“Don’t know you.  This is all pretty crazy, huh?”

“Kevin sure dragged you into something, huh?” Avery asked.  Snowdrop took her hand.

“He does that,” Rae said.

Avery glanced at Alexander, who stood back.  He’d woken Clementine, who looked up.

On the other side, though, other reinforcements had arrived.  Chase and Nicolette.

They approached and backed Rae.  Silent and staring.

“We got the rundown on the Kevin thing,” Avery said.

“Yeah?  Seems like everyone knows my life.  Parents, friends, strangers.  Whatever you’re going to say, I promise you, people closer to me, older, with more experience in the world have said it.”

“Okay,” Avery said.  She shook her head.  “What are you doing here?  Why here, why now?”

“It’s kind of a vacation getaway.  Not really a vacation, not really a getaway, but kind of, isn’t it?” Rae asked.  She smiled, and it was a bit wry, like feelings behind it betrayed the smile.

“Can I get you to go inside?”

“No.”

“Why not?” Avery asked.  She paced, trying to direct Rae’s attention away from Kass and Lucy.  Maybe Lucy could get Fernanda and they could do something there.

“Kevin’s counting on me.”

“Kevin’s kind of a dick, though,” Avery said.

“He’s mine,” Rae answered.  “My guy.  He’s letting me in by showing me the kind of work he does when he goes away.  So whatever you’re doing, whatever reason they need to have private security, while weird rich kids run around… stop.  Don’t make me stop you.”

Rae’s hand went to her waist.  She had a gun holstered there.  The hand rested on the handle with a casual ease.

It was like she’d stopped caring about anything.

“I’m not rich.”

Rae shrugged.  “Privileged.  You can come to a place like this.”

Avery was close enough to Alexander and Clementine now.  Clementine went to take a step forward and Alexander stopped her.

“Help?” Avery asked.

“No, you wanted to interrupt?  Interrupt.  We can wait until you’re done.”

“I don’t really know Rae,” Clementine said.

“Help?” Avery asked Nicolette.

“I’m not sure I could, even if I had the a-ok.  I’m very sorry.  The situation sucks,” Nicolette said.

“Maybe get Raymond to come?”

“He stepped in a few too many times,” Chase answered.  “He’s taken a spot critical enough in the world scene that within the hour that he takes a side, six or seven people bigger than Durocher, Bristow, or anyone here will wipe him off the face of the planet.  Guaranteed.  They’re deliberating now.  Because he countered the movements of the staff the one time, he arranged healing for a student on one side, and some other stuff.”

“Sounds big,” Rae said.  “I won’t pretend or try to understand.  But just in case it keeps me on the right side of people that big and important, I’m going to insist you all stay put and stay quiet until some others arrive.”

“Is this really what you want?” Avery asked Rae, still moving, pacing, leading her to the side and away from Lucy.

Rae didn’t answer.  She only laughed.

And it was an unhinged, hacksaw-back-and-forth kind of laugh.

Avery shivered.

Sanity’s edge?

“Avery!” Lucy raised her voice.

Rae twisted around, pulling the gun free of the holster, and aimed it at Lucy.

Lucy, who’d stepped out of cover, left Alpeana and Kass, who hadn’t gone for Fernanda.  Stepping into danger.

Lucy bit her lip, then raised a hand slowly to her eye.  Her other hand remained still.  She scratched her eye as she made eye contact with Avery.  While held at gunpoint.

Avery turned her Sight on.

Mist over everything.  Motion made more real.  She could see connections, and she could see movement.  Changes in expression clearer than expressions themselves.

Rae was like stone, unmoving.

And the mist was thick, cloudy, noxious.

Like it was acid, the mist was eating away at connections.

The longer, fragile one, it was between- not Avery and Lucy.

Avery looked down at Snowdrop, then took a step away, before wishing she hadn’t.

The step away gave her a better view of her little friend.  Her companion, and the way connections between Lucy and Snowdrop were dissolving.  The connections between Snowdrop and Avery.

“This is great,” Snowdrop said.  Her hand went to her throat.

“Easy!” Rae raised her voice, the gun moving with an erratic swing.  Even Alexander ducked some.  “None of you are moving until Kevin comes back or my landlord comes and passes on other orders.”

Ted.  Ted had momentarily gotten his hand on Snowdrop.

Taking her protection?

“Oh, I’m like a little trash goblin.  I have lots of junk.  Weird that I lost that,” Snowdrop said.

You’re a Lost, denizen of Paths.  You can’t hold onto stuff, you told me that.  Not weird you lost your grip on it.

You couldn’t have ditched the stupid knife or fork?

“Snow-”

“Don’t say or do anything,” Lucy urged.  “It makes it worse.”

“Shut up!” Rae raised her voice, reacting to the change in tension.

“Rae,” Clementine said.

Rae pointed the gun at Clementine.

“They’re kids,” Clementine said, staring down the barrel of a gun, with one eye that was half-closed, a little foggy, the other unwavering.  “Don’t you want kids one day?”

“Shut up!”

The agitation grew as the smoke did.

“Hey, loser,” Snowdrop said, turning her head to look at Avery.

Avery shook her head.  Small motions.

“Eh,” Snowdrop said, her voice wavering.  “Sucked knowing you.”

“You little brat,” Avery hissed.  “Don’t you dare.”

“If I die here, I’m going to leave you without a cool shirt on,” Snowdrop said.  “Funny.”

Avery mentally translated.

If I die here, I’ll leave you with a shitty t-shirt.  Tragic.

Their help was on the other side of the building.  Unconscious or tied up with Bristow.  Verona was stuck there, dealing with the trials, presenting or countering any arguments.

The goblins couldn’t take on an innocent Aware.  Maybe Clem, but Rae was a danger.

“You didn’t explain the shirt to me,” Avery told Snowdrop.

“Don’t ask Toadswallow.”

“I want to ask you!”

Rae fired the gun.

Avery took a step back.  Snowdrop flopped over.

A car alarm in the parking lot sounded, going off, whooping through the air and casting a faint red tint into the gloom as the lights on the back flicked on and off.

“Pay attention to me,” Rae said, gun raised, a curl of smoke barely visible from the barrel.

Avery paid attention to her, expression serious.

The noxious mist cleared.  Avery’s focus was on the smallest of Rae’s movements.  Of Lucy’s.

“What the hell’s with her?  I wasn’t aiming anywhere near her,” Rae said.  “It was a warning shot.”

Avery didn’t move, didn’t look away.

The connection was still there.  Even if she didn’t look, she could feel it.  It healed as the mist seeped away.

Snowdrop had fainted.  Kevin’s influence had pulled away, thinking his job was done.

Avery didn’t budge, her eye on the ‘ball’.

On Rae.  The gun.

Distract her,” Avery hissed.

“Did you actually hit her?” Lucy asked.

“I aimed in the air.  You saw.”

“Is she dead?  Did you kill a kid?” Lucy asked.

Rae turned toward Lucy.

Avery started running.

Closing the gap in record time.

She reached for Rae, her Sight showing the woman as a silhouette surrounded by handprints.  Not touching her- apparently he hadn’t hurt her like that.  But they were there and so dense they were a wall.  Comments, barbs, other things he’d done to separate her from the world.

Avery couldn’t get past that.  She knew it by looking at it.  By how they seemed to clarify instead of fading or pulling away as she got closer.

Each one, instead of fingerprints, had scenes, as though the whorls and prints were papers, arranged into the shape of a man in a doorframe.  A scribbled word against a background at a store.

Rae wasn’t the enemy here.  Something supernatural had pulled her to a place dark and unreachable.  And Avery couldn’t touch her there, couldn’t get to her.

So Avery went for the gun.  She’d spotted the connections that had jumped out when the gun had fired and claimed everyone’s attention and now she pursued those.

She barely grazed the side of the gun, reaching out.  But she could grip connections and put her power into those connections.  Like she had on day three of the practice.  Reclaiming her mask.

It was, in Rae’s reality, a grazing touch at a moment she didn’t have a good grip.  The gun fell from her grip.

Avery hit the ground, the cut on her chest screaming like she’d just torn it open again, as she landed on her back, holding the weapon.  She raised her feet, a barrier, and kicked as Rae lunged in, reaching.

“I’ve taken self defense,” Rae told her, grunting as she pushed a leg aside.  Avery flipped over and scrambled back, holding the gun pointed down and to the side.

Rae didn’t fight like she’d just taken self defense.  She fought like Avery had imagined Ted would.  Slippery, fast, strong.

The ‘slip’ part of that might have been the kind of Aware she was.  Nothing got to her.  Not words, not a reaching hand trying to get hold of her wrist.

But some of it was something else.  Like she was in the zone, her focus entirely there.

“This isn’t you!” Avery grunted.

“It’s us!” Rae shouted, groping for the weapon.

“You’re worse off because of it!”

“No,” Rae grunted.

Avery twisted, kicked, and pushed Rae away.  It barely landed, barely worked.

“No,” Rae said, again, before adding, “I can’t be alone.  I won’t ever be alone again.”

The words were heavy.  Rae’s presence heavier still, as she crowded in on Avery.  Using reach to win the wrestling match for the weapon.  There was no self-preservation on Rae’s part.

“Might not be alone right now,” Avery grunted.  “But you’re not you either.  Not like this!”

She pushed.  It worked.  Rae moved back a bit.

Avery feinted, and Rae fell for it.

Avery used the moment to turn, to hop up onto the hand-rail by the stairs of one of the exterior classrooms and run up to the top of the stairs, her feet by the doorknob.

As Rae circled around to the bottom of the stairs, Avery hopped up, climbing onto the roof.

“Get- come down here!” Rae shouted.

Avery gave the woman the finger, glancing warily at Alexander and then over at Chase and Nicolette.

She glanced down at the gun, figured out how it worked while being very careful of where it was pointing and what she was doing, and ejected the clip.

She tossed the clip into the darkness behind the building, then set the gun down in a gap between gutter and a chimney-pipe.  It would be hard to find in daylight.

Chase was chanting.  Nicolette hung back, looking miserable, eyes on the ground.

Rae shouted.

Where?  Avery looked around.  They’d tended to Fernanda and Kass.   There was still Mccauleigh.

Was Mccauleigh back in her family’s room?  Hiding out?  Or- had she gone with family?  Avery didn’t see any of the Hennigars.  She hadn’t since Hadley had left the building, when the others had been stuck in the top floor of Bristow’s building, listening to that music box.  Hadley had jumped out of the window.

Hennigars were gore-streaked.  They did the warcry thing as part of a war-pact that let them endure or deal with pretty much anything, as long as they paid for it in violence.

Had they gone looking for trouble?

Toward the ‘enemy’.  Toward the back of the school, where Zed and Verona still were?

Avery turned, took a running start, and leaped from the rooftop of the workshop to the canopy over the outdoor dining tables.

From canopy to the sloping rooftop over the window that looked into the library.  She landed, slid down half a foot, then scrambled up.

Up to the peaked rooftop, where she had a view.

Chase’s chant was getting louder.

Whatever he was doing, it wasn’t good.

Avery scanned, searching.

She wished she had Verona’s eyes for seeing in the dark.

Verona and Jorja were surrounded by the Hungry Choir.  Twenty children gathered around them, warding off Bristow’s group and Tedd.  It looked like Zed might have taken a punch, because he was sitting on the ground, one hand at his cheek.

The Hennigars.  Had they followed?  They’d want to be close to the action.

Avery looked, scanning… scanning…

Smoke erupted behind Avery.

Lucy and Chase.  She had tried to interrupt him.  But he kept chanting.

Nicolette put herself between Chase and Lucy.

Avery wanted to help, but the way she could really help was by spotting the target.

One person to find out of the twenty-five or so that were in the gloom.

If she used a light, she might get a glimpse.  But she would get pursuers, interference.  Whatever else.

Musser was down there with his niece and son.

Past them were the Hennigars.

“Alpeana, Alpeana, Alpeana,” Avery murmured, finding and reaching for that connection at the same time.  She gave it a tug.

Black drain-hair and smoke swirled up the side of the school building and pooled.  A pale face and limbs emerged from it, tilted and bent in odd ways.

“Thar she is.  Tha Belanger laddie is preparin’ to wake ’em all.”

“How?”

“He dinnae say.  Ye sure want a dangerous one, Avery.  That Musser family isn’t a joke.”

“Do you need help?”

“Distract them, aye?  And dinnae go blamin’ me if we’re short on time.  Unless ye want ta get tha Belanger blowhard while ye’re at it.”

Avery nodded.

“Git tae!” Alpeana exclaimed, as she slipped from the roof to the woods.

Circling around.

Avery went further down the rooftop peak, closer to Bristow.

Then she let herself slide, making noise as feet scraped shingles.  She banged the gutter.

Musser and Bristow both looked up.

Ted put himself between her and Bristow.  Musser took a running start, disappeared from view, then appeared, gloved hand gripping the roof’s edge.

“Uncle!” Raquel shouted.

He ignored her.

His focus was on Avery.

His son followed.  Blackhorne put a hand out and practically heaved Reid up to the roof’s edge.  Drowne followed shortly after, flung with the other hand, moved faster, and caught Reid as he landed on the roof, helping secure his balance.

Reid drew two knives from his waist.

Musser walked with his hands in his pockets, moving easily along the sloped roof.

“I don’t intend to let you by,” Musser said.

“What if I say please?”

“Uncle!  Reid!” Raquel shouted.

Again, the two were silent, focused on their enemy.

“Try waking the Hennigars again, Raquel!” Mr. Musser called out.

“We’re- there’s an Other!” Raquel shouted.

The men looked.

Alpeana and the goblins were at the edge of the clearing, near the Hennigars.  Raquel couldn’t advance any further because Tashlit was there.

Avery let herself slide down the roof, toward Bristow, and Musser moved to counter.

She scrambled, running, and made a beeline for Chase, instead.

“Reid, deal with her!” Musser called out.

He changed direction.

Avery skidded, running on the southern side of the rooftop, closer to Alexander, Chase, Nicolette, and Lucy, as Reid, Blackhorne, and Drowne crested the peak.

Blackhorne ducked out of view as Rae looked.  Drowne, a little more capable of passing as human, carried on after.

Avery half-ran, half-skidded on her way down, and threw herself toward the ground, rolling many times as she landed.

She hoped the others could deal with Musser.

Drowne was fast, and the Other with wet hair matched her pace with ease.

Black smoke erupted around them, and Avery decided to trust it, hiding in it, instead of avoiding it.  She could hear Drowne, hear Chase, and hear Rae shouting.

Maybe if she got the gun-

A hand seized her neck, not for the first or second time today.  Clammy, cold, and wet.

Drowne had her.  And, as he reached into the smoke, he had Lucy too.

Reid was there on the roof, holding a chain stretched taut between two fists, like there was some purpose to it.  He smiled like it was all planned.

All of those still sleeping and unconscious had lights glowing between their two eyelids.  Rae didn’t seem to notice.

“There we go,” Drowne said.

“Open your eyes!”  Chase shouted, clapping.

The clap came with a breeze, or a shockwave.  The lights in people’s eyes went out like candles blown out in a strong wind.

The sleeping people awoke.

Did we get enough?  We got Kass, we got Fernanda.  No guarantee they’ll take the cue, but if a nightmare can be a wake up call about something…

“Just step-!” Lucy called.  Drowne gave her a fierce shake to get her to be quiet.

“Don’t change sides!” Snowdrop called out.  She’d woken with others.  “Don’t give Verona and Avery and Lucy credit!”

“That is the worst reverse psychology I’ve ever heard.  And I’ve had a geriatric try to tutor me in emotion manipulation.”

Kass’s head hung.

No sign there.

Nobody seemed willing to step up or be the one to cross the lines.

This was supposed to be a second win.  They’d committed to three and they’d been pared down to two, no matter how much Verona seemed to think the Aware could be taken out as a third condition.

“Don’t join the side with my friends on it!” Snowdrop called out.

“Shut up!” Fernanda shouted.

“Fernanda,” Alexander said.

“No!  You shut up too!” Fernanda called out.  “You were supposed to either lose or make things better when you got back!”

“Either-or?  You should blame them.  They’re the reason this is messy.”

“Get bent!” Lucy shouted at him.

“You suck!” Avery called out.

“Enough,” Drowne told them.  “Insults can be come curses.  Come.”

“Can you tell Lawrence I’m waiting patiently while he struggles to get his house in order?” Alexander called out.

Drowne glared at the man, and dragged Avery and Lucy with.  Avery motioned for Snowdrop to hang back, and Drowne shook her, somehow slapping her hand down and away.  Dead eyes met hers, warning.

Nicolette shifted position.  She reached out for Lucy.

“I don’t need help,” Drowne said.

“I’m helping regardless,” Nicolette said.  She extended a hand to Lucy’s face.  “Sorry.”

“You suck!” Avery shouted at her.

Nicolette moved her hand, touched Drowne’s face, and closed his eyelids.

He jerked, stumbling back, then remained where he was, still holding them, eyes still closed.

He let go of Avery and Lucy, hands going to his face.

“-kkkkkkked!” Avery forced it.  “You rock now!”

“I don’t know that I do.”

“What the hell are you doing!?” Chase shouted.

“I guess I’m giving up on a really cool position with a group of Augurs.  And ending up on the bad side of both Bristow and Belanger,” Nicolette said.  She pushed Avery and Lucy behind her.  “I’m probably going to be in a lot of debt as far as deals I’ve made, I might lead the rest of my life destitute, doing this.  But… I think I can make do.”

“Did you forget I’m better than you?” Chase asked.

“You are… as an augur,” Nicolette said.  “I’m pretty darn good with some scary arts, you know.”

“I have more years of training in elementalism, shamanism, fighting…”

“We can try fighting,” Nicolette told him.  “Your call.”

“You’d have to deal with us too,” Lucy said, from a position a step behind Nicolette.

Avery nodded.

Snowdrop hurried over.  She wrapped her arms around Avery in a hug.

Chase didn’t opt for a fight.

“Rae,” Bristow called out.

He was there, at the corner of the building, walking around.

Avery’s Sight alerted her to motion.  Verona appeared at the roof, cat form.  Avery raised a hand, and Verona bounded over.

“Yessir?”

“Go inside.  Relax.  Find Kevin and Shellie.  Send them out.”

Ted and the Mussers followed behind Bristow, along with Tanner, two of the Hennigars, and some Others.  Blackhorne was with them.

As the man arrived, students sorted themselves out.  Many were still waking up.  They backed away from one another, as battle lines were unconsciously drawn.  A gap sat between Alexander and Bristow.

Kassidy crossed the gap.

Fernanda situated herself off to the side, near the alley between two buildings.  Not choosing either, her head hanging a bit.

Verona hopped down and became human, and joined Avery, Lucy, and Snowdrop.  They took up positions opposite Fernanda, at the edge of no man’s land.

“What happened, Fernanda?  Your family’s fortunes are rising,” Bristow said.

“I’m a manipulator.  I know they were messing with me, showing me those things.  Putting Laila in front of me.  I don’t care.  It happened on your watch.”

“Kass?”

“Been thinking about this for a while.”

Bristow nodded.  “The original allegation was forged.”

“Doesn’t matter.  The school handbook warns the brownies may act if they get your gratitude, affirmations, or positive feedback,” Verona said.  “I looked it up.”

“Followed by two halfhearted, paltry attacks,” Bristow said.  “I’ve told Mrs. Hayward that we do not operate in absolutes.  A regret about an outcome is not a regret about what I’ve done regarding her hometown, nor is a general sign of happiness over outcomes aimed at the staff.”

“Halfhearted defenses on your part, you mean!” Verona shouted.  “All of this, us three working so hard against you!?  Follows from what you did to our home!  And you owe the staff for the help you got!”

“Paltry!” Bristow spat the words.  “And a few changed minds?  Is that your form of attack?  Two students who barely rate?  Lesser daughters from lesser families?”

Lucy touched Verona’s arm, indicated Nicolette.

“Four,” Verona said.  “Mccauleigh has doubts, and Nicolette’s abandoned you.  You put so much importance on people but you don’t keep them!  You lost them.  Is this the kind of leadership you’re going to have?  You’re going to keep losing people, and you put so much pride on holding onto people like Clem, like Kevin, or Ted.”

Was this Verona’s hope?  That she could find the leverage to affect the Aware, score a win there too?

But Ted didn’t budge.  Kevin and Shellie emerged from the building, and took up spots behind Bristow.

“Your office is trashed,” Shellie told Alexander.

“Easily remedied.”

“Not the kind of damage I did.  Don’t lie, Alexander,” she said, her voice low.

Alexander pressed his lips together.

“It’s scarcely anything in the grand scheme of it all,” Bristow told Verona.

“It’s a win for me and a loss for you.”

“And?” he asked.  He spread his arms.

Verona was silent.

And!?  For all this petty teenage drama, this interference, this petulance!?” he asked.

Verona didn’t have an answer.

“It weakens your position, Bristow,” Alexander said.  “Funny how that works.  May I continue, then?”

They didn’t have a third challenge.

Not unless Avery wanted to jump up to the roof and maybe try to gun down Kevin.

Probably wouldn’t work.  Musser was there.

Was this all their effort had amounted to?  A shaking of Bristow’s cage, giving Alexander the win?  When he’d stood by like that?  He’d probably planned this this way.  It was what he did.

“If you must,” Bristow said.  “But-”

“Wait!” Avery took off.

Running.  Straight for Alexander.

“What are you-?” Alexander asked.

She ducked around him, bumping him a bit, to knock him back.

Taking Clementine’s hands.  Avery’s momentum was such that she circled around Clementine, spinning the woman in a half-circle.

“Give us-”

“Give them nothing,” Alexander interrupted.  “They interrupted us, they made us wait, Bristow isn’t right about much, as far as I’m concerned but he’s right that their attempt was feeble.  They-”

“They’re kids!” Clementine spoke up.  “They’re kids, and I don’t understand anything, but they were kind to me and they should be listened to, not talked over, especially by their teachers.  I think they were fair to me, when they could have been harsh.  Mr. Bristow?”

Lawrence didn’t speak.  He remained there, backed by two tall men, flanked by students, by staff.  Others who the Aware shouldn’t see hung back in shadows.  Visible to Avery, Lucy, and Verona, but not Ted or Kevin.

Clementine cleared her throat, and then addressed Mr. Bristow, “Mr. Bristow, Alexander has things to say to you.  So do tenants who think you’ve failed to do a very good job, because you’re spreading yourself too thin.  My sink still needs fixing, I can speak on behalf of a few others who have wanted your help or attention but haven’t been able to get in touch.  You let things slide.”

“All will be tended to, barring interference or extraordinary event.  I promise,” Bristow said.

“Okay, well, while we’re on the topic of promises, this is the big one.  You promised me you’d answer a question for me.”

“In due time.”

“I am in my rights,” she said, glancing at Alexander, “to demand an answer now.”

“I gave her some advice,” Alexander said.

“Give,” Avery whispered. “Help.”

“Everyone wants answers now.  Go home, Ms. Robertjon.  I’ll speak to you there, barring unexpected circumstance.”

“I demand my answer,” she said, more firmly.  “You owe me for the trouble-”

She paused.

“For the trouble Daniel, Sharon, and I put those three girls through.  For their sakes-”

“On our behalf,” Avery said.

“On their behalf, please answer in the here and now.”

“Third challenge, woo!” Verona whooped.  “Let’s do it!”

Bristow gave her the side eye, then stared Clementine down.

“Third challenge, sure,” Clementine said, very serious.

Stolen from Alexander.  He had to have something prepped against Bristow.

Alexander didn’t look happy.

“What are the questions?”

“Question one,” Clementine said.  “How may I, Clementine Robertjon, or anyone I designate to search on my behalf, access the most valuable pieces of information you keep on me?”

“Pieces of information?” he asked.

She shrugged.

Diagram? Avery thought.  Is this the arrangement that has the Aware all secured and trapped?

“Ask your second question.”

“How many I, or anyone I designate to search on my behalf, access the most valuable pieces of information you keep on Ted Havens, tenant and assistant manager of the building?”

“And the third?”

“How may I, or anyone I designate to search on my behalf, access the most valuable pieces of information you keep on Sharon Griggs, tenant and sometime helper of yours?”

“I can guess how the rest go.”

“Are you going to rush home?” Alexander asked.  “It’s a long, long drive.  I can testify, as I just traveled the opposite direction.  And I can tell you that Wye may be injured, but he’s ready.  Everything you have on them, to keep them under your thumb?  It’ll be long gone by the time you even cross the provincial border.”

“I want my answer now,” Clementine declared.

“Third challenge!” Verona crowed.  “Is it going to be a third, sucky half-answer?  Because that sounds pretty bad for you as far as our back-and-forth go over your difficulties with the staff.  You’re wobbly with your word, got it on paper, as you’ve seen, you’re not keeping students-”

“Letting them die,” Fernanda said.

“-and you’re not keeping promises made to tenants?  Gosh!”

“Thank you,” Avery murmured to Clementine.

Ted laid a hand on Bristow’s shoulder.  Bristow, wordless and still, flinched, jerking back out of the way of the hand.  He took a few seconds to resume his prior posture, gradually resettling.

“Lawrence?” Alexander asked.  “Cede.”

“No,” Bristow said.

“There are ways.  Verona- if you’re claiming this win and he can’t dispute, would you agree to go easy?  There are ways to deal with the staff, the tenant situation, but you’d need to clear it.”

“Sure!  If he agrees to terms,” Verona said.  “Gladly, sure.”

“Stepping down,” Alexander said.

“You don’t get to take control over this!” Lucy raised her voice.  “You failed people here.  You let things slide, you- you ruined Seth!”

“Seth ruined Seth.”

“You don’t get to win here!” Lucy raised her voice.  “You don’t!  You don’t get to decide terms!  Bristow!”

“Can you call me Mr. Bristow, please?” the man asked.

“Step down,” Lucy said.  Verona nodded beside her.  “Make amends to Laila.  To all of us, we deserve something for the pain and stress you put everyone here through.  Release your hold on your tenants.”

“Agree to leave us alone,” Verona added.  “No retaliation against anyone here, or anyone related to us.”

“Giving up everything?” Bristow asked.  “Everything I’ve built, everything I am?”

“You’d be alive, you’d even be able to salvage relationships,” Lucy said.

“I wouldn’t even have the flames of hate and revenge to drive me forward.”

“You’d be alive.  Free.”

Unforsworn, Avery finished.

“I won’t make this any easier by surrendering.  I’ll leave the mess that follows to you,” Bristow intoned, his eyes downcast, the light making veins and lines on his head very visible.  “In a little while, bad things will come to pass.  Things that end cities.  I don’t know what they are, but the conditions are right.  What I was going to build here would have prepared us.  Yes, it’s harsher.  Yes, fewer students make it through, but we’d be ready and organized against threats to come.  It won’t be in the next few years, it may not even be in the next decade, but I think these wrongs are coming in your lifetimes.  And I damn the lot of you to it.”

He turned.

Ted reached for him again, and he smacked Ted’s hand aside.

“Bristow!” Alexander called out.

“You most of all,” Bristow said, without turning back.

On either side of him, in blue tinted windows that glowed with interior light, x-shaped eyes opened, orange-red.

They multiplied, opening from bottom to top, in all of the available windows.

“This is dumb,” Verona’s voice was barely audible, talking to Bristow.

Verona’s eyes were purple with the Sight, visible only to fellow Sight-havers, and as the orange eyes filled the window, turning it from pale blue to orange-red, Verona’s eyes reflected that, doing much the same, purple to a warmer color.

The Aware, looking back, didn’t seem to notice the interior lights were different.

“As my last act as headmaster, you and your friends are expelled, for acting against a teacher.”

“I don’t think you’re headmaster anymore,” she said.

Bristow shook his head.  He turned to Musser to say something.

He pushed the doors open.  For the brief moment the double doors were open wide enough to let him pass through, the room was bright and stirred, as if an orange-red flame burned inside.

The doors closed behind him.

The multitude of orange-red eyes closed, or turned away.

The interior returned to a soft blue.

Verona didn’t even seem to flinch.  Lucy’s eyes were downcast.

Avery felt a bit sick.

“As practical lessons go,” Alexander Belanger said, “that was a steep one.  Shall we-”

“You’re not headmaster,” Nicolette called out.

Alexander stopped.

“Can someone get Ray?” Nicolette asked.  “Zed?  I know you’re still mad, but please?  Tell him Bristow’s gone, he doesn’t need to worry about taking sides anymore.”

Zed nodded.  He hurried up the stairs, past the remnants of Bristow’s continent.  Into the building.  No ‘fire’ of x-shaped eyes burned inside as he pushed the door open.

“This goes smoothest if I resume my position as teacher.”

“Let’s wait for Ray,” Nicolette said.

Ray didn’t take long at all.

He stepped outside, wearing red sunglasses despite having been indoors, long hair combed, dress shirt and suit jacket on, with a very narrow red tie.

“Sorry for the inconvenience,” Raymond said.  “Bristow’s gone?  Can I get confirmation?”

There were wary nods here and there.

“Students, I’m sorry.  I believe we’ll have a reduced class selection for the next few days while we get things sorted and organized.  Mr. Musser, while I have your ear, would you happen to be available?”

The man shook his head.

“Mrs. Graubard?”

The woman nodded.

“Alright.  I know some students haven’t eaten.  I’ll ask the staff to please put something quick together.  Guests- you are-?”

“Tenants,” Clementine raised her voice.

“Tenants of Lawrence Bristow.  You’re welcome to stay for dinner.  It shouldn’t take more than ten minutes to get ready once I get them started, and the quality is top notch.  If you are unable or unwilling to make the drive home tonight, I can look into accommodations.  Things are chaotic, so I beg your patience in all things.  I beg everyone’s.  I’m not good at this, I don’t enjoy it, but I will do my best for all of you.”

“Raymond,” Alexander said.

Raymond held up a finger.  “Students, please be aware, I’ve expressed a very strict no-tolerance policy in the past.  If there are any lingering disputes, please put them to bed, or reach out to staff to resolve them.  If I have to expel anyone as a result of this, rest assured, I will not be paving the way for those expelled students to return.  A headmaster will replace me, I’m sure, and their policies will be their policies.  I’ll do what I can to ensure the selection is as agreeable to everyone as is possible.”

“Ray,” Alexander said, approach.

“Alex.  Can you please seek accommodations elsewhere?”

“This isn’t the way to do this.”

“Please,” Raymond said, voice firm.  “I will find you as soon as matters are settled here.  I hate deadlines, but I’ll suggest a gentle one of two or three days.”

“Make it a vote,” Alexander told Ray.

Raymond shook his head.

“You realize, by taking any other course, you earn my enmity.”

“By making it a vote, with what you’ve set up here in this school, I’d be making you headmaster.”

“The alternative is having me as a very dangerous enemy.”

“Understood,” Ray answered, quiet, very serious.

Alexander remained where he was.

A student put up their hands.

“I know there are a lot of questions,” Raymond said, to the student.  “And many of you will want to speak to me.  I’ll do what I can, but if you’ll be patient, ask classmates what you can, get comfortable, eat when food is served… hopefully questions can hold until tomorrow.  I’ll send Durocher out with her apprentices to address any medical care.”

Alexander turned.

His eye fell on Avery, and it was bright in the gloom.

She watched him warily as he strode on down to where his car was parked.

His headlights flared on.  As that light faded, his eyes remained bright.  More anger and intensity in there than there’d been in that orange-red frenzy-fire that Bristow had walked into.

That kind of anger, that kind of fury?  He wasn’t going to let things sit.  He’d come for them, and soon.

Having me as a very dangerous enemy, he’d said.  And she believed him.

Gone Ahead – 7.x

Interlude

Before

“Ray, sweetie,” Durocher said.  “Don’t spend all night with your nose in your computing machines.”

“Computing machines?” Ray asked.  He leaned back, closing his laptop.  “Really.”

“I’ve had a few drinks, and I don’t understand half that stuff when I’m sober,” she told him, before laughing.

“Be careful,” he told her.  He sighed.  “For others’ sake, if not your own.  Especially after a hard day like today.”

“I’m not really very drunk,” she told him, sitting down beside him, and laying a hand on his shoulder.  “I’m other things.  If you’re tapped out, you and I could retire upstairs.  Work out the leftover restlessness and adrenaline of the day.”

He shook his head.  “I’m attached.  You know that.”

“It wouldn’t mean anything.  You know that.”

“It would to me.”

She sighed.  “Should I go find some other hapless gentleman?”

“If you like.  I wouldn’t mind catching up, though, without the chaos of everything getting in the way.”

“If I stay, will you stop peeking at that laptop of yours?”

“I have to keep tabs on things.”

She shook her head, then shifted position draping herself into the space next to him, head on his shoulder, leg against his.  There wasn’t anything to it, no intention or anything, and her attention was clearly elsewhere, but that was the kind of person she was.  Especially after a couple drinks.

Larry Bristow laughed at something.

A slightly strained laugh, like he’s trying to inject the humor into things by force.

Larry was short, haircut simple but tidy, parted, lifted up at the brow.  He’d worn a blazer with a t-shirt, but his clothes had been torn and taken the brunt of a tide of centipede blood, as had his slacks.  The man had been able to change his pants and t-shirt, but hadn’t had a replacement blazer.  It looked better, him wearing a t-shirt.  It looked better.  His body was a bit muscular, a bit padded.

The best he’d ever look, maybe.

Durocher, by contrast, hadn’t changed her clothes- a black lace top that was probably meant for someone a bit larger around the chest.  It worked for her, on the same level that let her lounge beside Ray so casually.  Her hair was a bit shaggy, by accident rather than by design, the upper edge of her ichor-stained top sagged perilously low across her chest, and her dress, a lighter material, had more of the blue-black stains that caught normal light a bit like there was a blacklight.  She’d kicked off her sandals and the strapping of one of those sandals was being idly toyed with by her toes.  She’d washed off her face, hair, arms, and legs, but had done nothing about the clothes; the metallic and ammonia-like tang of the insect blood hung around her as a perverse sort of perfume.

More like a wild animal than a person, in many ways.  Here, in a bar, late at night, the group of them gathered, her slightly inebriated, tired self was akin to a tiger stretched out in a sunbeam.  The claws so easily protruded as she stretched.  A hand flexed, multiple joints popping.  A long thumbnail had been split in two, cuticle to fingertip, blood crusting the gap, and she examined it.

“You’re stronger,” Ray said.

“I sure hope so.  All that time away.”

“Seems like every time you go away, you get twice as strong.  Anything interesting come of this trip?”

“Yeah,” she said, and she smiled about as wide as was possible, while her gaze was vacant, like her mind was very far away or she was looking at something that wasn’t in that bar.  “We got bored.  We went into its den.”

“Of a primeval?”

She nodded, still smiling, gaze unfocused but generally aimed at her thumbnail.  Her gaze clarified, and she met Ray’s eyes.  “Itty bitty one.  Type seven-E, about.  Complex.”

“Complex?”

“The locals were wondering where their local goddess got off to.  My suspicion is that it found her or she went after it.  They got embroiled in a battle to the death, and it subsumed her.  Bit of goddess mixed in with a carrion beast from aeons before aeons existed.”

The seven-E was a shorthand, initially joking, that Durocher had started to take seriously.  Elephants.  Each E was about six and a half tons of mass.  At seven E, a little over forty five tons.

A sliver of primeval with the mass of a bull could kill a lot of groups of practitioner.  Primevals sat comfortably at a tier where gods, angels, demons, and the highest spirits dwelt.  Things that could be contained, but never truly defeated.

Ray put up a hand.  She looked at it, bewildered.

“You know what a high five is,” he told her.

“I feel like decades have passed,” she said, grunting as she sat up.  She gave him a high five.  “I want to get high, get drunk, drag some guy back to my den so I can demolish the hardest parts of them with the softest parts of me-”

Luisa Crowe choked on her drink.  Musser laughed.

“I’m noticing you use the same terminology for your lair and the lair of the beast you were hunting,” Alexander commented.

“I have no comment on that specific coincidence,” Durocher said.  “Some people ask not to be bothered until they’ve had their coffee.  Well, I don’t want to be bothered until I’ve had my vices and deciphered my new find.”

“I don’t know if I should feel sorry for this hypothetical guy you’re dragging back to your den, or if I should be envious,” Alexander said.  He leaned forward to stub out a cigarette.  Alexander wasn’t local, but he was at peace here.  Mellowing out after a triumphant day.

“Not hypothetical, Alex,” Raymond said.  “Ree gets what she wants.”

“I want to study my new find but I won’t be able to think straight until I’ve had a bit of what I’ve been missing all this time.”

“All this time?” Raymond asked.  “It’s been less than a year.”

“In a land before time.”

“Isn’t that a movie?” Larry asked.

“And a place beyond defined physical boundaries.”

“That’s not a movie,” Larry said.

“Make it,” Musser said.  “I have some funds if you need startup.”

“At a high markup,” Larry retorted.  “No, no thank you.  And I’d have to move, just when I’m getting things underway in Winnipeg.”

“Too bad,” Musser said.  “I’ve been looking for a creative project.  “Luisa?”

“Only if I get a part in the film,” Luisa told him.

They were all so different.  Raymond wanted to relax, but he wouldn’t feel secure until everything had been checked over.  The Deus Ex Machina they had defeated and captured was still in holding, being filechecked, and the power would have to be parceled out.  Or, better yet, Raymond would work out a system to ensure that each person got something equivalent in power.  Trying to butcher something like that into its individual pieces was a task.

Musser and Luisa looked like they held themselves a bit above this space, and may never have normally come to a bar like this.  Musser was well-dressed, his clothes and accessories expensive.  The dynamic there was almost entirely the family he came from.  His dad had delegated him to act on behalf of the family, and Musser had been happy to get a chance to escape.  Even if this wasn’t his scene, he was prolonging going back home where he’d war with brothers over the imminent turnover of the family, and now that he was here, weariness was softening him around the edges, enough that he could fit into the conversation, instead of being upright and off to the side.

Luisa Crowe wouldn’t stick around, for entirely different reasons.  She’d become a mother young.  She had to get back for the kids.  Her entire life was divided into stark roles.  That she was relaxing here was a thing she was doing, that would have no relevance at all to her place in their dynamic.  Or her lack of place, really.

Durocher was physically exhausted but mentally, she tended to come away from encounters with the scariest and largest Others energized, wanting more.  Just a week or two off of her latest hunt, she was willing and wanting to track down this Blue Heron Throne god, while Alexander did the legwork to bring them all together.  She would sleep only with the help of drugs, drink, and more physical exhaustion, and she would wake interested and alert, wanting to research.

The least human human any of them knew.

Larry barely seemed to care.  That was his strength and weakness.  Every challenge was something fleeting, before the next thing.  It took a lot to get him to flinch, and it had worked for him up until this point.  A danger when facing a god was that any respect afforded was power handed to the god, with a direct connection to the person giving that sentiment.  Larry and Durocher occupied a similar space in refusing to cede any ground.  It had mattered.  And now, for him, it was a night like so many others.  Drinking, being a touch boorish, wheedling for attention, respect, and gratification.

And Charles, he hadn’t even gone into the structure, he had only sent help and promised to look into rescue if they couldn’t leave.  But they’d invited the man to celebratory drinks.  Thoughtful and lost in thought.  He was hard to get to know, and much of that had to be done not by reaching out or studying him, but by studying what he offered and what he asked, when he finally decided what he could ask that might be a good question.  Seeking validation and respect in the opposite way to how Larry did.  Too subtle, instead of too forced.

“Charles,” Larry said.  “What would your role be, if we collaborated to make a film?”

“Ah, well, you know I’m a crook,” Charles said.  “I could supply actors and actresses. Others.”

“Don’t discount the crookedness.  The closer you get to high society, the more you realize how many of those are there,” Musser said.  “Crooks make things happen, because systems are so broken and convoluted that they logjam, otherwise.”

“I’m not that kind of crook, and I don’t have any desire to be a part of high society.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Larry asked.

Charles looked bewildered.  “I mean I’m not a threat, I’m willing to help but… I know how cutthroat practitioner society can be, and I imagine hollywood or any other high society is the same.  I’d rather keep my throat intact.”

Bristow laughed again, forced.  “What about being wealthy?”

“No.  Seems like a hassle.  That’s not very high on my list of priorities.”

“I wonder if you just broke poor Larry’s brain,” Durocher said.

There was light laughter.

Charles wore a rumpled men’s overshirt over a black tee, was relatively clean shaven, considering they’d had a long day, and didn’t really style his hair.  The man was quiet, and looked simultaneously older and younger than the group here.  Chronologically younger, maybe, but he had an attitude and atmosphere that conveyed more.  A bit more melancholy.

Which seemed to work for some.  As others had come through the bar, two ladies had started up conversations with Charles.  Two had done so with Alexander, and none with Larry.  Raymond hadn’t received offers either, but his proximity to Durocher was probably a factor in that, as was the t-shirt with the cartoon character on it, and the headphones he had around his neck.  Musser sitting next to Luisa probably played a part in the man only getting one offer; on another night, without the false signaling, he would have beat them all.

“What do you want?” Musser asked Charles.

“If you’d asked me a year ago, my answer might have been the same as Larry here,” Charles said, eyes downcast, gaze sinking into his drink.

“I’ve got a little trinket for time travel in my collection,” Larry said.  “Given a great deal of time, I could maybe finagle getting a question back to you.  Question is, is it worth using it?”

“Hush,” Luisa said, smiling.

“Not by me.  I’m a minor player, very much on purpose,” Charles said, his voice taking on a bit of a grumble, until he sat up straighter.  “There’s a more comfortable territory that a practitioner can sit in, no greed, no ambition, not so minor they’re vulnerable, not so big they have others wanting their position.  I’ve tried to stay in that general area, as of late.”

“There’s something wrong with you,” Larry said.

“Part of flying under the radar might mean me leaving before there’s too much attention pointed my way.”

“Stay, stay!” Alexander said.  “Really.  I’m sure you have stories to tell.  Or anecdotes to share.  These things are important.”

“I’m not sure what I could share.  I’ve- you guys know my history.  But actually sharing parts of it…”

“Share,” Alexander said.  “We’re open minded.  War stories, perhaps?  First big wake-up call.  First Other that was out of your league, or closest to being out of your league.”

“This sounds like a trick question,” Durocher murmured.

There were some chuckles.

Alexander leaned forward.  “I’ll start.  Before our recent machine god, the blue heron on his throne, it would have been a Hangmaiden.  This would be your specialty, Larry.  Or Mrs. Crowe.”

“I’ve seen two,” Larry said, more serious.  “A Fisherwoman and a straight Aranaea Hangmaiden.  Yeah.”

Luisa Crowe shook her head.

“Lucky,” Larry said.

“I stay out of trouble for the most part.”

“One Other, three forms,” Alexander explained.  “They hew close to Fate.  The maiden, the matron, the crone.  Each form has different abilities.  One to do the luring, one to trap, one to reveal the spider and do the devouring.”

“They often hang around clubs,” Larry said.  “Or anywhere people go to find dates.  Always glimpsed out of the corner of your eye, taking a lot of time to pick their targets.  They get in close and then ensnare.”

“She was strong,” Alexander said.  “Love at first sight, when she wanted it.  And that’s dangerous when you’re an Augur, and you See a lot.  She knew that.  She made a sport of hunting us.”

“Brave,” Charles said.  “Stupid.”

“She got away with it for a long time,” Alexander said, his expression serious.  “Invited herself over.  Flirted but put off consummation.  Her ‘snare’ was to find things valuable and important to you and mark them.  Keepsakes, things from childhood, projects you were neglecting because you were so infatuated with her.  A childhood stuffed toy in the back of a closet, now festooned with biting spiders and throbbing clusters of eggs.  Cobwebs growing on that pile of paperwork in your study you can’t even bear to look at.  A letter from a first love has handwriting get more and more spidery until it grows legs and crawls from the page.”

“And signs, I’d guess?” Luisa asked.

Alexander nodded.  “Every hint she can give you without you pulling away is another tether, tying you to the fate she wants to hand you.  Dreams about being bound, for example.  Or they’ll even unnerve or reveal glimpses of their true self to neighbors, family, and friends, with the intent that you’ll ignore those hints and be drawn deeper into it.  In the end, she reveals her third form, and it’s half-woman, half-spider, and you look around, realize you haven’t eaten in five days, you’re weak, and you couldn’t go in your kitchen if you did have the strength, because your apartment is filled with dense webs and small biting spiders.”

“You survived,” Raymond said.  He lifted his beer.  “Cheers.”

“My cousin passing gave me the opportunity to lead the family.  Ambition won out.”  Alexander clinked his glass against Raymond’s.  “She had my heart on a platter, for all intents and purposes.  So I told her I didn’t care.  I wish I hadn’t had to kill her.  I would have liked to question her.  In the aftermath I found a trove of little trinkets and scraps from other Augurs she hunted.  I could have gotten more.  I carved her eight eyes out, used the last one today, for our machine god, as a matter of fact.”

“Feeling melancholy about that?” Charles asked, staring down into his drink.

Alexander smiled.  “Weirdly so.  The end of the post-Scarlet chapter of my life.”

“Her name was Scarlet?” Larry asked.  “That’s a tell right there.”

“In my defense, I was a teenager,” Alexander said.  “And that’s my war story.  The one that almost got me.”

“Raymond?  I’m curious,” Musser said.

“It’s embarrassing,” Raymond said, dropping his eyes.  “You know the saying, the brighter the light, the sharper the shadow?”

There were a few nods.

“I got a tip from one of the men who taught me.  A student of one of his colleagues went down into the digital aether and didn’t surface.  I knew I should be wary, if it was going to be easy, they would have gone after him themselves.  Navigating a foreign technomancer’s systems… it’s like entering a dungeon.  Winding corridors, spaces, folders, subsystems with their own purposes, security… and other hazards that move in when you have any sufficiently dark, empty space.”

“And then you have your man,” Durocher said.

“The target, the apprentice who didn’t end up coming up for air.  Crazed, on edge, and very familiar with the space.  I was so fixated on those things, and so nervous, I missed a step when turning on the metaphorical lights.  I cast myself in sharp shadow, and unbeknownst to me, something seized on my digital silhouette.  I plumbed the rest of the depths, I seized systems, evicted residents, gathered data that I could sell.  My loot from this digital dungeon, if you want to call it that.  Dealt with the apprentice.  All in all, about forty five real seconds passed.”

“And the silhouette?” Musser asked.

“Had enough of me and my life to emulate anything and everything it wanted.  Passwords, security, contact information for everyone I cared enough about to keep in touch with.  It knew my history, the music I liked… and I’d been careful.  A lot of that was air-gapped, or obfuscated.  Didn’t matter.  What it didn’t get or decipher in those forty-five seconds, it got in the next few days, through agents it hired or unwitting people who answered a voice that sounded like mine on the phone.  It started to materialize physically.”

“Doppleganger?” Charles asked.

“No, not exactly.  Data vampire, more like.  Started applying for name changes, creating new bank accounts and moving funds, using my reputation and my word to create the image of a new person with a new name.  If what it was doing wasn’t enough, the time I had to spend in there, chasing after it, looking for digital fingerprints, seeing if it had laid groundwork to pop back up again in the future… that did damage of its own.  Hector was an infant.”

“This wasn’t all that long ago, then,” Alexander said.

“One stupid mistake, cost me months,” Raymond said.  “I hit the big red button nineteen times. The big red button is-”

“Nuke everything nearby,” Alexander said.

Raymond nodded.  He looked frustrated.  “Except everything nearby was a good chunk of my life.  I thought this would be a good diversion.  A bit of beer money, pot.  And then… so much empty space.  So many ways things can be streamlined, or needs can be filled.”

“Raymond’s work is getting international attention,” Durocher said.  “Lords of Paris, London, and Moscow.  They’re pleased and they’re willing to pay if he’ll give them more.”

There was some cheering at that, some excitement.  Raymond protested all of it, as glasses clinked.

“I don’t even know if I want to pursue it.”

Charles met Ray’s eyes, nodding.

“You’re mad if you don’t,” Larry said.

“I want to curl up with my wife and kid and watch cartoons.  Put Heck to bed, then smoke up and bore my poor wife about technology, and pretend to be annoyed or bored while she tells me about teaching kids.”

“A life that stops at that sounds like it could be more of a bullet to dodge than the identity vampire,” Larry joked.

There were a few chuckles at that, more from Larry’s friends.

“My war story isn’t an Other,” Musser said, “Practitioner.  Stupid fucking kid.  Became my apprentice on a trial basis.  Wanted to know more, faster.  The more he pushed, and the more he disrespected me, the more I slowed him down.  My hope was that he’d start listening, or he’d match my pace.”

“You don’t want to hand an apprentice the keys to the proverbial kingdom in the first little while anyway,” Alexander said.

“Yeah,” Musser agreed.

“Wait, was this Yellowston?” Larry asked.  “Wondered what happened to that kid.”

“This happened,” Musser said.

“He kept giving me the stink eye, that one time I was over,” Larry said.

“He gave me two years of stink eye.  Doesn’t help, when you’re trying to make a bid to be head of the family, being ground down from above, sniped at from the sides, and you’re getting crap from below.  He never did shape up.  He snapped instead.  Turned on me.”

“Was he smart about it?” Alexander asked.

“He almost got me.  I tasked him with drawing a diagram.  Standard grunt work for an apprentice, but you do have to be careful.  I did the intricate runework in the center, tasked him with the rest.  Easily two hours of putting chalk to floor.  The design at the end was thirty feet across.  It was a major project, and the biggest I’d given him.  I thought he’d be eager enough to move forward and move up that he wouldn’t make mistakes.    He put intentional flaws in the border.  Aimed at the lectern where I was prepared to stand.”

“You spotted it?” Durocher asked.

“I’m betting it was the human element,” Charles said.  “He gave something away in body language.”

“Humans are frequently the weakest part of any system,” Raymond said.

Nerd,” Durocher whispered.

Musser shook his head.  “Maybe he did give something subtle away.  But for me… it was supposed to be symmetrical.  But as I walked around the room, looked out over the diagram for anything obvious, something felt off.  I lit a candle and cast a shadow to check.  With an even number of studs at the border, the shadow should have cut between two details, stretched directly through the middle of the diagram, and passed through two matching details on the other side.  It was lopsided.  From there, other things jumped out at me.”

“Imagine if you’d been the type to never pay mind to chalkwork again, after teaching it to your apprentices,” Larry said.   “You have to stay brushed up on the basics.”

“That was a factor, I suppose,” Musser said.  “He rotated the exterior border, moving the chalk on the floor to point it at me, while pushing power into the diagram.  I asserted my ownership over the space, stopped it just in time.  Pushed it back toward him.  He broke at the last second, ran, and I put my fist into his throat.  While he sputtered and choked, I pointed the diagram at him and let him have what he planned for me.  Now he’s a stain on the wall, a vestige of his former self, aware of things but… dim.”

“You should go right home and let him go, Musser,” Luisa said.  Her expression was troubled.

“I don’t like to discard resources.  I could have use of the vestige later.”

“He doesn’t deserve that.”

“The powers that be do like eyes traded for eyes,” Larry intoned, looking at nobody in particular.

Luisa looked troubled, like she was going to say something, but she was interrupted.

“What do you even say to the boy’s family?” Alexander asked.

“That he made an error, he paid the price.  I noted it looked intentional, suggested there might be justifiable reason for retaliation or sanction if we looked at his phone and did some investigating, and found he’d been given orders.”

“Now you know an investigator, trained in these matters,” Alexander said.

“I already know.  Keeping the who, when, where, and why up my sleeve until later lets me eventually re-establish contact with the Yellowston family.”

“Smart,” Alexander said.  “I don’t think I’d have it in me to hold back on revenge.”

“You have to, don’t you?” Larry asked.  “To make the revenge effective?  Make it so that no matter what they do, even if they escape the specific fate you have planned, they’re still ruined.”

“I prefer to look forward just enough to ensure my fates are inescapable,” Alexander answered.

“Do you have one, Charles?  A close call?  A war story?”

“Mine were human,” Charles said.  “Well… technically, it was a revenant.  She came after us, licked with flame like she’d just been set on fire.  This was… I was barely over sixteen, I think.  A gang in Toronto was on the rise, and whenever they got stumped or ran into something strange, they’d come to me.  I’d tell them, hm, you know, I’m thinking of one particular asshole, he’s a real monster.  If you want to leave an indelible mark in their minds and hearts, this would be just the bastard.”

“Bogeyman?”

“Or a vestige with a bit of elemental nestled inside.  Or a ghoul, if I want the crime scene cleaned up.”

“You’re a scary man, Charles.”

“I was scarier then, even if I didn’t realize it.  Revenant came tearing through.  Horror movie stuff, custom endings for each of us, starting with the lowest rank guys, then moving up.  Attacked our business, our alliances, stock, money, revealed secrets.  Crucified one guy with rebar she’d hooked up to a heat source, took the bones out of a woman’s arms and legs and left her in a shallow hole in the rain, to drown.  She had a vendetta in the way only the vengeful undead can.  And the thing that got me was… we had no idea who it was.”

“Each death is a hint,” Alexander said.  “But you know that.”

“Yeah.  The revenants need to stay anchored in this world.  They do it with keepsakes, which means you’ve got to look for the places they hit before they start coming after people.  Reach the start of the trail before they get to the last of you.  And we couldn’t.  The guys I was working with cooperated, I told them to investigate and they did.  We contacted police, we were everywhere.  We narrowed it down to a certain neighborhood, a select few people, and couldn’t get any further than that.”

“How’d you get out of it?” Raymond asked.

“I didn’t.  She got the third, second, and the top guy.  I pulled out all of my tricks.  A few of my monsters, and she still got me.  Decided I wasn’t directly involved enough to die, so she’d leave it up to fate.  Handcuffed me in the electrical room of an abandoned warehouse with a lot of the evidence.  Cops eventually came, and I got my first stint in prison.”

“What’s the moral to this story?” Ray asked.

“If you’re going to kill, don’t kill with prejudice?” Musser asked.  “Just ticks them off.”

“You say that but what happened to the Yellowston apprentice?” Larry asked.

“He offed himself, really.  There was justice in it.”

“Or don’t kill at all?” Luisa asked.

“There is no police force governing us.  We’re still, generally speaking, in a wild west of practice,” Alexander said.  “If you don’t act with prejudice, you’re setting precedent.”

“They were civilians,” she said, her voice was sharper.  “Innocents.”

“And Charles wasn’t involved.  The revenant gave him a pass, pretty much,” Musser said.  “Don’t blame the man.”

“I won’t argue with all of you here, me outnumbered.  Not after two beers.  Consider me thoroughly unimpressed.  Excuse me-” she said, her voice rising with that last bit, anything but polite.

“You’re leaving?” Larry sounded aghast.

“I’m using the facilities.”

Luisa navigated her way to the back of the building.

“Don’t go killing her anytime soon or you’ll have another vengeful dead to deal with,” Alexander joked.

Larry laughed.  “You were asking about the moral, Ray.  I think the moral is that Charles deserves a drink.  If she’d had a bit more fire in her, he wouldn’t be here with us today, to regale us with… what was it?  Petitioners, edicts, and covenants?”

“Among others,” Charles replied.  “No drink for me, thanks.  If I lose half my power for the next while by being gainsaid, I won’t have much of anything, unlike some of you.”

“Drinking and keeping to your word is a cultivated skill, Charles,” Larry said.  “You train it.”

“If you can trust him on anything it’s that,” Musser said, smiling.

Alexander leaned back. “Seeing him tonight I wonder if it’s his rule of discourse.  If you’re always sloppy with your word and a bit inebriated, it might blunt the impact.”

“Blunts the power too,” Musser said.

“Is this how you see me?” Larry asked.

There was more laughter.

Charles was staring into his drink, and he looked morose.

Ray nudged his leg with a toe.

Charles looked up.  “I made mistakes.  Should have paid more attention to what I was enabling.  They deserved those ends, more or less.”

“Don’t be a downer, Charles,” Larry said.  “The only mistake that matters is the one that ends you.  The rest are chances to learn.”

Luisa emerged a bit too fast to have actually used the facilities.  Her face was wet, like she’d rinsed it.  She paused at the bar.  Alexander watched her.

“Charles,” Larry said.  “When we were mid-job, you mentioned these special Others.”

“Loose category,” Charles said.

“Are we really going to talk shop?” Musser asked.

“Please!” Alexander cut in.  “Unless Marie wants to share her horror story?”

She shook her head.  “None I think worthy of sharing that you don’t already know the details of.”

“Then I’ll share what I know,” Charles told Larry.  “Others, bound by rules, get certain leeway.  If they must ask questions or must do certain things, like a revenant having a very specific path laid out before it, that’s… in our analogy of a bank heist, it’s the drill.  It’s more solid, it has more force.”

“Can that apply to people, then?” Larry asked.

“Certainly does,” Alexander answered.  “Practitioners as well.”

Luisa returned, taking her seat, but her phone started ringing almost immediately.

Alexander, situated so Musser was between him and Luisa, sat back, his eyes flashing gold as he turned on the Sight.

Raymond, too, opened his laptop.  Checking again.  God still bound, and the nearby phone call… yeah.

“Yes, okay.  Thank you,” Luisa said.  She hung up.  “I’m going to go.”

“What a shame,” Musser told her.  “Back to the kids?”

“That’s the intent.  Good work today, everyone.  Raymond?”

“Your dues will be delivered soon.”

“We need to do this more,” Alexander said.  “Did you notice the catch in our stories?”

“Is this important?  I’d like to return to my children,” Luisa said.

“It’s that we’re very strong when we’re united.  It’s when we’re alone and interacting with dangerous forces, be they practitioner, Other, or man, that we find ourselves at risk.  Which is a roundabout way of saying I’ve enjoyed this, more than I’ve enjoyed myself in a long while, and we should do it again.”

“No hard feelings if you can’t get away from the kids,” Raymond said.  Alexander arched an eyebrow at him.

“These things get harder and harder,” Luisa said.

She wasn’t talking about getting away from the kids.

“The age difference is too much for a playdate, isn’t it?” Raymond asked.

Luisa nodded.

“Take care.”

“I will.  You too, Raymond.  Give an extra kiss to-”

“Hector.  Or Heck, affectionately.”

Luisa nodded.  “Kiss Heck for me, then.  Bye all.”

They said their goodbyes.  Luisa pulled on jacket and scarf, then ducked out into the cold.

“I suppose we scared her off,” Alexander said.  “That call wasn’t from her family.”

“She asked the bar to call,” Raymond said.  “It’s fine.  Let her go, let her enjoy her family.”

“She’s a resource that may yet be tapped,” Musser said.  Larry nodded.

“But for what?” Alexander asked.

Musser shrugged.

“You’re lined up to become head of the biggest family here,” Alexander told him.

“And you’re already heads of your own families, or once-apprentices, now free,” Musser said.  “I have no designs, outside of silly ideas for movies or other vanity projects.”

Larry laced his fingers together and cracked his knuckles.  “Carry on?  Tell me about these others?”

“Or maybe I should take over,” Musser said.  “To keep Larry from going on at length about his passions.”

Larry laughed.

“Still awake?” Raymond asked Durocher.

“I’m overdue on sleep too,” she admitted, reclining in that tiger-in-a-sunbeam way, arms draped out over the back of the cushioned bench.  “Somehow that rarely make the list of priorities.”

“You tend to fold drugs into the mix.  Tranquilizers.”

“I do.  You’re a very smart man, Ray.  I don’t suppose you can oblige?” she murmured.

“Be careful,” he said, reaching into his bag.  As he was bent over, he also flipped up his laptop, checking.  The god was still bound, security was still within normal levels.

He straightened and passed her a packet.  She went to take it, and he held onto it.”

“In exchange, tell me about how this place was laid out?” Raymond asked.  “With the god-primeval?”

“If I must,” she told him.  She laid a hand on his cheek, staring at him.

“I’m attached, Marie, and you’re tipsy.”

“I’m not looking at you like that.  Don’t worry.  You’re quieter tonight than usual.”

“Scary business.  I’ve got people to go back to.”

“I could never do that.”

“I would fear for what your child’s life would be like, if and when you were to have one.  I’ll face down a god for the sake of my intellectual curiosity, get some power I can hand down to Hector when the time comes.”

“You can work with London, Moscow, and the other powerhouses.  That’s security and power surer than anything else.”

“You talk so casually about facing down monsters bigger and more enduring than dragons.  I’ll think on it.  For now, tell me about this space the complex seven-E was in.”

Durocher sighed.  “Netherlands.  Veluwe.  As mankind grows, its territory shrinks.  It held onto a pocket, accessed by taking a certain path…”

Now

Alexander exhaled a cloud of smoke through his open car window.  The inside of the car was hazy, and glimmers of the scene of years past were cast out into the smoke.

Outside the car, in the woods, there were no crickets, no animal sounds, no sounds of traffic.  The only noise was smoke rubbing against smoke and producing whispers.

“Accessed by taking a certain path.  The way is harsh and troubled.  The bog asphodel decorates some areas.  Look for a bushel.  Seven on the left side, three on the right.  Then walk past.  The peat bog will swallow you.  Let it, and wait four minutes.  You’ll drop into a deep cavern of thick mud and bog plants.”

“How do you bind such an entrance?  Especially to- you can call on it?”

“Her.  We sank figurines into the muck around the portal.  Figures for each of the seven ages of mankind.  Others are doing more.  But yes, I can call on her.  She’s not very big, only a seven-E, but I think she’s very pretty.”

“It’s hard to imagine, the way the others have looked.”

“Oh, it’s not so different from that.  No solid form, just everything you’d hope to see in a carrion-eating animal, and then some, twisting through itself in a way that’s never the same from moment to moment.  But it’s got an elegance you wouldn’t expect to see in something that devours the dead.”

“It’s that goddess, I bet.”

Even taking his time, he couldn’t keep it alive forever.  He’d burned his cigarette down to the filter.  He stubbed it out on the car mirror.

He saved one from every pack he smoked, and he liked to smoke in important meetings and negotiations.  He kept meticulous notes, using practices that recorded things for him, and the cigarettes were a backup.  He changed his brand every year, which helped with keeping track.

Eyes half-lidded, one arm extended out the window, still holding onto the smashed cigarette butt, he picked up his phone and dialed.

“I heard you had a bit of trouble, Alexander.”

“Word travels fast.  I don’t call for the commentary.”

Alexander discarded of the butt, and made a one-handed cut of a deck.  He checked, cut, checked again.

“What do you need?”

“Veluwe national forest.  I want a hold on certain action.”

“You’re going to make me send some poor apprentice into the deep woods to get eaten alive by bugs?”

“A peat bog, not a forest.  And don’t send anyone you value.  It might be better if they aren’t practitioners at all.  Just make sure they follow instructions without fail.”

“What instructions?”

“Find flowers, they’re called bog asphodel.  They can have red or orange fruit at the right time of year.  I have no idea if this is that time of year, over there.  Seven on the left side, three on the right.  They walk between those points, in until they start to sink.  They should let themselves sink, grope in the mud until they find something.  Figurines were soaked into the muck.  I want one, but failing that, I want it gone.”

“At the time of your choosing.  I get the impression this is more complicated.”

“It is.  Don’t leave a trail between you and whoever you send.”

“Expensive, Alexander.”

“I can pay it.”

“Then I’ll send someone.  Soon?”

“ASAP.”

“I’ll arrange it.  I’ll contact you shortly when they’re positioned.  You know the drill.  Text when you want us to act.  If it’s not ‘cancel’, we treat it as a cue to go.”

“Thank you.”

Alexander hung up.

He lit up another cigarette.  Not one of his ones from the past, this time.

Just a regular cigarette.

Sitting in his car like this, figuring out his next moves to get the desired results, it felt like he was young again.  Still learning under his uncle, still doing the private investigation and petty criminal work.  He picked up a collection of large photographs, each nearly as large as the folder he’d been keeping them in.  He peered at them through the haze of smoke.

Raymond was in his office.  The meeting between Raymond and the major powers was over.  Raymond was still alive.  He was checking things on his computer.

It was so tempting to target Raymond in this.  Zed would be the easiest target, if he wanted to utterly destroy Ray.  Zed was…

He checked.

Zed and Brie, sitting on the steps outside the west entrance, Brie on a step below Zed, Zed behind her, his arms around her.  Zed had a bruise on his face.  Brie had been scuffed up, and one of those scuffs interfered with her binding.  A few waifs from the Devouring Song were lingering in the area.  Zed and Brie ignored them for the time being.

He touched a pen he kept in his dash.  It was no larger than an ordinary pen, but it might have weighed fifteen pounds.  It twitched in his hand.

Defenses were down, they were still being careful, but not careful enough.

If he had it in his mind to bring the full bearing of his wrath down on their heads, then he could.  A stroke of the pen, to turn that vulnerability into a critical flaw.  Brie would break, and the devouring song would be free, Zed would be at the epicenter, close enough to be pulled into it.

And Ray would be destroyed.  Alexander would have to act while Ray was still reeling.

His preparation with Durocher’s peat bog was a multi-layered attack.  On its own, if he were to use it, he would be putting Durocher and Ray at a disadvantage.  Durocher because she had taken responsibility for it.  Raymond because Alexander could let word slip that he knew and had exploited it because of Ray.  Minor, but it was something, and a furious Durocher was something to behold.

But it was a critical tool in case he ended up facing other enemies.

Raymond was the enemy that had the most focus.  Raymond hadn’t let him take his school back.

He checked on his other enemies.  Bristow- the picture was distorted, stretched out, like a misprint.  He tossed it onto the passenger seat.  He’d had to push hard to force that outcome, but he’d wanted it to be his.

Bristow’s followers.  Clementine was with the other Aware.  Most of them.  Kevin was off on his lonesome.  Ted Havens was gone.

He exhaled cigarette smoke he’d been holding onto, directly onto the black and white photograph.  He turned it over, while it was still obscured, and touched his hand to it.

“Inscription,” he said.

The smoke cleared.  There was writing on the back.

Clementine Robertjon and the Sargent Hall Aware discuss how they weren’t truly themselves.

He gave it a shake, and the inscription disappeared partway through.  The scene changed slightly too.

He tossed that onto the passenger seat, where it joined Bristow’s.

Sargent Hall.  The picture was distorted.  Another misprint, but it was more like two photographs had been taken in quick succession, or one photograph taken in the midst of an earthquake.

He couldn’t use too many calls for inscription, and he already had some information from Wye.  The residents were agitated and didn’t know why.

It would get worse before it got better.  But they lived there, and there they’d remain.  Low rent had its own traction, even if Bristow was gone.

Putting that photo away, he had another glimpse of the one with Raymond.  Raymond looked into the camera, so to speak, meeting Alexander’s eyes, even though he barely seemed to realize it.  Durocher stood beside him.

There was a faint growling, as if from far away, but from something very large.

Augury didn’t like Durocher.  Watching her by any kind of Sight was like swimming in shark infested waters.  There was no guarantee the bite would come immediately, but it would come eventually.  Even Shellie had mimicked the effect while pretending to be Durocher, apparently.

He didn’t want to do more than dip his toes into those waters, and Raymond could retaliate if he didn’t like being watched.  Not that he was really that personality type.  More likely, he’d retreat behind defenses.

Alexander withdrew, putting the photo aside and turning it face down.

He’d act soon.  It was a payback of sorts to make Raymond twist in the wind.  He knew retaliation was coming, and he was an anxious, introspective man.  Driving him into his own mind where worry could eat at him would be fair spice for Alexander’s retaliation.

A few things remained True.  Alexander had a seat of prominence in the building.  Raymond could wall in that space with concrete and Alexander would still belong there.  A vote was easier because it required a half dozen to a dozen nudges.  But he would find his way.  That was the guarantee the demesne provided, its true purpose, beyond being just a study or a place to work in.

He’d then have to tap resources.  New staff.  New structure.  Lawrence had wanted to shrink the school, distilling it down to its key, loyal, and effective players.  Alexander would have to find a way that made it feel natural and right that he resumed power.  Pushing Raymond over the edge would be a punishment of sorts, and it would be Just.

Next photograph.  Nicolette lay in bed, fast awake.  Seth was in the room, sitting so he could look out the window.  He looked diminished.

“Having doubts about your chosen path?” he asked the photograph.

Cigarette smoke swirled around it, hazy within the car.  As a whorl passed over the picture, the image changed.  She was looking at him.  Seth was looking at her, like she’d said something.

One curl of smoke later, she lay with her back to him.

The trio from Kennet had played a big part in stealing his victory out from under him.  He picked out a photograph.  Taken by Seth during the first day of school, it now showed them inside the school, instead of just outside the doors.  They were in the woods, talking to various Others.  Goblins, the many-eyed god-begotten, the nightmare, the opossum companion.  Some he’d seen in his visit to Kennet, others he hadn’t.

“Inscription.”  He exhaled the word with a mouthful of smoke, washing over the photograph.

The Kennet trio send friendly Others home.

He waited, studying the photograph for details.  The inscription was telling.  The phrasing.  Not unsummoning, not releasing.  Just… sending them home.

After so much fighting, tension, and bitterness, so many were relieved the worst was over.  Bristow was gone, and even to those who had liked or loved Bristow, however that was possible, there was no denying that things were stable again.

Now people rested.  They let their guards down, they unsummoned Others.  They were all on the same page, they thought.  All tired, all relieved to have stability.  It helped to put enmities aside.

Alexander gave the photo another look.

The Others were gone.  Only some scattered local goblins and the opossum Other remained.

Lucille Ellingson was walking away, rubbing at her arm.  Going for a walk in the woods?

They were too unguarded.  All of them.

It’s my school and I have eyes everywhere.

And Alexander had, with purpose, chosen to stagger out his moves.  He’d taken his time, conserved his energy, and let them exhaust themselves fighting each other.

Picking up the heavy pen again, he touched it to the photograph.

Black ink bled into the photograph, taking on three dimensions in the scene.

“Abandonment,” Alexander said.  “A connection severed.”

The ink took on a sharp smell, then began to eat through the photograph.  He tossed it aside before it could burn his fingers.

Done.

This was the time to strike, that he saved energy from.

Some of the most powerful practitioners and families in the world were strict with Raymond as they were because information was power, and Raymond had made it a project to disseminate and share information.  Taking the power of practice from textbooks and paper to the digital space.  The moment he suggested a stance, or looked as though he might withhold that kind of power from certain groups while supporting others, the balance was shattered.  He could play kingmaker if he chose.

It didn’t matter that Raymond had little interest in such.  It mattered that he could.

Alexander would destroy the man, by suggesting impropriety to the right ears.

He dialed.

The line clicked.

There was only a heavy silence on the other end.  No buzz or static in the line, no disruptions in the signal.  Nothing.  As if the phone was off.

“Alexander Belanger,” he announced himself.

The weight of the silence on the other end was heavier, somehow.  Like there was an implicit ‘we know’.

“Raymond Sunshine defied established order and precedent when he didn’t hand the school back to me.  I have a claim.  It’s concern-”

The line clicked again.  He looked at the phone.

Call ended.

He had the sense that if he’d upset them, he’d already know it.

Maybe it was too trivial for their tastes.  They would discuss it internally, hand it to certain people lower in the internal structure, and it would make Raymond Sunshine’s week far worse.

There.  Done.  Easy.

Ray had to know what he was doing.

This would be a taste.

The bell that hung from Alexander’s rear-view mirror dinged.

He had to reach up to touch it and silence it.

The heavy, cricket-less, wind-less silence pressed on, outside.

Only a few enemies remained unaccounted for.  A few out in these woods, like Lucy Ellingson, who was going for a walk, now severed from critical connections.  They wouldn’t renew.

If only he was in his office.  He’d have a better view than he had out his car window.

He climbed out, still smoking, and slammed the door behind him.

That chime hadn’t felt like a chime that fit the Kennet trio.  Too sharp, and too heavy.

One enemy remained unaccounted for, and he didn’t have a good photo of the man.

The world was see-through, if he wanted it to be.

The trees provided little cover.

Ted Havens ducked under a branch, rounded a copse of trees, and emerged from foliage.  He was unscathed, unlike so many others.

“Saw me coming?” Ted asked.  “That’s not usual.”

“We’ve met many times before, I’m sure.”

“Less than you’d think.  You, like Lawrence’s colleague Durocher, you kept out of the way.  As if you saw me coming and slipped away before I could do more than glimpse you.”

“What are your intentions?” Alexander asked.

“I don’t know.  But this feels like the most important place to be.”

“I’m touched.  To help me or to stop me?”

“I don’t know yet.  Why does it feel like you’re similar to me?”

“Because you have experience.  You can look to the past, and there’s more to your past than in many family lines, start to present.”

Ted nodded.

“I look forward.”

“Ah.  People are usually more shy about outright telling me these things.”

“There are loopholes.  Lawrence went to great lengths, behind the scenes, to keep all of you innocent.  He made it hard for details to stick in your mind.  You in particular might find that frustrating.”

“Deciding what memories and experiences to hold onto when a brain can only store so much was… it was difficult.  You’re right, I hate the idea of that being tampered with.”

“You do know that Bristow latching onto your idea about saving the world in the future, that was only bitterness, an effort to get people to care about his passing.”

“Yes.  But I think he would have come to believe in it with the right guidance.”

“You would have found it hard to guide while directly under his boot-heel, I think.  I’ll tell you now, I can’t do what he did and keep you innocent.  Not as easily.  I don’t think I’m your vision of a saved future.”

“I came to see.  Your eyes are too cold.”

Alexander pulled on his cigarette, then exhaled.  “The world is full of monsters, Mr. Havens.”

“I know, believe me.”

“Oh, I believe you know of some.  I just don’t think you know the extent of it.  You don’t want to, because then you might falter.”

“Could be.”

“Some of these monsters, despite deals and arrangements, rules set down from on high, they prey on people.  They steal children and butcher people who stray too far from civilization.  And they do it, they can do it, because of certain loopholes.  Dead men tell few tales, and the tales they do tell don’t reach the people that matter.  Leave no witnesses and the deed will be forgotten.  Some of them are very good at this.  The ones that aren’t have been pruned away.”

“This is your loophole, Alexander?  You intend to try and kill me?”

“Remove, not kill.  I made deal earlier.”

“A deal?”

“About a place outside of your reckoning.  By your own admission, you weren’t able to get a bead on Mrs. Durocher.”

“No.  Something about her always unnerved me.”

“Sisyphus,” Alexander said, pulling out his phone.  “I have another rock for you to push uphill.  Smaller, but complex.”

“What are you doing?”

“She caged one, Mr. Havens.  She toys with it, uses it.  And I…” Alexander touched a button.  “Am prepared to release it.  I have other countermeasures and plans.  You can try to fight me and stop me.  I don’t think it will go the way you wish.”

“I don’t believe it could be that easy to free a thing like that.”

“It isn’t.  It’s expensive.  But I see it as an investment.  By threatening this, I can give a dangerous man like you pause.”

“You can.”

“And I can, I think, rock you to your core, by telling you that if powers that be go looking for a way to stop or slow this thing, they might do what has worked before.  With someone who has achieved it before.  Ted Havens, the sequel.”

Faint emotion touched Ted’s face, as much as he tried to hide it.  Alexander could See through that too.

“It might take a nudge to get them to look at you, but it might not.  The powers that be over there are different from the ones here.  Just like how the people who condemned you in the Maritimes aren’t the same ones that hold sway here.  With my finger hovering over this message, ready to send a text, you stand on a precipice.  Will you risk doing it again?  Or condemning someone else to it?”

Something slight in Ted changed.

How many thousands or tens of thousands of years had he lived?  If all those years were placed in a chart, then the time he’d been free was slight, an imperceptible sliver or change.  That made for a lot of weight behind Ted, and little ahead of him. It was why Bristow found him so easy to snare.

“You believe me,” Alexander said.

Ted didn’t deny it.  “What are the options?”

“The first option is that you tell me everything I want to know, then die by your own hand.  The second option is that you Awaken fully to this world and swear undying fealty to me in the process.”

“You’d have me be a servant?”

“Right hand man.  Or die, if you think your character couldn’t withstand fealty.  I’ll take what Lawrence had, keep the items and people that are valuable and cooperative, and let the rest go free.  Unless you think you can get to me before my thumb can hit the button.”

Thirty paces separated them.  Trees obscured the view some, though Alexander’s Sight helped with that.

“What if giving someone like you, that is willing to do that, any information, power, or help is too much of a price?  What if I’d go back to that life?”

“Or risk someone else doing the same?” Alexander asked.  “Some poor man, woman, or child, who might get flung into similar predicaments?  To lose their mind and regain it again, to put their original self so far behind them that they can’t even imagine what that person might have been like?”

“Yeah,” Ted said, and the words were heavy.  He didn’t stand as tall as he had.  “I’d risk it.”

“Even if I sweetened the deal?  I have your diaries, Ted.  Retrieved from oblivion.  A glimpse of the man you once were.  Meaning given to the journey, rather than the end.”

Ted paused.

“I do.  I can’t lie to you, Ted.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Ted lied, but he diminished a fraction more.

“Then that brings us to option three,” Alexander replied.  He closed his eyes and opened them again, and they were gold.  “We fight.  I press the button early on in that fight.  Then you’ll try to beat me, get me to take it back or take measures.  Except it doesn’t work.”

“Why not?”

“Because I won’t lose the fight, Ted.  I’ve been anticipating having to deal with you since before you arrived.  Hindsight may be twenty-twenty, but it’s the people who look forward who win.”

Alexander’s eyes, gold, started to flake and peel.  They revealed a burnished red.

With each fallen flake and revealed bit of red, his vision took on a red tint.  He could see the entirety of Ted Havens, inside and out.

With his free hand, he drew his wand, and he tapped his pocket, before tapping his eye.

White text began to flow into the backdrop of blood red and dark shadow, and the expanding image of Ted Havens, analyzed in full, in motion, in stillness, in emotion.

A little bit of fate, a little bit of strife.

Invisible to Ted’s eyes, they began to gather between.

Moments of hesitation, of doubt, of recollection, of dismay.  Frustration at Bristow, even.

Little landmines that would slow the man down and create openings.

This wasn’t going to be a drawn out fight.  It was one pass.  One exchange.  Lesser ‘landmines’ would pave the way for the big one.  Which would be when Alexander struck.

He had many forms of awareness, many Sights, many tools.  He fixed them on defeating a man who had seen tens or hundreds of thousands of years on this Earth.

Good.

That left one last measure, to secure this fight before it started.

He jerked, and for a moment, saw only stars, heard only raucous noise.  His eyes rolled up and his head turned skyward.

“What are you-” Ted started.

The man wasn’t at his best.  Having just lost Bristow, faced with what might be his worst fear, he was prepared to throw it all away, and that kind of preparation could give a man an edge.

Here, it only added to bewilderment.  The incomprehension.

“You’re-” Ted started, stopping.

Alexander’s head dropped, and he knelt.  Ted remained where he was.  No, Ted took a step backward.

After

He trudged through grass and fallen branches.  Toward Ted.

Worn out Ted.  Spent, defeated Ted.

“What now?” Ted asked.

“Go home,” John Stiles told him.

“I don’t think I can.  Or should.  If people want to get me under their thumb like this, it might be better if I disappear.”

“Then travel.  I used to go from ghost town to ghost town with- you can think of her as my daughter.  And my friend.  It was nice.  You don’t have to choose ghost towns.”

Ted sighed.

“Consider yourself free.”

“I don’t like freedom,” Ted answered.  “So much bigger than the life I used to live.”

“I knew men like that.  I fought men like that.  It’s hard to leave it all behind.”

“What about him?”  Ted gestured.

John didn’t turn to look.  “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention my part in this.”

“According to him, you saved my life.  He was going to beat me and the kill or enslave me.”

“Yep.”

“Yeah.  I won’t say anything.  I could help with the body, and the crime scene.”

“Go, Ted.  While you still can.”

“Is that a threat?”

“It’s a warning.  About them.  Everyone who would chase you.”

Ted remained where he was.  He took a deep breath, staring, then sighed.

John remained where he was, watching Ted, until Ted finally looked away.  His head turned away first, then his body followed, as if the scene had a hold on him.

John didn’t move until the man was gone.  He wiped his gun down with a cloth, then holstered it, wet the cloth with his water bottle, and then wiped his hands.

“Which one of you is out there?” he asked the woods.

Branches and leaves rustled.

“His head-” Lucy said.  “It’s gone.  Cracked open.”

She sounded so much like a kid.

John walked, long, quick steps, until he stood between her and the body.  He put a hand out to steady her, to keep her from pulling away or moving to a point where she could keep looking.

“You didn’t need to come.”

“Didn’t I?  Toadswallow – he asked me.  He asked me if I knew what summoning you to the BHI meant.”

“This was not you.”

“He asked and I nodded because I knew it might be a thing.  And Avery nodded but I don’t think she got it.  And Gashwad said it would be violence but… you said, back when we negotiated with Alexander the first time, to free Avery…”

“Lucy,” he said, firm.

“You said you’d need to shoot Alexander.  Before the deadline came up.”

“Yes.  But that’s my duty, as a part of this.  I was always going to do it.  He was always going to come after you.  You summoning me did nothing to make this happen, it only let me act to stop him before he could retaliate against you in any meaningful way.  And it let me protect you in the meantime.”

“I don’t really believe you,” she whispered to him.  She was shaking a bit.  “Sorry.”

“I can’t lie.”

“And I can’t believe you, that I have so little responsibility, bringing you here when I knew deep down that this was possible.”

“It had to happen.”

“I know.  I really do.  I-” she broke off.  Her voice, already shaky, became a tremulous whisper.  “John, I think he’s still alive.”

John pushed Lucy behind him as he turned, drawing his gun.

He stared for long moments, at a man with a head that had cracked like an egg.  Large caliber bullet.

He’d waited, used extra senses, about war and conflict, to determine the moment Alexander might be most distracted, or have the most senses turned away.  Then he’d fired.

“He’s not, Lucy.”

“But I can See-”

“His awareness.  He set powers into motion and extra forms of sight and analysis.  Observation.  It’ll keep going until the power runs out, even though the man is deceased.”

“Oh,” Lucy’s answer was a shake breath with a word sort of in it.

“You should go, Lucy.  Go, distract yourself, get the mental image out of your head.  Put the entirety of yourself into music you never want to listen to again, and try to crowd out the visual.”

“I should stay,” she said.  “They’re probably going to find this place eventually, if they go looking.”

“I can manage.”

“But they have augurs.  Alex-” she stopped, staring like she could see through John to the body.

“Lucy.”

“Alexander taught us that if you use augury a lot, it gets harder to get a signal the more times you try.  If I get some stuff off of him and from his car, I can create a lot of noise.  Hide that you were here.”

“Not your responsibility.”

“It protects Kennet,” she said.  She was still shaky, but she stepped back so she could meet John’s eyes.  “That’s my responsibility.”

“I wouldn’t have shot him if I’d known you’d end up here.”

She shrugged.

“Don’t look any more.  Sit with your back to a tree.  You can do a lot of what you need to while there.  I’ll bring you whatever looks useful.”

“Verona would want to keep it, but we shouldn’t.”

“No.”

“Okay.”

He reached into his bag and he got a cassette player.

The music began playing.  A light, sad rock ballad.  Lucy sat, and John remained where he was, watching her, until her head started bobbing.

“You need me?” Musette asked.  The ghoul, called by the cassette player.

“Cleanup.  If you’re up for it.  I know it’s not your usual meal.”

“I was talking to her,” Musette said, pulling off her leather jacket.  She tossed it to the ground beside Lucy.

“That works too.”

“I’ll get to him after,” Musette said, sitting on the jacket.  “Heya.  Want company?”

“Am I next on your list?  Slated to die?”

“Nah,” Musette said, settling in.  “Not as far as I can tell.  But this is familiar ground for me.”

Lucy nodded.

“Talk to me,” Musette said, sitting shoulder to shoulder with Lucy.

“I was thinking about him being my familiar.”

“Yeah.”

John remained standing where he was.  He wasn’t sure he was supposed to hear this, but…

“…Not so much anymore.”

The air filled momentarily with the smell of acid and ink.

He nodded, turned, and got started with cleanup, fishing in pockets for car keys, apparently content to miss the remainder of the conversation.

Musette finished her talk with Lucy, and sat for another fifteen minutes before rising.

She cracked her jaw, then set to work.

The last practices that gave any awareness of the scene to the body ceased to function, and all went dark.

Vanishing Points – 8.1

Lucy

Lucy roused to the sound of a knock on the bedroom door.  She didn’t wake, exactly, because she had woken up at five and startled Avery awake when she’d gotten up to head to the bathroom, they’d talked momentarily, and then they’d settled, four to a bed, Avery, Verona, and Snowdrop sleeping while Lucy sat, butt beside the pillow, back to the wall, thinking the kind of muddled thoughts that happened between five in the morning and…

She looked at the clock.

And almost nine.

She pulled out her earbuds, put her phone aside, and made herself get up.  Once up, she checked she was decent enough to answer the door, and unlocked it, opening it.

Raymond Sunshine stood on the other side, tall, narrow, long hair combed close to the scalp up to the point it no longer touched the scalp and went a bit wild.  His eyes were hidden by his red sunglasses and the rest of his expression gave nothing away.

“I’m doing rounds, checking on every room of students who haven’t woken up already and started breakfast,” he told her.

“We’re alive.  We’re mostly intact.  Tired,” she told him.

“Good, acceptable, and a bit of a shame, respectively,” he told her.  “Ms. Durocher is holding a class on healing practices this morning, starting late, at ten.  We thought it would be a good chance to make sure our students are in tip-top shape, physically or otherwise.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  She felt a bit weird, giving such short answers, so she elaborated, “I’m sort of interested in that one.  The way things have been going, it would be a nice skill to have.”

“Yes,” Raymond said, absently.  Some students were in the hall behind him.  Lucy felt a bit anxious, hair uncombed, wearing a rumpled t-shirt and sleep shorts.

She wasn’t sure what to expect from a healing class, but a part of her had hoped for a distraction, or a class they could skip.  This wasn’t really either.  With the ambient mood, the injuries, the resentments, it felt like it’d be a drag.

“Are your friends awake?” Raymond asked.

Lucy was standing in the doorway, and leaned back to look.  Avery was sitting up, propped up by elbows.  Verona kept her head on the pillow, but raised a hand, thumbs up.

“Yes.  They’re up.”

“There are some other things to discuss,” Raymond said.  “If it’s no trouble, could you meet me in my office before class?  Say, in ten minutes?”

She glanced back, verified, then ventured, “Fifteen?”

“That’s fine.  Whichever is convenient.  Finally, while I’m here, I thought I’d let you know, we’re stepping up security, activating some wards at the perimeter of the property, and putting the augurs on shift duty to avoid further trouble.  I reached out to Alexander this morning and couldn’t find him.  I don’t know how concerned you are about him, but you should know that we’re keeping a close eye out and I don’t think you should have any immediate worries.”

Lucy had worried about this, or about something like it.  The inevitable questions or prodding.  She’d thought panic might grip her, or she might say or do something weird, or flinch, her expression giving something away.

Her expression didn’t change at all from its default, slightly-pissed-off frown.  She inhaled, then exhaled slowly.

“Is-”

Lucy turned her head, then shifted her position, pushing the door open so Raymond could see the others on the bed.

Avery asked, “Is he the type to do something like that?  Retaliate, when we weren’t even directly against him?”

“Yes,” Raymond said.  “I could dodge the question or talk around things, but yes, he would and I’m guessing he will.  I’m a longtime friend of the man, and he made some preliminary moves against me last night.”

“What kind of moves?” Avery asked.

“Political ones, with political types who sometimes eliminate their political problems.  But that’s not a topic for when you’re barely awake.  Shower, dress, eat, do whatever you need or want to do.  I’m going to check on other students and then head back to my office.  Barring emergency, I intend to see you there in ten to fifteen minutes.”

Lucy nodded.

Raymond moved on.  Lucy let the door close by its own weight.

“So we have that Alexander thing happening, I guess,” Verona said, mushing her face into a pillow, and dragging Snowdrop halfway across the bed to hug against her chest.  Snowdrop stretched out all four legs toward the ceiling for a moment before relaxing.

“I want to say sarcastic things right now,” Avery said, stretching.

Lucy visualized Alexander lying in the dirt, body unable to lie even completely flat because an arm and a tree branch were beneath him.  The damage from the gunshot was more than just about any movie she’d seen, and she’d watched a lot of horror films.

She didn’t want to visualize it, but she did.

She’d tell them after.  It was calculating and awful but them having no idea made selling their non-involvement easier.

The mental image had a vivid nature to it that beat out even that crisp mental picture of her mom sitting on the edge of her bed, after Paul had left.

She’d slept with her earring on and somehow it hadn’t gotten sore or bothered her.  Now she could hear Raymond across the way.  Talking to Jorja and Talia.  The way the two girls talked, voices almost overlapping as they answered questions, no hesitation, no barriers, it sounded like they’d made up.

One good thing to come from last night’s resolutions.

To get the mental image out of her head, she turned to music, getting her phone and headphones, and sticking one of the earbuds into her ear.  It was a purring, grungy, goth-y sound, percussive sound, heavily processed and loaded with lyrics her mom wouldn’t be happy about.  Might even get her grounded.

It was good, though.  Distracting from the visual, the lyrics pulling her brain away from things.  It didn’t fit the mental image, and was almost like she was attacking it.

“Come on.  Meeting with Raymond shortly, then class,” she told the others, leaving no room for disagreement.

The others picked themselves up.  Lucy put the other earbud in.

Drowning out the visual with music.

She got her clothes and her hair and makeup stuff, then headed to the showers.  Verona caught up with her a short distance down the hall, stole an earbud, and popped it into her own ear, prompting a look from Lucy.

Lucy glanced back, saw Avery trailing behind, carrying an opossum-form Snowdrop.

Including Avery was important.  She pulled out the remaining earbud, rubbed it clean on her shirt, and held it out.

“Ah, I don’t want to be a bother.”

“Be bolder about what you want,” Lucy said.  “I can handle me.”

Verona took the phone and Avery put the earbud in, sharing the cord with Verona.  Lucy pulled off her earring, tapped it against the phone, and murmured, “listen.”

The earring picked up the music.  As well as any earbud, to both ears.

Lucy’s head bounced with the music as she led the way.  She smiled when she looked back and saw how scandalized Avery seemed to be.

“You seem so pure,” Verona teased.

“I’m not that pure.”

It felt like nothing fit.  That everything was at odds.  The sexy music warring with a mental image that was almost fighting to stay in Lucy’s mind’s eye.  The school so tidy when it had so recently been at war.  The playful banter between the others, when students kept giving them sidelong glances.

Like glances Lucy had gotten all her life, just… condensed into one short walk to the showers.

There weren’t many stalls open, but with one open, the others encouraged Lucy to take it, because she took longer.  She did, and kept listening to the music through the earring.

Midway through pulling her sleep clothes off, she got a good look at her arm in the light that came over the door.  It looked bruised, and still had traces of the coloring from the Nettlewisp, and she wasn’t sure which was which.

Her lip was still split, tender as she touched her tongue to it.  She’d been knocked to the ground, pushed around, grabbed by the throat… and fatigue settled into her, settled into all those sore points, real and imagined.

She might normally have stood under the stream of the shower, taking a few minutes to rinse and think about nothing.  Instead, she used every moment of the shower to do self-care, to take care of hair and skin, her mind thinking forward to what she might anticipate from Raymond.

She dressed in the clothes she’d hung up just before showering, any minor wrinkles smoothed out by the humidity and a pass of her hand.

The others were in the shower as she emerged.  She dried her hair using a t-shirt, because it was gentler than most towels, and produced less frizz, then covered bruises with some of the same concealer she used on her face.  Couldn’t do anything about her lip, though.

Yadira took up a spot at a sink, further down, pulling her hair into a ponytail at the same time Lucy was doing the same.

Lucy was very aware of how cold Yadira’s sidelong glances were.

If it weren’t for the music, then Lucy might have snapped at the silence, and that fact surprised her.

The others caught up, and Lucy gathered up her stuff.

Some students were already camped out in the main classroom, more than half an hour before class, sitting on benches and talking, some eating or finishing off juice and tea.

More sidelong looks.

The western hallway of the school, at least, was for senior students and staff, and was fairly empty.  A bit of reprieve from the staredown.

Lucy knocked on the door to Raymond’s office.  The door opened.

They layout had changed somewhat.  Furniture was arranged in the center of a main room, surrounded by floating screens.

Raymond was talking to a mannequin-like figure, who stood on a pedestal.  He beckoned them in.  “Yes.  If you can, just get back to me with availability, and any fees.  The school can provide, up to a point.”

Lucy, Avery, and Verona took seats in the cushioned chairs.  Snowdrop hung back, standing behind Avery’s seat.

“Thank you.  I have students to attend to.  Excuse me.”

The mannequin nodded, then fizzled out of reality.

“Sorry,” Raymond said.  “Phone call.  The holograms and things are a trapping I fell into at an earlier age that I haven’t bothered changing.”

“It’s cool,” Verona told him.

“Ahem,” he said, smoothing out shirt and slacks as he took a seat.  “Thank you for coming.”

“I can’t tell if we’re in trouble or not,” Lucy said.

“I can’t either,” Raymond answered.  “Which is why I asked you here.  Part of why.  Some concerns have come up, I thought the best way to handle them would be to be straightforward.  I’ll tell you right now, this is between you three, your opossum, and me.”

“Concerns?” Lucy asked.

“I’ve been awake all night, trying to reach out to some people who may be suitable headmasters.  The people who are most suitable to take over and carry on some form of the school’s mission statement are also very particular individuals.  Two candidates stand out, and to ease their transition and ensure I’m prepared as I engage in these hours of phone calls, I’ve been familiarizing myself with the school and how it’s being run.  Some I already knew, some I’m just now learning.”

“Sounds like a lot,” Avery said.

“If you’re doing all this, why not just become headmaster?” Verona asked.

“Because I would like to have some semblance of a life when I’m not working.  This is manageable for a few weeks or months, but I’d shorten my lifespan if I kept it up for long.”

“Especially with those all-nighters like you’re describing,” Lucy said.

“Yes.”

“My brother’s talked about having to do those.”

“Alexander kept me and Ms. Durocher informed about things like the teachers we’d invite in as guests, resources and trips we’d carry out, and the renting out of workshops to graduate and senior students.  Sometimes we take on bigger projects as a school and use workshops for that, committing students like Reid, Wye, or Amine to oversee them and bring in necessary individuals.  Deciphering threats, remote bindings, and scholarly work that standalone families can’t do.”

“Super interesting,” Verona said.

“Perhaps.  Alexander managed other things himself, including incoming student lists, reaching out to new students, sponsorship from larger families, interactions with Lords and other powers, whenever we might be taking any action that would draw their attention, staffing, funding, and general finances.”

“Oh,” Verona made a sound.

Yeah.  The fact that he’d chosen that note to end on…

“Your reaction tells me I’m not mistaken,” Raymond told them.  “There’s a discrepancy in paperwork and funding, with a short note from Alexander saying to contact him if there are any questions.  I’ve set Tanner to the task of finding the man, and intend to include those questions on the long list I have for him.  But until he figures out how to find an augur who doesn’t want to be found, the only way to get answers about this is apparently by talking to you.”

“From the way you responded to Alexander wanting to have a vote for the school, I think you know,” Lucy said.  “His… cheat?  Kind of?”

“I couldn’t volunteer that information if I did know.”

“He set up the demesne here, but it’s more than that, isn’t it?” Verona asked.  “He tied it to the school itself, serving students and that left some pretty big loopholes.”

Raymond reached behind his chair, to a space where there wasn’t a table, shelf, or anything, and picked up a tablet.  He tapped on it a few times.

“He messed with Avery and our hometown,” Lucy said.  “We called him out on it.  Said we had a right to be students, because of that loophole.  Then he couldn’t really come after us or leave Avery out to dry like that.”

“I see.  Even if you aren’t paying tuition.  He could argue the point, but if he does, he damages his demesne and claim, if worse doesn’t happen.”

“Our leverage for being here was that we could tell other students they could technically attend for free,” Avery said.

“I’m glad you didn’t.  That makes my life easier.  I do have to tell you that I’m afraid this leverage only works if Alexander is headmaster.”

“Crap,” Verona muttered.

“Thank you for your honesty.  You could have evaded, and I have enough minefields to deal with, without you three being another set.  Two possible headmasters are lined up, and I know them well enough that I don’t think this tuition concern will be ignored.”

“Double crap,” Verona said.  “How much is tuition?”

“For the three of you, twenty-one thousand dollars a term.”

“Okay,” Verona replied, blinking in rapid succession, her eyebrows going up until they disappeared behind her bangs.  She looked at Avery, “Want to rob a bank?”

“What does that mean?” Lucy asked Ray.  “That it won’t be ignored?”

“What it means depends a lot on your answers to my other questions,” Raymond said, putting down the tablet.  “I don’t know you.  I have some sense of you from our past interactions, and from how you conducted yourselves last night.  Zed likes you and I like Zed, but he’s sworn to secrecy, as is Brie.  Nicolette has run into you but won’t say anything, and she won’t let me talk to Seth, who is forsworn and could tell me, even if oaths still hold some sway over him.”

“What happens if we give the wrong answers?” Avery asked.

“Wrong answers could be cause for expulsion right here and right now.  The Blue Heron Institute might try to handle you, at least until we can extract more information and some necessary oaths from you.”

“Extract as in torture?” Avery asked.

“Extract as in extract.  We have a number of Augurs still in attendance at this school,” Raymond said.  “But given the severity of an attack of this potential style and scale, I wouldn’t rule out torture either.  I’d argue against it, for what it’s worth, but I wouldn’t necessarily be in charge.”

“What the heck kind of answers would those be?” Verona asked.

“Zed mentioned to me at one point that students were speculating about you.  They thought you might be Oni-related.  Oni and practitioners don’t traditionally get along, and it would make some sense if you were actually here specifically for what happened last night.  The removal of one headmaster.”

Lucy’s thoughts went to Alexander, before she reminded herself that he was talking about Bristow.

Raymond lifted up his sunglasses, and he was looking at her, studying her with eyes that looked as tired as she’d felt when she had been getting ready for her shower, feeling all her sore spots, injuries, exhaustion, and little traumas in one total feeling.

“I’m glad it bothers you,” he told her.  “That it happened, and that you had a part in it.”

“It’s pretty spooky,” Avery said.

Lucy pressed her lips together.  The split on her lip stung.  She licked it.

Verona shifted position, but she maintained a pretty serious poker face otherwise.

“Do you believe that?” Lucy asked, quiet.  “That we came here for that reason?”

Raymond Sunshine shook his head.

“Good, because we didn’t,” Lucy told him.

“But I do worry,” he said.  “You might have been directed here unwittingly.  Oni or other forces like Oni might want to hurt the school.  Certain practitioners or ex-practitioners would want us out of the way.”

That word, ex-practitioners, it said a lot about Raymond’s train of thought.  Lucy tried to keep her expression still, but her eyebrows drew together and she wasn’t sure how to put them back to normal, that wouldn’t be too far in the other direction.  Concerned or worried.

He went on, “You awoke relatively recently, you have a lot of power and a large number of contacts, and your arrival was followed by the handling of the Devouring Song.”

“Hungry Choir,” Lucy said.

“Hm.”

“Sounds better.”

“Convention has sway, and both urban myth sites and practitioner circles have been calling it something else.  Either way, you struck very close to the heart of this Hungry Choir, very quickly.  I worry you’re striking at the heart of this school in a very similar way.”

“Which is how you get to us being imprisoned, bound, sworn to oaths?” Lucy asked.

“If true or close to true.”

“Well,” Lucy said, looking at the others.  “Let’s try to make it clear that’s not the case, and soothe those worries.”

“I’d love to,” Raymond said, leaning back, setting one ankle across his knee.  With his long legs and the framing of the chair, it was pretty effective.  He set the sunglasses back in place.  “What can you tell me?”

“That’s a pretty big question,” Verona told him.  “A lot of practitioners would be protective of their family stuff and secrets, I think.”

“They are.”

“I don’t like how early it is in the day right now,” Verona said.  “My head’s not all there.”

“I’m not interested in power, or on preying on practitioners.  I want to ensure the school is safe, that things transition smoothly to a new headmaster, and that students are safe.  I want Zed safe, and I know he talks to you more frequently than many students.”

“Would you swear oaths?” Lucy asked.  “To keep stuff secret?”

“Depending.  I’m limited in what I can do.”

“Then maybe it’s better that you ask questions, and we try to answer?” Lucy tried.

“Alright.  Then I’ll start with one of the most pressing questions.  Lawrence Bristow.  You played a significant role in what happened to him.  I’ve looked in, and the man is as good as dead.”

“Not what I aimed for,” Verona said.

“What did you aim for?”

“To ruin his day.”

“You have thoroughly done that.  Yesterday, today, and every day for a long time.”

Avery sighed audibly.  Snowdrop reached over the top of the chair back and hugged her.

“Nobody really spelled out what the brownie thing was,” Verona said.  “He kind of- you know he came after our hometown, right?”

“Easy,” Lucy murmured.

“I know,” Raymond said.  “Clementine explained.  I intend to verify other facts with her before she leaves, after our talk.”

Lucy nodded.  Damn.

“He came after us, and if he hadn’t then we wouldn’t have had that ammunition to use against him, and start the Brownie thing,” Verona said.

“Was that a motivation then?”

“We wanted him to back off and leave us alone,” Avery protested.

“We told him,” Lucy jumped in, a little firmer.  “That he was off target.  He was aiming big guns at us, our town, our friends, and our families, just to inconvenience Alexander.  We gave him a chance to back off, and he made it clear he wouldn’t stop.”

“We don’t fit what he wants in his school,” Verona said, before correcting, “didn’t.  Wanted.”

“Did you want him dead or, for lack of a better word, gone?”

“No!” Verona’s voice raised.  She lowered her volume.  “No.  When Alexander said we could have gotten the Brownies to back off, I was all for it.”

Lucy frowned.  “But Bristow wouldn’t back down.  I think that shows there wasn’t a better way.  He had the chance to back off, and he wouldn’t.  He would have kept coming for us, and we can’t- we swore oaths.”

Raymond nodded, leaning back.  His chair wasn’t adjustable, but it adjusted, reclining slightly.  He folded his arms.  “When you say you were all for it, was that because you worried about the audience?”

“Because I’m not super happy about doing what- what Shellie said.  That he gets kidnapped and gets sold off or whatever.”

“Or whatever,” Raymond said, absently.  “Something of a relief, to get this confirmation.  But these oaths you mention, Lucy.  I think I need to know more.  About who you are, where you’re from.”

Lucy nodded, tense.  She was glad she’d put herself together earlier.

“Kennet.  Charles Abrams is there.”

“He lived outside of the town,” Lucy said.  “After Alexander went after him, he was offered sanctuary.”

“In exchange for?”

“Taking on specific ailments, curses, and things, until they could be handled.”

“Was this part of a greater experiment, design, or the refinement of a form of attack?”

“Not to my knowledge,” Lucy said.

“Keeping things clean.  Healing an innocent.  Some stuff, ummm…” Avery hesitated.

What else?  Oh.  John and Yalda.  Lucy tried to figure out how to phrase that.

“Stuff tied to jobs done for major powers,” Verona jumped in.

Think of this like a police investigation, Verona.  Don’t volunteer too much, Lucy willed.

“Major powers.  Are these gods?  Great spirits?  Incarnations?”

“I don’t know,” Verona said.  “And it was a while ago.”

“You can’t append a label?  An incarnation would be a force like Death herself, or Poverty.”

Verona glanced at Avery, then Lucy.

Said a lot, that it was in that order.  It wasn’t that Lucy was insecure, really.  But Avery offered a different sort of backup to what Lucy did and if Verona was looking for that, then Verona wasn’t doing all that hot.  It was hard to tell sometimes, but things like this were clues.

“I could offer an oath, but that’s dangerous ground, especially considering the scale of things that a major power may interact with.  Let me instead provide more context.  I gave Zed his foundation in technology and technomancy.  Most technological know-how can be a problem, when you’re trying to bring somebody into the fold and get them thinking in the right ways.  I would rather start with a luddite than with a career programmer.  But it’s best to start with someone very young.  In any event, I taught Zed most of what he knows and I took responsibility for awakening him.  In exchange, he helps me, he allows me to guide, direct, and inform his research, and he owes me a token from whatever power or position he gains.  I know he was looking into the Devouring Song, for example.  I know he’s avidly curious about the three of you now.”

Lucy nodded.

“I suspect you three may have inklings already, but sometimes what is not said can be as telling as what is said out loud.  Zed stopped keeping track of specific data after he negotiated with you for details that let us conquer the Devouring Song- Hungry Choir.  Nicolette has similar areas she declines to talk about.”

“Not very fair,” Verona’s voice was barely audible.

“It may not be.  What would you say if I asked if these greater powers are judges?  Carmine, Alabaster, Sable, and Aurum?”

The three of them exchanged glances.

“Yes,” Raymond said.  “No need to say.  Alexander took specific files with him when he left to target Lawrence.  There were similar absences there.  I know that what Lawrence would have built here would have overridden the position of the four Judges.”

“What would that mean?” Avery asked.

“That the Judges would have less sway.  Lords and… whatever we would have ended up calling Bristow, leader over this swathe of unclaimed territory, they would have made the final judgment calls on things such as forswearing, the Others that may exercise full power or allowed leeway under rules, and how the landscape changes.  Mr. Bristow seems to have timed what he did to take advantage of the fact that the four judges are currently three.”

Lucy nodded.

“By that same token, I think Alexander may have thought he could bait Lawrence into the position, or used the current situation with the Judges to upset his rival’s plans.  And I think, if you’ll excuse my speculation, that we have a confluence of factors all coming together.  An empty Carmine seat, Alexander, Lawrence, the emergence of the Devouring Song, Charles Abrams, and, of course…”

He extended a hand even as Lucy beat him to the punch.  “Us.”

“You,” Raymond said.  “Less surprising, now, that a lot of power has been invested in you.  Which leaves me with the pressing question… why?

“You said, before, if we gave you the wrong answers, you might capture us or come after us,” Verona reminded Ray.

“More or less, yes.”

“And I think we gave okay answers, to avert that worst case scenario?” she asked.

“More or less.”

Verona nodded.  “What’s our best case scenario?  What comes from this meeting, if we give really good or important answers?”

“If you’re going to kick us out,” Lucy followed up, “then maybe we should leave now?  If you’re satisfied we’re not malicious?”

“Stay,” Raymond said, firm, gesturing.  “If you’re in over your heads, and this is as big as I’m starting to think it is, then the best case scenario may be that I help you.  I can provide guidance, shelter, pull you away from being made pawns in something big and malicious.”

“What if we’re not in over our heads?” Verona asked.

“If you’re not, then I’d have a hard time believing the incident with Lawrence and the brownies was pure accident and naivete.  But that’s unfair.  Let me ask, was it Charles Abrams who spearheaded this?”

Lucy shook her head.

“No?” Raymond asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“You’re sponsored, according to Durocher.  Others provide you with diverse power.  You do something for the Others.  What?  And for who?”

“We’d need oaths,” Lucy told him.

“I can’t.  Not in my current position, not in general.  Not when it’s peripheral to Zed and the young woman he fell so fast and hard for.  If the Judges are involved it involves all practice in the region.  Another tack, then.  I’d like to meet the Other who led this endeavor.”

“That’s hard,” Avery said.  “But we could arrange it if we had to.”

Avery’s instinct was to be helpful, and to go easy.  She softened every blow.  That was tricky.

“Are they sworn to the seal?”

“We have good reason to believe they are,” Lucy said.

“I can confirm, simply by re-binding.  Temporarily.”

“I think that would… not go over well,” Lucy replied.

“I see.  That sort of situation.  Zed reported to me that there were areas he was being kept away from.  Distractions, interference, some light violence.  Around Kennet.  Your hometown.  Liberty and America recognized one of your friendly Others by name.  Uncle Toad.  He reportedly said he’s been hiding away.”

Lucy nodded.  The others did the same.

“I have strong suspicions but I need to know,” Raymond said.  “Small details may have big impacts.  I’m willing, not to swear an oath of silence, but to pledge my goodwill.  I have little to do with judges and thrones and I’m not looking to hunt or prosecute Others, unless given cause.  I’m only interested in this because it affects everything, a little bit.  If Alexander were to make a play for the empty seat, or if the wrong Other took the spot, it affects the school, every student in the region, my practice…”

Lucy shook her head a little.

“I will only step in or share this information if it’s necessary to protect good people,” Raymond told them.  “Frankly, I’m happier to ignore it, with everything else on my plate right now.”

“I don’t know-” Verona started.

“You swear it?” Lucy said, at the same time.

The two of them exchanged looks.

“Do you need a moment?” Raymond asked.

“I made a similar promise when I awoke,” Lucy told Verona.  “To step in for the sake of justice, protecting innocents.”

“Good oath,” Raymond said.

“It’d be hypocritical of me to deny Raymond the same.”

“I agree with Lucy,” Avery said.  “I don’t know about you guys, but I do feel like I’m in over my head.  I don’t want to do what we did last night, ever again, and I’d love to have an adult we can go to that isn’t, like, Brie or Zed.”

“What a thing to think about, imagining that Brie and Zed are adults,” Raymond said, wistful, shaking his head a little.  He removed his glasses to rub at his eyes.

“You have no, uh, what are they called?  Ulterior motives?” Verona asked.

“None large enough to spring to my mind.  Among the minor motives, I think there is some curiosity, some frustration, some desire to know what my apprentice is entangled in.”

“I’m okay with that,” Lucy said.  “If the others are.”

“Yeah,” Avery added.  “It’s a big thing we’ve lacked, for a bit.  Someone we can trust.”

Verona nodded.  But time passed, Verona’s eyes moving like she was looking for something, until she finally relented.  Ten or twenty seconds before her quiet, “Okay.”

“We’re trusting you,” Lucy told Raymond.

“Okay,” he told her.  “Thank you.”

“We were awakened to serve as practitioners for Kennet.  To tell anyone who started poking their noses in that the area’s covered, it’s our territory.”

“Benefiting from general rules we put in place, to defer, leave things alone if asked to,” Raymond said.  “If they wanted to intrude, settle down, or start tapping the area for power, they’d really need to go to the local Lord.”

“No Lord in Kennet,” Verona said.

“The Judges then.  I see.”

“We were asked to investigate the missing Judge.”

“And?”

“And we have some good ideas, I think,” Lucy said.  “We’re at school to figure out what we need to do to bring in the perpetrators.”

“What about Charles?”

“Peripheral.  He may have helped.  Or summoner-type practices were used.”

“Relating to the Choir?”

Lucy nodded.

“Who told you to come here?” Raymond asked.

“The Other you can’t easily talk to,” Avery said.

“She told us the trick to force Alexander to let us.  We had to use it when he stuck his nose in, trapped Avery,” Verona told Raymond.

“And how did she learn this?”

Verona shrugged.

“We don’t know,” Lucy said.

“She knows a lot about a lot of things,” Avery said.

“We think others allowed us to be picked because we’re children,” Lucy said.  “And they thought we’d need a lot of help or we’d be likely to fail.  But she- she picked us because she thought we’d be very good at this.”

Raymond sighed.

“We need to study a bit more, without distractions,” Verona said.  “Then we do our job, bind the perpetrator or perpetrators, and that’s it.  That’s our big plan.”

“I believe you,” Raymond said.  “My concerns lie elsewhere.  Students described this Uncle Toad as very canny, and world-wise.  Your patrons seem to be evasive, hiding away from the world.  I don’t know what they’re plotting or doing, and my efforts to find out have been mostly stymied.”

“I don’t think it’s that nefarious,” Avery said.  “Except for the murderers but we’re handling that.”

“I want to ask you, then.  One of my last big questions before your first class of the day begins.  Is it at all possible that, even if you had no such intentions, you were led to come here to cause this kind of mayhem?  Could that have been part of a scheme, plot, or plan, on the part of your patrons?”

“I think-” Avery started.

“Think about it before answering,” Raymond said.

They paused.

“I think the ones who would have had to scheme that up care too much about us to use us like that,” Avery said.  “And the ones who would be willing to let stuff happen to us didn’t want us to come.”

Lucy nodded her agreement.

“Which group does Charles belong to?” Raymond asked.

“I don’t think Charles is capable of doing much,” Lucy told him.  “Scheming or doing anything.  He didn’t even want us to Awaken in the first place.”

“A new headmaster will be installed in one to three weeks,” Raymond told them.  “Either Maurice Crowe or Mr. Abraham Musser.  Neither is likely to miss or overlook the tuition issue, and I don’t intend to keep it a secret either.  I’ll assume you don’t have the twenty-one thousand dollars or equivalent services to render.”

Lucy shook her head.  Matthew and Edith had said they’d pay for the demesne, but that was different.  The Kennet Others hadn’t wanted them to come, and shelling out that kind of money for lessons in how to bind Others, among other things, probably wouldn’t go over that well.

“You have a bit of time.  Not the whole summer, as you might have hoped, but some time,” Raymond told them.  “You’re going to want to make the most of it.  In exchange, I want you to keep Zed from getting too entangled in this.  Come to me if you need help, but…”

“But you’re busy, right?” Verona asked.

“I was going to say there are political considerations.  I can’t be seen as taking a side and apparently Alexander has notified outside forces that he thinks I did.  You’re not wrong, in any event.  I will be busy.  I’ll try to make time.”

“Thank you,” Avery told him.

“I’d like to see Charles.  Will you go home to Kennet after you leave here?”

“That’s the plan,” Lucy told him.

Verona made a gurgling sound.

“I’ll be in touch, then.  To arrange things.”

“A lot happens at the end of summer,” Lucy confessed.  “Apparently that’s the deadline for the Carmine Throne to be filled.  The judges will force someone to step in.”

“Before then, then, so I’m not in the way,” Raymond said.  “In the meantime, as I was saying, I imagine you’ll want to study and use the facilities, but I do have another recommendation.”

“What’s that?” Lucy asked.

“Mend fences and build bridges.  There are a lot of hard feelings over what happened these past few days.  And practitioners are, as a general rule, very wary about anyone who would do what you did to Lawrence Bristow.  Even considering the circumstances.  Your stay here might not be easy as things stand.  I intend to keep the peace, but I can’t make guarantees, and I can do little to nothing about much that happens if your tuition lapses and you’re no longer considered students of the Blue Heron.”

“You think they’d do that?” Avery asked.

“Bristow had friends and you now have enemies.  Reverse this trend while you can, or it’s something that can follow you well into the future.  Now, I do think class is about to start.  We’ll be doubling up on teachers and teaching assistants to make sure we have everything square, so I’ll be sitting in for this one.”

He stood, and they followed suit.  Avery lifted a sleepy Snowdrop to her shoulder.

Lucy exhaled.  Class.

Her stomach was clenched, worrying they were providing too much information, setting themselves up to fail later.

She had to avoid rubbing at her arm, and had to work doubly hard to keep from replaying the conversation over and over again in her head, wondering what she’d done wrong, that she could regret just as much as any enemy she might make.

Class, at least, was a little easier on the nerves.

The god walked across the stage, past his sister, his head ducking low so he wouldn’t bang it on the beams that supported the roof, and took a seat at the stage’s edge, hunched over a bit.  Lesser Others peeled away from him, taking to the air, grabbing onto beams, and cavorting around him, humanoid figures with heads like lit matches, their ‘hair’ a dancing and flickering glow, their heads too golden-bright to have faces.  His hair was similar, but his face was defined, etched more severely than a statue’s, his eyes bright.  Each bend and sudden turn in his blazing mane made the air in the rest of the room stir.  His steps, though gentle, made the room shake.

He wore only a cloth, and it wasn’t even draped on him like a toga might be.  It was more by accident, volume, and design that it shrouded him.  His posture was casual, one foot flat on the ground, the knee of the same leg higher than any of the bookshelves that lined the classroom, while the other leg was folded under him.  His face was framed by long flickering hair as he looked down on them all, while lesser entities appeared like the sparks from a fire, taking to the air or gracefully navigating his head to drag locks of hair behind his ears and away from his face, so it wouldn’t be covered.

“Yo,” he addressed the room in a deep voice.

Lucy, as she’d been instructed, kept her head bowed a bit, studying him before dropping them to the floor.  Her hand gripped the bench’s edge.

The wood was new.  It was fresh cut, sanded, polished, but it was new.  So much of this room had been trashed and it had been put back together again, just about everything set in order.  Maybe too much order, with papers too neatly stacked, nothing left out of place.

Just yesterday, she’d been bound to a bench on the other side of the classroom, threatened.  They’d deliberately sat as far away from that spot as they could, but it didn’t really help shake that awareness.

Easier on the nerves.  Right.  Right.  Yeah.

“We appreciate your attendance,” Durocher told the god.

“No problem,” he said.  His voice was loud, at the same time he was very obviously keeping his volume down.  The acoustics of the church-style building carried the sound.  “They’re worn out.”

“They are.  It’s been a long couple of days,” Durocher said.  She walked around at the foot of the stage, past Raymond, who was sitting in on the class.

“Very few come to visit my ilk when times are good, so I’m used to it,” the god said, before laughing.  The laugh should have been painfully loud, but it wasn’t.

Lucy couldn’t have been more shortsighted, thinking the class would be easy or calm or boring.  She’d wondered if the class would be distracted or too tired to focus, and how Durocher might handle that.

Silly her.  Durocher didn’t do easy and the woman always commanded attention when she wanted it.

From their meeting with Raymond to class.  Then, in the first minute of Ms. Durocher talking, she’d shouted out an invocation, and then this.  Inviting a pair of gods into the classroom.  The sister of the god who sat at the front of the stage was as dark as he was bright, her hair like a waterfall of black-feathered birds with feathers longer than some people were tall, diving in glacial slow motion, weaving past one another.  Her skin was the grey of storm clouds, she was bare chested, and her lips and nipples were silver.  A night-black cloth sat loose around her waist, extending around and down her legs to the floor.  Black-furred beasts lurked in the folds and emerged here and there, only to disappear again, giving glimpses of silver eyes and silver-y-er claws and talons.  The things that peeled away from her were less immediately helpful or fanatical to her and looked more like they were intent on slinking off into dark corners to wait.

“The morning’s topic is an elementary lesson in healing,” Durocher said.  “A springboard to discussion of structural practices, which, I’ll note, are different from realms practices.”

“Sounds fun,” the god said.

“Gods tend to send splinters or aspects of themselves to tend to minor matters,” Ms. Durocher addressed the class.  “You’ve done so, yes?”

“I wouldn’t fit in here at full size,” he said, laughing through the sentence.

“Tell us about yourself.  What do you do?  Who or what are you?”

“Metaphaos, I’m not one of your gods from the books, and very few of the gods who practitioners will deal with are.  Being bound up in history is too constraining, too formalized, it comes with too much baggage.  You only find the best gods if you go looking in places unknown.”

He smiled.

Durocher looked up at him.  “And many are like yourself, others are, hm, what would we call them?  Raymond?  Glitches in the system?”  She looked to Raymond, who sat off to the side.

“Emergent gods,” Raymond said.  “Sometimes we’ll term them cosmic rounding errors.  Complexities of a deific scale?”

“Complex, in that case, being used in the same sense we talk about complex spirits, elementals, and such?”  Durocher asked, pacing, looking at the class and not Raymond.

“Yes,” Raymond said.

“You have to be careful with that lot,” Metaphaos said.  “Messy.  Interesting, but not fun.”

“Why?” Durocher asked, pointing at him, without turning around.

“They don’t always have humanity and humanity’s faith giving them a push from behind from the outset.  You can get less human forces, and that gets out of control fast.  They might not speak your languages, they might not have very good aim, or they might not care either way.  Guy travels to a temple deep in the woods that wasn’t built by man, where a deity of civilization has risen.  He wants wealth and gets kids instead, and before the hour’s out, his great grandkids have great grandkids.  The poor little explorer is now wading through birthing-muck and the bodies of descendants who are fast-tracking their way through learning how to crawl, walk, and talk, trying to get far enough away that it all stops.  Meanwhile,the god there is happy as can be, starting a deific civilization from the singular seed of one man. Then the cleanup crew arrived, I played a small role in that.”

“You self-police?”

“It’s easier than it once was.  To hear the older forces talk about it, it used to be lawless out there.  But you know how lawless things were, teacher.”

Durocher smiled.  “That’s for later in the class.”

“Sure thing.  Right now, those of us who are canny enough are changing roles.  Used to be we provided definition and structure.  Now your species is doing that for itself.  We’re smaller, we keep more to our own selves and family branches, and we game the systems if we’re smart.”

“Structure, you said?” she asked.  “We put gods under the broad umbrella of structural practices.”

“Your call.  It works.”

“Why does it work?”

“Because we build, we create from raw clay, beams of light, and from ourselves.”

“Create what?” she asked.

“Life.  Weather.  Rules.  We don’t create-create, but you can cut a statue out of raw clay and say you made that, can’t you?  Creating from scratch is a dying art, left to other forces.”

“And this is how you heal.”

“Sure thing,” the god said.  He smiled.  “Blow a bit of life into a vessel, doesn’t matter if they’re a man or a clay dog.  Or do a bit of repair to their fundamental structure, patch a hole, carve something out.  Most gods get to be gods because they have that faith backing them and they have the tools to do that creating.  Sometimes it’s one and the other follows, other times?  We’re like this, right out of the tin.  Grown and gorgeous.”

“Will you help us with the class exercise?  I’ll cover any deficits you find yourself at.”

“No need, Ms. Durocher,” the god waved her off.  “I’m not that minor.”

He held up his hands.  A glowing sign began to form in the empty space before them.  “If you wish to mend or heal, say some words to that effect, and call on my name.  We’ll get it done somehow.”

“Pair up.  Find the injured.  If you can’t, then find someone to watch,” Durocher said.

Verona turned to Avery, tapping her own collarbone.

Avery reached up to her collar and pulled it down.  The cut was bandaged there.  She’d placed the bandage against it and haphazardly taped it down.

Verona laid her hands down there, palm against the back of one hand.  Avery winced.

“Sorry,” Verona said.

“What are the risks of divine power and direct prayer?” Durocher asked, at the front of the room.

“That’s a big question.  If you have less awesome gods, they might give you something you didn’t ask for.  Or they might get pissy,” Metaphaos said.  “Can I say that, in front of a classroom of kids?”

“Please don’t,” Durocher said.

The god’s voice filled the room, “By deific decree, ignore the rude word, children.  I’ll warn, less great gods will get irritated, or very particular about how you can ask for things and what barriers must be met.  Especially if you’re asking a lot.  That’s how you ask for healing from a war god and get them deciding nah, have a dozen undead soldiers, instead, churl.”

“Gods will do what they want while the door is open,” Durocher said.

“Exactly.”

“Hm,” Avery hesitated, leaning back out of the way of Verona’s hands.

“Relax,” Verona said, putting the hands back, gentler this time.

“Metaphaos, bright haired cool god-”

The god laughed at the front of the room.

“-heal my friend of these cuts.”

Light shone beneath Verona’s hands.  She stroked the length of the bandage, then pulled her hand back.

“Ow, ow,” Avery said, as she pulled on the bandage.

“Did it not work?” Lucy asked.

“It’s taped on, it’s pulling at my skin, ow.  It worked.”

There were some exclamations from others around the room.  More glows.  Metaphaos laughed and it was a bit like the evil villain, heady on his own success.

“One healing for each of you!” Metaphaos addressed a group of boys.  “Don’t be greedy.  If you want more, talk to me.  I only ask for a symbol branded on the arse, thigh, or upper chest, a three week fever dance, or a moderate animal sacrifice, to start!”

Avery reached up, a bit shy, toward Lucy’s face.  Lucy crossed the last inch, pressing lip to fingertip.

“Plesh,” Lucy said, lip movements constrained by the touching fingers.

“Metaphaos, um-” Avery said.

“Fluff him up a bit,” Verona told her.

“Fluff?” the god asked, from the front of the room.

“In the most respectful, appropriate ways,” Verona hurried to say.  “You’re the coolest god I’ve ever met, I wouldn’t be fake about this, don’t worry.”

“Way to go, Ronnie,” Avery muttered.

“I didn’t think he’d hear.”

“You said my name,” Metaphaos boomed.  “I listen.”

“Okay, okay!”

“Stop irritating the nice, awe-inspiring god when Avery’s about to heal me, you moron,” Lucy muttered at Verona, her lips moving against Avery’s fingers.  It stung, reminding her of the cut.

“Metaphaos, exercise your divine glory, please, and heal my friend who thinks you’re nice and awe-inspiring, ignore our other friend who’s a moron sometimes,” Avery said.

Verona sniffed.  But light shone.  Warmth leeched into Lucy’s face, like her face was close to a fire, but at no risk of being burned.

She opened her mouth, then moved her lips.  No cut.  She traced a finger at her lip’s edge to check.

“Thank you, Metaphaos,” she said.  “Maybe it’s because I was a wimp, but that was bothering me an awful lot.  You’re too kind.”

The god glanced at her, smiled briefly, then turned his head, looking at another group.  “I’m not healing that.  Be good, girls.”

“Other forms of healing have their own risks,” Durocher said, stepping up onto a bench, because the stage was pretty much entirely occupied.  “Look at what the source of practice is when weighing the value.  The powers I tap originate from an age of primordial chaos.  When light, land, sea, and sky mingled freely.  As those things settled into layers, animals and other forces took form from the chaos.  Gods gave it structure.  The powers I tap don’t necessarily know I’m drawing on them.  The trick is tapping the right place in the right way, and the result is a flood of whatever it is I’m reaching for.  If I can successfully heal, it’s rarely pretty.  You may get some of that chaos in you, a bit of scale, fur, or wood where you once had flesh.  But it will almost always get the job done.”

“You have any healing you need?” Lucy asked Verona.  “Maybe we can cure that longstanding mental deficiency?”

Verona gasped, poking Lucy in the stomach.  Lucy gave Verona a playful shrug.

A few benches down, some students did another healing.

“Goblin healing is surprisingly effective, but difficult to bear.  Spit and a slap of mud, and it must be taught or done by the right goblins.  Find the wrong goblin and they’ll surprise you with an amputation.  Faerie healing is surface level and fragile, and I wouldn’t recommend it.  Glamour paves over the injury and you could just as easily end up with a mystical abscess as a healing that reaches below that surface.  Echoes can patch up the Self if matched well, but rarely mend flesh and they may even slow that healing.  Better to turn to spirits, who repair from the inside out, giving you fuel and fire.”

“Wonder how that works with Edith,” Lucy mused.

“I came out of yesterday mostly unscathed,” Verona told her, unrelated.  Replying to the earlier offer.

Durocher went on, “Put something elemental into a wound, and it’s more likely to brew as a small storm within than to truly mend.  A replacement spark of life, sometimes, if you have nothing else.”

“You could heal Snowdrop,” Avery told Lucy.  “She’s not too hurt, though.”

“Maybe after?” Lucy asked, as she looked back.  “If she needs it.”

Snowdrop turned human, reclining on the bench, head in Avery’s lap.  “I’m dying.  I need healing now.  Mercy.”

Yadira was at the back of the room.

Lucy stood, giving Avery a pat on the shoulder, and giving Snowdrop’s foot a waggle.

She walked over.  Durocher kept talking, “…and in fact, the Abyssal may be related to the same kinds of primordial chaos I tap into, simply refined by time.  The effects are very similar.  Healing is possible, but it leaves scars in much the same way my healing might leave inhuman flesh…”

Yadira locked eyes with Lucy.

Yadira was injured, her wrist wrapped, and she was alone.  Kass was in the middle of the room.  Raquel had left when Musser had.  Nobody had walked over.  Yadira’s stance and expression might have scared off anyone willing.

To Lucy’s Sight, it looked like the wrist hurt a whole lot.  Threads of dark red watercolor shot up and down Yadira’s arm, bleeding out to the point it colored a lot of her in darker shades.  It swelled around the wrist in particular.  The wrapping seemed to be keeping it rigid.

“Can we not be enemies, glaring at each other?” Lucy asked.  “I think we each get to perform one healing.  Will you be mine?  That wrist-”

“You have no comprehension, do you?” Yadira asked, looking at Lucy.  She shook her head a bit.

Lucy didn’t respond.

“Bristow?  The damage you three did?” Yadira asked.  Her expression changed three times, so fast Lucy could barely follow.  Bewilderment at Lucy’s reaction, then frustration, then anger.  “Get out of my fucking way.”

Lucy wasn’t in her way, but she still stepped back.

Yadira stormed off back in the direction of the dormitory rooms, leaving class early.  The god at the front of the classroom watched, but said and did nothing.

Lucy ducked her head a bit, as he glanced her way.  She didn’t need more enemies.

There were a lot of others watching her, too.

They didn’t have a lot of friends here.  One of the people she was most familiar with was Yadira, and Yadira was more willing to have a wrist that sore than to make things okay again.

They’d played games before, intimidating a bit, trying to look strong as a just-in-case.  They’d scared off the sorta-friendly types, like Yadira’s group.  Now they looked strong, and they had no friends.

Raymond, at the front of the room, talked to Durocher but his head turned toward Lucy.

He was right.  They were in a position to walk away with too many enemies and not enough friends.  She’d underestimated how hard that would be to fix.

Vanishing Points – 8.2

Verona

“I’m not going to eat it.  No way, no how.”

“We all know you can eat it, Snowdrop,” Lucy said.

“It looks terrible.”

It looked amazing.  Set outside the door to their dorm room was a little cart, and the food was laid out on that cart, each dish covered.

An arrangement of vegetarian sushi, including avocado rolls, cucumber rolls, fried rice rolls, and what looked like some brawny string beans dusted with salt and beads of moisture.

Chicken nuggets that didn’t look like they came from a fast food place, dusted with herbs and what might have been finely chopped chives, set on one side of a plate that had a trio of dipping bowls.  Assorted chopped vegetables sat on the other side, half of each one deep fried, while leaving the other half crisp as a handle.

A mini-bowl of what looked like grilled shrimp cooked with a thick noodles and a creamy sauce.  Vegetables were arranged at the edge like a flower blossom, and the creamy sauce was just thick enough that they didn’t sink or drift.

Verona dragged the plate with the nuggets closer to her, then picked up a nugget, giving it a scrutinizing look.  “It’s… at least it’s not talkative.”

“Ronnie,” Lucy said, glancing over her shoulder.  A few doors down, some other students were also leaving class, getting ready to order their lunches.  Watching, Verona noted.

“No, uh, tweed in evidence.”

“Don’t be gross,” Avery said, wincing.  “I had a Wolf nightmare and I’m really not up for it.”

Verona tore the nugget in half, looking, then set it down, using a napkin to clean her fingers of breaded crumbs.

Lucy poked at the shrimp pasta dish with an obsidian chopstick.  “We skipped breakfast, we should eat.  Keep energy up.”

“Yeah,” Avery agreed.

At a poke from Lucy’s chopstick, a bit of shrimp sank into the creamy pasta.  A bubble rose and swelled without popping.

“Aaaaaieee,” Verona kept her voice very quiet, picking up a skewer and bringing it close to the bubble.  “Before I pop, call me mister bubble, esquire.”

Avery punched her in the arm with surprising speed and force.

“Ow- frigging ow!  That was hard!”

“Don’t be shitty,” Avery said.

Verona rubbed her upper arm.

“Friggin’- you shouldn’t hit people, Ave,” Verona grumbled.

“I have too many siblings to be nonviolent,” Avery said.

Verona glanced at Lucy, looking for help, and saw only a serious, thoughtful expression.

Lucy’s eyes flashed, irises turning white, the whites turning red.

“What do you think?” Verona asked.  She used her own Sight.  The dishes took on a weird uniformity, all white with red things struggling in them.

“It’s technically safe to eat.  No sign of anything weird.”

“Yeah,” Avery agreed.  She wasn’t using the Sight, she was just acknowledging Lucy.

Lucy didn’t look away from it.  “We really do need to eat.  Feed the Self.  This would be easier if they hadn’t, uh…”

“Given us this as a thank you of sorts?” Verona asked.  “A meal that may be designed to be our individual perfect lunches?”

“Yeah.”

“I know you three aren’t picky eaters at all, but I am,” Snowdrop said.  “I hate seeing food go to waste.”

“You hate- oh.  Trash food,” Avery said.

“Uneaten meals going in the trash is just the biggest tragedy,” Snowdrop said, shaking her head slowly.  “It’s the worst.”

“Anyone up for fast food instead?” Verona asked.  “I know it’s a bit of a walk.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Avery said.

“Yeah.  I do, actually.”

“Tossing out food like this?  Who would do such a thing?” Snowdrop whispered, leaning over the cart, nose so close to the bowl of shrimp she was threatening to tip it over.  “I don’t even want to know.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “Fast food, then.  We should go now if we’re going to go and get back in time for afternoon’s class.”

“Self and soul,” Verona recalled.

“If you’re legitimately interested in this Halflight stuff, and ditching your humanity, partially or overall, this seems like a great class to pay close attention to,” Lucy told her.

“Souls, though,” Verona mused.  They left the cart behind and headed for the front door, against the loose collection of students.  “Do we really need souls?”

Snowdrop reached for food, and Avery moved her hand away.  “We’ll feed you after.”

Snowdrop sighed.

“I’m willing to make you a bet, Ronnie,” Lucy said.  “That after this afternoon’s class, the consensus will be yes.  Yes, souls are important.”

“Pssh.  Class held by a bunch of soul-havers, bound to be biased.  We can’t really know until we dredge up some Others who don’t have souls and get their take.”

“You do that, Ronnie and I’ll listen.  Believe it or not, I do want to learn stuff, especially the stuff relevant to whatever practice you’re learning.”

Outside the school, in the parking lot, a bunch of older students were hopping in their cars.  More students were leaving the school campus than usual.  Hadley Hennigar, the Legendres, Xerxes and his little brother, Jarvis’s group, who were waiting and looking impatient while Silas talked to Estrella, off to the side…

America’s battered sedan looked like it had received the post-apocalypse road warrior treatment.  Modified engine block that stuck out of the open hood and blocked some of the driver’s view, spiked hubcaps, roll cage, graffiti on the side, and armor reinforcement.  Some of it looked less battle ready, but considering her focus on goblins, it was hard for Verona to say.  Fake eyelashes on the headlights and an arrangement of screaming rubber chickens rigged to the tailpipe.

If the group of older, unfriendly students wasn’t enough, the fact America and Liberty were getting in their car was good reason for Verona, Lucy, and Avery to stop walking and pause a healthy distance away.

America reached in through one of the car windows -no glass- and grabbed a goblin from the car interior, glancing over her shoulder before bringing it out.  It looked like a different type than the usual, which said a lot when goblins came in all shapes and sizes, with all sorts of features ranging from the noseless to the big-nosed, big-eared to pig-eared to earless.  This guy was decorated in glass and metal, and was bound thoroughly in chain and bike lock.  One key-turn freed him from most of it, America shoved some food in its mouth, gave its head a pat, while it smiled up at her, then tossed him into the open engine block at the front of the car.

“Bound goblin?” Avery asked.

“I think it’s a happy goblin,” Verona mused.

The car started before the goblin princess even had her car door open.  A moment later, she was tearing out of the lot, the rubber chickens screaming and flapping around behind the car like bats out of hell.

“What was that?”

The three of them turned.  Clementine.  The woman was holding a wrap and finishing eating, as she stepped out from one of the workshops.  She was dressed for summer, with jean shorts and a tee with a color-mismatched pocket on the breast, and sneakers without socks.

“Or do I not want to know?” the woman asked.

“It’s a student with an annoying set of car mods,” Avery said.  “Hi.”

“Hi.  Was that the scary car?  The one that didn’t look like it should even run?”

“Yeah,” Avery said, adjusting her footing and bouncing on the spot in the process.

“We heard you’re still around,” Verona commented.

“Some of us are,” Clementine said.  “They set us up in here for overnight.”

As if to answer that, one of the others stepped out of the building, brushing her teeth.  Shellie, who looked a bit sleepy.  Despite the summer warmth, Shellie wore a long-sleeved shirt, covering most of her piercings and body mods.  Some had been pulled out or changed out.  It was still a lot, overall.

Shellie’s arrival had a chilling effect on the conversation.  The woman took her meandering time, walking over to where Clementine was.

“Crazy stuff these past few days, huh?” Shellie asked.

“Yeah,” Avery answered.

“Clementine was just telling us they set you up here for a bit.  In the workshop area?”

“Beds and everything,” Shellie answered.  “I’m taking five until I go back to Daniel.”

“I’m still getting to grips with a small part of what happened,” Clementine said.  “Did you guys have a run in?”

“Yeah,” Verona answered, not taking her eyes off Shellie.

“I tried to kill them a little,” Shellie commented, eyes half lidded, foamy toothbrush in hand.

“Oh,” Clementine said.  “Maybe go back inside?”

“Bygones, right?” Shellie asked.  “We good?”

“I don’t want to be on bad terms,” Lucy answered.

Shellie snorted.  “Good way of putting it.”

Some others stepped outside.  People who had been in the background last night.  An older man, a nervous looking guy, and a guy who wouldn’t make eye contact.

“What’s the story?” Avery asked, glancing between the newcomers and Clementine.

“Things back at the apartment building are pretty rocky,” Clementine answered.  “Apparently Mr. Bristow isn’t coming back?”

Verona nodded, swallowing.

“And Ted Havens- you met Ted?”

“We crossed paths,” Lucy said.

“He normally runs things when Mr. Bristow is gone, but he’s taking a sabbatical.  I don’t know how things are going to end up,” Clementine said.

“I think our offer stands,” Lucy said.  “Maybe get out now, while there’s nobody keeping you there.”

“Maybe,” Clementine said.  “That’s a maybe aimed at the offer.  I… I thought long and hard about what the old man said…”

“Charles?” Avery asked.  “He’s not old-old.  Just…”

“Life kicked his ass,” Verona finished.

“Yeah,” Avery said.

“He said that I shouldn’t.  I thought about it and it’s usually better when I take advice.  And the bad advice I shouldn’t take tends to be people trying to lure me in.  So I don’t know.  I… a lot of stuff’s up in the air now.  I think I should back off and take people’s word for it.  But after that… what do I do?  Mr. Sunshine said he might be able to help with some things, since I can’t go to my landlord about it now, but if he’s gone, will the building be sold?  Will I be able to get in touch with my usual buyers, who take questionable stuff off my hands?”

“We could help a bit,” Verona said.

Clementine gave Verona a half-smile.  “The offer is appreciated.  I’m not sure I want to get kids caught up in this.  Especially given what happened the last time I came to your neck of the woods.”

“Is Raymond helping you get things figured out?” Lucy asked.

“Not really.  He’s figuring his own stuff out.  I work online, so I can be away for a little bit, but I’m postponing deliveries- I do online buying and selling.”

We know, Verona thought.  She was glad neither of the other two said it.

Shellie stretched a bit.  Piercings all up and down her arm stood out against her sleeves.  “And I work in a fucking gas station.  I called some people to cover me, but I don’t believe them.  Getting fired would be a mercy, anyway.  Not that you care about me.”

“Hey, if you don’t want to be enemies, I don’t know about these other two…” Verona started, looking at the others. “…but I’m cool with that.  I never want to work at a gas station, I think.  I don’t want to work anywhere, except for the weird stuff related to this school.”

“I mean,” Avery ventured.  “I don’t want to start anything, really, but… an apology would be nice.”

Shellie snorted.

“Shell,” Clementine said.  “They helped Daniel.”

“Yeah, well, I get carried away.  The short man with the mustache knew that.  I should have been more on guard.  Sucks that you got in the way.”

“Uh huh,” Avery replied.

“Who are they?” Lucy asked, jumping in before things could go any further.  “Staying with you?”

The Aware.

Clementine looked back.  “Neighbors.  They had disputes about how Mr. Bristow was taking care of the building.  They were told if they traveled, on Mr. Belanger’s dime, they could name and shame him, instead of going through the convoluted landlord tenant board.  A bunch of them were mad enough to want to do it, especially once they were told Mr. Bristow was trying to acquire another property.”

“What do they do?” Verona asked.

“Do?” Clementine replied.  She looked surprised.  She frowned a bit.  “I don’t know.”

“I do,” Shellie said.  “Want the dirt?”

“Yes,” Verona said.

Lucy shook her head.  “Yes, but we don’t have a lot of time.  We didn’t want to eat on campus-”

Shellie laughed.

“-and it’s a long walk.”

“Want a ride?” Clementine asked.  “My truck turned up last night.”

“Turned up?”

“Come on,” Clementine told them.  “She’s not very big, but if you don’t mind riding in the back…”

“We do that a lot, actually,” Avery answered.

They followed her.  Shellie came with, spitting her toothpaste into the grass, then, like she was a baseball player, hurled her toothbrush past the group of people at the door and inside.  Presumably to land on the floor.

Verona kind of wished she could give so few fucks.  Not that she was a fan.

“I’ll be back shortly!” Clementine called out to the three at the door.  “If Mr. Sunshine comes asking after me, let him know I won’t be long, I’m taking these three for lunch!”

Shellie wiped the toothpaste from around her lips.  It took some dexterity to get at individual sections of lip that were separated by piercings.  “Just so you know, our ride is a murder truck.  Scared?  It’s spooky, ooooh.”

“Right,” Lucy said.  “Sure.”

“It is though,” Clementine clarified.  “She’s not kidding.”

Lucy gave Verona and Avery an alarmed look.

“Did a lot of murders happen in it?  Or near it?”

“It’s not a murderer’s truck, it’s a truck that murders on its own,” Clementine explained.  “She found her way to me a few years back.  I love the aesthetic, and I figured as long as she’s with me, she’s not racking up a body count.  Can’t dismantle her, she’ll just turn up intact later.  But I had to do a retrofit to get her to where she can get up to highway speeds and be road legal.  That worked, at least.”

“You upgraded the murder truck?” Lucy asked.

Clementine stopped in her tracks, then resumed walking.  “I’ll keep her out of trouble.”

The murder truck, as it turned out, was the smallest truck Verona had ever seen, with a super low truck bed and a roof that was about the same height as Lucy.  It was white, a bit dusty, and showed no signs of the murder spree.

“I like it,” Avery said.  “Is it bad if I call it cute?”

“I’m unreasonably fond of it,” Clementine said.  “Even if cleaning is a horror show.  Tiny bones and congealing blood.  I went to a mechanic about it and they said it was an oil leak or something, the red color was a coincidence or rust boiling through with the oil.”

“Weren’t you saying America’s car was creepy?” Lucy asked.

“There’s creepy because of weirdness, and there’s creepy that makes you wonder who the owner is.  People bother me a lot more than some of this stuff,” Clementine said.  “You okay riding in the back?”

“More than,” Verona said.

It was a bit crowded, actually.  Avery sat up front, and then Lucy, Shellie, Snowdrop, and Verona sat in the back.

Windows were open and Clementine was right, she wasn’t a fast driver.  It seemed like a limitation of the truck and the roads being winding more than Clementine, though.

“Old man is a substance abuser,” Shellie said, head lolling back, watching the branches over the road as they passed by.

“I know that much,” Clementine said, from the front seat.

“Went to the war, got experimented on, you know the drill,” Shellie went on.

“Which war?” Lucy asked.

Shellie lolled her head back even further, until her shoulders and head were leaning well off the side of the truck bed.  She lifted a leg, and it looked like she could slide or fall off.  “Who knows?  The war.  You don’t ask a guy like that about his wartime experience.  You listen if he decides to share it.  He consumes enough caffeine to kill a herd of horses, pops the pills, whatever he can do to keep from sleeping.  Doesn’t really suffer for the lack of sleep or the drugs and stuff, but it does catch up with him if he lets his guard down.”

“What happens if he sleeps?” Verona asked, raising her voice to be heard over the whipping wind.

“Goes somewhere else.  Spot from the past.  You can always tell because he’s got fresh scars, blood, look in his eyes when he trudges in the front door.”

“I might actually have something that helps with that,” Clementine said.

“If you do, do it on the down low,” Shellie told her.

“Why?”

“Because the people who want him around aren’t people who want him better.  Just like they don’t want you fixed, or Daniel as a productive member of society.”

Verona had to lean over to get something of a view of Clementine’s face.  Clementine didn’t respond to that, just driving.  Lucy gave directions as they hit the intersection.

“No response?  That’s cool.  Moving on, the young lady?  She took me a little while to figure out.  Not really my thing, you know?  I thought, the way she’s working, the corporate overtime, she’d have to get promoted.  Probably a young CEO.  But no.  She smokes like a chimney, and comes up to the rooftop, so we run into each other a lot.  Got to talking.  My first clue was that she wasn’t sure if it was AM or PM.  She’s a basic data entry tech.  Has been for a while.  She can’t keep track of the days.  The clock and calendar aren’t nice to her.  You didn’t like the sound of working in a gas station, kid?”

“Nope,” Verona said.  “Sorry.”

“She works twenty-six hour days.  Might be longer if you account for other weirdness.  She doesn’t realize it, she can’t keep count, but she goes in, doesn’t come back to the apartment for a while.  Then she arrives home, maybe watches some TV, has a smoke, might have a, uh, gentleman caller but can’t actually upgrade to having a boyfriend because she doesn’t have the time.”

“So she’s, what, stuck at work?” Verona asked.

“You know when it feels like your days take forever before they’re over?  At school or whatever?”

“School, yeah,” Lucy said.  “Can’t work yet.”

“Don’t have to work yet,” Verona said.

“Hers actually take as long as those worst days feel like.  She at least racks up some crazy overtime, nobody’s caught it.  She sends the extra home to her mom to help get her out of debt, her mom wastes the money.”

“That sounds like a kind of hell,” Verona said.

“Can’t anyone help her?” Avery asked.

“Can you help her?” Shellie asked, indicating Clementine.  “Me?  Daniel?”

“Some,” Avery said, frowning as she looked back through the window.

“You’re more optimistic than I am.  So, after Mr. Dreams-take-me-to-bad-places and Ms. Work-takes-forever, we have Mr. Prey.”

“Prey?” Avery asked.

“The way he tells it, he bumped into a guy on the street, the guy dropped something.  He returned it, and got an envelope in exchange.  Money.  The person giving him the money freaked out when he opened the envelope to check, didn’t let him return it, then walked away.”

“How much?” Verona asked.

“A lot.  Enough that it was weird.  Ten years passed, nothing came of it, he nearly forgot about it, until a very pretty French woman with two very ugly French men came knocking.  They want what they’re owed, they tell him, and every time they catch up with him, they try to impress on him just how much they want it, before they drop him off at some random point unknown, bleeding, bruised, burned, electrocuted. Or he’s unscathed, but they burn his apartment building down.  Then the cat and mouse game begins anew.”

“I’m trying to think of what that would even be,” Lucy said.

“No idea.  He stole some money, tried to refuse it, but they don’t want the money back.  Even with interest.  They want what they paid for ten years ago.  Whenever he asks, they speak in metaphor only, or in French, or both.”

“Do you know?” Avery asked.  “What the metaphors were?”

Shellie shook her head.  “I didn’t have French class as a kid, and I kind of didn’t care.  We run into one another when I’ve finished a shift.  I finish my day as he’s starting his.  So long as he stays near the apartment building, they only watch from across the street.  The original three expanded to something like twenty.  Sometimes he’ll slip me five bucks to distract someone specific and let him by.”

“I’m thinking of the Wolf,” Avery said, leaning back and looking at Verona and Lucy.  “I feel like that’s sort of what she’d be like, given the chance.”

If she were free?

Just picking randoms to terrorize?

“If that’s true, what does it mean?” Lucy asked.  “In terms of deciphering his situation?”

“Could mean they don’t want any specific item or person.  Maybe they want the chase, the hunt.  They paid so they’d have the justification to hunt him.”

“They don’t, though,” Lucy said.  “Maybe if someone with enough authority told them…”

“I wouldn’t want to be the one to try,” Shellie said.  “They’re frustrated he’s so hard to get to, these days.  Kind of like certain school staff, who were pretty eager for someone to give them a reason.”

Verona looked away.  Shellie laughed.

They reached the small town.  The kid from before who’d been in the wading pool was there, slack jawed and staring, while a baby wearing totally unnecessary floaters was leaning hard into the pool’s edge, making it collapse and water leak out.  No parents in sight.

The woman from before at the gas station was standing by the door, smoking while there were no customers.  A similar-ish vibe to the current Shellie.

They pulled up at the fast food places.  Snowdrop was sleepy enough that Avery discreetly had her turn into an opossum, lifting her to a shoulder, and they ordered food for her anyway.

Verona had a barbecue chicken burger with sweet potato fries that were limper than spaghetti noodles.  It was nothing compared to what the nuggets back at the school would have been, but still better than eating at home, and she was ravenous.

Clementine and Shellie had been kind enough to wait.  They stood by the car.  Other cars from the school were in the lot, but Verona guessed the students had gone to sit by the water or whatever.

“How are you after last night?” Clementine asked, while they chewed, using the flat surface of the truck bed and the lip around the edge to rest stuff on.  “I’m not fishing for information.  I just worry.”

“You look healthier,” Shellie commented.  “Less cuts, bruises, and bumps.”

“Fast healing,” Verona answered.

Shellie smirked.

“It was dark, so I didn’t see,” Clementine said.  “Was it that bad last night?”

“It was pretty bad,” Lucy said.  “It’s bad in different ways today.”

“Lucy got shot down by Yadira,” Verona said.  “Similar wavelength, before, right?”

Clementine cocked her head.

“For friendship.  Or at least, I wanted to not be enemies,” Lucy said.  “We didn’t make a lot of friends.”

“I’m not the best person to give advice on making friends,” Clementine said.  “Wish I could.”

“I’m a bundle of hugs, warmth, and smiles,” Shellie said, leaning against the side of the tiny truck.  “This here’s my thing.”

“Shellie is comfortable being on her own, I think.”

“Comfortable enough.”

“And I-” Clementine hesitated.  “I don’t make many friends.  I have a lot of acquaintances.  But not many friends.”

“Maybe you could consider us friends?” Avery suggested, shrugging.  Snowdrop roused a bit lifting her head, then noticed the food, stretching herself awake.

Lucy shook her head.  “It’s not- I don’t care as much about making friends as I care about… sorting out the mess.  Trying to limit the damage and what might follow us.”

“Like envelopes of money opening the door to life-ruining headaches ten years later,” Verona suggested.

“Sure.”

“Hm,” Clementine hummed for a second.  “I do have experience with dealing with the aftermath of bad messes.”

Avery joined the conversation, eager.  “Any advice would be great.  I’m sorry to impose, you were kind enough to drive us.  And to help us last night.”

“I’m glad to.  What happened last night, going with Alexander, it didn’t feel right.  Helping you felt right.  Even if I don’t know half of what it meant.

Shellie looked down at Verona.

“You okay?” Lucy asked.

Verona met her friend’s eyes, and saw that the irises were white, the edges red.

Verona turned on her sight, meeting Lucy’s eyes with purple ones, and stuck out her tongue.

Oh wow.  Now that her Sight was on, she was seeing just how… meaty that truck was.  And everything near it.  It was less like it had a thing made of gore flapping around in it, because there wasn’t much space for anything in there, and more that the immediate vicinity of the truck was shark infested water, the flayed-flesh sharks swimming beneath the street, while bits of meat floated around, chum in the water.

“I’m serious,” Lucy said, taking hold of Verona’s chin and forcing Verona back to eye contact.

“I think I’m okay,” Verona said, her pronunciation messed up because of Lucy’s fingers near her mouth.  She did think so, even though her stomach was sore, like she’d been punched there a few times and couldn’t relax the muscles.  She didn’t remember taking any hits there yesterday.

“Okay,” Lucy said, letting go.

Clementine folded her arms.  She took a few soggy sweet potato fries as Verona held a container out.  “I think when it comes to situations that seem unreasonable… I think of the time someone invited themselves over to my place.  We’d been a thing, it hadn’t been great, but I wanted company.”

“Understandable,” Avery said.

“I was worried my place was a mess- this was before Sargent Hall.”

“Inviting one night stands to Sargent Hall is a gamble.  They might run into someone in the hallway and get scared off,” Shellie said.

“Yeah,” Clementine said.  “But that’s not what I’m talking about.  I had to do about a week’s worth of cleaning in an hour.  More than.  With the added problem that there are things at my apartment that I wouldn’t want someone I liked to get tangled up in.”

“Seems like mess would be something you’d really want to avoid,” Lucy said.

“It is, and I’ve learned that the hard way.  But that was… let’s just say it was a dark month or two.  Part of why I wanted an ex girlfriend over, even if she wasn’t my absolute favorite.  I let things slide, I had to clean up.  So how do you tackle that?  It’s easy to be paralyzed by the mountain of stuff before you.”

“I feel a bit paralyzed right now,” Lucy said.

“I had to tackle it.  What would do the most damage if I didn’t deal with it?  Either in terms of mess and her opinion of me, or the… I don’t know.  The reversed music box that turns random people nearby into babies.  Lotion that makes you immortal, but more and more cruel.  A paper airplane that was really good at flying, and slitting throats with papercuts.”

“Lots of stuff, yeah,” Lucy said.

“Start big.  The most obvious, problematic stuff.  And the stuff that’s easiest to handle.  Then you work your way down.  Then you ask yourself what the next biggest problem you’re facing is.  What needs to be handled?  And you work your way down.  Maybe accept that you can’t fix it all.  If you’re having somebody over, and they more or less invited themselves, then they shouldn’t expect things to be perfect.”

Lucy shook her head.  “It’s not about being perfect for any one person.  It’s more like… if we can’t get stuff sorted here, then what happened back home where you and Sharon and, uh-”

“Daniel,” Shellie said.  “I’m not going to bite your head off, so long as you don’t try to guilt me.”

“Not trying to.  When you guys got sent our way to pry and cause chaos, that might become regular if we don’t give people reason to back off,” Lucy said.

“Then start with the biggest things you can deal with, and work your way down,” Clementine said.  “Keep an eye out for fixes for the big stuff you’re ignoring.”

“You should be good at that,” Shellie said.  “The way you dealt with the biggest threat last night, and murked our landlord.”

That feeling in Verona’s stomach, like she’d been repeatedly punched, shifted all at once.  Like hands were gripping her guts, twisting.  Fine one second, and the next, distress, pain, and the aftertaste of the chicken burger she’d already eaten and swallowed became more intense than when she’d been chewing on it.

“Ronnie.”

The food stuff made her think of the brownie’s gift, like a prize or some crap, and the pain made her think of her dad, and of not going home, and karma, and the-

And that was the entirely wrong line of thought to go down because it made things twice as bad.

“Ronnie, hey.”

“Verona.”

She turned, jogged a few steps away, and decided jogging was bad, walked, then staggered, and then doubled over.

Last night’s late dinner and the meal she’d just eaten found their way to the ditch.  She almost keeled forward, but Lucy caught her.

Even when she was done, and it took a few goes, it was like her body was trying to purge itself of the negative thoughts and memories, and with her stomach empty, it worked on her lungs, making breathing hard.  She coughed and sputtered, trying to clear her throat.

If I’m going to purge my brain of all the bad stuff, there’s an awful lot more lung, heart, throat, and stuff to get through before you get to the skull, body, she thought.

She had tears in her eyes, and they were mostly from throwing up, and they caught the sunlight that filtered down through the tall trees around this little mini-town.  The light mixing with the moisture in her eyes made x-shapes, like a reminder.

Shellie came over with a water bottle from the gas station, handing it to Clementine.  Clementine wet a napkin, then handed it over.  Avery used it for Verona’s forehead, then mouth.

Lucy just stood by her, half-hugging her, and keeping her from falling over.

“Do you want a ride back?” Clementine asked.  “To a school nurse or something?”

“We don’t really have a nurse,” Avery answered.  “We have a Durocher.  Scary teacher.”

“We might not survive what she does to fix us up,” Verona mumbled.

“In some cases,” Lucy clarified.

Verona nodded, her vision filled with those ‘x’ shapes reflected in the moisture that welled in her eyes but didn’t drip down her face.  She thought the nod would shake them free and it didn’t.

“Are you up to walk back?” Lucy asked.  “You can borrow Avery’s… thing, maybe.  But I think we should talk amongst ourselves.  Figure stuff out.  Go over key stuff.  Family stuff.  Strategy.  If you’re up for it.”

“Could get a ride back and leave Lucy and me to handle talking about that,” Avery said.  “Catch a nap?”

“Important afternoon class, remember?” Verona asked.  She was a bit hoarse.  “Yes.  I can walk.  I’ll deal.”

“Time delayed reaction, huh?” Avery asked.

Verona shrugged.

“Is she okay?” Clementine asked.

“Verona bottles crap up and doesn’t think about it until it blindsides her.  It’s been a few years since you did that like this, Ronnie.”

Verona coughed.

“Can I do anything?” Clementine asked.

“Can we talk further?” Lucy asked.  “What’s your schedule like?”

“While you have your afternoon class, I’ll be having my meeting with your temporary headmaster,” Clementine said, her voice gentle.  “Then I go home, drive Shellie back.  Raymond Sunshine will arrange transportation for the others.  It’d be nice if Kevin and Rae had offered to give anyone a ride, but they left first thing.  We’ll have to make it safe for Curran, the guy with the mob after him.  Or whatever it is.”

“Not a mob,” Shellie said.  “Mobs don’t act like that.”

“Whatever it is,” Clementine said.  “But I’ll be leaving.  If that’s okay.”

Verona nodded.

“It’s okay.  We appreciate what you’ve done,” Lucy told her.

“You have my number.  I’d like to not lose touch.  Call if you need help or support, or… just to call.”

“That means a lot.  Thank you,” Avery said.  “Good luck with the apartment, and your, uh, girlfriends?”

Smooth, Ave, Verona thought, licking her lips and then wishing she hadn’t because it tasted like bile.  She motioned for and took the wet napkin to wipe at her mouth.

“Not girlfriend.  Partner, I think.  I might be jumping the gun on that one, but… I really want it to be the case.  I took the leap, reached out after talking to Charles, that old man you introduced us to.  I told them my life was complicated, they’re okay with that.  I’ll ease them into the rest.”

“That’s so great,” Avery said.

“I’m pretty terrified,” Clementine admitted.

Verona straightened up, wiped at her eyes with the napkin, and saw Clementine smiling.

Before,” Verona started, and her voice was a croak, prompting her to clear it.  “Before the end of summer… we might need a bit of help.”

“Anything I can do to help.”

“Stuff that’s safe and easy to use.  Or hard to use but you’ve figured it out enough to tell us what to do?” Verona asked.

“Okay,” Clementine answered.

“And Shellie?” Verona ventured.

Shellie’s pierced eyebrows went up.  She looked hot, wearing long sleeves in summer.

“We might need to kick Fae ass at some point.”

“Say when and where.”

Lucy’s grip on Verona’s arm tightened.  Verona could almost read her friend’s mind.

Shellie in the mix would make things harder, not easier.

“More like… advice?  Tips?  Any tricks?  Can we call or something?”

Shellie leaned back, looking to the side.

“Shellie,” Clementine said.  “Help them out.  Especially if you did try to kill them.”

Verona closed her eyes.  For a moment where they were opening again, moisture drew out those bright ‘x’ shapes, like the eyes of Brownies.

“Call Clem, Clem can bug me for it.”

“Thanks,” Verona said.

“Don’t thank me.  Thanks are annoying.  Just… employ some extra prejudice, when the asses are kicked.  How’s that?”

Verona shrugged and nodded.  “If or when.”

“Feel better,” Clementine said.

With those parting words, she headed out.

“Ahem,” Verona read.  “Your father is out of immediate danger and shouldn’t need surgery, but he will be tender and sensitive to food for a while.  He’s got plenty of meds and is returning to work for half days.”

They sat on the sidewalk.  Verona read from her phone, Lucy to one side of her and Snowdrop in her lap.

Avery was drawing a circle on the road around them, using a fat stick of chalk.

“It will take six to eight weeks for things to return to normal.  He had a flare up after pushing himself too hard and too fast last night.  He’ll have regular appointments to follow up and watch for any signs of danger or relapse, and may want you to come for some, when you’re back.”

“Not too bad,” Avery said.

“I think he’s going to milk it.  He’s going to draw this out and guilt me and I really don’t want to go home.”

“Careful with the language,” Lucy warned  “Predictions are dangerous.”

“He will, though.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “You can stay over some.”

“What if I go cat mode for a few weeks?  Just as a trial run-”

“Ronnie…”

Avery sat down beside Verona.  “If you can figure out a way to stay at Lucy’s without her mom talking to your dad, then maybe you could become a cat and stay with me when you’re not there?”

“I’d be worried your little sister would twist my head off or something,” Verona answered.  “And I don’t want to fib to Lucy’s mom.  But we’re getting distracted with my crap.  What about what Clementine said?  About there being big stuff to handle?”

“This is big stuff,” Lucy told her.  “We can’t handle all this other crap unless we’re all okay.  And you’re not okay.”

“And you?” Verona asked.  “Ave?  You were a part of things.”

Avery nodded, eyes dropping.

“I was telling myself he had an out and he decided to march in there as a big fuck you to us.  And I guess to leave a mess here for whoever became headmaster, and to mess things up at the apartment, and a bunch of other stuff.  So fuck him, right?  I shouldn’t feel bad, right?  But… it caught me off guard.”

“It wasn’t only the one time,” Lucy said, looking around at the sleepy little town in the middle of nowhere, with megafrighuge trees in the yards and stuff.  “We offered him a lot of chances to stand down.”

“I don’t think that makes it better,” Avery said.

“They came after us, over and over again.  They used us, they pit us against their enemies,” Lucy said.  “They acted like the wanted the school but they were awful to the students.  Holding them hostage, using them like pawns.”

“Alexander’s another thing,” Verona said.  “If we’re sorting out our messes from biggest to smallest, then he’s probably the next biggest, and normally my mind feels like I can think about things from all angles, but I don’t even know when it comes to a guy like him.”

Lucy looked down at the circle that Avery had drawn.

“Circle isn’t changing your stomach any?” Lucy asked, looking over.

Verona shook her head.

“I’d guess it isn’t an attack, then.”

“No,” Verona agreed.  “It isn’t.”

Lucy laid down a small stack of notecards.  Connection blockers, with some anti-augury.  She fanned the four cards out, and they flared as they lined up with the circle.

“That won’t last very long unless we give it a lot of power,” Avery said.  “Or redraw with something better.”

“We don’t need long,” Lucy said, handing the cards out.  “Hold onto these.  Let’s keep conversation private for the walk back.”

Verona nodded.

“You okay to walk?” Lucy asked.

“Do we need to worry?” Verona asked.  “If Alexander comes, it’s going to be when we aren’t near the Aware, or smack dab in the middle of this town, with a bunch of wary locals watching us through their windows.”

Avery looked around.

“Come on,” Lucy said.

“You’re sure?”

“No, but I’m pretty sure.”

They walked.  Verona kept the paper held to her chest, over her heart.  It felt cooler than anything else she was touching.

“Ronnie, stay over lots.  But tough it out if you can.  Remember we’re your escape hatch.”

“Okay,” Verona said, feeling miserable, her throat sore, her stomach growling.

“I think I’m more okay with what happened to Bristow than you two are, believe it or not.  Because fuck him, he came after us, he raised the stakes.  We were on the back foot, we didn’t want that.  He’s like a big stupid bull that charged through.  And on his way out, he hurt Clementine and the other tenants who didn’t deserve that crap?”

Lucy sounded mad, her words heated.

And it helped.  It really helped.

“I’m not glad it happened, I wish we found another way, but the important thing is that we found a way,” Lucy said.

“Yeah,” Verona replied.

“As for the other headmaster… don’t say his name for a few minutes.”

“Why?” Avery asked.

“Because I think people are keeping an ear out,” Lucy told Avery, touching her earring.  She held up the card.  “If we aren’t careful this simple connection block and anti-scrying stuff will collapse mid-sentence.  So let’s not give them something to latch onto.”

“What are you talking about?” Avery asked.

“He isn’t a concern, in the- he’s not going to come for us.”

“He’s-”

“I’ll tell you details later.  He’s gone.  More gone than Bristow.”

“You went out into the woods,” Avery said.  “You were worried about… John.”

Lucy nodded.

“He said he needed some time before Matthew called him back with a tag.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.

“Promises have power,” Verona said.  “Alexander sounded mad, that’s the sort of thing that makes it easier for an echo-”

“No chance of an echo,” Lucy said.  “Or revenant, or alchemical revival, or anything like that.  They’ll eventually find the car, but John said he was going to drive it through some shallow streams and creeks, then drive it into a river.  Rivers wash away traces and connections, and break up trails.  I stuck some anti-augury stuff in there, some general connection break stuff to weaken the chance anyone would follow John.  I scrambled some other augury stuff, added noise, trampled all over the crime scene.  Made sure there was no evidence I could see with Sight.  Did everything I could.”

“You say all of that so calmly,” Avery said.

“I don’t feel calm,” Lucy said.  “I feel angry.  I’m frustrated.  I- I can’t get some stuff out of my head.  And I’m worried that’s, like, permanent.”

“Talk to your counselor?” Verona asked.

“I want to.  It’s hard to schedule, and I crammed one in yesterday morning.”

“Maybe if you say it’s an emergency?”

“I don’t even know what I’d tell her.”

They walked in silence for a bit.  Verona checked the connection card.  Still intact.

Verona’s thoughts roved through everything from how Lucy could word things for her therapist, to Bristow, to Brownies, to Alexander, trying to visualize just what it was that Lucy had done.

Lucy hadn’t slept well last night.  None of them had.  But Lucy less than either Avery or Verona.

A lot of Lucy spacing out today made sense too.

She gave Lucy a one-armed hug, walking beside her.  Lucy returned the hug.

A distant, unearthly shriek grew louder.

America’s car came tearing down the road, swerving into the other lane to give them a wide berth before disappearing around the corner, rubber chickens hollering as the car exhaust poured from their mouths.

Verona smiled, and was glad to see Lucy doing the same.  Avery snickered.

“We’re not really making good use of these cards we took the time to draw,” Lucy remarked.  “Being all quiet.”

“Maybe a bit of silence throws them off the trail, if they get suspicious,” Verona said.

“We’ve got to figure out food-”

“Urgh,” Verona grunted.  “Don’t remind me.”

“-and what books to get from the library.  It’d be nice to know what classes are covered later.  I overheard someone saying Sol Ferguson’s dad is coming to teach tomorrow,” Lucy noted.  “Elementalism.  Relevant.”

For Edith.  Good.

“We’ll have the Athenum, won’t we?  Sunshine’s program?” Verona asked.

“Who knows?” Lucy asked.

“I really want it though.  How much will it suckif we can’t use it?  If we have to go from having all of this to going home and having almost nothing.”

“Toadswallow can’t teach you a damn thing,” Snowdrop pronounced.

“That’s true,” Verona agreed.  “Very specific style and focus of teaching though.”

“One thing that was bugging me,” Avery said.  “Was Charles’ books.  We kind of asked about his old books and if anything was left over and he seemed to think there was, but then we got busy and we didn’t follow up.  We never got a definitive no.”

“We didn’t,” Lucy agreed.

“Might be nice, if we go home and don’t have any books or the library program.”

“Please, no.  Let’s not even entertain the idea,” Verona protested.

“Speaking of reading,” Avery said.  “I’m also just noticing Snowdrop’s shirt…”

Snowdrop was wearing a top with exaggerated armholes that indicated she was wearing a bandeau top or something beneath.  It had a hood built in, and a pouch at the front.  It depicted a pudgy opossum with a remote control, sitting up, and the pouch at the front had ‘Pouch Potato’ printed on it.

“I think when your shirt is saying you’re overpreparing for winter, Snow, you need to take that as a literal sign,” Avery told her companion.

“That’s possible.”

The light, joking talk continued the remainder of the way back.  They took a shortcut down a path through the woods, so they didn’t have to travel the bend in the road, and Verona caught a glimpse of Lucy’s expression turning more solemn as she got lost in thought.

The way the conversation had turned to the way Alex had so suddenly been removed from the picture- it was jarring, it was unsettling, and that mirrored how quivery her stomach felt after throwing up from stress.

But as she groped for equilibrium and balance and a break from that quiveryness, she couldn’t help but think of Charles, and Charles’ warnings from the very start.  That they shouldn’t get involved.

Clementine was taking that advice.  Taking a leap with her partner, which was great.  But stepping back from trying to get all the answers.

Verona knew she’d be lying if she said she hadn’t quite understood what Charles had been referring to until now.  She’d seen enough monsters, enough shitty people.  Practitioners… she got why Matthew was so spooked, dropping them off here, the way he’d talked about the other kids and teachers.

She understood.

But seeing Lucy digesting the events of last night… more than throwing up, it was the worry for Lucy that really hit home.

She didn’t want the light in Lucy to go dark.  She didn’t want Lucy to stop being about justice and fighting injustice and being elegant and being someone who could fit in with beautiful people like George and Amadeus and Mia.

“I don’t want to go down this road,” Verona mused aloud, “-the”

“This road?” Avery cut her off.  “Back to school?”

“You didn’t let me finish.  I don’t want to go down this road of becoming a practitioner like they are in the big textbooks, or like how Bristow and Alexander are.”

“Frigging good,” Lucy said.  “I’m glad.  Because screw that.  I- I don’t either.  I think when I summoned John and Toadswallow asked me if I was sure about having him along… deep down, I wanted change.”

“Spooky,” Avery said.

“I don’t think you’re in danger of becoming a Bristow,” Verona said.  “Or an Alexander.”

“You’re too cool,” Lucy said.

Avery scoffed.

“She’s so uncool,” Snowdrop hissed, leaning over.  “So lame, you shouldn’t ever see what she’s like when nobody else is around.”

Avery pulled Snowdrop’s hood up and over her head, pulling it down over her face.

“But there are other traps.  Other dangers,” Verona said.  “If you end up some practitioner on the fringes… gotta be careful of the kids.  That’s when you let your guard down.”

“End up like my parents?” Avery asked.

“Compounded by practice?” Lucy suggested.

“Ugh.”

“We gotta keep each other on the straight and narrow, away from all those traps,” Verona said.  “Keep the best parts of ourselves.”

“Heck yeah,” Lucy replied, eyes on the school as they emerged from a second shortcut through woodland.

Some students were climbing out of cars.  Others were hanging out on steps in workshops.

“Feeling all squared up?” Lucy asked, watching the students, as many of those students stared at them.  Her eyes had the Sight on.

“More square,” Verona replied.

“We’ve got our work cut out for us.  Was seeing a lot of swords and stains with my Sight.  A lot of those points were pointed at us, until they started realizing I was looking and putting them away.”

“Good to know,” Avery murmured.

They crossed the campus, many eyes on them, and headed to the main classroom.  The students that weren’t outside were already seated.

Their teacher was a nervous looking guy that could have been a math teacher in a cartoon.  Everything except the pocket protector.  He had props- anatomical models that were more like that drawing by Da Vinci, the Vitruvean Man, and boards arranged with drawings of bodies and lines in the body and the entire mood was just… very sex ed class, somehow.  The focus on bodies.

Verona settled in on the bench.

It took a couple of minutes.  She mostly focused on not focusing on her stomach hurting a bit.

“Self, spirit, soul.  Who are you?” the new teacher asked the class.  No introduction or anything.  “Who or what will each of you become?  What were you when you began, except your parent’s child, and what will you be when your story closes?  Do you really change, from start to finish?”

Verona slumped down in her seat a bit, but she listened.

[8.2 Spoilers] Soul & Self

Vanishing Points – 8.3

Avery

Last Thursday: Self & Soul


Just down the forest path, nearly hidden by wet falling snow, was a deer, male.  Its horns were tangled in the branches of a tree, its forelimbs unable to touch ground, and it struggled violently, thrashing, pulling, and making no progress.  It screamed, and dark shapes ducked back away from it.

Wolves, drawing in.

“Can’t do anything about it, Avery,” Zed told her.

Zed, like Avery, was bundled up, in improvised cold-weather gear.  It looked like he was using sleep clothes for a scarf, flannel wrapped around his lower face, held there by the collars of the knit shirts he wore.  He had a hat on, hood up, and a leather jacket over several layers.  He was a bit on the short side and muscular to begin with, and the layers made him look very stocky.  He still managed to look cool, hands in his pockets, bag packed with tech over his shoulder.

Avery wore her fall jacket, black with reflective orange panels, over Lucy’s sweatshirt, borrowed, and she had her track pants on under her jeans.  She’d worn two pairs of socks with her running shoes, but had ended up taking it off, because it was making her feet hurt with the long hike.

The deer thrashed and screamed, in a repeat of the earlier sound.  The wolves darted in, and the deer’s eyes roved, wild, more whites than anything else, as it tried and failed to keep the predators in view.

“Think of it like a photograph of something bad that happened once,” Zed told her.

“What if we put it out of its misery?” Avery asked.

“You wouldn’t be putting it out of its misery.  It is misery, or panic, or helplessness, or some combination of those things.  You’d just be putting it out.  Water on a fire.”

Avery sighed.  Her breath fogged.  The snow came down in quarter-sized dollops, wet and ice cold, each bit hitting her like a sharp jab with a finger or pen.

“It’s so uncool that you care,” Snowdrop said, “Tch.”

“Tch,” Avery echoed, “You good?”

“No, I’m not good,” Snowdrop muttered.  “I’m exploring this awful place with you, it’s the pits.”

Snowdrop wore a shearling lined coat with opossum-style ears on the hood, and teeth at the edges.  A scarf covered her lower face, the ends slung over her shoulders so they sat over her shoulderblades, her eyes the only part of her face that was visible, large with dark shadows around them.  The ends of her scarf read ‘First play dead’ and ‘then play dirty’.  Well, it was the other way around, but Avery got how it was meant to be read.

“Using salt would at least make it be quiet,” Avery said.  “Makes it easier to hear things that matter.”

“It would,” Jessica answered, as she walked through the slushy snow. She wore a fluffy hoodie under her raincoat, and it didn’t look like nearly enough in weather this crummy, but she wasn’t suffering nearly as much as any of them.  Snow wasn’t piling up on her, either.  She stopped, took stock, then said, “But we don’t want to do that.  This place is built of scenes like this.  Especially this facet of the Ruins.  Take out one piece, and things will collapse inward.”

“Things?  Other scenes?” Avery asked.

Jessica nodded.  Then she crouched.  “Look.  See how wet the ground is?”

Avery nodded.  The deer’s trampling footsteps as it danced, trying to free itself, were making the ground a muddy puddle beneath it.

“There’s also water running down the branches.  Now see how dark it is?”

The grouping of trees blocked out most of the light, not that there was a ton of light here.  It made the whites of the deer’s eyes and teeth stand out more.  Front legs kicked at the air.

“Yeah.  I see it.”

“Clean salt can remove that scene from this tapestry, but you’d plunge back into Ruins more familiar to you if you tried.”

“Rain and darkness.”

Jessica nodded.  “The screaming is a way of pushing its echo outward, too.  You could get snared if you hear that scream up close.  Tangled the same way it’s tangled.”

“Are the wolves a danger?” Snowdrop asked.

“Props for the scene.  There are worse dangers here.  I saw signs of some while looking around.”

“Anything to worry about?” Zed asked.

Jessica looked around, and walked away a few steps, circling a tree and looking at the trunk.

“Answer whenever,” Zed told her.  “I’m just here, freezing.”

“The cold doesn’t matter.  How you feel about the cold matters,” Jessica said, still studying tree trunks.

“I recognize the distinction and I don’t like it,” Zed told her.

“Call Brie,” Jessica said, pulling something from a tree trunk.  It looked like a coin, but it was lumpier.

Zed pulled out his phone.  He selected Brie from the contact list while asking, “Why?  Danger?  Do we prepare for a fight?”

“You don’t fight these things.”

Zed sent the message.

“What’s that?” Avery asked, indicating the bit of metal.

“A token.  Certain inevitable forces will leave them places.  Like an Other closely related to Love leaving behind roses or rose petals, or an Other related to Mania leaving a pitchfork embedded in something.”

“Brie wants to know if she should abandon the fire.”

“Leave it.  Let it burn out.  It doesn’t matter.  Have her come straight here, avoid any lights.  If she gets lost and has to cross a road or path, have her stop, hide, and call us.”

Zed typed.

“Tell her to be quiet.  If she runs into any kind of trouble at all, she should let loose, as much as possible.  Let those children free.”

“You’re making me nervous here, Jess,” Zed spoke, his voice low.

“I’d say… five percent or less chance we have any trouble,” Jessica answered.  “But we want to make sure she does the right thing if she has trouble.”

“I could go.  It’s best if we pair up.”

“You could,” Jessica said, sounding unenthused.

She’s so used to doing things alone.

“Do you want me to go?” Avery asked.

Jessica turned, looking her over.

“It’s part of why I’m here,” Avery said.  “I know you’ve been down in places like this with Jessica a lot more than I have, Zed, but-”

“No,” Zed answered her.  “You’re better at navigating this place.  My only worry would be, you know, if you got hurt instead of me, I’d feel like the biggest piece of shit.”

“Ave’s useless,” Snowdrop said.  “Don’t let her.”

“Are you tired?  Sore?  Cold?” Jessica asked.

“Barely, a little from the other night, and barely.  Running might help warm up my toes,” Avery answered.

“It won’t make you too slow for the return trip?  Going out there and back?”

Avery shook her head.

“Go, then.  I’ll stay and keep an eye out.”

Avery picked up, grabbed the black rope from her pocket, took Snowdrop’s hand, and led her around a tree.

Felt good, being trusted.  And when so much of this place felt bad, it was like a much-needed light in a very dark place.

She slipped in and out of this desolate winter, that had so little of what made winter great.  There was no snow that was pristine or great for snowmen.  It was dark and gloomy and drippy, the ground treacherous, and somehow it managed to be a difficult trudge uphill and a slippery slope downhill.

Jessica had described the ruins as being like a cube.  The side they were closest to and most familiar with was at the edge of two sides, wet and dark.  Close to depression and apprehension.  Humans and civilization dwelt pretty close to that.  They’d taken a side track, now.

The things that lived here in this cold were well past depression and into grief and despair.  The people who lived in those emotions were far removed from things- their homes and rooms like cabins in remote wilderness.  Animals were far more familiar with that resigned despair, starved and trapped, so they occupied a lot of this space.  Their echoes were strongest here.  Like the deer’s.

There was an echo nearby, a canine, emaciated and starved, howled, caught in a trap.  It had tried to gnaw off a limb and stopped halfway, too weak to continue.  She remained a generous distance from it as she skirted around.  She still felt twinges in her own leg.

Echoes of this sort had a wide reach, and they snared.  An echo of a lonely disabled guy had caught her like tar, earlier.

Not many were mobile, at least.  They remained where they were, many in a bit of a dip, ditch, or low point.

Figures, gaunt, pale, draped in furs and collected curios, and eyeless, lurked at a ridgetop, crows gathered around and on top of them.  They didn’t move, only waiting.  One turned its head, the eyes of the feline skull it wore following her, but it didn’t move.

Part of the reason Brie was here was to test the bindings.  And they’d failed the test.  The Choir had started to leak out around her, and so she’d stopped to sit by the fire and try to fix the binding up again.  It wasn’t a big deal, but it was a deal.

“Go,” Snowdrop huffed.

Avery stopped in her tracks.  She looked at her companion.  “Tired?”

“I can’t hear her.”

Avery stopped, listening.  Snowdrop’s head turned sharply as she looked off into the woods.  Avery matched the angle.

A shout.

“You okay to run?” Avery asked.

“No.”

“Great.”

They ran.  There were more of the eyeless here, and Avery held off on using the black rope, because she wasn’t sure if they saw her, and a slip and fall could mean sliding down the wrong slope.

Like drafts of wind, impressions of starvation and mourning flowed over and past Avery.  The starvation blew into and through her, leaving her feeling hollow and weak, and the mourning messed with her head.  An animal mourning her cubs she couldn’t feed.

She squeezed Snowdrop’s hand.

“I’m a wimp, I can’t take this.”

“Yeah.”

“Free and clear ahead!” Snowdrop’s raised her voice, a contrast from earlier.

Avery stopped in her tracks.  Snowdrop had beat her to it, and was an anchor that held her back from going too far.

Echo-y, coyote-like animals, starved and distorted by that sensation, stalked their way out of snowy bushes.  Darkness had leeched into them, and sparse, patchy fur clung to gaunt, blackened bodies.  Some had only one eye.

The leader of that pack led from behind.  Its back was about even with Avery’s ribcage, and it was so gaunt it was little more than skin wrapped around a canine skeleton, eyeless.  Organs throbbed against that skin at the belly and ribcage.  Moisture wicked from it.  Some from the pelting snow, some like sweat.

Jessica had said to be confident in the face of things like these.

“There’s easier prey, big guy,” Avery addressed it.

The lesser hounds circled around.

Snowdrop’s grip tightened.

The smallest hound, which still had two eyes, wheezed, giving away its position as it moved behind her.  Avery tapped her foot.

It lunged, and Avery kicked.  By all rights, in a normal circumstance, it would have gotten its teeth around her shoe and held on, she would have fallen, and the rest would have descended on her and Snowdrop.

But she wore wind shoes.  It propelled the runt back and away, tumbling down a slope, and made Avery jerk forward.  Snowdrop held onto her to keep from going too far in the opposite direction, right at the big one.

She was off balance, though.  The big one came at her, teeth gnashing, and Avery reached to her charm bracelet, which was at the wrist of the hand that held Snowdrop’s, and pulled the Ugly Stick from the bracelet, swinging it.  Glamour peeled off as it swung, and it grew to full size by the time it passed by the big hound’s head.

The sudden attack from the weapon made it shy back.

It bolted, running.  The rest followed.

Other things were encroaching though.  A mourning wind blew from behind, and a trio of eyeless humans were trudging through the trees.

She and Snowdrop started running in the same moment.  Same wavelength.

An eyeless figure lay buried in snow, and birds like crows with skin peeled from their faces pecked at the body, tearing away strips.  She avoided those, using the black rope to jump up to a tree branch.  The rope was harder to use when she brought Snowdrop with her, because they both had to be entirely out of sight.  It required large trees, or groupings of tree big enough.

They moved from branch to branch, and in the midst of it, jumped straight into an echo going full-tilt into a starvation despair.

These were the things that made the Ruins so tough over the long term.  She could escape that effect, but feelings lingered and her body responded to it.  Stomach clenching, changing how it handled the food that was already there.  If she was exposed to that for too long, it would lead to her actually starving in fast motion, or something similar.

Get hit with an echo, then recover nine-tenths of the way.  Rinse, repeat.

She found a perch at the edge of the woods.  Brie was making her way over.

No evasion, no sneaking.  Brie marched on, and to Avery’s sight, she was streaked in blood, small child’s hand-prints in crimson painting the ‘false’ body parts the choir had given her, even over the heavy clothes.  Avery’s Sight created a mist, and the markings on Brie’s hand and neck cut through that mist, clear as anything.

An echo was making its way toward Brie.  A man in a hospital gown, bare-legged, trudging through slush.

Brie looked at him, slowing.  The light and shadow around her changed, the mist getting thicker, and she sagged a bit.  Feeling the echo’s influence.

Then the waifs started appearing.  They rose up out of the snow around her.  A girl in a bunny hat, a boy with a bike helmet, and a girl with a leather jacket covered in zippers.  However they were dressed, they acted similar; the ones with the bunny hat and bike helmet charged in, moving through the slushy snow like it was easy, pouncing on the echo and tackling it to the ground.  The girl with the leather jacket hesitated, glancing around, then jumped him, fingers dragging through his stomach to tear cloth and skin.  For every bite she got in, ten more bites worth of echo dissolved.  The others tore at arm and face, respectively.

Brie straightened and moved on, same pace as before.

Avery descended, bringing Snowdrop with.  Brie looked her way, and Avery raised a hand in a wave.

Brie waved back.

She could have gone to Brie’s side, but the Choir was out.  Just five kids now.  The Echo the waifs had tackled was gone, and so were the waifs.

The same pack of hounds that had come for Avery were surrounding Brie, now.

“Hey!” Avery shouted.

They didn’t react.

Brie matched the number of waifs she had around her to the animals.  One per hound.  It didn’t seem like enough, and frankly, it seemed like prime bait for the hounds.  Starving kids?

“I’m going ahead,” Avery told Snowdrop.

“Not cool!”

She tossed the black rope back to Snowdrop, then charged ahead.

The hounds went after waifs, and seemed surprised that those waifs fought back as viciously as they did.  Most were on the defensive a second after the kids started biting back, trying to pull away and retreat.

The lead hound charged at a boy in a skull t-shirt with a mohawk, gripped him with blackened teeth, and hurled him aside.

More waifs reached out of the snow, flanking the hound, grabbing its sides, but it still had momentum, and Brie backed away a few steps, slipped, and skidded down a slope, out of Avery’s sight.

The song was audible now.  Singing in the background, as the Choir swelled in number and strength.

Snow jabbed at Avery’s face as she crossed the distance.  Four children fought to keep the lead hound back, and failed as it walked to the crest of the ridge where Brie had slipped.

Avery closed in, and the hound started to turn- that, at least, was a process the waifs slowed down.  Avery gave it a sharp swat on the rump with the ugly stick.  A gift from the goblins from a while ago, it was a weird weapon that was often too heavy duty to use, even in the serious situations they’d been in so far.  They barely carried it with them.

It was gnarled, knotted wood in a club shape, it hurt like dammit, and it left lumps that were slow to heal.  A hit hard enough to do any structural damage would change that structure.  Break someone’s jaw and it would never be exactly right again.  Knock out teeth, same idea.

She wasn’t interested in that part of things.  She just wanted to scare off the hound.

Its back legs went out from under it as it finished turning on her, splaying out behind it, and as much as it gnashed its teeth at her, it couldn’t advance without those legs.  She rapped it on the snout.

In a twisting scuffle, waifs biting and hound reeling, struggling to get its feet under it, the hound finally managed to pull free, and bolted.

One hound had been brought down by a waif, and the others ran off.  The remaining waifs ate.

Brie was at the slope, waifs around her, holding onto her.  At the bottom of that slope, in a bowl-shaped depression, was an echo of a family around a car, and a bit of the sort of guardposting that appeared at a bend in the road, to keep cars from going over.  It looked like a crash, the family was trying to stay warm.

Brie slipped down another ten feet.  Two-thirds of the way down.

The family reacted, changing position.  Echoes were blurry and these guys were no exception, and blurs melded together.  Flesh blackened and waxy by cold, shrouded by wisps of sensation and sentiment.  The mist welled, the snow intensified, the mother cradled her child in her arms, and they looked like one singular mass, groping and reaching.  Even the car seemed to be part of them.

Frost crept up Brie’s legs, and they stopped working.  Sort of like how the hound’s had, but the hound had got it together enough to run off.  Brie wasn’t able.

Waifs multiplied, scrabbling for their own traction and grip.  The ones that found any supported others, and supported Brie.  The echo got to them too.

“I’ll help!” Avery called out.

“Don’t come!” Brie raised her voice.

Avery stopped.

She pulled off her bag, grabbed the plastic screw-top water bottle she’d filled with salt, and got spell cards.

What was the symbol for time?  She had to use process of elimination.  Each one was a planet and a god.  Trident-ish symbol was Neptune, sea and sky, to make stuff activate at a certain height or if it met water or some other environment.  Mars was the whacking symbol, like she used for the hockey stick.  Mercury for movement, like she used for her shoes.

She ended up sorting through her cards, taking a second to interpret each.

There.  She had a time-delayed smoke thing, for cover so she could use the black rope.  Little ‘h’ with a curl on the one leg and a cross at the top.

She copied that symbol onto another card, noted a time: thirty seconds, finished the diagram with two strokes, and then stuffed it into the water bottle.

She lobbed it.

“Things might shuffle, I think!” she shouted.

“Shuffle!?”

“Hold your breath, don’t panic!”

The echoes down here tended to remain dormant until provoked, and then they became whirlwinds of intensity or desperation.  This was no exception.

The bottle detonated.  Clean salt sprayed everywhere, and it cut through the echo, leaving gouges, causing parts to dissolve.  The entire effect got weaker.

Brie moved her legs, finding footholds in addition to the handholds.  Waifs were more mobile.

“Anyone!” the echo shouted.  A man’s ragged voice, hollering in desperation.  With the voice came a push of that cold effect.  It hit Avery like a slap in the face, whole-body, a cold that reached past any clothes she wore to lower her core temperature.

It was all she could do to control how she fell, tipping over into a snowbank.  Numb, she’d gone from 100 to 0, and she could feel herself slipping, sliding inch by inch toward that same slope, and she couldn’t move to do anything about it.

Snowdrop ran up, holding the black rope, and took hold of Avery’s arm, pulling.

Reversing that descent.

“Anyone!” the man shouted, voice ragged and raw.

Brie was in worse shape.  She slid further down that slope.

Waifs emerged. A couple dozen, now.  They pushed through the cold, stumbling, grabbing and tearing.  Each one seemed to get close and have time to do just one thing- one grab, one bite, and then collapsed.  But they were solid ground for others, and the tide of them were like a wedge driven into the damage the salt had made.

Car, people, and everything distinguishing about the scene were torn to shreds.

The song built in intensity, in volume, and mirrored the level of violence as they ate and destroyed.

Avery shivered as the cold from the echo dissipated.

And with the scene gone, things began to slide around.  A mini-avalanche, a bit of water.  A tree fell, and let snow start to tumble.  What looked like a hill flattened out into a sharp slope.

All converging on or aiming at the location where the echo had been.  More echoes loomed at the ridge, ready to take up residence in the bowl-shaped depression.  Each carrying their own effects and impressions.  Feelings they would transmit to anyone nearby.

The good side of the effects of the echoes was that they left as fast as they arrived.  Avery picked herself up, assessing the situation.

“Thanks, Snow,” she said.

“Never again.”

She had a game plan.  Now it was time to use those other cards.  She finished one and handed it to Snowdrop, then finished the other.

Avery took off running down the slope.  To Brie.

The Choir was around Brie, and two of them got in Avery’s way.  One hissed.

She leaped over them.  Helped by the fact she was on a slope, and she didn’t care that much if she happened to kick them in the heads in the process.

“You shouldn’t have-”

“Grab me.”

Brie did, hugging Avery.

Other, smaller hands gripped Avery as well.  She knocked one aside, waiting, hoping her timing wasn’t bad.

Snowdrop exploded into a plume of snow.  Avery winced.

Her own card went off, kicking up snow and wind.  Hiding them.

She used her Sight to look clearly to her destination, then used the black rope, jumping herself and Brie to the top of the ridge.

Fumbling, she found Snowdrop, heavily covered in wet snow, now.

They navigated their way away from the cloud of snow, and Avery had a view of the echoes colliding and wrestling with one another.  Two seemed to merge, and might have become kings of that particular pit if they weren’t torn in half by something animal that was hidden by snow.

It looked like that would take a little while to resolve.  Each one had been pulled there by the absence of the car family, and now that they were close, they were switching to their ‘mad desperation’ states.

Small hands gripped Avery again.  Fingers dug into flesh.  She pulled away with a sharp movement.  Snowdrop hissed at one who was presumably doing the same..

“Go,” Brie said.  “I don’t want them to hurt you and I don’t really control them.”

“You were doing okay.”

“They keep me alive and well because if this body dies, they die.”

Avery nodded.

She did as Brie had suggested and backed off.

Thirty or forty feet separated Avery and Brie.  The kids led the way, flanked, and followed Brie.  The singing was faint.

“So,” Brie said.

“Yeah,” Avery replied.

“Glad you skipped class for this?”

“Needed to get away, a bit,” Avery replied.

“Is this really better?”

Avery looked around.  At the unfriendly, battered trees, the forest that was more fallen branches than undergrowth, the gritty, slushy snow that promised no snowmen or snowballs, the distant, ruined shacks and cabins.

“Kind of?”

“The way Lucy was talking about it, you don’t have that long to study what you need to study,” Brie noted.  “Or to reach out to those students you want to keep around?”

Avery shrugged.

“Do you want to talk about it?  Those students, or, on a lighter note, studying?  I’ll be studying here for a bit, while I get things sorted.”

“I mean, for studying, they’ve got the morning class handled.  I could spend the day in the library, instead, but we thought being alone with other students might be dangerous, and I’d really rather be doing this.  Hands on learning, direct with an expert.”

“Studying in its own way.  Sure.  Are you going to become a necromancer?  Tapping into echoes and working with the other forces that dwell here, to affect Death?  Something like that?”

“No.  Just… exploring.  Learning how otherworldly places work.”

“Hm.”

“How’s your binding?”

“Not good, I think we have to do the long fix,” Brie answered.  She pushed up her sleeve.  The tattoos were broken up, and as Avery used her sight, the lines peeled away, drifted, and formed loops and bubbles that pulled away and disappeared amid snowfall.  A second or two later, a waif appeared in roughly the same general direction.

Gabe.  Shirtless, vomit streaked across his lower face, mouth ajar, with a mushroom cut.  Ten or so, skinny.

He looked at her and yawned his jaw open to crack it audibly.

Poor Gabe.

Could Avery have gone down a similar path?  Lonely at school, if Mrs. Hardy hadn’t reached out?  Or if she hadn’t had sports as an outlet?  Would she potentially have snatched at an answer, if that newsletter had found her?

Avery swallowed, shook her head, then reminded herself she was part of a conversation.  “What does it mean, to do the long fix?”

“Proper tattoos, redoing the initial ritual.  I have to fast for a few days, which isn’t a problem, because, well…”

Because Brie had finished the Hungry Choir ritual and she would never again have problems related to food.

“Just annoying?” Avery asked.

“Yeah.  Putting life on hold again.  No books to read, no TV, no movies, no phone or internet.  The first time it was okay, except I was worried it wouldn’t work.  This time it just feels- I don’t want to make this a thing I have to do every few months.”

“At least you have Zed for company.”

“Yeah,” Brie answered.  She smiled.

Avery glanced at Brie now and then, while still keeping an eye on Gabe, who was getting closer to her than some of the other waifs had.  Brie seemed to have more energy and enthusiasm than before, just from the mention of Zed.

“Do you have a plan for after?  Work?”

“It depends on a lot,” Brie said.  “We don’t know how or if we can totally bind the song within me.  It’s… not going perfect, so far.  If we can seal them in, then long sleeves, a high collar, and I’ll look for a job.  If not, then we control it, so there’s always a little bit of their power leaking out, and I manage that, and I’ll do some work that doesn’t require me to show up much in person.”

“Huh.  What about draining it?  Tapping it for power?  Doing the ritual, in a different way?  You guys ran the ritual for a group after the binding, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Brie said.  “They did the last part the weekend Bristow took over the school.  Five of the eight participants made it.”

“Five?”

“Forced a rules consistency.  So the last round was like the prior ones.  We drew some power at the start, gave you guys a share of that.  We’ll give you more as we figure out how to tap the rest.  If we can keep the numbers going like that, drain the reserves…”

Gabe hissed.  Brie stopped.

Gabe looked over at Brie, and Brie looked down at Gabe, then from Avery to Gabe again.

“You knew him?” Brie asked.

“He was a classmate.  We barely talked.”

“He was there that night.”

Avery nodded.

Brie made a gesture with her hand.  Gabe disappeared the next time a tree blocked him from Avery’s view.

“I was there too,” Snowdrop declared.

“Maybe if you were, Snow, we could have done something,” Avery told her.  “One extra set of hands for the people that needed help.”

“Are you okay?” Brie asked.  “You’re avoiding your friends-”

“I’m not, I mean, I am, but that’s not the main objective.  Just… a breather.”

“And you sound down about stuff in the past.”

“I liked what you said, before we did Jessica’s ritual.  We chatted for a minute or so, we talked about wanting things to be better, to share, to support.  More like friends are supposed to do.”

Brie nodded.

“I want that too, and I think it’s doable, but it’s like we’re doing it all at the edge of a cliff, and it’s so easy to push things too far.  And then it’s a long, long way down.”

“I’ve been dwelling on that too.  You’re thinking of Gabe?”

“And Bristow.  And-” Alexander.  “Reagan.  I had a close call, myself.  Almost got Lost and I might never have gone home again.”

“If you ever need to talk…”

“Can’t talk to me,” Snowdrop said.

“…and you can’t talk to Snowdrop, you can call,” Brie told Avery.  “Zed has neat phones.  We’re almost always reachable.”

“Thank you,” Avery said.

“I mean it.  I owe you guys.”

“And I mean it when I say thank you.  I- I’m collecting names at this point, kind of.  A bit of a support circle of people I can call.  Which might be important, because I don’t know what’s waiting for me at home.”

“I’d give you a hug right now if I could,” Brie told her, still walking forward, with the group of waifs around her.

“It’s okay.”

They walked for a bit.  Zed and Jessica stepped out of the trees, banishing a lesser Echo as they approached.  They walked fast and looked intense.

“Heard the singing of the Choir before we saw you,” Zed said.

“What’s up?” Avery asked.

“Walk fast.  You guy are covered in snow.  You okay?”

“We had a scary run-in with an Echo,” Brie said.

“Knit together.  Whole family,” Avery said.  “I don’t think Brie ended up needing me.  She pulled out the choir and dealt with it.”

“I could’ve, maybe,” Brie said.  “But I would be more tired than I am.  And we have to travel back.  If I’d fought on my own I might be too tired to walk all the way home.”

“You okay to walk right now?” Zed asked.  Brie nodded.

“What’s got you guys spooked?” Avery asked.  “Does it have to do with that token?  The bit of metal?”

“A group of lesser incarnations,” Jessica said.  She reached out, holding the token like she was going to drop it.  Avery put her hand out.

The bit of metal, slightly triangular.  A squashed bullet, edge sharpened.  It was wrapped up in cord.

“My best guess is this is Hunt,” Brie said.

“Hunt?  As in-”

“The hunter distilled, seeking, tracking.”  She motioned with her hand, then dropped something else.

A bit of glass wrapped in more cord, curved and smooth on one side and broken on the other, like it was from a magnifying glass or marble.  There was blood on the pointiest corner, worked into the cracks.

“Inquest or Inquisition.”

And a ring, snipped, the band twisted so it formed a curl, where the snipped ends didn’t meet but crossed instead.  There was a heart shaped hole at the center of the band, opposite the mis-aligned ends.  The cord was threaded through the hole and around the ring itself.

“Which one is this?”

“I don’t know.  But it’s compatible with Hunt and Inquisition, that token represents it.  If you let them drop from your hand, they fall into a position that forms a triangle.  Don’t actually drop it.  I don’t want to waste the time.”

“Okay,” Avery said, holding the tokens in her hand.

“They fall equally distant apart.  The triangle shape appears in the tokens, too.    They’re a team of three.”

“What do you need, and what do I need to know?” Avery asked.

“We avoid them.  This broad area is their hunting ground,” Jessica said.  “Brie, this is where you might be important.”

“Whatever I can do.”

“I normally back off in situations like this, return home, or find a long way around,” Jessica stated.  Her eyes roved, searching.  “I don’t want to, this time.”

“That’s fine,” Zed told her.

“You can leave if you want to.”

“I came to help,” Avery told her.

Jessica nodded.  She didn’t say thank you, and her expression remained serious, her eyes fixed on distant points.

“Incarnations- I remember you calling the Hungry Choir a ritual incarnate?  Am I right?” Zed asked.

“Yes.”

“So you know the terminology.  Incarnations are the same idea, but without the ritual attached.  They’re a concept, distilled, and they usually manage or control that thing, draw power from it.  And they’re inevitable.  Which is a pretty deep concept that’s hard to explain.  They’re stubborn.  Don’t get between them and their target, avoid face to face encounters if you can, and remember you can’t stop them.  You can deflect and distract.”

A starved wind blew past them.  It made them all pause until it passed.  Jessica seemed more wary in the aftermath, like she’d expected an attack or appearance, using the wind.

They passed through woods and entered a grouping of houses.  Except the houses weren’t true houses.  Instead, they were like rooms out of an apartment or hospital.  Through the windows were scenes where the echoes were in full form.

It felt hazardous.  The walls paper thin, containing some intense, miserable echoes within.  A woman curled up on her bed in a room with so much trash on the floor that the floor wasn’t visible.  A man holding a bucket for his daughter to throw up in.  A young man holding a letter, reading, while parents stood behind him.

Avery felt for each of them.  But she also felt worried that those thin walls would tear or something would give, and those echoes would wash over them.

“What were you two talking about, as you came over?” Zed asked.

“The choir,” Brie told him.  “Feeling like this is all… precarious.”

Avery nodded.  They slipped into a narrow passage between two buildings.  Avery could feel pressure weighing on her from one side and sadness leeching into her from the other.

“Heavy,” Zed stated.

“This is a heavy place,” Jessica said.  She held up her hand and checked the way was clear.  They left the alley between the two buildings.

“School’s heavy too,” Avery said.  “I wanted to ask, since you’re seniors, you know who the families are…”

“You might be asking the wrong guy,” Zed told her.  “I’m gone half the time.”

“But you went here, right?”

“Some.  I didn’t come at thirteen and then attend every year.  But if you have questions about anyone or any family, I can try answering.”

Off in the distance, an eyeless thing, pale, humanoid, and as tall as a one-storey house, snatched up an echo.  It held carved wood in the other hand, and pressed echo to wood.  To a carved head and torso.  Once the echo’s head and torso were stuck inside, it began attaching a multi-jointed arm.

Making a puppet.

“Dark,” Snowdrop murmured.

Avery looked.

Snow was pointing at a distant house.  Where every other place seemed so dim, unlit within, there was a warm red light glowing within that place, to the point it lit up the exterior walls.

“In nearly any other circumstance, I’d go there,” Jessica stated, staring.

“What is it?”

“Treasure.  Distilled power.  Echoes and things shuck off goodness, joy, and serenity here, and those things are pushed away by the grief, sadness, and despair.  Those scraps gather and concentrate in a hallow, which pulls in more.  Most are small.  An apple that glows with a light within, in a dark part of the Ruins, or a small mouse that warms like a fireside without burning flesh.  Even those are valuable.”

“That doesn’t look small,” Avery noted.

“No.  Which makes me think it’s bait.”

“Hunt?” Zed asked.

“They’re close.”

Zed pulled his bag around in front of him to access it.  “I’ve got a locator.  It notifies us if they’re close, but it’ll make noise.”

“That’s fine,” Jessica said.  “I think Hunt knows where we are by now.”

“Come,” Avery told Snowdrop.  “Small.”

Snowdrop shrunk, going from holding Avery’s hand to being small enough to fit in Avery’s hand.

Avery tucked Snowdrop into her jacket.

“What families were you wondering about?” Zed asked.  “If I don’t know, maybe Jessica does.”

Jessica snorted.

“More like, um, after the thing with Alexander and Bristow, a lot of students hate us.”

“I wouldn’t say it’s hate, exactly,” Zed told her.  “Not universally.  But a lot of negative feelings.”

“Clementine and Shellie recommended we tackle the biggest threats first.  So maybe who the big players who have reasons to be mad?”

“That is, uh, a very complicated question,” Zed replied.  “If your reason for coming today was to ask that, it might have been better to go to Nicolette.”

“I came today to help.  And to get away.  And this is secondary.  I figure while my friends are in class, I should try to work out next steps.”

“Clementine may have the right idea,” Zed replied, “But to narrow it down a bit more, I don’t think it’s the big threats who have reasons to be mad that you should be worried about.  Small threats could be more dangerous.”

“How?”

“Worry about the people who would take the time to find you and ruin your day, or hurt you,” Zed answered.

“Like?”

“The Tedds?  America and Liberty aren’t that strong, and their reasons are a bit shallow and stupid, but they absolutely would gun for you.”

“Why?”

“Because America had a running joke about having a crush on Alexander, and with the way her head works, I could see her targeting you guys as a capstone for the joke.  Doesn’t have to succeed or fail, just…”

“Has to ruin our day?  Be dramatic enough?”

“You got it.”

“That’s exactly what we don’t want.  Problems for tomorrow.”

“Ray says something similar.”

“Ray recommended we do this.  Get out ahead of this.”

“Ah,” Zed replied, and his expression changed a bit, a little more taut.

Brie’s, meanwhile, softened a bit, as she looked at Avery.  Like… like a plea for something.

“He helped us out in the end, and was pretty cool,” Avery ventured.

Maybe, from the look on Brie’s face, that wasn’t the thing to say, or the thing Brie had wanted Avery to do.  Maybe Brie hadn’t wanted anything at all.

This was so hard.

But it wasn’t like it set Zed off.  He barely reacted, only shaking his head a bit.

“Belangers,” Jessica said, from the head of their group.

“Belangers?”

“Or Ex-Belangers.  I don’t know.  But I think that group had a lot riding on stuff.”

“More stuff to ask Nicolette,” Zed said.

“Except she’s super busy, and she doesn’t want to get involved,” Avery answered.

“Yeah.”

A cold wind blew, and it didn’t have a feeling to it so much as it carried images.  Phantom figures, flickering, suggesting, promising.  Some were feminine, alluring.

“Shhh,” Jessica shushed them, her voice nearly lost in the wind.

The wind passed.

Zed’s radio whispered.  “Mark five and chatter… by the houses, end of the valley…”

“They hear us.  Do you hear me?  We’ve found you.  You can stop looking now, boy and girls.  Life is a long and empty search…”

Zed scrambled the channel.

“…and now you can finally stop,” the voice came through on the new channel.

“They must answer for being here first,” a stern voice added.  “Then you can have them and they can have you.”

“But I don’t want them all broken and bloody…”

Jessica peeked around the corner.  Avery ducked low to do the same.  In the distance were three figures.  All androgynous.  One hooded, carrying a bundle under one arm, long branches, twigs, and bits of metal.

One with a tunic that tapered down to a point at the knees, head partially shaved and less-partially scarred.  They wore gauntlets and metal boots, and broken glasses over their eyes. They had a heavy book under one arm.

The last one was underdressed for the weather, slender, shirt unbuttoned, hair long in a way that hid eyes.  Bangles like the ring encircled the arms and rings were at the finger, and they looked heavy enough that they kept the arms from swinging as the lesser incarnation walked.

That last one raised those heavy, decorated arms.

Zed and Jessica’s eyes flashed with Sight as they focused on what it was doing.  Brie and Avery followed suit.

As those arms raised, connections were forming, snapping into existence, and warping, between them and it.

“Yearning,” Jessica said.

“What?  It’s Yearning?”

The hooded one dropped the bundle.  Bits bounced out into the slushy snow at their feet.  The one with the book raised their free hand to their mouth and whistled.  Calling something.

“Go,” Jessica urged.

They ran.

“Good thing about it being Hunt is it’s about the pursuit, not actually catching,” Jessica said.  “Same for Yearning.”

“What about Inquest?  Or Inquisition?” Zed asked.

Jessica didn’t reply, focusing on running instead.

“You said you needed me,” Brie said.

“If they get close, the Choir is the only thing that can push back.  It only buys us time.”

Galloping hooves were getting closer.

Avery broke away from the rest of the group.

“Careful!” Zed raised his voice.  He had a device out.

They could distract, not stop.  A bash with the ugly stick wouldn’t put them down, but if she could lure them away-

Avery used the black rope to cover ground.

Inquest was on a horse, draped in similar outfitting to what they wore.  Avery whistled.

The horse was nimble.  A second after the whistle, it had turned, and lunged into the trees, Inquest ducking low to avoid being clipped by branches.

Avery ran.  And she couldn’t outrun a horse, but she could use the black rope, cutting this way and that, to be as unpredictable as possible.

She hadn’t expected the pressure, though.  The way this woman on horseback seemed to read her mind, and veer in the right directions.  Avery made a move, thinking she would get a good thirty feet away, and found Inquest within a second or two of grabbing her.  Another move, a feint this time, and Inquest didn’t fall for it.

Her Sight helped her see movement.  She tracked the figure on horseback and tried to lead it away from others.

She could also see connections.  Some from Yearning.  And those connections were vibrating, moving.  Each was a film reel of scenes and the reel was… winding up?

Retracting.

She saw the final bit of retraction out of the corner of her eye, like the tape measure slapping its way into the container, rounded a tree, and saw Yearning within arm’s reach, reaching.

She expected a firm grab, those rings digging into her arm.

Instead, a soft touch on the cheek.

Avery stopped running, eyes locked to the figure, looking past the hair to eyes that had stars in them.  Yearning smiled, hand resting against the side of Avery’s face.

The horse reared up as the rider stopped.  “She called to me.”

“I got to her first, Inquest.”

The horse, still rearing, slapped hooves to snowy dirt.

Staring into Avery’s eyes, Yearning sighed, smiling.

Avery remained frozen, unsure what to do.

A tumbling sound came from their right, but neither looked away, even as the horse whinnied.

A stampede.  Waifs, rushing in.  They were fast, and they were hungry.  They bowled over Inquest and the horse, and Inquest rolled, rising to their feet at the end of the roll.  Waifs grabbed Inquest and tried to pull them to ground.  They couldn’t.

It felt like a long ten seconds before the waifs ran over Avery and Yearning, separating them.  It was probably only a second or two.  Yearning smiled in the last second before the waifs hurled them to ground.

Avery was pulled away too, but the waifs disappeared.

“I told you to be careful!” Zed shouted, angry.

The anger was enough to jar Avery back to reality.

“I only have a minute of battery,” Zed told her, as she reached him.  Brie was there, too, directing the waifs.  Dismissing them any time they got too close to Avery.

“Battery?”

Zed clicked a button on the handheld device.

It was like the device that had created that plastic-bag-head Other.  The fake environment.  They kept running, but now there were walls between trees, then more walls, and then they were indoors, running through a long hallway.

Avery glanced back and saw Yearning, two kids holding each arm.

“Don’t look back!” Zed barked.  “Can you keep up, Brie!?”

“Yeah.  Where’s Jess?”

Zed didn’t reply, instead taking time to tap on the device.

“What are you doing?” Avery asked.

“Concentrating.  Trying to adjust the space-”

There was a tearing sound, and Zed hurled himself into the wall.

No- not hurling himself.  A wooden arrow as long as Zed’s arm had punched through the wall, alongside Zed, and impaled the device he held.

The walls he’d thrown up fizzled out.  Zed remained where he was, The arrow stuck through the sleeve of his leather jacket and attached him to the tree.  He tugged and didn’t budge.

Avery turned.  Past about a hundred trees, barely visible, was Hunt, holding a crossbow about as large as Hunt’s entire upper body.  They dropped another arrow into it, holding it level.

“Here!” Jessica shouted.

Avery looked over, looked back to Zed.

“Go!” Zed urged.

Avery went to Zed, hefting the ugly stick, and shouted, “Down!”

There was no room or good angle for the swing, so Avery chose a bad angle, and trusted Zed to get out of the way.  The club hit the tree and splintered wood, smashing, blistering, and scattering fragments of arrow.

Zed came free, and stumbling forward, hauled on Avery.  Both off balance and pushing off the other, it was a moment that could have made their falls that much worse, the two of them landing in a heap.  Should have.  But Avery was in the zone, focused on moving and getting away, and Zed might have been too, and together they stayed upright.

Brie ran alongside, a few trees over.  A waif on a branch caught an arrow meant for Brie, and slammed into her.  She found her feet.

Avery started to move in Brie’s direction, wanting to help.  Zed stopped her.

“Straight, go straight,” Zed urged.  “She’s a survivor.  Trust.”

Avery focused on going forward, one hand on Snowdrop so she wouldn’t jostle her too much.

Jessica had found a way.  An echo surrounded by heavy mist.

Yearning laughed as they plunged into the mist.

Their pursuers didn’t pass the threshold.

Another facet of the Ruins.  Buildings loomed on either side, only vague silhouettes, shrouded by fog.

Figures darted in and out, or they watched, obscured.  Echoes moved through the fog as well, and they didn’t have the wide, sweeping effects that the other echoes Avery had run into did.  These were tighter, more personal.  Focused on their own things.  They brushed up against Avery, surprising, and pushing ideas and things into her head.  Desires, wantings…

“Fog of… love?” Avery asked.

“Attentiveness, wariness, anticipation, the veil that tempts interest,” Jessica said.  “Very different, and we aren’t staying long.”

“Okay,” Avery said.

“Are you hurt?”

“She had a damn close call,” Zed said.  “That was dumb, Avery.”

“I thought I’d distract.”

“You distracted us too.”

“She did okay,” Brie said.  “She just underestimated that they’d be good at closing the gap-”

“Can we-” Avery started, stopped.

“Can we what?” Zed asked.

“Just… save the arguing over how I screwed up for after?  This is a lot,” Avery winced.  Her heart was still hammering and the echoes here, while subtle, were nagging at her brain, like they had fishhooks and barbs.

Snowdrop, nestled near her belly, gave her a nuzzle.  She gave Snowdrop a pet through the material of her jacket.

“After, then,” Zed said.  “Sorry.”

“Reminds me of my Sight,” Avery mused, looking around.

“The veil?” Jessica asked.

“Yeah.  Mist.”

“Yeah.  I’ve heard people theorize that the Sight might lean on these sorts of things, depending on who we are.  Desolate ruins for anger, darkness for fear and apprehension.  Cold for mourning.”

“I See the world as dark with laser outlines,” Zed said.

“I see the world the Hungry Choir brought me into,” Brie said.

“Yeah,” Jessica replied.  “I don’t see anything too different.  I needed clear vision, going in.”

Figures in the fog taunted, tempted, distracted.  Avery flinched away from looking, then flinched again as one brushed her arm.  Greed, theft, stealing, selfishness…

“Need a chocolate covered protein bar?” Jessica asked.

Avery nodded.  Those starvation winds and echoes had done a number on her midsection.

“What else?  Do you want to stop?”

“I want to get through here,” Avery replied.  “Distract me?”

“With?” Jessica asked.

“I dunno.  Your girlfriend?  I know how Zed and Brie met.  Or is that too personal?”

“Yes,” Jessica said.  “It’s personal.”

“Oh.  Sorry.”  Avery felt her face flush.  Zed was mad and Jessica was offended, and Brie had her own stuff to deal with.  She shouldn’t have come.

“Jess,” Zed said, “Come on.  She doesn’t want to pry.  She wants… guidance, I guess?  You hinted at that the day you came to school.”

“Yeah,” Avery said.  She still felt the heat of flush at her face.

“What do you want to know?” Jessica asked.  “Turn.  Watch for trouble.”

They turned a corner.  The mists were darker, the echoes slippery.  It was hard to think straight, because it was a crowded alley and there was nowhere to go that didn’t involve brushing up against something and getting ideas pushed into her head.

Jessica forged the way at least, walking a few feet ahead, parting the incoming crowd of figures that were barely visible in dense fog.

“How did you meet?  When did you know?”

“That I liked her?”

“Or anyone?”

“When she kissed me.  She was my friend and then she kissed me, and asked me to think on it before saying anything.  So I did.  And now we’re together.”

Avery huffed out a laugh.  “That easy?  You didn’t know before?”

“No.  I had other things to think about.”

They passed through a patch of dark, and cold wind blew.

Weird, that this desolate wintery sadness would be a relief.  Avery shivered.  Getting cold, not-cold and then getting cold again had sweat running down her body now, chilling her.

And they still had to get home.

An echo stumbled toward them.  Looked like a teenager who’d blown off his hands and face with a firecracker.

“I keep meeting people who… I get tempted into thinking they might have answers,” Avery said.  “And then they don’t.  No offense, or anything.”

Jessica snorted, and Avery had no idea how to read the snort.

“Like Clementine?” Brie asked.  “She’s pan, I think, with someone nonbinary.  That’s what you’re talking about, right?”

Avery nodded.  She hadn’t known for sure about Clem, specifically, but that was confirmation.  Cool.  “I wanted to ask Clementine stuff but we didn’t get the chance and I have her email but I dunno how I’d word the really basic, stupid questions.”

“My face,” the echo with the massacred face mourned, stumbling.

“You can’t ask your parents?” Jessica asked.

“My face!” the echo raised his voice.

“Shut up!” Avery shouted at him.  “Screw off!  Geez!  Have some manners!  I’m talking with people here!”

The echo remained where he was, rocking in place, ruined hands held near his ruined face.

“But… my face.”

“I’m sorry that happened to you, but what do you want me to do about it?    Do you want me to salt you?  End that?  That sucks, really, but I don’t know what else to do for you.”

The echo swayed, then muttered, “So sorry.”

She watched it stumble off.

“Sorry,” she said.  “I hope you find peace or whatever.”

“Your parents?” Zed asked.

“Different.  I dunno.  I go home in a few days or a week and a few days, and I don’t know what it’ll be like, but I think we’re having that conversation.  Whatever they could tell me about love and looking for love I just… I think it’s way different.  My circumstances.  There’s apparently nobody for me in Kennet.  Like, an Other told me that.  How do you even deal with that?”

“Here,” Jessica said.

They walked up to a lakeside.

“Careful on the ice.  If you fall through, you end up in the Abyss, not the Ruins, and it’s a lot harder to get out,” Jessica said.

“I’ll calibrate.  You talk to Ave,” Zed told Jessica.

This was their destination.  Using Zed’s tech to get Jess a concrete lead.  But they had to be in the right place, in the right facet of the Ruins.

“I thought we were similar, because we’re both explorers, we’re gay, we… strike off on our own, I guess,” Avery said.

“Sorry,” Jessica answered.  “I’m not good at this.  I could ask my girlfriend.  She might be more similar to you.”

“I’m trying to improve myself, and become someone better, that attracts cool people, but that feels shaky when we’re currently struggling with half the school hating us.”

“Which is tough with certain key classmates, I’m told,” Brie said.

“Yeah, we kind of had almost-friends here and there, and now we don’t as much.  You guys, but you’re older.”

“Yeah.  You could always ask those other students outright, if they want to make a connection.  It’s awkward if you’re leaving, but things can be established long-distance.”

“Kind of,” Avery admitted.  “That’s more Lucy than me, though.”

“Is it?” Brie asked, sounding surprised.

“Isn’t it?” Avery asked.  “Why does this feel… are we talking past each other?”

“Jess,” Zed said.

They walked on the ice, and dark shapes moved beneath the surface.  Here and there, a footstep produced a cracking sound, but Avery didn’t see actual cracks.

On the far side of the lake was a bird.

“My witness,” Jess noted.

As they got closer, Avery could hear a dog barking.

They walked up to the bird, and it remained very still.  Zed slipped on his power glove, then put his hand up, lifting the bird from its perch.

Pale, the songbird began to take on color, until it glowed from within.

“There,” Zed said.  “Freshly fueled, bright, easy to track.”

“The last four times I found this bird, I got close,” Jess said.

“And you know the general direction from the failed ritual.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“But you do know,” Zed told Jess.

Jessica rubbed her hands together and blew on them.

“See you later?” Zed asked.  “A few weeks?  Months?”

“Unless things go badly.”

“Get in touch after.  Let us know how it went.”

Jessica nodded.

They stood there awkwardly for a bit.  Zed lifted the bird from his finger and moved it to Jessica’s.

There were distant shouting sounds, men and an alarmed child.  A dog’s barking continued, incessant, mingling with the faint, barely audible song of the Choir.

“You can find your way back, I hope,” Jessica said.  “I can’t lead you.”

“It’s why Avery’s here, in part,” Zed told her.  “You’re pretty good at navigating this place.”

Avery nodded.

“Good,” Jessica said.  She hesitated.  “Thanks.”

“Thank us with a call after.  I mean it,” Zed told her.  “I don’t want us to never talk again because you don’t need us anymore.”

Jessica nodded.

Then, without further fanfare, she headed out into the cold Ruins, following the pointing beak of a bird-shaped echo that had witnessed her cousin being dragged away by authorities.

Leaving Brie, Zed, and Avery standing there.

“We can talk on our way back,” Brie said.  “I don’t know what advice I can give, I’m… a pretty boring girl who likes tough guys with a nerdy interior.”

“I’d like to think I’m tough and nerdy, inside and out both,” Zed said, flexing the glove with the keyboard and buttons built into it, before giving her a peck on the lips.

“Again,” Brie told him.  “Warms my Self up, and that’s important in this place.”

Zed kissed Brie more seriously.

“So yeah?  Good to head back?” Brie asked.  “Mission successful?”

“Warms me up, Jessica getting what she wants.  Seeing you guys happy,” Avery said, quiet.  She peeked down past her zipper and confirmed that Snowdrop was fast asleep.  Which was annoying because she had to keep Snowdrop propped up so she wouldn’t fall out the gap between jacket and pants.  “Before, you were talking about-”

“Fernanda?” Brie asked, interrupting.

“Fer-what?” Avery asked, her brain stumbling mid-thought.

“Sorry, that was blunt.  We were talking about your plans.”

“Oh.  Ohhhh.  Students we don’t want to be our enemies.  Yeah.  So it’s sounding like the Belanger circle, or what’s left of it, maybe the Tedds as a danger we could try to sort out.  And a couple others.”

“And the opposite of enemies?” Brie ventured, voice gentle, giving Zed a look.

Zed helped out.  “Students you wanted to keep in touch with.  Closer connections, alliances, more-than-alliances?”

“Wait.  This goes back to Fernanda?

“Your friends were concerned, after you told them you were bummed that you missed out on talking to Clementine,” Brie said.

Zed added, “Which in a roundabout way, led to us agreeing to take you on this outing.”

“Yes, but what?  What?  Where does Clementine fit into this?  Or that?  Or Fernanda?”

“And they gently made sure we were already aware you were gay before broaching the topic of your crush on-”

Fernanda?” Avery interrupted.  “Crush?  No.”

She paused.  The three of them stood on ice above the dark Abyss, in a snowy hellscape of sad, all bewildered, failing to connect the dots.

Avery finally did.

VeronaVerona talked to you.”

Vanishing Points – 8.4

Lucy

Lucy ate her gas station food with the resolve and weariness that she’d run into during their fitness test in gym, at the start and end of the semester.  As part of it, they’d had to run back and forth along the gym in response to timed beeps until they couldn’t anymore, then they’d had to do some other exercises, then run laps.  Some of the other teenagers had thrown up.  Verona had come close.

Eating this sandwich, chips, and salad felt like that.  A chocolate bar sat at the desk to their room and Lucy didn’t even want it that much.  This was only day two of the post-Bristow dining.

Verona lay in bed on her stomach with her legs kicking, no doubt getting crumbs on the sheets or the book she was reading as she ate and went over a textbook at the same time.

“I’m glad we don’t have a full semester of this,” Lucy said.

“Wha?” Verona asked, twisting around.  “Huh?”

“Food?  Eating like this?”

“It’s fine.  We’re fine.  Don’t be a wimp.”

Lucy looked around for something to throw at Verona that wasn’t so lightweight it could be ignored or so heavy it would do serious harm.  “I’m not being a wimp, I bet even Ted Havens would sigh as he had to eat this bland, weirdly dense bread.”

“Is he really the guy you’re comparing yourself to?” Verona asked, flipping over to lie on her back.

“If not him, who?  An Other?  If we’re talking about eating awful food, then… a goblin?  I don’t want to compare myself to a goblin.  Or a-”

A ghoul?

She remembered Musette, two nights ago.  Her good humor faltered.

“I mean, Ted works,” Verona replied.  She adjusted the positioning of textbook and food.  “It means I can say I might be superior to Ted.  He might have lived for thousands of years, but my experiences of eating freezer-burned leftovers and frozen dinners have made it so I don’t give a crap about food.  I win against you and the Ted we’re imagining.”

“If you can call that winning,” Lucy said, humor returning.

“I can call it whatever I damn well please.”

“You know I sleep on that bed too, right?  You’re getting crumbs-”

Her phone buzzed.

“-on it.”

“That Avery?” Verona asked.

“Zed,” Lucy said, holding her ham and bland sandwich with one hand and poking at her phone with the other.  “We’ve got you on speaker.”

“On our way back.  We’re taking the long way, to be safer and steer clear of some locals.  We probably won’t make it back for afternoon class.”

“Sorta figured.  What locals?”

“Three incarnations came after us.  Jess had an escape route ready, but it was close.  I’ll let Avery share the deets later.  We wanted to let you know all is well.  A bit tired, but well.”

“Great to hear,” Lucy said, leaning back.

“I have some requests to pass on.  We were talking about who might be your primary focus before you go.  My advice was that you might want to focus on those who would actually take the time and make the effort, ignoring everyone who might be powerful and upset, but ultimately irrelevant once they go home.”

“We might come back here, right?” Verona asked.

Lucy made a face at Verona.

“You might.  You can deal with it then.  But when you have limited time…”

“It’s like Clementine said,” Lucy finished.  “Gotta clean up the biggest, most necessary messes, when you have someone coming over.  Right, okay.  Which leaves the question who.”

“We talked about that too.  We can expand on this list later, but for now, part of what I’m passing on is a recommendation: steer clear of the Tedds, and stay away from the Belangers.  Nicolette excepted, of course.”

“Belangers are weirdly positioned right now.”

“They’re not bound by a lot of obligations or alliances, they had big stakes, I sorta know Wye, Chase, and Tanner, and I really don’t know what they’ll do.”

“Right.”

“So those things bundled together are numero uno.  Number two?  Can you throw a cold drink at Verona on Avery’s behalf?”

Verona sat up, smirking.

“I can, but she’s lying on a bed I sleep in.  How deserving of this is she?”

“Checking- not that deserving.  She says a smack across the head would suffice.”

Lucy stood, and Verona shielded her head for a few seconds until Lucy could find an angle to give her a sharp swat.  Verona cackled through her sound of pain.

“Done.  What did she do?” Lucy asked.

“Misled Brie and I about what we were talking to Avery about.  Or who we were talking to Avery about.  Again, I’ll let Avery explain.  Gotta wrap this up.”

“Can you put her on?”

“I can, but calling from this far away burns through battery, and my spare battery was in a device that got a giant arrow put through it.”

“I’ll keep it short.”

Zed made a pained sound.

But a second later, Avery spoke, “Hullo?”

“Avery.  Managing?”

“This is tough but I’m glad I did it.  Learning a lot.  What did I miss this morning?”

Zed said something audible in the background.

“Not much.  Elemental rune stuff we already knew.  Refresher.  This afternoon is the guest teacher.”

“Okay, I had a third request Zed didn’t get to.  Can you take good notes for this afternoon?”

“Of course.  Was going too anyway.  Listen, uh, this is awkward…”

“Oh no.”

“Just wanted to say I miss having you around and stuff.  Glad you’re doing this, hope it’s doing what you need it to, but I’ll be glad when you’re back.”

“Me toooo!” Verona raised her voice, cupping her hands.  “Averyyyy!  We love youuu!  Snowdrop toooo!”

There was a hiccup of a chuckle from Avery’s end in response that suggested she’d heard.

“Now unless there’s more Zed wanted, you should hang up,” Lucy said, stern.  “Leave some charge on his magic battery in case of emergency.”

“Yep,” Avery said.  There was a pause.  “Thanks.  Means a lot.”

Then it went silent.

“Recharging her Self?” Verona asked.

“Sure.  And I wanted to make sure she knows.”

“Cool.”

Lucy slid the phone around the desk a bit, poking at it to check other messages.  Her last message from her mom was that thing about Verona’s dad.  Matthew had sent a short list of who they’d invited in, why, and the rules they’d put into place to keep things manageable with the influx.

Something to think about more seriously later, when they were heading home.  It was a long drive, they’d be able to talk it over then.

Lucy finished the sandwich, wet a napkin, and cleaned up the desk of crumbs.  Then, after weighing the options of saving the chocolate bar for later, knowing the opossum or one of her roommates might get it, decided to eat it.

With her earring, she could hear the sound of doors opening and closing, and footsteps in the hallway.  She checked the time.

“Want to go learn about elementals?” Lucy asked.

Verona nodded.

It was tough, heading out into the hallway.  The eyes that were immediately on her, combined with the fact that they were in the room at the far end of the hallway, so a lot of those eyes that were staring at her were between her and the room they were walking to… something she had to walk into and through.  She could see Liberty in that crowd, not smiling, and she could recall the warning they’d just got.

The fact it was tough, weirdly, was the worst thing about it.  Lucy, all her life, had dealt with assholes.  She’d marked, even from a young age, that some people would be vaguely jerk-ish to her -if not total a-holes- and then be nice to the next random person her age.  More often, there was a vague sense that the world was a hostile place, that things were hard, and question marks were stamped all over everything.  Why was this person giving her a hard time?  Why did that guy pick her to bully and keep in the water?  Why had Logan given her a hard time?  Why had Mr. Bader had an issue?  Why had Paul left?  Alone, any one of those things was a maybe, or even a likely, and putting it all together she could be reasonably sure that the color of her skin was the primary reason why.  But those question marks still got to her, made it hard to call any one thing out, frustrated.

And she liked to think she stood tall through it, she picked her clothes with care, she learned hair and makeup through a hundred hours of tutorials and videos.  Was still learning.  She called out what she could and she didn’t let stuff slide.

It made this hard.  When she was tired and she’d just eaten a lunch that had supplied basic nutrition and less than zero joy.  When she’d seen violence very real, a man’s head cracked open, just nights ago, and hadn’t slept great ever since.  When she felt far from safe, far from any backup that wasn’t her friends.  When it felt like all of that prep and those safeguards weren’t helping like they normally might.

When she didn’t feel like she was standing tall, emotionally.

Verona nudged her.  Lucy looked over at her friend.

“Come on.”

Some of the students who’d left during the event still hadn’t returned.  The Driscolls, Scobie, Rowsome… but at the same time, the fact that there was only one option for classes meant that everyone was heading in the same direction, albeit at different speeds.  They didn’t really enter the bigger group so much as they got absorbed by the stragglers.

They reached the student lounge, and the slight bottleneck as other teenagers stopped and figured out where they were sitting.  Lucy leaned against the wall and looked over to where Sol Ferguson sat in the lounge.  He looked restless but he didn’t rise to his feet, either.

“How’re you doing, Sol?” Lucy asked.

“Not looking forward to this afternoon,” he said.

“Redundant?” Verona asked.  “Elementals class, and you’re the elemental explosion guy.”

“That too,” he said.  He stood, making grumbling sounds, and stretched.

She remembered reading the student guide and feeling sorry for Sol.  The only twelve year old.  A bit too young to fit in among the teenagers, pushed into a younger age group by the fact his roommate was ten.  But he was Lucy’s height, lanky, with superfine blond hair that looked a bit like it was always suffering from bedhead or light static.  He’d put some gel or something in it but he did that thing that guys did when they were first doing their hair and concentrated on the parts at the front that they saw when looking in the mirror, ignoring the back.  He was wearing a shirt with a stylized graffiti orange-on-black pattern on it, and had tattoos at his hands- a half circle on each hand, each filled with diagram stuff.

If there were students out there who weren’t glaring at them or hating them for intervening like they had, then Lucy wanted to use that.  Getting rid of enemies was important, but making friends didn’t hurt either.

“What’s got you down?” she asked.

He walked over, then peeked around the corner, pointing before retreating.

At the stage was a woman with very fine dark brown hair, skinny, with tattoos all down her arms, each of a partial diagram.  Her dress was a crimped fabric, red at the shoulders and blue near the ankles, with unnecessary brassy buttons up near the collar.

“That bad?” Lucy asked.

“Would you want your parents teaching?”

“That would be a sight to behold,” Verona mused.  “Plop my dad down on the stage.  Get him to teach something about designing ticket systems for management branches and how the right implementations can encourage good workplace habits, and blah blah blah.”

“I think he’d run instead of teaching,” Lucy said.

“Well yeah, but it’s trippy to think about.  And awful.”

“This is awful,” Sol muttered, glancing around the corner.  “I can’t skip a class my mom’s teaching, can I?”

Lucy made a ‘hmmm’ sound, before venturing, “I don’t think I’d want to get on the wrong side of the kind of woman who tattoos a twelve year old so he can blow stuff up by putting his hands together.”

Sol sighed.  “Yeahhhh.  I was ten, by the way.”

“Is this a Talia type of situation?” Verona asked.  “Scary mom?”

“Very scary, but not at all like Talia’s.”

“Huh.”

Durocher entered the classroom from the western hallway, and the murmur of conversation changed, dropping in volume by half, then by half again, just a second or two later.

Mrs. Ferguson clapped her hands.  “Everyone, if you’d please take your seats!”

Durocher walked partway up the stairs, and gave Mrs. Ferguson a hug, before they exchanged kisses on the cheeks.

“Ohhh, she’s close to Durocher,” Verona commented.  “Cheeky-kissy close.”

“Yeahhh,” Sol groaned the word.

“Does that give a hint about what kind of teacher or mom she is?”

“Nooo,” Sol groaned out the word.

Things were quieting down enough for class to start, so Lucy entered the room.  She, Verona, and Sol sat down on the first available bench, toward the back.

“Mrs. Durocher is going to be sitting in and observing, apparently?  That’s a thing you’re doing this year?” Mrs. Ferguson asked, looking around.  “Okay!  I’m Mrs. Ferguson.”

Sol dropped his face into two waiting hands with enough force it made an audible sound.

“Those of you who have been attending for a while may remember me from two years ago, I did a week-long series after a Storm not too far from here.  I’m a career elementalist, semi-retired adventurer-hyphen-explorer, mercenary, monster hunter, writer of two textbooks, consultant for police on weird events they’d rather not get involved with, and, of course, most challenging of all, I’m a mom.”

Sol lifted up his face and smacked it down again.

“Careful you don’t, um, connect that diagram on your hands,” Verona murmured.

“I’m tempted.”

“This is the first year I get to teach a class with my son attending.  Sol!?  Where are you?  Looking through the benches, Sol?  Sol!  Solarisse Blaze Ferguson, I hope you’re in this class!”

Sol sat up and put his hand up.

“There you are!”  his mom gushed.  “Come on, come up to the front, you can help with the class.  I hope you haven’t been having so much fun you’ve forgotten everything you know.”

Virtually every pair of eyes on the class was on Sol as he rose to his feet, circled around to the aisle, then walked down, head a little bent.

Cringing a little, Lucy distracted herself by getting her book and pen out.

“I…” Mrs. Ferguson said, touching the edge of her palm to a partial diagram on her arm-

A violent blast of wind scattered papers all across the room, made students lose their pens and pencils, and made pages flip in books and notebooks that sat open throughout the retrofitted church.

“Love…” she touched another portion of her arm.

A geyser of flame shot through the middle of the room, over the heads of students who were already ducking low.

“Elemental practice!”

The third point of contact produced a spray of water.  Droplets reached Lucy, moisture dotting the page she had just opened.

Mrs. Ferguson touched a point near her wrist, then drew her hand up her arm- white lines spelled out more diagram, spreading up to the shoulder, and with them, lightning crackled out around her.  She touched a point at her shoulder, and it all fizzled out.

Students flinched as she switched hands, touching her right arm with her left hand, instead of her left arm with her right hand.  A humanoid figure made of light flickered into existence.

“I love elementals,” Mrs. Ferguson said, smiling all the while.  She turned to the Other.  “Stay put.”

The figure, mid-step, hesitated, then planted its feet, remaining still.

“Shamanistic practices are struggling with a modern paradigm shift.  Technomancy is modern but has no roots.  But elemental practices have been around from an early era, and we’re still going strong today.  We may even be stronger.  Yay for global warming, am I right, Sol baby?”

“Yeah,” Sol stood with his back to the stage, his mother a few feet behind him.  He sounded and looked like he wanted to die.

“As mankind harnesses the elements, earth, air, fire, water, and all of the derivative elements, like electricity, cold, smoke, wood, and iron, the Others change.  In my grandmother’s generation, it was more common for elementals to resemble animals, but now they resemble men and women, old and young.  The balances of power change, as electricity reigns triumphant.  They take on new flavors.  Polluted water, radiation, acid rain.  Elementals are exciting!”

If the enthusiasm and forced charm were painful enough to make Lucy’s teeth hurt, the current state of Sol was something of an antidote.

“Some say elementals are indistinguishable from spirits, but this isn’t correct.  Elementals and elemental practices are the work the spiritual does, channeled through strict physical laws, making contact, sometimes violent contact with our world.  Spirits govern, but elementals are the doers.  It is an excorporate school of practice.  What does that mean, Solisse?”

“Makes stuff,” Sol answered.

“Don’t be sullen.  Come on, up on stage.  Come on, don’t make everyone wait.  Up, up.  You couldn’t have combed your hair?”

Sol shrugged.

“I’ve missed you, honey,” she told him, reaching up to sort out the gelled locks of hair at the front of his hairline.  Sol gave the room of students sitting in benches a sidelong look.  “Excorporate?  Full sentence, please.”

“The schools that can take power and make stuff.”

“There are a lot of schools that can take power and make stuff.  How is it different from enchanting objects, or creating a ward?”

“Out of thin air.”

“Yes.  Out of thin air.  Or, more technically, from us, our bodies, our power.  Excorporate forces include elemental, echoes, and celestial bodies.  They’re easiest to bind, banish, and create, when we have a mind to.  But with elemental practice, while it’s very easy to use… it hits much harder than the echo you’d get with the same power expenditure.  If you have a source of elemental energy, or an elemental Other that you have bound and available to tap, then it’s easy to draw on for raw power.  It’s excellent for offense and defense in a pinch, it’s versatile, and at its best, it can be awe-inspiring in strength.  Which raises the question.  Why isn’t anyone using it?”

A few seconds of silence passed.  Then, as students realized it wasn’t a rhetorical question, they glanced around.  Nobody seemed to want to volunteer an answer.

“Are you all going to abandon your family schools of practice and come apprentice under me?” Mrs. Ferguson asked.  “Come on, you’re big boys and girls with a well-rounded experience.”

Lucy had no idea what the answer was, but she saw Verona squirm and start to raise her hand, and took hold of Verona’s wrist, putting the hand back down.

If this woman wanted to put poor Sol on the spotlight, she could squirm a bit.

“Anyone?”

It took a little bit, but on the far end of the room, America put her hand up.

“Yes?  Young lady?”

“Is it because Elementals are lame and don’t last very long?”

Mrs. Ferguson made a face, then replied, “Not lame, but you’re on the right track.  Elementals are fleeting, they exist to change our world and they tend to do it in rushed, dramatic ways, and then they disappear.  Look at this Other I summoned earlier.  Light and heat energy, and it’s already faltering.”

The Other did look dimmer than before, and it crouched a bit.

“Effective elementalist practice requires that we, sometimes literally, must catch lightning in a bottle.  To be in the right place at the right time, to have the right things on hand, and to act fast when that Other or general elemental manifestation is actively tearing up your surroundings, setting them on fire, or flooding the ground you’d want to draw a diagram on.  The goal is then to find a home for the elemental, a hallow or a positive environment that keeps them in one position, and this isn’t as simple as you might imagine.”

She walked over to the side of the stage, got a case, and lifted it to a lectern.  She popped open the case, grabbed some papers, and handed them to Sol, who looked a bit shell-shocked in the moment.

“Our summoned friend at the side of the stage.  Would you invigorate it?”

Sol looked over at the dimming spirit and then down at the paper.

“No pressure, really,” she told him, putting hands on his shoulders from behind him, while the eyes of every student present pressured him.  “But don’t let it go out while you’re reading.”

Sol frowned, looking up, then back down.  “What am I-?”

“Sol has a list of entities I’ve collected and bound, all of which are in the case.  These are other excorporate Others, vestiges, echoes, spirits, and even a cracked cherubim.  Creating a bright light or lighting up the area isn’t quite enough to invigorate the elemental Other.  Elementals come through environment, strike, and leave through environment, and the wrong trigger would cause it to burn its power and then break into constituent elements, going back to the spirit and physical spaces from whence it came.  We need a container.

“I don’t know,” Sol told her.  “Is it this one?”

She looked over his shoulder, frowned, then said, “Don’t ask me.  Have you been keeping up with the reading over your school break here?”

“Some.”

“Then if you don’t know, it’s your own fault.  Figure it out, now.  It’s dying, by the way.”

Sol’s posture was rigid as he read through the page, turned it over, and read the list on the back.

He put the paper down, went to the case, and stood on his toes to peer over the lip, before reaching in.

He lifted out an ID card on a cord then held it at arm’s length.  He looked to his mom, who gave no indication of whether the choice was right.  The ID card twitched and pulled like something was hauling on it, or it was in a violent wind that nobody else experienced.

“Ahem,” he cleared his throat. “Willie Koehn.  Night guard.  He snapped, caught some teenagers sneaking into the property to use it as a skate park.  It was a pair from a larger group that had mocked him and always got away when he tried to confront them.  He ambushed them, and tortured them.  Bludgeoned them, breaking their legs, beat them around the heads until they were insensate, then hurt them more.  Dumped them into a dumpster.  Pretty angry echo.”

Sol’s mother folded her arms.  “An echo this angry is better termed a wraith.  Nasty influences are mixed into it.  You’ll need to summon it.”

“I know.  I’m naming it as a prelude to summoning it.”

“Safeguards?  What are they teaching you at this school?  Sorry, Marie, I know you try, but you’re only one person.”

Durocher didn’t say anything in response, watching.

“I’m a safeguard.”

His mother shrugged, arms still folded.

“Willie Koehn, I call you out.  I hold your I.D. card, and I release you.  Go into this light,” Sol said.

The card twitched more violently, then it began to shed shadow.

An echo appeared, but it was a dense one.  The edges were inconsistent, like it had caught outlines of other ways the head had turned or the arms had moved, and the midsection had gaps like it was missing organs or something had melted through it.  The man was big, overweight, and looked about five times as mean as any human should.  His face was shiny, his hair and beard wet and sticking to his head like he was in heavy rain.

Lights throughout the room flickered, some going out.  Most of the light that filtered in was through blue tinted windows, but the man didn’t take on any of that hue.

“I’m pretty disappointed Sol,” Mrs. Ferguson said.

“I thought-”

“Carry on, Sol,” Durocher spoke up.

Sol turned.  He held up his hands, keeping them a few inches apart.  “The light, Willie.  Now.”

The figure twisted, turned, and set its sights on the dimming elemental of heat and light.

It marched forward, pulling out a flashlight that was about a foot long and all metal, thwacking it against palm audibly.  Lights flickered more violently as the man closed the distance, reaching out with one fist to grab the elemental by the neck.

It glowed, flashed, and then flowed up the wraith’s arm.  The flashlight the wraith held turned on, then turned bright, and the wraith’s eyes lit up.

It grew, visibly, by about half a foot, and that twisted, gap-filled mess in its midsection started to have a light that emanated at the edges.

The wraith turned, looking at the assembled students, and its eyes were like searchlights, casting out light into the gloom.  Faint light shone within its mouth.

“That was not the choice I wanted you to make, Sol baby.”

“It wasn’t the right answer,” Mrs. Durocher said, reclining on the stairs that led up to the left side of the stage.  “But it’s a right answer.”

“I hear you, Marie, and I disagree.  If you have a multiple choice question, you’ll only get the point if you pick the most correct answer.  There was another choice that was far more elegant, efficient, and economical, than using a hard-to-acquire wraith.”

“What was your thought process, Sol?” Mrs. Durocher asked.

“That a security guard working an evening shift would have ways to see at night.  Like a flashlight or headlamp.”

“You were right.  Good job.  Now please don’t let it kill my students.”

The wraith set its sights on a corner of the seated class.

The lights flickered, and when they came back on, the wraith was right next to some students sitting on a bench.

“Back!” Sol shouted, his voice high as he held up the I.D. card.  “Here!”

The lights flickered, and the wraith appeared behind Sol.  He turned around as it lifted up the flashlight to use as a bludgeon, and then pressed the sides of his hand together, completing the diagram there.  A rolling explosion blasted the wraith’s head and shoulder off.  The flashlight hit the ground without bouncing, a leaden weight that produced an echoing boom on striking floorboards.

Sol thrust the I.D. card into the remains of the wraith.  The darkness with glimmers of flickering light threaded through it leeched into the I.D. card.

Mrs. Durocher stood, walked up the stairs, and went to the shelving units at the back.

The I.D. card wasn’t taking in all of the darkness.  It began to creep along Sol’s arm.

“Honey, no,” Mrs. Ferguson said, sounding exasperated.  “I guess you’re only twelve, after all.”

Sol looked more annoyed at her than the wraith that was slipping its binding.

Mrs. Durocher walked over to Sol, carrying a flashlight that resembled what the Other had held, metal and long.  Sol took it, and, hesitating for a second, wrapped the lanyard and laminated I.D. card around it.  The card struggled every step of the way, moving of its own volition.

“Authority, Sol,” Durocher’s voice was quiet, but Lucy could hear with the earring.  Then again, it was Durocher speaking, so maybe everyone heard.

“Uhh-”

“Exercise your Self.”

“In!” Sol raised his voice.  “I don’t want you, get in!”

“Willie doesn’t like youths,” Mrs. Ferguson told Durocher.

“Too bad for Willie,” Durocher said.

The wraith didn’t look like it was going to listen, but gradually, it gave way.

Lucy wasn’t sure, but Durocher standing as close as she was might have been a factor.

The flashlight flickered, casting a red-tinted light, then went dark.  The lanyard and card stopped whipping around.

Sol huffed out a sigh.

“A little scary, baby?” Mrs. Ferguson asked.  “I’m sorry, I asked too much of you.  If Mrs. Durocher hadn’t been here, what would you have done?”

“More explosions.”

“While it’s crawling all over you?”

“The lesson,” Mrs. Durocher said, putting a hand briefly on Sol’s shoulder before returning to her seat on the stairs.

Mrs. Ferguson beamed.  “Yes.  We were talking about hallows and homes for elementals.  Others can be that point of residence.  A vestige can be the broken jar that hold most of it.  Even a hazy echo can be the structure an elemental maps to if it has the right anchoring points.  The elemental becomes the beating heart of the Other.  Electric, hot, storming, boiling, or turbulent, among other possibilities.”

She put papers and things back in the case, retrieved something, and then lowered it to the base of the podium, before dusting off her hands.  She held up objects.

“Objects may become inadvertent homes, if they meet the right requirements.  Whatever force created or currently holds the Other might have less grip on the Other than the new object.  Here is where we war with the environment, and where they protect themselves.  I have here a taser, rusty and ulcerating from a leaking battery.  It holds a strong Other, and a lot of power.  To capture that elemental, I had to deal with downed power lines, wiring tearing itself from walls, and arcs of electricity dancing through hallways.  Electricity that did not always follow normal rules.  Every bit of chaos it could create was something that kept it present, while also giving it an escape route.  This device was used to murder three individuals.  Ostensibly nonlethal, not very impressive, it had weight.  That weight mattered more than the state of the building and the electrical storms, and the elemental found its home.”

She held up a blasted chunk of what might have been a radiator.  “This gained its meaning and momentum through violence.  An explosion punched it through the head of the hallow a steam elemental.  Destructive force can be its own force, but it only worked because this chunk of metal had affinity for the steam.”

She walked back to the podium, setting the things down.  The taser sparked.

“Third, if we’re talking about the background parts of an elemental, we need to talk about realms.  The realms we assign to elementals are known as capital-S Storms.  Mrs. Durocher, did Raymond set it up?”

“There’s a remote on the shelf inside the stand.”

Mrs. Ferguson bent down, checked the stand that was set up at the front of the stage, for notes, luggage cases, and display, and pulled out a remote.  She clicked.

The lights went out again, and the room took on a red haze, with no particular light source.  Dark clouds floated where the ceiling should be.  Smoke rolled, and lines of white light buzzed, crackled, and arced as they held the shape of electrical towers and power lines, standing out visibly against that backdrop of choking red and black.  There was an audible electrical hum.

“Like elementals, the Storms are fleeting, intense, exceedingly valuable and powerful, and very hard to deal with.”

Lightning struck, making nearly everyone jump out of their seats.  A second later, more lightning hit, and this bolt not only rocked the room, floor, and the people sitting, but it traveled, digging a trench along ground that left ruined dirt in its wake, that dirt arcing and crackling with its own residual energy.  The ground looked like it was melting, like there was nothing that solid about it.

An ozone, burning smell filled the air, prompting some students to cough.

“It takes preparation to survive even a few minutes in a real, un-simulated Storm.  They tend to emphasize one element, they arise when a great many elementals gather and die at once, or when a powerful elemental comes into being.  Then they pass.  You could draw comparisons to a hurricane.  When they last for any meaningful length of time, they often, like elementals, have something they root themselves to.  One tree that’s been struck by lightning enough times, one building, one object.  In an ideal case, an elementalist will want to get to the Storm itself, well prepared, and harvest it for power.  If achieved, this can elevate a family dramatically.  Most often, we harvest the power after.  Tapping a storm, a few good harvests, or one strong elemental caught like lightning in a bottle are things great elementalist families and circles have managed.”

The storm grew more intense as she talked.  Figures as tall as the skeletal structures holding up the power lines remained like electrical giants in the wake of some of the blasts, darting around.  She had to shout as the sound got especially loud.

She clicked the button.

The ghostly-white image of the power lines, the red sky, and the black clouds faded, even though the ozone smell lingered.

The walls melted like wax, fire licking them, and smoke rolled up.  At times, the wax melted into smoke and rose up.  Other times, the smoke seemed to get heavy with chemicals or heavier materials in the smoke and rolled down the walls.  Colors ranged from pink to green to yellow, but the tones of fire were dominant.

A single metal chair glowed white-hot at the side of the stage.

Echoes entered the area and ignited, taking on power like the night security guard had.  Growing in size, ferocity, with energy burning within.

Random objects ignited and became intense blazes.  The only thing missing was the actual heat.

Lucy reached out for a blob of melting wall and her hand passed through it.

“Another Storm.  This is terrific, Marie.  Raymond’s work?  Did he model them off a real storm?”

“I don’t know.  He is good, isn’t he?” Durocher asked.

“Storms will keep going because they turn inward.  Winds will loop inward instead of venting out, fires will focus toward the interior of a structure instead of spreading.  They can cover wide areas, enough to occlude a small settlement, but they can be as small as a single building.  It often requires something catastrophic.  This is, at the most extreme end, the uppermost tier of elemental power.  The things that live and are comfortable in storms are akin to deities, but as fleeting as their storm.  We don’t know how many live for a few hours or a day, and how many recede into other territories or realms, waiting for another storm to wake them, before they emerge there.  Now, is there a student named Raquel present?  Raquel Musser?”

Heads of students around the room turned.  Even if nobody actually pointed, the sheer number of eyes that fixed on Raquel made it pretty darn clear that there was.

“Would you come up on stage, dear?” Mrs. Ferguson asked.

Raquel rose to her feet, and because she was closest to Mrs. Durocher, had to slip past the woman who sat on the stairs to get to the stage.

“I’d like to get to know my son’s schoolmates and friends.  I’ve heard your name, I’d like your help for the demonstration, if you please.”

“We’ve never really talked, but I’ll help out,” Raquel said, wincing a bit at the fake image of the ‘Storm’ that decorated the classroom.

Lucy felt that Sol was doing a commendable job of holding a poker face and simultaneously looking like he wanted to hurl himself face-first off the stage.  Subtle body language, and a frozen expression.

“At the very opposite end to the storm, we have another vessel for elements.  And it’s one that is critical to master if we’re to direct the elements, make good use of celestial and crude elemental diagrams, or even host the elementals in our own bodies for brief periods of time, to channel power or withstand a storm such as the one depicted now.  The human body.  You are a very pretty young lady, Raquel.  You seem to be in good health, fit.  Sol?”

Sol looked at his mother with that frozen poker face and those dead eyes.

“All of us, in ways both subtle and obvious, have slight affinities for certain elements.  Sometimes we even give it away.”

“I like to think I give very little away, Mrs. Ferguson,” Raquel told her.

“If you’d face my son?  Sol, stand here?”

Sol moved as ordered, facing Raquel on the stage.  The ‘Storm’ continued to ravage the walls and turn the background into a flaming, psychedelic hellscape.

Raquel stood with her hands clasped behind her back, ramrod straight, feet shoulder width apart, her chin raised, staring Sol down.  She wore a pleated skirt, black, and a tennis top with no sleeves and a polo collar.  She flinched a few times as the fake Storm erupted near her, but she didn’t take her eyes off him.

Sol visibly withered, standing there, his mother behind him with densely tattooed hands on his shoulders.

“Describe her,” his mother said.  “As detailed as possible, now.  Every little thing can be a sign of the elements and elementals she has affinity for.  Do you know, by the way, Raquel?  Have you worked it out for yourself?”

“I have.”

“Good, then that makes checking Sol’s answers easier.”

Sol swallowed.

“Hurry up.  If you take too long, we won’t have time for everyone here to do practical exercises in the blasting field behind the school.”

“Yeah,” Raquel told Sol.  “Please hurry.  This is awkward.”

The back door of the classroom opened, and Lucy nearly sagged with relief for Sol, at this interruption.  The poor damn kid.  The figure was hidden by the holographic ‘Storm’, up until Durocher motioned and Mrs. Ferguson clicked the remote and dismissed everything.

Lucy blinked a few times as her eyes adjusted to the change in scene.

“What’s this interruption?” Mrs. Ferguson asked, arch.

Lucy’s relief was short lived.  Verona’s hand gripped her arm.

Wye Belanger.

“Mrs. Durocher?” Wye asked.  He didn’t walk to her, but to the western hallway.

Lucy had to lean back, almost falling over the bench, to see into that hallway and see Chase and Tanner.  Nicolette was a ways behind, with Ray.

She sat back down, more normally, and tucked hair behind her ear, her fingers finding spots to rest on her earring, as she closed her eyes.

Raymond: You found him?

Wye:  No.  It bothers me I can’t.  I started to look for other things.  Financial connections, colleagues, people who I know he knows who might have hidden him.  I talked to the three skeptics at Sargent Hall, thinking he might be in their company.

Chase: That wouldn’t explain the lack of a trail between here and there.  Seems he did a good job of cleaning up the trail behind him.

Wye: He didn’t.  Hi, Mrs. Durocher.

Durocher: What did you find?

Wye: I didn’t.  I went looking for his car, today.

Raymond: You asked for help on that.  I found footage on traffic cameras.

“Can you hear?” Verona whispered

Lucy nodded and held up a finger.

At the front of the room, Sol stammered through the task his mother had given him.

Wye: …was the starting point.  Thank you, Ray.  The end point was… I talked to authorities, because practice wasn’t getting us anywhere.  I steered them in the right directions, paid a couple guys who weren’t on duty to help me find my way around.  The car was driven into a river.

Tanner: He knows how to cover his tracks.

Wye: No.  This wasn’t him.  The car interior was torched, I found his wallet and phone in the muck.  His wand, too.

Raymond: You think he’s dead?

Wye: Have you tried to enter his demesne?

Raymond: Sealed. 

Nicolette: Sealed how?  There are a lot of interpretations of that.

Raymond: I haven’t tried, frankly.  I’ve had enough to do, and his security is good.

Durocher: Go, Nicolette.

Students through the room were chattering.  Mrs. Ferguson’s lesson wasn’t getting a lot of traction.  The woman raised her voice.  “Excuse me!”

“They think Alexander might be dead,” Lucy whispered to Verona, picking her words very carefully.

Verona’s eyes widened.

“Excuse me!  Thank you!  I’d like to very deliberately ignore the events of this past week and focus on learning, please.  Sol is making a commendable effort at describing the beautiful Ms. Musser, noting she’s dressed comfortably for warm weather.  That leads us to natural body temperatures-”

“Shut up, nobody really cares about that,” Fernanda declared.  “I think they found Alexander, and Wye’s like, the only guy that’s one hundred percent in Alexander’s corner.  He didn’t look happy, so something happened.”

Fernada, for that matter, didn’t look especially happy.

Fernanda hadn’t really taken a side in the whole back-and-forth thing, and she’d settled in the middle when they’d made their final play against Bristow.

To go from that, to being this unhappy?

Nicolette: There were some wards and some security that were up there like normal, but the door opened.  It’s a mess in there.

Raymond: Define mess.

Nicolette: Everything he brought in there is jumbled up together, layout’s different, the space is still Important but it’s not…

Raymond: It’s not a demesne anymore?

Nicolette: No.

Durocher: That confirms it.  Dead or forsworn.

The chatter was increasing in intensity as students discussed possibilities, and it was a lot of whispers for the Eavesdropper’s earring.  Lucy ducked her head down, meeting Verona’s eyes, but neither of them had anything to say.  Any words they might have exchanged could be just as easily shared with a glance.

Durocher stepped into the archway, and the volume level dropped.

“Is he dead?” America asked.

“We can’t say anything for certain, but it does appear that way,” Mrs. Durocher said.

“What the frigging fuck!?” America raised her voice.

Everyone had a reaction, and Lucy’s eyes couldn’t move fast enough to grab all of them.  Fernanda staggering back to rest her back against a bookshelf, students who had been against Alexander who now looked spooked.  Students who’d been for Alexander who looked like they’d had something important ripped from them.

She hadn’t realized how much they cared.

The image of Alexander lying in the mud with his head shattered and leaking sat in her mind’s eye, big enough it choked her throat and made it hard to breathe.

She swallowed hard, and felt Verona’s hand on top of hers.

Others followed behind Durocher, striding into the room.  The Belanger circle, or ex-Belanger circle, and Raymond.  Nicolette was late, but she was followed by Amine and Ulysse.

“We’ll be calling an end to this class early,” Raymond said.  “Please do not get up from your seats.”

Vanishing Points – 8.5

Verona

Verona sat back, taking it all in, as students reacted.  Chattering, leaning over benches in a loose violation of Raymond’s request to stay in their seats- their butts were clearly not in contact with wood as they leaned forward.

Durocher strode down the length of the room, to the rear of the classroom.  The stage area had an offshoot area to the right where there were more shelves and, maybe more importantly, an exit to the rear of the school.

The rest of the senior students and faculty -maybe better to say apprentice senior students and faculty- were hanging out at the back, in a loose organization that barred the exit through the front door or side hallways.

Not that it mattered much.  Was there really any way that anyone gathered here would run for it?  They’d make it about three steps before being bound five ways from Sunday, eaten by a Durocher summon, and sent to Brownie Hell.

Or, again, correcting herself, was there any way that the people who knew how Alexander had died, herself and Lucy, could run away?

No.

No escape.  That- that really sucked.  She’d woken up that morning with a headache buzzing at the back of her head, maybe a consequence of not eating breakfast and then throwing up lunch, and then eating a pretty small dinner so she wouldn’t upset her sensitive stomach.  And that headache had worsened with a morning class that had covered precious little new information, frustration making the dark cloud at the back of her head that much worse and harder to ignore.

Now she had a stomachache and a headache, and the fact that these were both things that were like, exactly how her dad physically reacted to stress, it annoyed-

No, it ate at her.

She hated that in the span of one minute of feeling and thinking she was second-guessing herself and needing to clarify.  This situation, the fact they were being asked to stay put, that there had to be questions while the teachers and apprentices had them rounded up, it needed her to be one thousand percent on the ball with what she was good at.

And she was already messing up, making herself suspicious of her own words and meaning.

“They’re talking about Fernanda and America right now,” Lucy whispered.

Verona looked at her friend.

“Because Fernanda jumped to the conclusion it was about Alexander, and America went straight to a question about-”

“America, Liberty.  A word?” Raymond asked.

Lucy pursed her lips.

“About Alexander maybe being dead?” Verona asked.  “Or forsworn?”

Assume someone can hear anything we say.

“It’s hard to concentrate on everything, because there’s so much chatter, but I think everyone’s a little freaked out,” Lucy whispered.  “I think everyone blames themselves a little, for not supporting him more, or pushing him out, or they’re upset, or they’re worried about consequences.  Some have families that will be upset.”

“What does that mean, though?”

“It means this is a mess, I don’t envy Mr. Sunshine and the others if they have to sort through all of this.”

Verona got what Lucy was really saying with that.  That they had a bit of cover.  Which didn’t mean a lot but it meant something.

“Um, they’re really grilling America, though,” Lucy whispered.

Verona glanced back.

America looked angry, and Liberty and America looked like they, as a pair, were really good at playing off one another, picking up where the other left off.

“I wish we had the mood glasses, remember those?” Lucy asked.

The mood glasses they’d confiscated from Brie.  When they’d released Brie they’d negotiated to keep the items they confiscated.  They’d gotten the red button, the crying cold tears tape, the centipede keycard, and other stuff.  The glasses were a weird multi-hued, sunset tint, and they made it easy to read a crowd’s mood, and see individual moods standing out inside that crowd.  They were also very dorky and…

“Tried them on for a few days to see if I could do anything too interesting with it.”

“Yeah,” Lucy replied.  “But I bet they’d show some interesting stuff.”

“Like any culprits?”

“Maybe,” Lucy said, absently.

“What about your Sight?  You see shades of watercolor and blades-”

“It’s a mess.”

“I don’t think my Sight is good for much here,” Verona commented.  She turned it on just to see and the room was wrapped in film and fibers, everything under a transparent or translucent veil, hiding things beneath.  A lot of those things were crimson and wriggly.  Magic items on the shelf at the back of the room, some things the students carried or wore…

What other stuff did they have?  Avery was carrying the enter key, as well as the glasses.  The enter key was another confiscated item that could have been a quick, if dangerous, way to escape.  Something for if the crowd turned on them.  It was dangerous, it electrocuted the person using it, but that had to be better than whatever this crowd would do to them.

Summoning John was the opposite of a good idea.

No, no items really stood out as good answers.  She had glamour but whatshisname Vanderwerf was among the students.  Estrella’s little brother.  Risky.

“Raymond is asking if America or Liberty have any idea what happened to Alexander, beyond what was said here.  America answers that he probably died old-guy-hot.”

Verona nodded.  Tough questions.

“Wye isn’t letting her get away with ‘probably’.”

Verona nodded again.

“America concedes she doesn’t know what happened.  Liberty says the same.  Raymond is now asking if they took any action, used any item, or performed a practice that would confound their answers or actions about Alexander.”

“Would you know if you did?” Verona asked.  “Should we have been asking-”

“Maybe,” Lucy interrupted.  “They say no to all of the above.  Apparent-”

“What?”

“Shh.  Let me listen.  Apparently… cheating the system to alter your mind or force a lie is something the spirits don’t like all that much.  Chase says that if America and Liberty pulled that, then they’d know.”

So that wasn’t a thing.  Right.  “Know how?”

I don’t know, Verona,” Lucy said, surprisingly intense, startling Verona a bit.  “I’m listening and trying to figure out what’s going on.  Shh.”

Verona nodded.  The nod reminded her of the burgeoning headache and upset stomach.

They weren’t even being interrogated yet.  What the heck?  She considered herself okay at hiding her emotions and emotionally deadening herself, but she had no confidence right now, and she could remember messing that up when talking to Yadira and Kass, back when they’d been trying to sell themselves as tough and too scary to mess with.  She’d tried to go emotionally dead and she’d just gone, what… sad?

What if they got directly questioned and she puked like yesterday?

“They’re asking about movements, when they’ve seen Alexander… Chase and Tanner are taking notes.  I think they’re going to split up and ask additional questions.  Chase is suggesting a question, asking… feelings toward Alexander.  Okay, that’s vague.”

If they ask us those questions we’re doomed, no way to dodge it.

So we can’t let them ask on their terms.  But they’re going to be on the lookout for that.

Need a second to think.  Need-

Lucy’s hand brushed Verona’s as her head turned.

The bench behind them had the host brothers, sitting at the far left, while Verona and Lucy sat at the far right of their bench.  Both brothers were focused entirely on the huddle of apprentices near Ray.

One of those ‘apprentices’, for lack of a better way of putting it, was Nicolette, breaking away from the group to walk over.

To them.

Lucy raised her hand in a wave of greeting.

Verona could see Nicolette’s face as Nicolette walked around the rear bench to where they sat.  Nicolette had an earpiece above and behind her ear, hooked into her hair and over her ear, like a petrified lizard or something, with a glass orb in its mouth, right-front claw, right-back claw, and the end of the tail.  Her eyes were normal until viewed through her glasses, which were thicker glass and magnified her eyes a bit.  Through the glass, Nicolette’s eyes showed something red and nugget-like swimming in a filmy pool within her eye sockets.  She adjusted her glasses, and the image the glass showed changed, to a crimson coil where the whites should be, orbiting a deeper darkness.

“Being good?” Nicolette asked.

“Are you?” Lucy asked her.  “What’s going on?”

“We’re using America as a starting point.  We may pull students aside to ask and try to get a fuller picture.”

“You might want to do more to control the room and take care of the students here,” Lucy said.  “I can see a lot of pain and agitation.”

“What practitioners do is big, we touch on a lot of bases, go to a lot of different worlds,” Nicolette replied, looking out over the room, the coiling redness twisting, adjusting, and condensing as she focused on more distant subjects.  “But it’s a small, interconnected world at the same time.”

“People know people,” Verona suggested.

“Like you guys and me, or you guys and Zed.  At odds one day, friendly-ish a few weeks later.”

“I kind of thought that might be us.”

“It isn’t, and it makes for some interesting arranged marriages and things.  Families trying to force that kind of adjustment by sacrificing sons and daughters, basically.  But I’m getting off track.  The way Alexander works- or worked, as the case may be, he liked being a part of well-coordinated systems.  Like Jessica’s diagram, for that ritual that was sabotaged.”

“I remember,” Verona said.

“He earned a reputation as someone who did good work, which led to people starting projects with him, and with each other.  Some small families positioned their success and failure on work they were doing with him, or things he was facilitating.  I know a lot of students are aware of that.  It’s not just losing a teacher and wondering what the future holds.  It’s also knowing your parents might lose everything.”

“He wasn’t that reliable or doing good work when he forswore Seth, was he?” Lucy asked.

“No.  Maybe, I don’t know.  I think… it goes back to what I just said, about how grudges can become uneasy friendships, and vice-versa.  Stuff doesn’t die and this world has a long, long memory.  Unless you kill it.”

“Unless-”

“Unless you very deliberately ensure those things don’t follow you or weigh you down,” Nicolette said, watching Mrs. Durocher talking to Mrs. Ferguson at the end of the stage.  “Removing burdens and threats in a surgical way.”

That felt… chillingly on-target.

Verona’s headache ground at the back of her head, stomach tense.

Nicolette’s eyes fell on her, dark centers ringed by deep red coils of veins.  Which would normally be cool but was only a four out of ten on the cool scale, now.

Had Nicolette been hinting at knowing they were involved?  Or alluding to why Alexander was gone?  Or just talking about other stuff?

Verona wanted to shake Nicolette and get clearer answers on what she was doing but there was no way she actually could.  They had no power here.

Nicolette went on, “Alexander was never one for the arranged marriages, not for himself, even though it would have been a good play to rise in status.  He’d arrange them for others- I know he was looking into options for me.  Connecting me deeper to the Belanger family if I turned out to be a true asset.  Trading me to someone else in another family if I didn’t.”

“Gross,” Lucy said.

“I wasn’t a fan.  Either way, given the option of either maintaining those connections to people who might end up being enemies or burdens, or cutting them loose, he preferred the latter.  Doing surgery and staying free, independent and alone, and sometimes that surgery was a brutal amputation.  That was the last few days in his confrontation with Bristow.”

“Seth,” Lucy said.

“Yeah,” Nicolette said.

“How is he?”

“I put him in a protective circle after something got at him, last night.  Spiritual parasites.  Purged them, moved the bed, set up the circle.  He was catatonic, even before the parasites, but I got it so he’s at least watching television.  It’s a step toward showing interest in the world again.”

“That’s, um… good?” Verona guessed.

“It’s something.  Even if the television won’t stay on for long if I’m not there.  The power shorts just long enough for it to turn off, or the internet connection hangs.”

“Do you have a plan?” Lucy asked.

“Taking it day by day.  I loathed him before.  Now I pity him… and loathe him.  And I don’t know how much of that is the forswearing letting connections around him fall away.”

“We know someone forsworn.  He made a deal for protection,” Lucy told Nicolette.

“Yeah.  But I took responsibility for Seth, and I don’t know if I could turn him over to someone or a group of someones like that without being absolutely sure it was okay and safe.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.

“I told you what happened, that made me Aware.  I’ve been… awfully close to where Seth is now.  The catatonia, the world not cooperating, the hopelessness.  Being so close to Seth right now is giving me nightmares.  Flashbacks back to where I was, then.  Not your nightmare, don’t worry.”

“That’s good,” Lucy said.

“I have too many protections for Seth’s benefit, for something like that to get into the room.  And the school is secure.  Regular old mundane nightmares.”

“Can we help?” Lucy asked.

Nicolette shook her head.

Verona desperately wanted a free moment to think and plan, and Nicolette being here made that impossible.  This entire thing was far from being Verona’s style.  The crowd, the moods that Lucy was noticing- that wasn’t something Verona was any good at wrangling.

“Was Bristow the same?  Interconnected?”

“Some.  Different.  He was more of a builder-”

“Fernanda,” Raymond called out.

“Oh,” Nicolette said.  “I’m going to go look in for this interview with Fernanda.  I think she’s not doing great, and I like her.  Good kid in a bad situation.”

“Not doing great?”

“Her family fortunes are her fortunes, they put all chips on Alexander, with Chase, then Chase thought they should bet on Bristow, instead.  If just Bristow had fallen, I think she could have navigated to Alexander’s side again, even if Chase didn’t, but with both gone…”

“She has nothing,” Lucy said.

“Except me, maybe,” Nicolette said.

“You’re looking out for a lot of people,” Verona noted.

“You included, I guess.  But I know from experience how I can help those at rock bottom, I don’t know about your case…”

Nicolette looked down at them, adjusted her glasses, and her eyes became normal.  She glanced over as Fernanda navigated past America and Liberty, who were walking down the same aisle.  Liberty growled at Fernanda, who didn’t flinch.

“What are we?” Verona asked.

“If rock bottom is broad, dangerously freeing, and an awful kind of safe, then you might be at the opposite, or on the road to the opposite.  Maybe if I’d spent more time around Alexander, I’d know what to say or how to warn you about what’s coming.”

“A precipice?” Verona asked.

“A narrow path, maybe.  From Awakening to whatever lies ahead.  And whatever lies past that.”

“That’s more Avery’s thing,” Lucy said.  “Paths and stuff.”

“You’re interconnected, aren’t you?  All tied together?”

“Yeah.  Guess so.”

“I wasn’t really talking about paths in that sense.”

“Yeah,” Lucy agreed.  There was a pause where it felt like someone should say something.  Nicolette looked at Verona, and Verona shrugged.

Which seemed to fill that silent pause.

Nicolette knocked twice on the backrest of the bench, then walked over to where Fernanda was joining Ray, the Belangers, Amine, and Ulysse.  Fernanda sat on a storage box by one of the bookshelves, seemingly not caring that it situated her lower, so she was looking up at all those people.  Nicolette found a seat on the box next to Fernanda, and put an arm around her shoulders.

“Given the circumstances Nicolette talked about, probably not Fernanda,” Verona mused.

“It’s kind of weird, being in this situation, what with the other investigative work we’ve been doing.  We don’t have to solve this mystery.”

“Yep,” Verona agreed, meeting Lucy’s eyes.

“Yeah.  Um, not to make too big a point of things, but you look a little green around the gills.  Again.  Might be the lunch we just ate, as much as you were bragging.”

It wasn’t the lunch and Lucy knew that.

“Stupid human bodies.  Stop telling me I’m not feeling great, body, I know I’m not feeling great.”

Lucy reached into her bag and got a bottle of pills in a nondescript container.  She held it out for Verona, then hesitated.

“What is it?”

“Stuff for upset stomachs.”

“Gimme.”

“It’s from the Brownies.”

Verona hesitated.  “Gimme.”

Lucy handed it over.  Verona tilted out two pills and swallowed them with some water.  “I just need less distractions, I know we don’t have to solve this mystery, but I do want to go into this smart, aware of what’s going on, with a plan.  I don’t want to get blindsided.”

“Me too, and…”

Zachariah and Salvador, sitting a few benches down, glanced back, then snuck their way up to a seat on the bench just in front of Verona and Lucy.  Don’t no no no no don’t you assholes, you literal goblins!

Verona kept her expression flat, eyebrows going up.

“Stay seated!” Ray warned, looking over.

Salvador made a pleading gesture as he settled in.  He didn’t go back to his old seat.

You assholes, you jerks.  Verona fumed.

Zachariah was the undefined sort of guy, hair shorn short, features a bit doughy.  The hot girl totemist.  Salvador was the spider breathing shaman, which apparently meant he stored an awful lot of free, minor spider spirits within a hallow in his throat and upper chest.  Not to host them, but as ammunition, the kind of thirteen year old who’d lurched into puberty with wiry hair on his arms and face, pimples, and gangly limbs.

“What was Nicolette talking about?” Zachariah asked.

“Seth, people at rock bottom, people on precarious paths,” Lucy answered.  “Why are you so interested?”

“Because we have no idea what’s happening.  You guys really threw yourselves into that whole thing, and we were like… very background.”

“Wasn’t about Alexander so much.  More about how we approach all of this,” Lucy said.

“Generally,” Verona said, watching them warily, wishing they would go away or leave her alone to think.

“I mean, you guys have your approach, for sure.  My approach is probably going to be like my mom and dad, stressing out over the mortgage, money, sales sheets, and hoping my kid figures out something a little bit better than carving, uh, hot girls out of wood and stone.”

“I can’t think of anything better for you than carving hot girls, except maybe marrying one,” Salvador said.

“Yeah, yeah.”

Salvador hooked his arm over the back of the bench, facing them.  “My friend, ladies, is a very eligible bachelor, he’s clean, smart, way more sensitive than you’d think…”

“Don’t do that.”

“I think if you’re starting with ‘clean’ you’re damning with faint praise,” Lucy noted.

Verona sat there, silent, mentally banging her head against the wall.  Why were they here?  Why were they talking to her?  Each mental bang made her headache worse.

“Or am I recognizing that a lot of girls our age say ‘gross’ when faced with a guy they aren’t into?  Gotta head that off.  This gentleman is actively un-gross, he’s nice to his parents, he’s good to his friends, he has hobbies, he even has a workshop he spends time in for fun, when he’s not doing it for work.”

Lucy glanced at Verona.

“I saw that.  Why’d you look at your friend?  Is the workshop a selling point?”

“Not really,” Verona said.

“I think it would be if Verona was looking for a future husband, but I don’t think you are, are you?” Lucy asked.

“Nope, not into guys that way.”

“Girls?” Sal asked.

If it wasn’t the vaguely girl-obsessed guy saying that in that tone, it would have gone over a lot better.  As it was, Verona frowned at him.  “Not girls either.  Don’t get me wrong, boys are cute, they can be hot, but… no.”

“No?”

Verona shrugged.  Would they just go away?  This was distracting and she hadn’t been thinking straight when there weren’t distractions.  Stress was mounting and she felt like this was an out of control train, speeding violently toward her saying something regrettable and making them enemies instead of friends… or her puking again from stress and tipping everyone off that she was freaked.  Which would mess up their image pretty bad, if it didn’t bring the full focus of the investigation straight to her.

“No interest in boyfriends or marriage?” Zachariah asked.

“Nah,” she said.  She met his eyes and she momentarily imagined a scene, domestic, her and a sorta muscular, sorta plain woodcarver boyfriend, a house filled with art, bills on the table, rugrats running around.  Having to get up early every morning to send kids to school, scraping by to find free time for herself as an individual.  Having to worry about fifty birthdays and anniversaries and date nights and stressing about all of it, because if she missed one then the kid or husband or family member she slighted would be upset.  Where she had no big aspirations except maybe teaching a few days of class at the Blue Heron once in a blue moon, which would mean the kids would have to be juggled and stuff shuffled around.  She’d heard her dad and mom talking about how life had to be managed just to make things possible, like coming into town for dress shopping or getting a week off.  It would be like that.

The scene only lasted in her mind’s eyes for a moment, but it was vivid.  It was an existence of piled up stresses and life-clutter that got in the way of what she’d really want to do and be.  All inescapable, burdening, slowing her down and occupying her head.  This headache and stomachache would be unceasing.  She’d end up treating any hypothetical husband like utter shit as a result, she knew it.

It felt like Nicolette was very, very wrong.  That there was this safe road running right down the middle of things and thinking about it made Verona’s stomach cramp. She’d rather fling herself over the side of that safe path, into Otherdom or hardline practice.

“No,” she elaborated, feeling like it was a huge understatement.  “None, really.”

“You might change your mind,” Salvador said.

In lieu of throwing up on him to convey her feelings on that, Verona made a face at him instead.  With all of the ambient stress and distraction she was channeling into it, and the way the smile dropped from his face, she sorta wished she could take a photograph and keep it with her, to punctuate future statements.

“It’s cool,” Zachariah said.  “Sorry my friend’s being annoying.”

“Annoying?  You wound me, Zach.  Here I am, trying to be a wingman for you-”

“Don’t do that,” Zachariah told his friend.

Verona let them chatter, glancing at Lucy, who looked a bit worried, peeking at the ongoing discussion with Fernanda.

“They can’t keep us here all afternoon, can they?” Lucy asked.  “Going to us one by one?”

“I don’t know,” Verona murmured.

That scene of vivid imagination had helped, in a way, even though it had inflated the brutal headache that was gnawing at the back of her brain.  If she had to steer off that safe and predictable path that people like Zach were on, she had to do it carefully.  It would require some of that surgery Nicolette had talked about.  Like with Bristow.  Like with Alexander.  It would require some brutal amputation somewhere down the line, but she couldn’t make the mistakes Alexander had.  If she went down the more serious, more ambitious practitioner path, then she couldn’t go all the way down that road.  She had to make those connections, those compromises, do that arranged marriage crap, in a way.

Except without the marriage, like she’d just told Zach.  Unless it was purely for show and periodic nights together as the mood struck, with them each having their own space in a manor or whatever.  That would actually be kinda ideal.

But she was getting distracted.  Very distracted.

A big connection she’d have to hold onto would be her friends and their Other allies.

If she became Other, she’d need to do the same.  Maybe less surgery, since the surgery would be on herself.

Having a more concrete plan and set of goals helped focus her and made her feel more sure of her thinking.  So much of her exploration here and her discussions with the others had been… breaking down.  Trying to process the Other path on her own until Lucy forced her to fess up, then crying it out and confessing stuff.  Or trying to support Avery and Lucy from the background until she slipped up, made a mistake, and they got angry.  Or…

Or, similar thing, she’d think she had a plan, then Lucy would say something and she’d realize it wasn’t that doable.  Or Lucy would say she needed to attend a super boring Self and Soul class and she’d attend and it would make her second guess everything.

Nothing ever came together that easily.  She had to put in the work, and maybe sometimes Avery would pull the last step together or Lucy would provide some clarity, but… mostly it was Verona struggling to figure it all out and reality would shout ‘Wrong!’.

Surgery and bridge building.  Amputation and politics.  Figuring out who to leave behind and who to rely on.

She knew who she was.  That was her strength, right?

So she had to hold onto that.

“They’re wrapping up with Fernanda,” Lucy said.

Verona’s eyes widened a fraction.

“How do you know?” Zachariah asked, breaking away from a discussion about a girl who lived in Zachariah’s area.  He looked relieved to not be talking to his friend about that.

Lucy tapped her earring.

“Your implement.  That’s uh, disconcerting, that you can hear stuff.”

“I’m not that interested in listening to whatever you and Salvador talk about in private, Zach.”

“That’s a relief.  I heard you did the ritual, I saw.  It looks really good,” Zachariah said.

“Thank you.  I appreciate that.”

“My dad picked a mallet.”

“That’s, uh, very nice.”

“My mom had him etch it, so it’s silent, so he doesn’t make such a racket in his workshop area.”

“Uh huh, that’s- sorry to cut you off, but Verona, I think they’re talking to us next.”

“Uh ohhhh,” Salvador jeered, smirking a bit.

Lucy wasn’t smiling, and neither was Verona.  Verona managed a shrug and nod.

“How do you want to do this?” Lucy asked Verona.  “I remember meeting Alexander for the first time, but…”

“Yeah, no,” Verona replied.

“No,” Lucy echoed, frowning more than usual.

They’d gone full kid, full disruption, and put Alexander on his heels a bit.  It had bought them the time to change the conversation.  The problem was, the other augurs had been there too.  Alexander had brought Tanner, Chase, and Wye, along with Nicolette.

Verona thought back, to ties they were maintaining, beyond just the three of them.  Four, if Snowdrop was included.

To John, to Edith, to Matthew, to Guilherme and Maricica.

Maricica.

“Remember the first meeting with Mari?” Verona asked Lucy, drawing her feet up onto the edge of the bench and wrapping her arms around her legs.

“Yeah.  She makes meetings memorable.”

Verona nodded, thinking.  “We did one thing right when meeting Alexander for the first time.”

“Cryptic,” Zachariah said.

Verona shrugged.  “They’ve been angling for more information or control of us for a bit, this might be their chance to do that, secondary to their investigation.”

“You really think they’re the types to do that, when Alexander just died?” Zachariah asked.

“Yes,” Verona said, at the same time Lucy and Salvador voiced the same.

“The meeting with Alexander, and Mari, I’m trying to connect the thought- oh,” Lucy said.

Verona could have kicked herself.  She hadn’t been building enough.  Hadn’t been taking steps.  Instead, she’d been leaning back, watching, looking for the right fit.

And Lucy had been taking steps to build herself up, picking her implement, and Avery was giving herself gold checkmarks and going off on an expedition with Jessica.

Just have to pull myself together.  Put the headache out of mind, resist the stomach issue.  The meds were maybe helping, even if thinking about the meds as being from the brownies was not.

Get centered... I can’t do this if I’m freaking out.  Verona found her emotional center.  Calm and ordinary in the face of a situation more stressful than her dad bawling and screaming a foot from her face.

“Verona Hayward, Lucy Ellingson?” Raymond raised his voice.  “A word?”

There it was.  Sure as wet shit.

Verona glanced around, eyebrows up, looking a little surprised at being called as Lucy got up first, clearing the way for Verona to circle around.  She left her bag behind.  Having her spell stuff and glamour and junk wouldn’t help that much.

At the front of the room, Mrs. Ferguson was with her son, holding his arm and apparently forcing a conversation with Raquel, while Sol looked like he wanted to wriggle out of his skin.

Trade ya, guy, Verona thought.

“Don’t touch,” she told the boys, pointing to her bag, as if that was her biggest concern.

She had to skip to catch up with Lucy, who walked with head high.

It was a pretty imposing arrangement.  Raymond was tall and thin and dressed in a way that exaggerated those features, currently a charcoal button-up shirt with brass buttons that were more like horizontal dashes than normal buttons, and pants so black they made the shirt look light in tone.  He peered at them with the red-tinted glasses he wore hiding his eyes.

Wye was like Alexander, but younger, and… warmer, maybe, in look.  Hair less immaculate, eyes with more emotion in them, a dress shirt that looked like it had been worn for more than five minutes, not just pulled straight off the hanger.  She had no illusions about him being sharp.  The most dangerous person present?  He, like Nicolette, wore glasses, thin and wire-frame, but they didn’t appear to be magic.

Chase was… he was that but taken in the wrong direction.  Hair that looked more nineties than twenty-twenty, face too small for his head.  He was too soft at the edges of his features, he’d missed shaving spots at the corners of his sorta-nonexistent jaw, and his clothes looked expensive but, maybe like his hair had maybe been, before, it looked like he’d shelled out the money but hadn’t done the upkeep.  Maybe that was his entire character.

Tanner was legitimately attractive.  Whatever dress code Alexander had encouraged among his apprentices, it worked for the guy, he’d gotten a nice haircut and it worked for him with everything swept back except for locks of hair that were very good at locking, all twirly-downy, he had narrow eyes and a sharp chin, and cut a sharp figure.

Then there was Ulysse, disturbingly attractive and a bit disquieting to have looking directly at her for maybe the first time she’d noticed.  Wearing a sports top and shorts like a model from a magazine.  And Amine, who wore looser clothing and had looser hair, tied back with beads.  A more casual arrangement of beads hung from one forearm and Verona had no idea how it all didn’t slip down.

And then Nicolette.  With the cool lizard hair ornament, dress shirt, and knee-length skirt.  Still dressing like an Alexander apprentice, post-Alexander.

All of them tall and the youngest of them was maybe seventeen and then there was Lucy and Verona.

“How are you two?” Raymond asked.  “Nicolette tells me Avery’s out on an impromptu field trip with Jessica Casabien, Brie Callie and my apprentice?”

Verona nodded.

“What is this?” Lucy asked.  “Asking us over?”

“Trying to figure out what’s going on.  You were involved the other night,” Raymond said.

“Unfortunately,” Lucy said.

“We talked yesterday, but that was about Bristow, and your attendance in general.”

“Yeah,” Verona said.  It was her instinct to fall silent, to withdraw, to let the other person exhaust themselves doing all the talking.  But she couldn’t do that here.  And she couldn’t lose that emotional center.  “Can we… not make this, what, seven of you against the two of us?  We’re not even a trio right now and that makes us weaker.”

“Are we against you?” Wye asked.

“Kinda?” Verona asked, wincing as she said it.  “I’m not going to lie, but like… we’re on pretty good terms now, Nicolette, I hope.”

“Yeah,” Nicolette answered, taking a seat on the box where she’d been sitting with Fernanda a few minutes ago.

“But that didn’t start great.  And we’re okay with you, Nicolette, but I remember it seeming like half of these guys were there ready to strongarm us or ruin our day if Alexander said the word, and you guys were stirring up strife in the school-”

“We’re putting the events of this past week to rest where we can,” Raymond said.

“But we can’t!” Verona stressed.  “It’s not that simple.  You said we’re getting expelled around the time the new headmaster comes, fine, but then we lose protections, and Alexander’s gone, and we may lose the protections he swore to provide us.”

“You should have some,” Wye said.

“Should isn’t good enough.  But fine, maybe that’s the way things go, but now you’re also grilling us on this?  You said yesterday you couldn’t swear to anything.”

“No,” Raymond said.

“And you won’t swear here?  Because stuff we tell you might come back to haunt us, which is definitely something you said we should be careful about.”

“I can’t readily swear oaths without more information than I have.”

“What about them?” Lucy asked.  “Can all of these guys swear some oaths, like he swore, at the very least?”

Raymond looked at the young men who formed a half circle around Verona and Lucy.

“No,” Wye answered.  “It’s a bad precedent to set, making frivolous oaths when I may be head of the Belanger family.”

Verona laughed in response.  This was why she’d needed to have her emotional balance, and be situated at a fake ‘neutral’.  To be able to laugh.

The entire room fell silent.  Conversations in the background stopped.  Even Lucy looked a little startled.

All eyes now on Verona.  Laughing so soon after Alexander’s death.

“It’s not frivolous to us,” Verona answered him, more seriously.

“In the grand scheme of things.”

“She’s right,” Lucy pressed.  “I feel like Verona’s getting to something and I don’t want to get in the way of that, but she’s right.  We swore oaths.  You guys have a way of- and I’ve said this before, you make your messes our problem.  Over and over again.  Nicolette, you trespassed-”

“Only in one sense.  The boundaries weren’t marked, there were no declarations of owned territory…”

“Not winning me over here,” Lucy said.  “You went digging and you found us.  You sent in a dangerous Other that was tearing up our resident echoes, you were told to stay out, you kept going, and you found us.  Then you attacked after I personally reached out for parley.”

“Yeah.  About right.”

“This stance and this tone runs against what I was recommending,” Raymond said.  “Don’t burn bridges.”

“We don’t want to,” Verona told him.  “But isn’t it the stupidest thing ever to build metaphorical bridges while the other guy is mounting an army to send over that bridge?  We can’t tell you stuff if you’re going to use it against us.”

We can’t tell you stuff even if you won’t, but that’s at least easier.

“That’s pretty damning from my perspective,” Wye mused.

“It’s our reality and our responsibility,” Lucy told him.

“I’ve heard some of these girls’s situation from them,” Raymond said, glancing over at Wye, then turning to look at Nicolette, then Ulysse.  “I can say their hands are somewhat tied.”

“And dictating the terms of our questioning of them is, I maintain, not a good sign,” Wye said.  He managed to look stern and dangerous without seeming defensive; he didn’t fold his arms or wear anything more than an inquisitive expression, his posture remained relaxed, thumbs hooked at the corners of his pockets, his tone was level, but he still had Verona’s attention as the threat here.

“Then we’re at an impasse?” Raymond asked.  “I don’t like that.  As Wye said, not a good sign.”

“Send them away?” Verona asked, indicating the guys.  “We sorta trust you and Nicolette, at least.  When Lucy was saying she didn’t know what I was getting at… that’s it.  Nicolette’s sworn to keep things private and I believe Mr. Sunshine when he says he’s too busy to bother us any.”

Wye frowned, his gaze meeting Ray’s, which was hidden by the red-tinted glasses.  Then, relenting a bit, he said, “I’ll go talk to the Leos.  Tanner, Chase-”

“You’re not our master,” Chase said.

“I can be,” Wye told him.  “Whiskey, cigarettes, whatever, we should meet tonight, talk.  Maybe we remember Alexander.  The good parts.”

Chase frowned a bit.  “Who should I talk to?”

“I don’t know, Chase,” Wye sighed.  “The Oni practitioners?  Tanner, would you go too?  You’ve got the list of questions?”

The three men walked away.

Amine and Ulysse glanced at Raymond, then, without remark, headed over to the far archway, blocking one of the exits.

Leaving just Raymond and Nicolette with Lucy and Verona.

“Will they come after us, do you think?” Lucy asked Nicolette.  “Our town?”

“Wye has to manage the Belangers, I guess it’d depend on whether he thinks there’s a good enough prize at the end of that tunnel.  Chase has the entire Whitt family leaning on him.  The Bristow thing fell through, he can’t even beg his way back to Alexander’s good books if Alexander’s really dead.  I guess Tanner’s the one you’d have to worry about, if any of us, and I wouldn’t worry that much about Tanner.  He focuses on other sorts of things.  Events more than places.”

Lucy bit her lip, nodding.

“I want to ask you some blunt questions,” Raymond said.

“This is all kind of screwed up, isn’t it?” Verona asked him.

“It’s far from great.  For my first question, please-”

“I wanted to ask about a limited Oath, first,” Verona tried.

“Please,” Raymond said, raising a hand.  “Let me ask first.  If you can’t answer, you can’t answer.  We can discuss Oaths.  But continued stonewalling and deflection may lead to me signaling Amine and him binding you on the spot, if I think we need to bring you into custody for more serious questioning.”

“That’s a bit of a power imbalance, isn’t it?” Verona asked.

“Verona,” Nicolette said.  “I don’t know if you realize this, but you’re really coming off as evasive.”

The headache buzzed.

“That’s kind of how Verona always is, a bit,” Lucy said, quiet.  “I’ve known her for years, it’s how she was with her dad, her mom…”

Verona shrugged.

“To answer your statement, it is a power imbalance,” Ray told Verona.  “That’s reality.  I run this school, and in our world, there are no policemen, there are no detectives.  We police our own.  Often poorly.”

Verona laughed again.

She didn’t look but she could feel eyes boring into her back, in the wake of it.  There was zero humor on Raymond or Nicolette’s faces.

“That’s the tone of discussion I was saying may burn bridges,” Raymond said, quiet.  “A man died and you’re laughing.”

“I’m not laughing at the death,” Verona said, half-smiling, “it’s all kind of missing the point, isn’t it?”

“Then I’ll get to the point.”

“I mean-”

He trampled over her, “Do you girls know anything more about the passing or forswearing of Alexander Belanger?”

“More than?” Lucy asked.

“The typical student in this room.  Is this going to be a painstaking process, Ms. Ellingson?”

“A student was forsworn less than a minute’s walk from here, apparently for pretty frivolous reasons,” Lucy said.  “So… yes?”

Raymond looked at Nicolette and sighed.  He looked back at Lucy.  “More than the typical student in this room, then.”

“Yes,” Lucy said.  “My new implement lets me hear things.  I heard what you and the other apprentices talked about as a group.  Interviews.”

“I see,” Raymond replied.  He frowned.  “Then, besides what the typical student knows, and what Wye alerted us to in this huddled group and the interviews we conducted, do you know anything more?”

He was going to press on this line until they were cornered.

“I heard what students chattered about,” Lucy said.  “Connecting movements and making guesses.  Alexander made calls.”

“Elaborate.”

Lucy shook her head.  “Just… he made plans to talk to Fernanda’s family, but Fernanda talked about that, too.  He, um, he was plotting, rallying the troops, sort of.  Talking to some mercenary types through America’s dad, um, he was serious about that revenge plot.  I heard only snippets, so there was more I missed or only got fragments of.”

Verona thought hard, trying to think of a way through while Lucy supplied answers.  Raymond was too stubborn to deflect or turn aside, he insisted on pushing forward…

Sure enough, he went on, “Then besides that, besides the typical knowledge of students, our discussions and interviews, and the whisperings of students, what do you girls know about Alexander’s passing?”

“I don’t know,” Lucy answered.

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t know what Avery knows, I assume it’s not much more than us, unless Zed or Brie or Jessica have said something.”

“What about you two here?”

“I only really know what Lucy passed on, what she overheard and observed,” Verona said.

“Lucy?” Raymond asked.

“This feels like it’s running against everything my parents tried to instill in me when I was young,” Lucy said.  “Talking to authorities and all.  Not having a representative.”

“Maybe,” Raymond said.  “Nevertheless…”

“Who would you pick?” Nicolette asked.

“The person I’d pick would be the same person Raymond said he wanted to bind, in our earlier conversation,” Lucy said.  “Um.  Which wouldn’t go over well, because we can’t get to her right now.  So it’d be like in the movies, asking for a lawyer that forces a delay.”

“Do you need a delay?” Raymond asked.

“No,” Lucy said, getting a bit heated.  Raymond frowned.  “But I don’t want to give the wrong answer, because I don’t want to entrap myself or get in trouble.  These things happen.”

“Do you think I’d do that?”

“Frankly?  Yes!” Lucy raised her voice a bit.  “I’m sorry.  I respect you more than most here, I appreciate you turning things around, but I can’t forget day one.  It wounded me.  You wronged me.  I have to account for the fact that you could do it again.”

“Even with me looking out?” Nicolette asked.

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “Sorry, I am, but… always.”

She clenched her fist, holding it up, like she wanted to punch something.

Raymond loomed above them, unmoving, silent, watching.

“To answer your question, what else I know, yeah, what Verona said is right,” Lucy finished, turning away, like she was disgusted.  Her tone remained angry.  “Can we finish this?”

“There’s more to ask,” Raymond said.

“Of course there is,” Lucy added.

Verona glanced at Nicolette, and saw those weird eyes filtered through the glasses, staring at her.  Eyes like black windows with pale, shrouded figures within.  White-wrapped heads and bodies with vague, distorted black shapes of unevenly-sized eyes and mouths all grouped in the middle of the eye, like a family or something staring through a window.

So many students were watching, looking for clues, for signs.  Listening, if they had the ability.  Lucy’s anger had drawn more attention.

Even the students who weren’t deeply invested would be following for the drama.

Lucy was here, using the fact that Raymond wasn’t great at dealing with angry people.  Tapping into what may have been legitimate anger and emotion.

It bothered Verona, that Lucy had to do that.  She’d wanted to find an opportunity to take control over this conversation and she hadn’t been able to get past this.  Raymond was too straightforward, too unerring.

Would there be a follow-up question?

“Could your answers provided here be affected by any practice, items, substances, or measures you may have taken?” Raymond asked.

“That apparently doesn’t work,” Lucy said.

“It almost never pays off, even in the short term.  I’m still asking.”

“No,” Lucy said.

Verona shook her head.  “No items, practice, or any of that junk, really.  I took a pill for an upset stomach.”

Give me something.  Give me a fingerhold, a crack, a something, Verona thought.  Her stomach hurt, as if she were reminded it existed by the mention of the pill.  Something I can use.

Her finger on the metaphorical trigger.

“Did you wish any harm on Alexander Belanger, as that evening-”

Her metaphorical finger twitched and found the trigger more sensitive than she’d expected.

Verona, despite herself, despite sense, sanity, and reason, laughed, interrupting him.

“-concluded.”

“Verona,” Lucy said.

The laugh trailed off.  Verona was startled to find tears in her eyes.  “You- you think I wanted this?”

“I’m asking.”

“You think I wanted Alexander gone?  I came to study!” she answered.  Lucy’s fingers gripped her bare arm, digging in.  “I wanted to learn, I wanted to do cool magic stuff!  And those guys started a war and they took it to our home, our families, our friends!  They dragged us into it and they didn’t back down!”

Her voice rang in the acoustics of the room.

She couldn’t even bring herself to glance behind her, because she didn’t know how she’d react if she did.

“I backed down!  I was willing to let Bristow go!  You would’ve heard me if you were there!  You can ask!  I didn’t want that!  I didn’t want to- to feel sick at the idea of eating here!  I didn’t want to do that to him!  I just wanted him to leave me alone!”

The shouting was raw enough she coughed, and she had to bite back a gag.

Raymond’s expression was unreadable.

“Verona was upset enough over it she was sick yesterday.  And not great today.”

Verona started forward, and Lucy held back on her arm, like she could somehow keep Verona from getting going again.  Verona let Lucy keep her in one spot, but she raised her voice, “You call me evasive but I’m human!  I don’t want to talk about Bristow!  I don’t want to think about Alexander being gone!  You ask me my feelings on him?  I kinda liked the guy!  I know my friends didn’t like or adore him but I thought he was sorta cool sometimes!  Now he’s gone?  And I can’t ever chill and talk practice with him?  That sucks!”

“Yeah,” Raymond said, terse.

“I didn’t want this,” Verona said, and she couldn’t bring herself to raise her voice as she said that.

The tone that resulted was… pretty much the opposite of the strong image that Lucy and them had been trying to convey, before.  The ‘don’t mess with us’ image.

Image shattered.

Sorry Lucy.

Lucy, fingers still digging into Verona’s underarm, rubbed her thumb on the back of the forearm.

Mixed messages there.

Verona’s breathing was ragged because she wanted to cough more and clear her throat but she couldn’t without risking gagging and she couldn’t risk gagging without throwing up in front of everyone and it was so stupid that this was her stress response and it was absolutely going to be the first moronic bit of humanity she ditched if and when she got around to that.

She already felt like she’d embarrassed herself more than Sol had been embarrassed by his mom, acting like this with everyone watching.  Venting emotion like a little bitch, like her dad.  Puking would just dial that up tenfold.

She looked at Lucy and in her peripheral vision she could see people looking.  Faces blurred by the tears in the corner of her eye.

Lucy gave her a one armed hug, pulling Verona’s head down into her shoulder.

“And you, Lucy?” Raymond asked.

Lucy looked up at him, and she might not have realized it, but she held onto Verona’s arm and shoulder tighter, painfully so.  “Really?”

“I have to ask.”

“I didn’t want this, either.  I didn’t do it, I didn’t ask for it.  Avery didn’t either, for that matter.  Now can I take my friend out for some fresh air?”

Lucy’s tone was biting.

Verona hiccuped, which became a cough.  She put the back of her wrist to her mouth.

Would Ray push it?  Press the questioning?

“Go,” he said.  “Take care of your friend.”

The ritual circle exploded near the base of the parking lot.  Wet snow splooged out in every direction from the circle’s edge, along with mournful wails and stuff.

Avery crossed the distance, hurrying to their side, as they sat on the steps to a workshop.  Zed and Brie lingered behind.  Avery practically threw Snowdrop out of her pocket, freeing her to run faster.  Snowdrop became human and hurried along.

“What’s wrong?  What happened?”

“Alexander’s dead,” Lucy said.  “Verona had a freak-out during questioning.”

“Oh,” Avery said.

Snowdrop caught up and tackle-hugged Verona.

“Tried to call, guess your battery was dead,” Lucy said.

“Yeah,” Avery said, her expression stricken.  “How… how bad was it?”

Lucy shrugged.  “I don’t even know how to begin answering that question.”

“I want to go home,” Verona said.

“Oh,” Avery said.  “That’s… pretty bad.”

“…to Kennet, anyway.  To be a cat for a few weeks.”

“That sounds more like you.”

Verona gave a half-chuckle.

More students were walking free.  It looked like questioning had come to an end.  About an hour after they’d gone outside.

Zed and Brie approached, and Lucy motioned for them to move on.  Zed asked a question that might have been ‘later?’ and Lucy nodded.

Verona was content to not have more company.  Even being outside like this, waiting for Avery, it felt very exposed, and she felt a bit humiliated.  That hadn’t exactly been the master ploy she’d been going for, in tackling Raymond.

Avery sat down and leaned back.  “We waded through literal despair and desperation in the form of a wintery hellscape, got hunted by three unstoppable-ish Incarnations, Zed got an arrow through his nice jacket, a magic wall-making box and a spare battery, Brie’s binding needs work and that’s getting to her more than I think she wants to admit… and I get the feeling we had the easier time of it.”

“Lucky,” Verona mumbled.  “Smart move.”

“What’s the plan for tonight?” Avery asked.  “Maybe a walk?  Visiting goblins?”

“Library?” Lucy suggested.

“Mmm, you know just what to say,” Verona mumbled, knocking her head against the side of Lucy’s.

“Oh, what shall we learn about?” Lucy asked.  “Ogres?  Oni?  Lost?”

“Keep going, you’re making me feel a bit better,” Verona told her friend.

Lucy went on for a minute or so, musing on topics they could cover and topics they needed to cover, to know what they were grappling with with the new Others of Kennet.

Others who could be working for or under the culprits of the Carmine Beast thing…

Which felt heavy, as Verona thought on it.

Estrella Vanderwerf left through the front doors, stretching, her brother a few steps behind her.  Silas, Verona remembered, now that she saw his face.

Silas stayed put as Estrella walked over.

All four of them sat up and looked up at Estrella.

Estrella dropped down to sit on her heels, bringing herself to their level, her attention on Verona.

“What do you want?” Lucy asked.

“Mm.  Those tears you shed were real,” Estrella said.

“Do you know what else is real?” Lucy asked.  She raised her hand, then raised one finger.  “Leave us alone.”

“I remember when I was a little younger than Silas, I had a stay in the Winter court,” Estrella said, rising up to a standing position again.  “It was a crash course in all things Faerie.  A sink or swim thing for me.  A woman took me under her wing, because that was what she did, she took people under her wing, and she shared secrets.  She pointed out a young faerie of Winter, something in him broke early.  He took on a role and he didn’t want to give it up.  He kept saying it.  I dare say.  I dare say.  I dare say.”

“I don’t dare say,” Snowdrop echoed.

“It stood out.  Like you laughing stood out.  It’s a beginner trick, and I’m pretty tuned into those tricks,” Estrella said.

“What are you talking about?” Lucy asked.

“Three times, a startling laugh.  Taking control of the conversation by stamping it with your Self.  Making it yours.  But the tears were real.  The words were real and unfiltered.  And they didn’t finish questioning you.”

Verona looked up at the senior student.

“Can’t steer a discussion that big unless you have firm control over yourself.  Don’t worry.  I wasn’t on Alexander’s side.  I’m glad he’s gone.  I’m not going to say anything.”

Avery looked at Verona, studying Verona as she heard Estrella’s words.

“If the tears were fake, I’d have so much respect for you.  It’s a good move.  As is… happy accident, no?”

“My friend was clearly upset and you think we’re happy?” Lucy asked.

“Happy outcome, at least.  Showing weakness, it got most of your enemies to back off.  Most.  Raymond Sunshine closed off with some announcements.  They’re bringing in the new headmaster sooner than later, they’re ordering in for dinner, so you don’t need to worry about the Brownies… but that comes at a cost.”

“What cost?” Avery asked.

“The enemies you still have want to make a move, sooner than later.  You have two days that aren’t the very supervised field trip to the faerie realm, which means your enemies have those two days to get to you.  And if they can’t, I don’t think they’ll let things go.”

Vanishing Points – 8.a

Interlude

Liberty sauntered down the forest path, arms out to the side, and thorny branches, thorns, and nettles scraped at her bare arms, legs, stomach, and the sides of her face.  A keychain hooked into the beltloop at her hip winced, bounced, and uttered the occasional quiet ‘ow’ in response, and her skin was left untouched.

Goblins scrambled to climb trees, push each other off branches, and make enough forward progress that they could not only predict where she was going, but intercept in time.  Rubtug almost made it, but a huck of flung mud slapped him off the branch.

She was outfitted for war, but that was mostly because she hadn’t bothered to sort out her stuff and put it away.  The fighting was supposed to be done.

“Good throw,” she said.

There was a satisfied huff of a laugh from the goblin who’d done the throwing as it hurried forward, trying to take advantage.

Not that Sis knew that.  ‘Meri stalked her way through the not-path of the forest, intense, focused, and pissed off.  Bigger goblins hurried to keep up with her, moving alongside.

Liberty zig-zagged through the woods, and a smaller goblin made the scramble and leap, crossing a bridge where two branches met, ducking a thrown rock, then leaping like a squirrel, landing on Liberty’s hand, wrapping arms around wrist and clamping legs around fingers.

Liberty smiled, lifting the little goblin to her shoulder.  If the goblin had a mouth, it wasn’t clear.  Her eyes were huge and stapled open, in an arrangement that made the staples look like cartoon eyelashes, five above, three below.  Either it was the little goblin’s own work, or another goblin had done it to her and she’d kept it like that out of spite, to show it didn’t bother her.

“Winner!” Liberty cheered, doing a twirl, holding the goblin steady at her shoulder with one hand.  The goblin made a tiny sound.  “Here, a prize.”

She reached into her pocket, got one of the awful five cent lollipops she’d grabbed from the bulk bin, and gave it to the goblin.  To her right, another small goblin made a leap and was dropkicked out of the sky by a goblin with wings.

The big-eyed, squirrel-sized goblin clung to the straps of Liberty’s top and bra to stay at her shoulder, toes dragging against the skin of her shoulder blade to find traction, as she took the prize.  Liberty watched as she tried to open a mouth that Liberty’s finger wouldn’t have fit in, to try to put the much larger lollipop inside.  She settled for jamming the stick of the lollipop through the straps, twisting it around once to anchor it there, and then proceeded to savage it with a tongue the size of a pinhead and claws she stuck in her mouth between licks.

Two goblins landed, fighting even as they landed, at Liberty’s side, clinging to fabric.  She raised her arm up and out of the way to give them space to scrabble and push, and the smaller one scampered up her side, her shoulder, and one of her two braids; this one had barbed wire spliced into it.  It settled at the top of her head, splayed out belly-down, panting for breath.

“Second place!”

“Yaaa!” it cheered.

“Yay!” she cheered with him.  She gave it a lollipop, then gave one to the one ti had been fighting with, as it found a position at her shoulder.

They had a herd around them.  Most of the goblins in the area, drawn in as if by magnets.

A fourth and fifth goblin pounced onto her, one grabbing the keychain and the other landing at the middle of her back and clinging to her top there, not moving.

“Okay!” she announced.  “That’s enough of you catching rides.  Don’t be pests, have candy instead!”

She reached into her pocket and threw out some more tiny candies into the bushes.  Plants summarily died in the ensuing fracas, caught between goblins who were fighting over one cent, strawberry-flavored granny candies.

A good share of the herd around them hurried forward, getting ahead of even America.  Those who didn’t were either fighting for the candy, giving up on that fight, or were just happy to be near Liberty, trotting alongside and getting shoved so they’d get bumped, kicked by, or caught under her feet as she walked.

They were resilient, didn’t matter if she stepped on one, really.  Here and there, she avoided stepping on the smallest, crossing her legs as she stepped to avoid it, or she gave a light kick to the ones who looked like they could take it and the ones who deserved it, not paying enough attention to where she was walking.

The spot the goblins were rushing up to was a clearing.  Her sister had already gotten there, and the goblins were crowded around, looking up.  Liberty ducked under a branch and stepped into the clearing, looking around, while America kind of glowered, seeming especially surly and unsatisfied.

“What?” Liberty asked.  Goblins who’d been tag-alongs, happy to be near her, were now claiming their territory and hugging her calves and shoes, snarling at others who drew close.

America scrunched up her nose.

“Whaaaaaat?” Liberty asked, again, dragging out the sound.  Then, drawing in a breath, she repeated the sound, making it as nasal and annoying as possible. “Whaaaaaaaaaaaat?”

Some goblins picked it up, then others did, until the entire crowd was making noise.

America turned around, striding from the clearing.  The sounds became plaintive, complaining, booing.

“Stop, stopstopstopstopstop,” Liberty told them.  She took a breath and then shrieked, “STOP!”

They stopped.

“This is an important place,” she told them, indicating the log at the end of the clearing.  “One we fucking respect, got it!?  So shut your yaps for five seconds.  Trust my sister.”

She saw the massed sixty or so goblins all glancing at one another, some nodding obediently, others sneering.  Some looked back at the log.

“Uh!” one raised its voice.  Immediately, half the goblins present began making noise, talking over one another, pushing others down so there would be that small fraction of a better chance that they’d be heard.

“Five more seconds!” she told them.

They shut up.

“Fifteen!” America called out, from the woods.

“Fifteen more seconds!” Liberty told them, stabbing her finger out in their direction, as much a warning as an order.

Those fifteen seconds were torture to the little blighters, half of them contrarians, half of them with the attention spans of four year olds on literal crack, half of them dumb, half of them class clowns and showboaters looking to stand out from the crowd.  Some were all of the above, probably none were none of the above.

Just as the fifteen seconds were up, America whooped and came tearing into the clearing, dropping about five fireworks while holding ten above her head, the sticks that were meant to be embedded into the ground held between her fingers.  They fired off as a volley, made goblins scramble for cover.

America hollered, goblins went apeshit, and fireworks got aimed at any goblin that wasn’t apeshit enough.

Liberty laughed, doubling over, shielding her face with one hand as America let a few fireworks fire off in her general direction.  The goblin at her right shoulder who’d been in third place leaped for cover.

“Put out those fires!” America ordered.  Goblins quieted enough to listen, though some were cheering still.  “Yeah, I’m talking to you.  Go, stamp that out or I’ll use your face to grind out the embers.  I’m seeing a lot of new faces around here!”

Some of the newer goblins answered with cheers and jeers.

“You heard there was trouble and you want in on it?  Sorry guys, you missed the boat, but you get my company, at least.  I’m cool, you can ask around, the locals love me.  Goblins far from here love me.  Stay on my fucking good side!  That goes for my sister too!”

“Heck yeah!” Liberty chimed in.

“She’s kick-ass, so you’d better respect her!” America declared.

“And ‘Meri’s one of the coolest people you’ll ever meet, so hop on board, don’t cross her, it’ll be great!”

“That means you play cool, read the fucking room.  If we’re having fun, stay fun!  If we’re chilling, stay chill!  And if Libs or me are up to something, follow our lead!  And don’t be creepy, because creepy is boring and I hate being bored!”

Liberty took the barely-damaged lollipop from the big-eyed goblin at her left shoulder, to peeping sounds of protest, and popped it into her own mouth.  She crunched it in her teeth, picked out a chunk, and handed it over, to now-delighted sounds.  She sucked on the ruined remainder, while the goblin popped the chunk into her own mouth.

“Stay in our good books, we’ll throw a party at the end of summer, before we have to go back to regular public high school!”

“Party yay!  Boo to school!” Liberty jeered, smiling.  Goblins chimed in.

“Now I’ve just got some crap to resolve while I’m here, so I need you to shut up for a few minutes,” America said, turning around.  “Great sage!”

Liberty found a spot to sit, pushing a goblin out of the way, and settled on a rock, her back to a tree.  Goblins already perched on her found new positions.

Two goblins nearby were pushing and shoving for a spot by her leg, and she prodded them with her toe.  “If things are chill, be chill,” she told them.

They kept squabbling.

She sighed, unhooked the keychain, and found the little goblin carving, which was covered in scratches and making a pained expression.

She leaned forward, holding the goblin at her shoulder steady, and poked the pair with the little carving.

The scratches of a walk in the woods and having goblins clambering all over her slipped off the carving and onto the pair, who yelped as scratches, red lines and poke-holes appeared all over them.  They hollered as they ran off into the bushes.

“Be chill,” she said, settling.

“Great sage!” America shouted.

Goblins all throughout the clearing were settling in, sitting and kneeling.  Some bowed their heads.

Liberty reclined back, moving some goblins into more comfortable positions as they used her as a perch, as something to recline against, or settled into folds.  The one with the eyes who’d had the lollipop chunk settled in between Liberty’s arm and body, head on her ribs, watching.  The one on her head had its elbows propped up near her hairline, she was pretty sure, chin in its hands.

“Great sage!”

The sage made his appearance, walking up the log, nearly tripping, holding a pencil that had an image drawn onto it, probably graphic.  The pencil skewered a playing card that had a sexy devil on it.  He was potbellied, about seven or eight inches tall, and shaggy, with a fake beard made of strips of plastic bag and lots of scotch tape.  He stood at the peak of the log, which leaned against a rock at a diagonal, so one end stabbed skyward.

“Thank you for your audience, great sage,” America said, head bowing.  The entire clearing had gone quiet.

“You have served our kind well,” the sage proclaimed, voice high and small.  Liberty smiled.  “Witch princess Tedd, you could be a goblin queen if you wished.”

“My head is not ready for that crown, and evil queens in the movies get their shit kicked in way too often.  I’d rather be a princess for now,” America said.

“These words, uh, are really wise,” the sage stated.  “Uh.”

A small goblin poked its head out of a hole in the log to whisper something.

“Oh!  Gifts!  To have audience with the great sage you must bring gifts!”

America got her bag, opening it.  She pulled out three sticks of dynamite, and the great sage’s eyes bugged out of his head.

America had booze too, and cigarettes.

Liberty watched as one goblin trundled by, carrying an armful of the crappy little candies she’d chucked into the woods.

“Hey!” she whispered.

The goblin stopped.  It looked at her.  It had rabbit ears, draped off to one side, and a general appearance that was proportioned like a very plump rabbit’s head and neck on a hippo’s body, made bipedal, and wrapped in bulldog skin.  The eyes were high on the head, the nose small and crammed together, and the jowly features extended from that small nose to make for a triangular, slack jawed mouth.

Like a human from a video game with the proportions all messed around to make him as dumpy and pinch-faced as possible, jagged sharp teeth, wrinkled folds to the skin, and the ragged bunny ears that looked like they’d been bitten a hundred times by things of varying size.

“Yeah, you, come over here,” she hissed.

He hesitated, looked down at the candies, and turned his body away, as if protecting the candies from her.

“Come!” she told him, stern.  “Come on.”

Reluctantly, he advanced a few steps closer.

“You got all of those yourself?  Did you take them from other goblins?”

He moved his belly and arm further away, so the candies he had were on the opposite side of his body from her.

America presented the collection of gifts to the log, holding them up.  Goblins within the log did their best to claim the weighty objects and take them into the log.

“Come on,” Liberty said.  “What’s your name?”

“That’s Flops-left.”

“Flops,” she cooed.  “Are you big and strong, did you get all those candies yourself?  Took them from smaller, faster goblins?”

Flops hesitated, then nodded.

“I keep an eye out for goblins like you,” she told him, petting the one with the eyes who was nestled in at her side.  “Want to join my crew?”

He frowned a bit.

“Beat some people up?  I’m a raider princess, I kick the door in and I need people to cover the flanks.  You gotta be ready to deploy through the nearest Warren hole.  My power greases the way, I whistle and you’d come crashing in through a window or something, with a bunch of other goblins.  Doesn’t that sound fun?”

He nodded.

“Set everything on fire, wreck crap, but you gotta follow my orders.  Sometimes I gotta set one of you guys on fire, or blow you up, and I’ll only do that if you’re not doing a good job.  Just warning you ahead of time.  You’ll live a lot of the time.”

America caught a dropped gallon-size bottle of vodka and offered it up again.

Flops nodded, and relaxed enough to grab a candy and pop it, wrapper and all, into his mouth.  He saw her looking and again moved to hold it back and out of the way.  A smaller goblin was sneaking up on him, and he punched it, scaring it off.

“Come closer,” Liberty said.  “Let me get a good look at you.  If you’re interested, that is.”

He was.  He approached until he was in arm’s reach.  He shrank back a little as she reached out, lifting up one thick-skinned, ragged, long ear and trying to drape it right.  The construction of his head only let it flop to the left.  She scrunched up his face and then pulled it back the opposite way, then she stretched his mouth open, looking at his teeth.

He was a bit of an Eeyore-type.  Shy, very sad looking.  Goblins tended to wear their experiences on their skin.  It was refreshing.

“Can you run fast?” she asked him.  He didn’t look it, but goblins could be subtle in that respect.

He looked around, unsure how to answer.

“Doesn’t have to be for very long.  Just need a burst of speed.  You had to catch those goblins to get their candy somehow.”

He nodded.

“That’s what I need in my raiding party.  Can you work with others?”

“No,” another goblin piped up.

Flops growled.

“Come on,” Liberty said, putting her arms under Flops’s armpits.  He was a dense fellow, and shied back as she started to lift, fighting free of her grip, even growling.  A lot of goblin heads turned at that sound.  Some even looked ready to fight on her behalf.  She gestured for them to stay back.

A bit like a stray dog who’d been treated unkindly from day one.

She gave him a sympathetic look.  “Ever had a hug, Flops?”

He scowled, looking away.

“A pat on the head?  A treat you didn’t have to steal?”

He shook his head, jowls shaking, scowling more.

“A kind word?”

The scowl became something more closed, face scrunching up, mouth closing for the first time.  Looking away, he muttered, “‘sed I was big and strong.”

“What I said just now?  Was that the most recent, or was it the first and only time?  Really?  Buddy…”

He scowled, and he flinched as she reached out, growling, resisting, but she lifted him up bodily, and she plopped him down on her own stomach.  Dense little potato of a fellow, who put a few holes in her arms as she manhandled him.  As she relaxed her grip on him, he stopped fighting and biting, and remained poised, stubby knees and hands digging into her.  She caught some of the treats that fell from his grip and positioned them closer to his hand.

At her urging, he laid out flat, until he was draped out across her belly, her arms around him.  She held him there with one hand and pet him with the other.  Because of the construction of his head, he couldn’t really look up at her, so he remained there, face pressed against her solar plexus, breath hissing out.

America glanced her way as the great sage got his shit together, rolling her eyes a bit.

Liberty saw the great sage leaning over, watching as the gifts were properly stowed, and saw some of the tape had come free.  She gestured.

America looked, saw, and very quickly darted forward to fix the tape and beard before returning to her position of awaiting audience.

Liberty smiled.

A bunch of goblins had seen, but it didn’t really matter.

“For your generosity, we’ll give you access to our great texts…” the sage proclaimed.

Goblins were struggling to lift out stacks of the magazines that had no doubt been collected from far and wide, taken out into the woods by teenage boys and abandoned, or left on a truck’s dashboard, in easy reach of an open window.

“I don’t need those, great sage,” America stated, kneeling.  “I need counsel, and I want your blessing.”

“For what, witch princess?”

“For revenge,” America growled.

“Tell us.”

“There was this hot older dude, you’ve seen him around.  Alexander Belanger.”

Goblins booed and hissed.

“I know, I know, but there aren’t many unattached guys out there who dress well, who don’t underestimate you guys, and who gives a girl like me actual respect.  Not just a little, but the respect I deserve.  Say what you will about the guy, but he never once made any of us out to be less than we were.  He held himself up higher.  And that’s the way it should be.”

There were some nods around the crowd.

“I go to high school and it’s all dress code, ‘Meri, no improvised weapons, ‘Meri’, don’t bring weird things to school, ‘Meri, put the safety pin down you can’t give classmates prison tats, ‘Meri, and guys are gross and guys dads are grosser and you’d think the girls and women would get it and they don’t.  Humans suck.  It’s why I hang with you guys.  You guys are great for the most part, except you, Scuttlebutt, fuck you!”

“Aw.”

“Next to Daddy Tedd and my excellent sister, there’s only one human who’s ever acted like I’m worth anything.  One human being besides family who was willing to ask me who and what I wanted to be and who cared?  Who was willing to work with that?  One dude.  He listened to me when I said I wanted the school to go easier on you guys, that you were useful sometimes.  And he wasn’t saying or doing all of that because he wanted to bone me.  So naturally, I had to joke about wanting to bone him.”

There was a clamor in response.  Liberty added to it, leaning forward as much as she could with sixteen goblins all sitting or lying on and against her.

“Natural and wise words,” the goblin sage said.

“I’m not okay with how it all went down,” America said.  “I’m not cool with the fact that the hot old dude was turned away and got got, somehow.  I’m not happy with how it’s going after.  And I’m putting that nicely.”

“Why!?” Liberty shouted.  The suddenness of it made Flops tense under her hand, and she gave him a pat, urging him to relax.

“I don’t freaking know why I’m putting it nicely, Libs!” America raised her voice.  “I’m pissed!  I’m holding back because if I don’t I’m going to lose my utter shit!

“Lose it!” Liberty shouted.  “Don’t hold back!”

“I’m pissed and I don’t know why!  I’m a little freaked I’m as bothered as I am!  I liked him and I might have loved him a bit and that’s really fucking lame that I might’ve loved some old hot guy because he listened to me and was nice to me sometimes and shit!”

“Really lame,” the sage agreed.

“Fuck you!” America spat the words at him with enough venom he nearly fell from the log.

The clearing was quiet, and over the seconds that passed, the Sage found his footing and stood tall again, and the anger seemed to leech out of ‘Meri, making her sag a bit.  Some smaller goblins got restless.

America’s voice was low and quiet.  “I don’t know who did it, but when I do, I want to rally all of you guys and go after them.  That’s later, if ever.  For right now?  I’m pissed, and the closest things I’ve got to having anyone to blame are three kids who stuck their nose in things and told that hot old dude to get lost without checking in with the rest of us.  I want to kick some ass, and I want your blessing for it.”

The great sage crawled forward along the log, held out the pencil with the card on it, and, straining to reach, bapped her on the head with it.

“So blessed, witch princess Tedd.”

Liberty whooped, and the crowd of goblins took up the call.  The sage retreated, and goblins stirred, rallying, giving Liberty’s sister their full attention.

“Ass kicking time!” America shouted.

The goblins went crazy.  The goblin on Liberty’s head bounced up and down, nearly slipping and falling.

Flops, though, just lay there, having finally relaxed enough that he’d kind of melted a bit around the edges, muscles untensing.

Trusting her.

“First comes the declaration of war!” America cheered.  “Letting them know we mean business!”

Liberty smiled, massaging the lumpy, wrinkled goblin, pushing loose skin around.

“Hey, Libs!” ‘Meri called out.

Liberty looked up.

“That means you too, right?”

Liberty smiled, candy-less lollipop stick sticking out of one corner of her mouth.

She didn’t want to.  She was tired of fighting.  America had been caught and bound and Liberty had been quietly freaking out.  ‘Meri might have only ever had daddy and Alexander and Liberty backing her up, but Liberty had only ever had America and daddy.

And while things had been bad, for a while, she’d had no idea what had happened to her sister.  Their entire world had turned upside-down, she hadn’t known if she’d ever get a clear answer about America, and those three that America was so pissed at had sorta helped.

Her sister was in the middle of the fight, ‘Meri had been sidelined early and she hadn’t had a chance to really go to bat.  Liberty had just finished that fight, she had ‘Meri back, and she wanted to chill like this.  She wanted to enjoy the summer, to enjoy her sister’s company, to find ugly-cute goblins and party and shit.

She gave Flops a pat, and scratched the one with the big eyes under the chin.

“Libs?”

But they’d made a deal early on.  To not let their sisterhood slip away, like so many sisters did.

No other choice, thanks to a years-old oath.

She nodded.  “Yep.”

“Declaration of war,” America said.  “Gotta let them know you mean business, first.  Then you stomp their buttholes in, and then you kick them while they’re down, deliver the hurt to Self and soul.”

Liberty nodded.

“They’re trying to make nice.  Estrella introduced them to Silas, and Silas and his guys have influence,” America said.  She spat to one side, and because there were so many goblins herded around them, the spit landed squarely on the bald dome of a three-foot-tall goblin.  He looked up at her and smiled toothlessly.

They reached the edge of the trees.  As they did, there was a whistle.

The bridge was wooden with some metal plates affixed to it, many with more than half the material degraded or rusted away to oblivion.  Wooden struts, beams, and two-by-fours arranged in ‘x’ shapes, some logs for the actual part that cars were supposed to drive over, not that they really did anymore, and a part of the railing that had been torn away by students of a previous year, so there’d be a good gap to jump from.  Water churned below, a river deeper than it was wide because of the force of the waterfall that the bridge was braced over.

At the start of every summer, students tested the bridge to make sure it was stable, then dove to check the base of the bridge to make sure no wood or metal had fallen in and positioned in a way to skewer anyone jumping.  Anything that had fallen was scavenged.  Liberty had used some for a knife she had in one of her other kits.  Elementally charged and degraded and spiritual.  Scrap to humans and workable material to practitioners.

Avery was on the bridge with her opossum in human form, both wearing swimsuits.  At the base of the bridge, standing in the water, was Lucy, with her other friend Veronica sitting on the shore, drying off while reading a library book.

Other students had gathered, and it looked less like the three were really fit into that group and more like they were tagging along.  Playing at diplomacy.

Lucy was pointing at the woods, at them.  She’d spotted them?

“We didn’t trip any alarms on our way in, did we?” Liberty asked.

A goblin near the lead gave her a shrug.

Man, it would be nice to go for a swim, Liberty thought.

“Well, if they know we’re here…” America declared.

She strode forward, out of the trees and onto the shore opposite the two girls.

With a whoop, Avery leaped from the bridge.  It was more than twenty-five feet up, varying depending on the water level, and she had time to windmill her arms and position before splashing down.

She emerged a few feet down, pushing wet hair out of her face, and walking over to where her friends were.

The opossum looked like she was going to jump, then hesitated.

Liberty walked out of the woods alongside the collection of thirty or so goblins they’d recruited.  They could have invited all of them -that was the power of the blessing- but America thought it was more important to keep some back for later moves.

Plus, the way goblin mentality worked, if there were a hundred goblins, a lot of goblins would put in one one-hundredth of the effort.

“Transformation: war bikini!” America shouted, hurling a pellet at the ground.

Smoke exploded all around her, and in the trees, a goblin hurried to get out a scrapbook-style booklet and flip through pages, squeaking out orders as goblins hurried forward, pulling off outer layers to reveal the swimsuit ‘Meri was wearing underneath, or putting on other accessories, like spike-studded straps and belts.  They squabbled here and there as they got entangled.

The smoke faded and a few goblins took another second to get things connected before leaping away and hiding.  America gave the stragglers an annoyed look, held out her hand, and a group of three goblins hurried forward with a staff topped with a conch shell with a bunch of giant nails driven through it.  The outfit, loaded down as it was, was a swimsuit-centered outfit that was ironically less suited for swimming in than her regular one.

Veronica clapped.

“Are you for real?” Lucy asked them.

“I’m very for real,” America answered.  “I’m pissed.”

Guys were running, and as Veronica took a step back, America pointed the staff at her.  “Don’t you dare run.”

Liberty hurled her own pellet down.  It exploded into smoke.  She put her arms out, t-pose, and waited, rolling her eyes, as goblins updated her outfit.

The moment they were done, finishing with a pat on her shoulder, she started moving.

Heading for the bridge, wearing decorative armor meant more to intimidate than to protect.  A goblin tossed her a helmet, rusty metal in a scowling visage, and she pulled it on, undoing her braids so that her hair hung free.

“I have no intention of doing anything to you, because that would get me expelled!” America declared, “But the great goblin sage of this area has made it clear that you guys got rid of a really hot old guy and that isn’t right!”

“I don’t think that works!” Lucy called out.

“Oh, it works for me!  See, I’ve got responsibilities to these guys, and now Liberty and I are going to help them!”

Two of their larger goblins emerged from the woods.  They were more toadlike than humanoid in proportion, heads broad and built into their bodies.  One was lopsided, the other heavily scarred.  They stopped so they each stood to one side of ‘Meri.

“Would Toadswallow be cool with this?”

“That is the wrong name to bring up if you want me to go easy, kid!” America shouted.  “The wrong fucking name!”

Seeing Liberty head for the bridge, goblins in tow, Avery grabbed stuff and hurried up the shore to the opposite end of the bridge.  The opossum backed up, then stopped as she realized smaller goblins had already snuck in around behind her, cutting her off.

She looked like she was going to jump, then stopped.

“What are you hoping to get out of this?” Lucy asked.

“This?  They’re making this a declaration of war.  This is the part where we make it clear we’re serious, we try and ruin your day, mess with your stuff, and maybe we kidnap one of you.  Who is it gonna be that enjoys our hospitality until this whole thing is done?”

“I like how you’re going from saying it’s the goblin’s grudge and you’re helping, to saying ‘we’ and ‘our’.”

“Yeah?  How do you like this?” America asked, reaching into a pouch and pulling out a pellet.  She tossed it, then batted it through the air and over the river at the two girls, using her staff.

They scrambled out of the way before it exploded into another cloud.  It left a mucus-y slime on everything the mist touched.

Some goblins were circling around, further down the bank, crossing the river using slimy, algae-covered rocks that cut across a narrow portion of the bank.  Others had to use the bridge, which meant they backed Liberty.

The two girls at the shore seemed to recognize that.  They grabbed stuff and took up a position like they were ready to fight back to back against threats from two directions, keeping one eye on their flank, where America was.

Lucy reached for a necklace, lifted it up, hesitated, and then dropped her hand.

Goblins couldn’t easily cross clean running water.  And this water was clean enough.

Liberty reached into her pocket, then pulled out a dead rat wrapped in flypaper.  She hesitated.

It would be so nice to swim, to enjoy the summer day.

“Libs!  The river!”

“I’m already on it, geez!”

She let it tumble from her hand, off the side of the bridge.  A small part of her hoped it would stop on the rock face, get caught, get stuck.  She could excuse it to ‘Meri as an attempt at drama, which it was, but it was also…

She saw it tumble into the frothing water beneath the bridge.

Froth became something else, yellowed and foaming, and the water changed tint.  Dead rats began to bob in it.  In some places the dead rats and things were so dense the water flow changed, frothing more or making sucking sounds.

“Ooh, nice one, sis!” ‘Meri called up.

Liberty smiled.

Goblins surged into the water.  The pair on the shore had to scramble back.

Some goblins went straight for the shucked-off clothing and bookbags, jostled stuff-

An explosion ripped out.  Goblins screeched.  They’d been painted bright pink, paint gluing eyes shut.

“Nettlewisp, nettlewisp, nettlewisp,” Lucy said.  “Don’t touch my stuff.”

The pink joined dead rats, streaking the river.  Liberty watched as the current carried it down around the bend, out of sight.

No swimming today.  What a pity.  Boys in swim trunks, lounging around, catching some sun, getting skin cancer, maybe eating some overly sweet stuff…

“Hey!” Avery shouted.

She was carrying a goblin club, wearing a cape, hat, and deer mask with a sporty swimsuit.

Liberty wore armor.  She reached down to either side, snapped her fingers, and goblins reached up to hold her hands.  They shrank, twisted, and changed, and when she raised her hands, she was holding two machete-like blades.

“I want to talk!  If this is a declaration of war, then there’s room for parley!” Lucy shouted.

“I want to kick ass!  How about we hold a vote!?  I think my side wins!”

Goblins cheered and jeered.

“We already beat you once,” Avery said.

“Sure, but that was a fair fight,” Liberty answered.

Goblins were clambering along the bridge now, climbing along struts.  Below, goblins were swimming through the river, or leaping across dead-rat-bergs where the muck in the water now had clumped together.  A few were getting stranded, sailing down the river waiting for another ‘berg to leap to that never came.

Shitty rickety bridge?  My home turf, Liberty thought.

She advanced, legs crossing to choose the best footing, hopping here and there to avoid spots where a foot could go between the logs, boards, or metal sheets.  She held out the blade as she got closer, and Avery swatted at it.  Liberty pulled it back.

The girl and her opossum tried to retreat, and goblins snapped and clawed at them.  They tried to stay put, and Liberty advanced again, jabbing, poking, testing.  Looking for gaps or opportunities.

Below, goblins were claiming makeshift weapons out of the bridge’s construction.

She hoped they weren’t doing too much damage.  She liked this shitty bridge, the chance to jump off it, the thrill, the way other kids were into it.

Some goblins climbed up the railings, reaching out with claws or pointed sticks, which forced Avery closer to the edge here, or to the middle of the bridge there, where wood sloped, water pooled from a rainfall days ago, and things were soft, wood sinking visibly beneath her sandal.

It was a space only broad enough for a single car to pass over, but the state of it narrowed it further.  Liberty navigated that narrow space, weapons out, darting around, to use the fact the goblins were on her side and that she had walked over a hundred bridges like this one.  Her Sight glowed beneath the visor of the hot metal helmet she wore, and she could see that damage, the weak points, the stronger material, like television static running through everything, sometimes thin, sometimes dense, sometimes a disrupted, easy flow.

Through the girl she was fighting, a deep-set tiredness, close to the heart, running through the core of her, crown to root.

Liberty felt that same tiredness.  She probably wanted to enjoy the same kind of day.  Swimsuits, sun, jumping off dangerous bridges…

Liberty’s heart was heavy as she walked around, her back to a railing, while Avery retreated to what should have been a railing, but was just a gap in the railing for people to jump off from.

Below, the teeming filth of a river of dead rats boiled and frothed.  A dozen goblins waited, pointed sticks jabbing upward, ready to catch her on the way down.  If they didn’t, or if that wasn’t enough, the goblins swimming in the murk could.

Avery kept one hand at her opossum’s shoulder, keeping herself between Liberty and the animal-turned-human.

If it weren’t for the great sage’s blessing, some goblins would have skipped out.  It wasn’t like the great sage was anything more than a game, it was just a ruse, a conceit that let the goblins play and find the occasional excuse to band together.

‘Meri was pulling out all the stops.  A font of mud, slime, a detonation.  Something triggered one of the other piles of clothing to detonate into pink paint, no doubt intended to stain any prying eyes.  It was good.

Veronica did something and fire erupted, setting one of the big guys on fire.  He charged forward, not even caring, and she turned into a bird, flying around to another spot.

America whooped and laughed as she launched a stream of muck at the bird.

“Having fun?” Avery asked.

Liberty met her eyes, tossed one machete, then caught the handle again.

No.

“I will be.”

“You-”

Liberty stepped forward, dodging a soft spot, swinging.

Avery met the swing, bracing one foot against a plank, club smashing metal.  The weapon left Liberty’s hand, clattering onto the bridge.

But Avery had firmly planted her foot on one part of the bridge that wasn’t that secure. It was soft, and it gave way.

She went down with surprising speed, twisting her head to one side to avoid cracking her chin on the bridge’s edge as she slid down.  Stomach scraped against wood, hand dropped club as fingers sought purchase, and found it.  The opossum fell too, but sprawled off to one side.

Avery hung there, hat drifting off the edge, wind catching it, blowing it in the direction of her friends, who paused mid-scrap to look up.  To see their friend hanging on by one arm.  Veronica caught the hat out of the air.

Liberty approached the edge, one weapon still in hand, and looked down as she took a few steps to the left, then a few to the right.  Avery’s stomach was lightly scraped all over, she’d lost a sandal.

Goblins crept in closer, and she used her blade to motion for them to back off.

“Snowdrop,” Avery said.

Snowdrop flipped over, then scrambled forward, and Liberty stepped back, weapon ready, as the opossum reached down, gripping Avery’s wrist, holding on.

“No, stop.  I need you to jump.  The river’s gross but you can deal with gross.  Get enough clearance they don’t jab you on your way down, deal with the goblins in the river.”

“Yeah, good plan,” Snowdrop said, without moving.

More goblins were congregating.  More were preparing sticks below Avery and Snowdrop.

“Get to Verona.”

Verona?  Veronica.  Verona, right.

“Will do,” Snowdrop said.  She fumbled at the side of her swimsuit, blazoned ‘Drowned Rat Aesthetic’ and pulled out a rusty fork, jabbing it at Liberty, who held out her blade.

Lucy had fought her way up to the end of the bridge, a dozen feet away, but there were a lot of goblins between her and Avery.  She held a spear and pointed it at any goblin that got too close.

Liberty could only stand there, wishing that America would get on with it, decide she’d won, and leave.  But America stood there, watching.

What was the easiest way to end this?

Avery slipped.  Her fingers lost their grip on a plank, scraped for a few inches, then found another gap.  Goblins whooped and jeered.

Snowdrop abandoned her weak fending-off, taking hold of Avery’s wrist with her other hand, her back to Liberty’s.  America, on the bank a couple dozen feet down the river, raised her head, eager and waiting.

It would be so easy to boot her off.

The cracked rusted fork, abandoned, did one full rotation, then cracked further.

Like an egg, it popped open.  A tiny red goblin lunged at Avery, “Boo!”

“Yes!  Good timing,” Snowdrop hissed.  “Help out.”

“I scared her!  I got her!” the tiny goblin cheered.  “Did you see her flinch!?”

“Not now, Cherry,” Avery spoke through grit teeth.  Feet scraped at planks below and Liberty could see through gaps in the bridge as goblins pushed her away from any footholds.

Avery reached under and through the bridge to grip the same plank from beneath, fingers reaching up through the gap to wrap around the board.

“Bahahaha!  Spooked her.  With an audience, so everyone saw!  I was waiting, we were waiting!”

“The entire time!?” Lucy raised her voice.  “Did you know, Snow?”

“No!”

“You knew, you so knew, I told you!” Cherrypop bounced, looking around.  “How dumb are you, Snowdrop?  You have a small opossum brain, it’s so sad!  You’re dumber than me sometimes!”

“How many fights have we been in, that you had that up your sleeve, Snowdrop!?  We could have used that!” Avery grunted.

“You’re right,” Snowdrop told her.  “Cherrypop as a goblin is way more useful than a rusty fork with a wobbly handle.”

“I mean… you’re right,” Avery said.

“Respect!” Cherrypop cheered, scrambling around, like she was trying to view the same scene from a bunch of angles, except she was part of that scene.  “I did it!  A genius plan!  Bahaha!”

“Great moment to do it,” Snowdrop said, sounding unhappy.

“…On so many levels,” Avery added, grunting as she tried to get a foothold and failed.

The opossum was glancing up at Liberty, tense.

This was…

This wasn’t what Liberty wanted.

“Go,” Liberty ordered.  “Clear out.”

“Wha?” a goblin asked, aghast.

“Go!  Declaration’s made, and I made a promise, a long time ago… I can’t disrespect a great plan like this.  Gotta let Cherry here bask in her glory.”

“It’s a terrific plan,” Snowdrop said, deadpan.

“Shh,” Avery hissed.

“Yus!” Cherrypop cheered.

Liberty smiled, seeing how happy the little one was.

Goblins were drawing back.  Liberty motioned using her blade, and they moved with more force.

“What the everyloving shit, Libs!?” America called up.

Didn’t matter.

America wanted respect and she rarely got it, and Liberty felt it was important to extend that out, to carry out a promise she’d made on very similar foundations.  When they’d sworn to stay close, to be good sisters, they’d also promised each other they’d play along and go along.  The idea had been that they’d be cool to their kids and any students in ways their teachers hadn’t.

But it went for goblins too.

“How long were you self-bound into the shape of a fork?”

“Weeks!  Ever since we left to come here!” the little goblin cheered.  “I almost did it a few times, every day I almost jumped out at them to shout ‘boo!’ and I held back, and I waited and I waited, and I snuck out and I ate food- she gave me food and she’s still too dumb to remember I became a fork-”

Cherrypop was too excited to even accurately point her arm in Snowdrop’s direction while answering Liberty.

“-and I waited and I finally did it and look at the look on her face!  Look!  It’s great!  Bahaha!”

If this was the best this little mouse-sized goblin could manage… Liberty would respect the shit out of it.

“Nice one,” Liberty told the goblin.

“Yus!”

“In respect, I’m backing off.  America can continue fighting this grudge on her own.  I’m calling off my troops too.  Hey!  You, scram!”

She motioned, and more of her goblins left.  She pointed at the woods, and they backed off.

As their number dwindled, other goblins peeled back as well.  Only those closest to America remained.

America gave Liberty an exaggerated shrug, expression dumbfounded.

Avery climbed back up onto the bridge.  Liberty backed off, and Lucy approached to help.

The little red goblin kept jumping up, punching the air, happiness distilled.

“You guys aren’t around for long, right?” Liberty asked.

Lucy looked up, eyebrow raised.  “Couple more days.”

“‘Meri’s going to pull something during the field trip.  I don’t want any part of it.  I’m tired.”

“We’re tired too,” Lucy said.

“Tell her that.  I’m out.  I’ve got a crappy excuse ‘Meri won’t like, but I’m out.”

“Okay.  Thanks.”

Liberty shrugged.

She looked around.

“Sorry.”

Avery was standing now, hand at her stomach, where it had been scraped up, a dozen red lines of varying thickness and a bit of ripped up skin extending from pelvis to ribs.  She winced.

“It’s okay, getting used to it,” Avery said.  “Thanks for not going as far as you could have.”

“It’s okay to you maybe,” Lucy said, to Liberty, she said, “I know I don’t have as much room to complain, less claim and whatever… but can I ask a favor?”

“You can ask, but I can’t and won’t cross my sister.  We’re in this together.”

“Not asking you to cross her.  We could use some help with something else.  We’re trying to gather notes on dealing with Others.  We could use some anti-goblin tips.  Just in case we end up having to deal with them.”

“Okay,” Liberty said.  “Get my email from the student directory or something.”

Lucy nodded.

“Field trip,” she told them.  “Be ready.  She wants a fight but it all makes her so unhappy.  It’d be nice to have a resolution.”

“This conversation would have been great to have before my friend nearly fell off a bridge.”

“Yeah.”

Liberty looked around, made sure the goblins were clear, then she leaped.  Off the bridge.  Into teeming dead rat water.

The armor she wore weighed her down.  It made for a harder fall in a way, not because heavy things fell faster, but because she wasn’t able to brace herself in the same way.  She plunged deeper, and after a second of sinking, her boots touched mud.

She felt out, used Sight, and found the original dead rat, sunken to the bottom.

She waited, cut off from the world, until her lungs started to reach their limit, then pushed herself through mud and scraggly plants to the shore.  She emerged, fighting, dripping wet, and threw her helmet to the side.

America stood over her.  Goblins were dissipating.  The girls were getting their stuff, watching the pair of them all the while.

“What the shit?” America asked.

“I’ll explain later.”

“You’d better.  You going to help me with the rest, or are you-”

Liberty was already shaking her head.

She could see the pain in America’s eyes.

America getting kidnapped by Bristow had been scary for Liberty in the exact same way that Liberty saying no now was scary to America.

“It had better be a damn good explanation,” America said, as she wheeled around and stalked off.

“It isn’t.”

“Fuck off!” America shouted.

Liberty, tired from the swim and tired at heart, sat herself down on the bank.  Smaller goblins who’d hung out with her before crept closer.  The one with the eyes and Flops were among them.  Some had handkerchiefs and napkins of varying cleanliness.  They used the cleaner parts to dab at her.

“I know stuff,” Flops said, voice deep but small.

“Stuff?” Liberty asked, leaning her head back.  A goblin was combing fingers through her hair.

“Stuff.  About the hot dead guy.”

“Alexander?”

Flops nodded.  “A goblin saw.”

“How many know?”

“Not many.”

“Okay.  Keep it quiet for now.  All of you.  Shut up the ones who’re talking.”

The various goblins she could see as she twisted around nodded.

“Who or what was it?”

“Gunman,” Flops answered.

“Blond?  Short hair?  Scary eyes?”

Flops nodded.

“America doesn’t need to hear that.  It makes her angrier for longer.  It’s going to get out sooner or later, because that kind of thing always does.  Has to.  But not now.  Not while it’s all raw and she’s already bloodthirsty enough.”

Her retinue of goblins nodded.

“You have fun?” she asked, stretching and unstrapping some armor.

Flops nodded with enthusiasm.

She reached over and mussed up his ears, scrunching up his face.

“Not a total loss then.  Come on.  Let’s get on top of that rumor mill, make sure ‘Meri isn’t too pissed, and see about dinner.  We’re getting takeout instead of Brownie-made stuff, and that’s way better in my books.  Do you ever watch TV, Flops?”

Flops shook his head, ears whipping out to either side.

“Oh my gods, buddy.  We’ve got to get you caught up with the times if you’re hanging with me.”

She got to her feet, some goblins pushing on her legs to try and help the process, then headed into the woods, weary, her herd of loyal goblins following after.

[8.a Spoilers] New Other Correspondence #1

Subject: Correspondence & Updates
From: Matthew Moss (Mossball@mooseboop.ca)
CC: Verona (VHayward@tbaynorth.ca); Avery (AKelly@tbaynorth.ca); Lucy (LEllingson@tbaynorth.ca)

Can we correspond?  Do your parents read your emails?

Email Reply From:  Verona (VHayward@tbaynorth.ca)
If they did then your email would be very alarming Mr. strange adult who has us keep lots of secrets from our parents
Correspond away!

Email Reply From:  Avery (AKelly@tbaynorth.ca)
this is school district email tho so I guess we could make new emails but that doesn’t really work.

Email Reply From: Verona (VHayward@tbaynorth.ca)
Connection blockers work ok.


Subject: The New Kennet Others. General Details
From:
Matthew Moss (Mossball@mooseboop.ca)
CC: Verona (VHayward@tbaynorth.ca); Avery (AKelly@tbaynorth.ca); Lucy (LEllingson@tbaynorth.ca)
Attached: Cblock.jpg

Ok!  That should do.

E & I wanted to keep you girls in the loop as we finalize some deals.  You should know our (Kennet councils) mentality & goals.

What we were looking for: we want Others who…
1) play nice with humans
2) play nice with us
3) work with what we’re trying to build.

We are also trying to cover weaknesses.  Ways enemies can come at us or gaps in the perimeter they could slip through.  In some cases we were after power.

Power does not mean the ability to fight.  Some came and are feeding the perimeter.  The box your friend Zed gave us as our share from the Choir wasn’t nearly enough.

The deal we made is that all the new goblins together get one vote.  All 9 of other new Kennet Others get one vote.  This is to help keep us from being co-opted.  We didn’t want a block of new Others come in & outvote those of us who have been here all along.  They could take control that way.  There are groups out there that would try.

Every new member has two sponsors.  If new members come & there are no issues after one year then they become half members for one year (half vote each) and full members a year after.  To put it simply the only ways this process gets interrupted is if:
1) they break a major rule
2) 5+ of us vote to kick them out (can be part of #1 above) for cause
3) either sponsor says no.

Sponsors will know them best and be able to keep eyes on them.  Sponsors will check in regularly to make sure they are being good and helping out.  Sponsors can also act as go-betweens & have some idea how that Other works.  Mostly.

The deals are complicated and some vary slightly with specifics about what “for cause” means and what rules are but all have agreed to these terms.

Will send some emails as I confirm details with sponsors & the Others themselves about who joined & their backgrounds & details.


Subject: Nibble & Chloe
From:
Matthew Moss (Mossball@mooseboop.ca)
CC: Verona (VHayward@tbaynorth.ca); Avery (AKelly@tbaynorth.ca); Lucy (LEllingson@tbaynorth.ca)
Attached: Cblock2.jpg

Nibble & Chloe are ghouls.  Specifically Nibble is a Couch Ghoul & Chloe is either a profane or NDE Ghoul.  Sponsored by myself (Matthew) & original goblins (TS/Gash/Blunt)

Nibble spent too long on the cusp of barely surviving while sitting in front of a flickering screen.  Life gave up on him & Death was not alerted to claim him.  Legal authorities eventually wrote him off as dead.  The power shut off and when the screens went black he lost his last light and connection to the outside world.  Was thrust into Undeath.  This is fairly standard for couch ghouls with only some minor differences in context & circumstance.  (Nibble had early inheritance to live off of after mass family death)

Nibble as a couch ghoul leans more heavily into light/dark dynamic than some other ghoul types.  Was more ghoulish than partner Chloe for a long period of time.  Probably owing to him being a ghoul for longer — he cannot give us a clear timetable except by referencing old TV.  Appears as a 20-something male.  Is skinny/pale with claws/teeth he can hide.  Unlike other ghouls he doesn’t sleep like the dead outside of the hunt phase and is thus easier to contact.  Good for us!

Nibble Gets low level of sustenance from games/TV/artificial light.  Like plants & sun.  My initial read after several conversations is that he is very mellow and jokey by nature but this is heavily suppressed by stress over current circumstance (see below).

Chloe was overseas with a group of friends when the group inadvertently intruded on an important funeral and offended rural locals.  Vigilante justice followed.  They were harassed/captured/made to turn on each other (on Chloe) and then released battered and bruised.  Chloe’s humanity leeched away soon after and she became a ghoul.

We don’t know the specifics of her becoming a ghoul but from what I remember two possibilities stand out.  The first is that she is a profane ghoul.  Nibble’s rendition of her story is that the friends were tied up and made to decide who was most responsible for the offense and they named Chloe thinking she would die.  They were released and started on their way home and then Chloe was released & caught up.  She later attacked and devoured them.  If she is a profane ghoul then she was cursed between the time they were released and the time she was and this pushed her into that knife’s edge state between Life and Death.  Curse-oriented origin would mean she is more focused on right/wrong & law/justice & maliciousness.

Second possibility is she is a NDE ghoul or Near Death Experience ghoul.  Same story but without the curse.  If she nearly died or came to the razor’s edge of Death’s embrace (by being hurt enough or a metaphorical hair’s breadth from hanging/being shot/other execution) and stayed there long enough that could push her to become a ghoul.  This state/Otherhood may have allowed her to fight her way free and deal with her captors.  I can’t remember the specifics about NDE ghouls.  Resilience?

The question may no longer matter.  Chloe is not doing well and has lost much of her humanity.  Distinctions fall away and she has the weaknesses of both.  Chloe has more pronounced fangs/claws and waking/sleeping cycles.  Is more feral.

Nibble & Chloe met alongside a third while foraging for sustenance.  As ghouls they eat dead matter.  The three became a foraging pack and became romantically involved as part of this.

In Summer 2019 they had a scarcity of accessible food.  Efforts to curtail ghoul population restricted access to common foraging grounds.  This caused the ultimate death frenzy of their third (who became so hungry she lost all sense of caution and put herself in the way of hunters) and Chloe’s steep decline and loss of humanity.  Subject best avoided with Nibble: lots of self-blame.  Nibble was not aware the other two could not get some small sustenance from television as he did and they were not clear about how poorly they were doing.

We took them on because they are fairly effective in a scrap, and they can see Life and smell Death.  Their ability to see Life means they can notice many of those who might try to slip through the perimeter.  The smelling of Death means they may notice the aftermath of any trouble caused by any intruders: bodies/dead residents/dead animals.

Nibbles is focused on Chloe’s state and Chloe is focused on her own circumstance.  We all hope they can find some equilibrium now that they’re spending less time moving on and avoiding hunters.

For you three: expect wariness around practitioners.  They are fine to talk to and approach but I would not put my own hand within reach of a snap from Chloe’s mouth.  Be appropriately careful– I suspect you three make a more tempting meal than my doom-hosting self.

Email Reply From: Lucy (LEllingson@tbaynorth.ca)
Do we know who hunted them??

Email Reply From: Verona (VHayward@tbaynorth.ca)
Texts at school says NDE ghouls can get stronger as you push them to the brink of Death.  Or they may not be more resillient at all, they don’t get as weak as we do when they get more hurt so they keep going right up until they fall over and die for real.  They get best sustenance from the recently dead ‘specially if they were scared when they die.
Best sustenance isn’t “more” sustenance.  Is what pushes her closest to balance between Life/Death.
Can’t find the same kinds of details on profane ghouls.  They’re a footnote in this book.  They seem to be rare.  MIght mean its more likely Chloe is a NDE type.

Email Reply From: Matthew Moss (Mossball@mooseboop.ca)
Verona: There you have it.  I’ll pass that on to Nibble.  He’ll want to know that.  Will tell the goblins in charge of him & Chloe & E.
Lucy: No idea who hunted them.

Email Reply From: Avery (AKelly@tbaynorth.ca)
what + who was their third member of the pack?

Email Reply From: Matthew Moss (Mossball@mooseboop.ca)
Faith.  Became a ghoul after getting infected by another ghoul.  The Death that runs through them can leech into a person who doesn’t have enough Life (because hurt, because other reasons).

Email Reply From: Verona (VHayward@tbaynorth.ca)
Sometimes called the standard ghoul, the ghoul scion, the branch ghoul or the family ghoul.  Pyramid scheme type power: it flows uphill, you get anchored more if you create more ghouls.  At the bottom/if you’re new then existence is hard.  As you get higher you get the really strong/dangerous necrophage types.  I think they should be called ghoulfathers.  No really obvious strengths/weaknesses except the ghoul scion is even better than regular ghouls at making more scions and gets stronger by doing it

Email Reply From: Lucy (LEllingson@tbaynorth.ca)
I think we should move on.

Email Reply From: Lucy (LEllingson@tbaynorth.ca)
CC: Verona (VHayward@tbaynorth.ca), Avery (AKelly@tbaynorth.ca), Matthew Moss (Mossball@mooseboop.ca)
But save the info on binding all types just case??

Email Reply From: Verona (VHayward@tbaynorth.ca)
:thumbsup:


Subject: Goblin Gangs
From:
Matthew Moss (Mossball@mooseboop.ca)
CC: Verona (VHayward@tbaynorth.ca); Avery (AKelly@tbaynorth.ca); Lucy (LEllingson@tbaynorth.ca)
Attached: Cblock3.jpg

10 new goblins include:
Group 1 – Tatty Bo Jangles, Bumcake, Bangnut, Humpydump, 1 Unnamed
Group 2 – Creamfilled, Kittycough, Fishmittens, Ramjam, Biscuit

The new goblins come in two groups– group 1 tried to invade when the perimeter went down and were deterred.  Group 2 were brought in by Bluntmunch and have worked with him before.  Some in group 2 may stay or leave depending on how things go.

Tatty’s gang are minor vandals and troublemakers who have spent the last few years going from misadventure to misadventure.  Most of these actions were unsuccessful and/or mystifying to mundane humans.  Recent efforts include:

— One attempt to break into a gun range and steal weaponry despite the fact that few in the group are of a size to hold a gun and none are of a size to easily carry and aim one.
— One effort to steal the curbside trash of a minor actress and auction it off online.  The most literate and tech savvy of the group is the gremlin Bangnut and he writes/uses a computer at the level of a 2nd grader.  After weeks of no replies on the illegible auctions, they abandoned the ploy.  Apparently their own trash mingled with the stolen trash and they felt it was irresponsible to risk auctioning their stuff instead of hers.
— A campaign to erect large and detailed ‘snow dongs’ in mysterious locations across and around the city.
— One effort to steal a tiger from the Toronto Zoo as a pet & mascot.  This halved the size of their group.

Group 2 is a pre-formed group of goblins who have helped Bluntmunch on jobs requiring many hands.  Often this is looting & the coordinated carrying of heavy objects.  They operate & cooperate surprisingly well as a unit when it comes to simple tasks.  They have spent the last five years renting an apartment in what to Goblins is luxury and safety.  Their old leader was a ‘Tod’.  Tods are goblins specializing in befriending and enabling a perpetually inebriated human (or Othered human, through drink/drugs) as their imaginary friend.  This human (referred to as a ‘Barney’) was a way for their group to launder money/handle simple tasks/and pay rent.

When the Barney moved on the group was left leaderless.  Creamfilled held the reins for a short time but is content to pass on control to Bluntmunch.  We’ve provided an apartment similar to their last one and they are happy to have a task.

Kennet’s O.G. goblins, John and I are keeping an eye on the two groups.  They give us more eyes & more ways to harass intruders.  Toadswallow thinks having more goblins gives us more cover by making us more like a normal town our size but I think that take is a reach.

Double-edged sword.  They add up to a lot of small nuisances and headaches & that includes a few for locals.

Edith is reading over my shoulder and stresses a lot of small nuisances and headaches.

Email Reply From: Avery (AKelly@tbaynorth.ca)
I’m a little goblined out
2nd group especially sounds like they are pretty good?

Email Reply From: Verona (VHayward@tbaynorth.ca)
Hey Matthew is my little man the snot painter the unnamed one?

Email Reply From: Matthew Moss (Mossball@mooseboop.ca)
He is.  He wants you to name him.  Normally a right for someone important in a goblin’s life.  I think he really liked you.

Email Reply From: Lucy (LEllingson@tbaynorth.ca)
First Tashlit and now a snot painter??
What are you getting up to when we aren’t watching??

Email Reply From: Avery (AKelly@tbaynorth.ca)
are the paintings good?

Email Reply From: Verona (VHayward@tbaynorth.ca)
I’m getting up to meeting cool others.  No idea if they’re good.  Naming a guy’s a huge responsibility.  I need to think on this.

Email Reply From: Avery (AKelly@tbaynorth.ca)
how will they react to practitioners?  team #1 and team #2 would react different I’m guessing?

Email Reply From: Matthew Moss (Mossball@mooseboop.ca)
Who knows?  They’re goblins.

Email Reply From: Avery (AKelly@tbaynorth.ca)
any recomendations on making a good first impresion?  I think that matters more for goblins than others.

Email Reply From: Matthew Moss (Mossball@mooseboop.ca)
Who knows?  They’re goblins.

Email Reply From: Avery (AKelly@tbaynorth.ca)
yea

Email Reply From: Lucy (LEllingson@tbaynorth.ca)
We’ll ask around.


Subject: Montague
From:
Matthew Moss (Mossball@mooseboop.ca)
CC: Verona (VHayward@tbaynorth.ca); Avery (AKelly@tbaynorth.ca); Lucy (LEllingson@tbaynorth.ca)
Attached: Cblock4.jpg

Our best guess is that Montague is a folded or corrupted spirit.  He was a spirit or something spirit-like and a powerful ritual or something either altered him as a side effect of being too close (like a person or animal caught up in the gears of industrial machinery/a bird wounded by wind power plant/churned up by the automated plow in the fields) or transmuted the forces of an area and transmuted him in the process and now he transmutes other things.

Montague isn’t intact or standalone enough to spend much time unstructured so he borrows the structure of other things.  He is apparent even to those unAware as a pool of blood or an oily red coating that slips along the ground or into and over objects.  When he occupies an object (be that object a picture/radio/box/anything else) he alters its appearance to be grim & bent & battered.  A derelict car may be filled to the brim with what appears to be blood with branching and zigzagging spider legs reaching out.  A picture on the wall may appear to be painted in blood with twitching legs reaching from the corner of the frame.  It takes him a few moments to get settled and he can lash out with these appendages from the settlement.  If the object can communicate then he can in a limited fashion (radio voice or tapping).

He has helped in a few cases with making sure invaders cannot settle too easily or put down roots.  It disconcerts them when the campfire at the edge of town goes out and the smoking wood starts oozing and growing appendages.  Mostly however Montague is providing us with power.  He can take some structure from diagrams and things and has been attaching himself to our perimeter to fuel it.  He does this for about an hour at the quietest time of night just before dawn.  The limited time is less about him having the power to spare (he does ok) and more about his influence inevitably altering the perimeter.  Left too long with it he would absorb it and make it a part of himself and alter its function.  As is he gives us an hour a day we can unplug the box Zed gave us and the perimeter will rev up but the atmosphere in town changes.  Similar influence to the aftermath of the carmine beast but revved up– fighting/violence/stress/more echoes.  Then for a few hours after (sunrise and city waking up) the perimeter will hum along nicely while plugged into the box.

We are overlapping the night and day shifts to fit during this time and using this as an excuse to check Kennet itself for trouble instead of watching and patrolling the metaphorical borders.  If there is anything that has slipped through then a loop of a Montague-infused diagram encircling Kennet seems to give it a kick in the ass and make it show itself (a bit angrier and stronger than it would otherwise be but we manage).  If you are awake when we do this then you should notice him starting his ‘shift’.  Unawakened people up & about in the small hours of night may get a bad feeling or have to deal with rogue spirits/echoes/agitated animals.  Tradeoffs.

As you may guess the influence the CB death had in the area drew Montague here.  He came from the site of some ritual or big practice and has no recollection of what the ritual was or who/what he was before.  Edith and Alpeana are sponsoring him.

Good guy all considered but was not easy to get on board.  Negotiation was halting and he was resistant to the terms until Edith & Alpeana softened him up.  I think companionship with them/with Tashlit were more impactful than any amount of quibbling over terms of membership & how he might get kicked out.  2nd hardest to bring on board (1st hardest will be covered in next batch after I talk to people today).

Email Reply From: Avery (AKelly@tbaynorth.ca)
I was just reading notes from elementals class I missed.  montague sounds like an elemental.  fragile & needs a vessel & has lots of power to spare

Email Reply From: Verona (VHayward@tbaynorth.ca)
Yep.  Yepyepyepyepyep.  Elemental seems to map to this yes.
:thumbsup:
Looked up folded spirits and didn’t find much but did find about Plicate Spirits.  Fits Monty here.

Um.  So when you do big rituals, especialllly realms practices  like opening doors between our world and spirit or our world and abyss (loooking at you Ave) you can catch bystanders in the way as space folds and worlds bend to make room.  Especially if you rush it or do a bad diagram.  If that bystander is a human you can get a horror that’s all stretched out and bent and operates by slightly different rules.  Horrors.  The plicate spirit is this but for spirits (or plicate echo, or plicate elemental).  Folded up, stretched out, twisted up with something else, and operating by different logic.  Think implicate and ‘plicate: folded, crumpled, or corrugated, in biology.’

This book sums a lot of it up as ‘each one is different so no one thing works perfectly’, ‘apply lots of fire’, and ‘here’s how you should diagnose or deal with a plicate spirit overriding your diagram’ (which is basically cut off all power and run).  Not very useful stuff.

Email Reply From: Matthew Moss (Mossball@Mooseboop.ca)
Elemental makes sense.  The Girl by Candlelight/Edith is like that.  She has a lot of elemental at her heart powering the spirit side of her.  It’s what makes her so impressive when she steps free of Edith.  You three sure got an education.

Email Reply From: Lucy (LEllingson@tbaynorth.ca)
CC: Verona (VHayward@tbaynorth.ca), Avery (AKelly@tbaynorth.ca), Matthew Moss (Mossball@mooseboop.ca)
Easy does it on talking about binding/’dealing with’, Ronnie???

Email Reply From: Lucy (LEllingson@tbaynorth.ca)
Matthew??
I caught that about the bird and wind power.
Don’t do that! Other forms of power kill way more birds!
Be one of the cool baby boomers Matthew.  :sunglasses:

Email Reply From: Matthew Moss (Mossball@mooseboop.ca)
I’m a millenial.

Email Reply From: Lucy (LEllingson@tbaynorth.ca)
Then act like one.  Don’t act like a crusty old 40+ guy :oldman: and do research and don’t buy into environmental propaganda!!  Were you trying to be clever???

Email Reply From: Avery (AKelly@tbaynorth.ca)
lucy is visibly annoyed sitting at the desk in our room with her laptop right now

Email Reply From: Matthew Moss (Mossball@mooseboop.ca)
I was not trying to be clever.  I was reaching for examples and that came to mind.
Retracted.  Sorry.


Subject: Cig
From:
Matthew Moss (Mossball@mooseboop.ca)
CC: Verona (VHayward@tbaynorth.ca); Avery (AKelly@tbaynorth.ca); Lucy (LEllingson@tbaynorth.ca)
Attached: Cblock5.jpg

Ambulatory object.  Cig is a fairly old Other from what we can tell and has traveled from place to place by jumping from locations where cigarettes are used.  Since the ban on indoor smoking it keeps close to the roads and has been traveling Canada.  It jumps from rest stop to truck to hazy bar.  A mostly intact & smoking cigarette with nobody to claim it.  If picked up and smoked by someone unaware it will stay with them for a time then burn the fingers so it is dropped and will disappear to appear somewhere nearby.

Motivations are hard to discern.  Cig doesn’t think like you or I might.  We have to infer from where it goes and what it picks out.  That it came here and seems to want to stick around.  It accepted the terms given without issue and has already taken to indicating desired votes as one of the new Others.  Edith writes options down and Cig will burn the paper to indicate a choice.  Cig avoids places where smoking is not allowed or does not happen and this does include patches of nature where cigarette butts couldn’t be found littered here or there.  We think this is because it cannot easily move to places where cigarettes are not in some sort of use.

Cig does not sleep and is very active as an observer.  One of two Others we have mingling with incoming humans & potential practitioners.  Cig hangs out around the motel/Bed & Breakfast/gas stations and watches newcomers.  Part of this is to catch those Others who blend in with the crowd and part is to watch for any witch hunters or practitioners who may be paying attention to what is happening.

Cig seems to gravitate toward interesting people.  It doesn’t shy from addicts or criminals– just the opposite.  It also likes world-weary travelers and the rambling elderly so long as they have stories to tell.  It may be best to think of it less as an object and more of one or all of these types of people bundled together.  If they gather together and talk while sitting around a heaping ashtray then Cig is the old man/old woman/criminal/weary traveler/trucker/addict/teenager all tied up into one that is sitting & listening at the table with their cigarette lit but not yet smoked… with the person subtracted from the picture.

At the risk of injecting personality where there is none: Cig is nonviolent and passive.  An observer and “listener” rather than an actor.  It seems to prefer to avoid violence and sometimes remains behind after alerting us about potential threats.

Cig has been around for roughly a hundred years and has some familiarity with various Lords and longstanding Others.  It has had two prominent owners we know of: the first a witch hunter who collected magic items and appreciated an endless cigarette without recognizing the sentience.  The second an alchemist who fell victim to an explosion while working on their own work.  The explosion seems to have scarred Cig with a telltale abrasion at one side.  Cig is clear that it had no involvement in the explosion and seems to dislike the topic.

Cig is sponsored by Edith and myself.  Initially it was Maricica instead of me but Maricica became annoyed by the smell and there were other Others (covered in the next batch) Maricica could sponsor.  Edith has unfortunately picked up smoking again.  I’m annoyed.  Please don’t follow her lead.  Smoking cig has no effects that regular cigarettes don’t and Cig doesn’t carry anything from location to location (inc. saliva, germs) but it’s really not good for you.

Email Reply From: Verona (VHayward@tbaynorth.ca)
Girls I am thinking about taking up smoking

Email Reply From: Avery (AKelly@tbaynorth.ca)
no verona

Email Reply From: Lucy (LEllingson@tbaynorth.ca)
No!  Gross.

Email Reply From: Matthew Moss (Mossball@mooseboop.ca)
Gross.

Email Reply From: Verona (VHayward@tbaynorth.ca)
Any chance Cig can point us to that alchemist’s blown up lab, maybe we can forage?  Was it recent?  Or close?

Email Reply From: Matthew Moss (Mossball@mooseboop.ca)
You would have to ask.  I would but communicating takes time.

Email Reply From: Lucy (LEllingson@tbaynorth.ca)
We can try it…
I wanted to ask how you are Matthew?  Are you guys managing?
We come back soon.

Email Reply From: Matthew Moss (Mossball@mooseboop.ca)
Tired.  50 hour weeks at work and then managing these Others and negotiations.  Edith’s reading over my shoulder as I lie in bed typing this but she struggles with leading alone.  A little too harsh.  She often regrets her choices after.  I come at things tired.  She comes at it hard.  We find an equilibrium but it is not easy.

Email Reply From: Avery (AKelly@tbaynorth.ca)
we can help once we get back.  can we take over duties?  and not to pressure but we were talking and I was wondering if we get votes.

Email Reply From: Lucy (LEllingson@tbaynorth.ca)
Avery’s being nice about it.  I was the one wondering…

Email Reply From: Avery (AKelly@tbaynorth.ca)
you were also the one wondering what we could do to help make things easier for matthew and edith
we have a responsibility to protect kennet as kennets practitioners

Email Reply From: Verona (VHayward@tbaynorth.ca)
Do you need extra eyes on any of the other Others?

Email Reply From: Matthew Moss (Mossball@mooseboop.ca)
You get votes.  Obviously some things leave you out.  Just as some things would leave me out.

Thank you for wanting to help.  John informed me of how strongly you felt about protecting Kennet.  It’s appreciated.

Some help with the perimeter guarding and keeping an eye on the Others would be good.  But some are pricklier than others.  Tashlit and Cig are easiest and most willing to let me pass on info: this is why I told you the stuff I did earlier.  Goblins are a roll of the dice really.  Then there are warier others like Montague and Nibble/Chloe.

5 more new Others to cover.  4 if you discount Tashlit who I already introduced.  I need a day to get my thoughts in order.  Some of these guys aren’t easy & a couple aren’t so ‘play nice with others’ / ‘play nice with us’ / ‘play nice with practitioners’.  Sorry.  We were struggling to fill gaps in the defense and this is what we ended up with.

Need the day to ask/negotiate what I can share with you and sort out my explanations.

After stopping in at work tomorrow I’ll send out emails about Tashlit / Lis / Jabber / Ken and one other I can’t name without negotiating permission.  If you’re getting home in a couple of days then I want you to have this before you arrive so you have your eyes open.

Let me know if you need a ride.  I know you said Zed offered and you have the Paths but I wouldn’t mind the chance to escape from things for a bit.

Vanishing Points – 8.6

Verona

Last Thursday: New Other Correspondence #1


Cute lavender belly shirt with the overlappy bottom… V neck tee… Top with the buttons down the front and the scalloped sleeves and hem… Slinky striped black and purple dress…

Rather than fold the clothes as she got sorted, Verona smoothed them out and rolled them into tubes, then stacked the tubes together, side by side.

“This was in my bag,” Lucy said, handing Verona a monster sock.  “Why is your stuff in my bag?”

“Dunno, spillover?” Verona asked, putting her acid-washed jeans under her chin while she rolled them from the bottom of the pants leg up to the waistband, tight as she could get.

“I’ve got a sock of yours in the gap between mattress and the footboard of the bed, here,” Avery noted, throwing it at the side of Verona’s head.  “How?”

Verona laughed and put it in the pile.

Snowdrop was sitting cross-legged on the bed, folding shirts and handing them to Avery.  She was smiling too much to not be up to something.  Cherrypop was stuck inside a spare sock with a hole in it, one foot sticking out of the hole.  It served to restrain the little goblin’s movements and formed a kind of sleeping bag for the little goblin as she slumbered.

“How’s your stomach?” Verona asked.

“Hurts when I bend over.  But it’s superficial.  Thanks for asking.  You don’t usually ask so much.”

“Yeah well… I got to have my little freak-out the other day, in front of everyone, I’ve hashed stuff out, I’m mostly worried about you guys.”

“I think your judgment of how okay you are is a little suspect, Ronnie,” Lucy said.

“Hey.”

“Just saying.  Maybe all of us are bad at that.  My old therapist told me that just because you have an emotional outburst, it doesn’t mean you’ve actually handled that stuff.  It’s still there.”

“That might explain a lot about my dad,” Verona said.

Caught up on the folding, Snowdrop moved the covers and found shorts and socks that Avery had worn to bed and kicked off in the middle of the night.

Barbarian.

Snowdrop picked up a striped sock and held it up.  Verona raised her hands to catch.

They were a matter of feet apart and Snowdrop’s throw was still insufficient, the sock landing at Verona’s feet.

“Not a strength, huh Snow?” Verona asked.

“I don’t know, opossums are supposed to be really good at throwing.  We have the muscles for it,” Snowdrop replied, handing Avery more shirts and folded socks.

“This isn’t a color of shirt I wear,” Avery said.  “What…?”

She shook the dull grey shirt out to view the front.  It had a print of the hanged man tarot card with an opossum instead of a man, hanging upside down.  Instead of the number at the top or the title ‘hanged man’ on the bottom it was just ‘aaaaaaaa’.

“How many of these did you give me?” Avery asked, checking.  “God.”

Snowdrop laughed, which woke up Cherrypop, who looked around bewildered before joining in with the laugh.

Lucy high-fived Snowdrop.

“Mannnn, I thought I was nearly done,” Avery said, unpacking and picking through her shirts.  She set some of the others aside, which were similar enough to the green, orange, and teal colors of her other shirts to slip through.  She held it up and read off it, “Live free, be bizarre, make whoopee, get hit by a car.  No, Snowdrop!”

“It’s no way to live,” Snowdrop said, raising a hand as Lucy went in for another high-five.

“Hey!  Ey!” Cherrypop raised her voice.  She strained, arm reaching as if trying her utmost to sit up and reach would do more than add another inch to the distance Lucy had to close.  Lucy gave her a one-finger high-five.

“You didn’t even do anything, did you, Cherry?” Verona asked.

“I did everything!  I saved the day yesterday!”

Snowdrop found the sock to match the one Cherrypop was lying inside and pulled it down over Cherrypop’s head and the other sock, bundling them.  Cherrypop squirmed until she could stick her face through the hole that her foot had been sticking through.  “I get credit!”

“You get chip,” Verona said, heading to the desk in the corner and getting the bag of chips from their last stop in town, where they’d grabbed some stuff for taking care of Avery’s stomach and her own headaches and stomachaches.  She gave Cherrypop a chip bigger than the little goblin’s face.  Cherrypop, with her entire body still within the sock, unable to reach through, bit, then started flopping around, trying to get into a position to eat the chip.  Mostly she rolled over it.

It was kind of amazing at how bad she was at it.  It was the experience of watching an old person trying to parallel park for five minutes, captured in less than a minute of the little goblin rolling around.

Verona tore her eyes away from the sad little spectacle, looking over the desk.  There were still notebooks and various writing implements, from when they’d had their turns sitting at the desk while the others were in bed.  “Yellow pencilcase?”

“Mine,” Avery declared.

“Your pen, Luce.”

Lucy took the pen as Verona held it out.

“And laptop.”

Lucy took the laptop.

Verona sorted out the library books, which included what she’d grabbed from the library to do some digging on the new types of Other who’d moved to Kennet.  She stacked them from largest to smallest.  She then turned to her own notes.

“This is it,” she said.

“You sounded ready to go home, the other day.”

Verona shrugged.

“Field trip later,” Avery said.  “I’ve been looking forward to the field trips from the beginning.”

“There are more later we won’t get to see,” Verona said, hopping up to the desk to sit on it, feet on the chair.

“Alpy could maybe take us places again,” Avery said.  “Or the new Others could.”

“Not the same.”

“No,” Lucy agreed.  “Different tone, we won’t have to watch our backs in the same way, but we can’t learn from the experts, either.  We’re learning from the natural residents.”

They’d had the whole disaster, with classes cut short, then a day of recuperation, which had included a class on healing.

Then a day of elemental stuff, which had capped off in Wye turning up to mention Alexander was dead.  Avery had missed a lot of that.

Yesterday had been a day of minor stuff on deal-making Others, touching briefly on Faerie as a prelude to today, but the instructor hadn’t been much good, and had been that much worse when moving on to the afternoon class, which had been two and a half hours of droning about Djinn, Envoys that operated like the Hungry Choir but who were smaller, and other things that were really hard to get to grips with when they really just… didn’t interact with those Others, and might never.  They probably wouldn’t ever go to those Djinn who had roots in angels and had helped build the universe and make wishes.

And, like, if they ever did, they’d do their own research, they wouldn’t need what was taught in a snooze-inducing voice for two hours in the middle of summer.  The room hadn’t been hot but somehow when imagining it her mind revised it to have them all dripping in sweat, slumping in their seats, slack jawed and wanting to die.  It had been that bad.

Turns out that people who both know about the practice and who can teach are few and far between.

She looked at the picture on the wall of the barn with the cat, deer, and fox in it, and remembered the one it had replaced, with the hunting party, mass of dogs, and the dead cat.

We kind of offed one of the teachers who knew their shit and who could teach half decently, too.

She put that out of mind.

They’d fled the classroom and gone swimming, aiming to make some allies and have some fun to counter the dreary lessons, and that swim had been crashed by America and Liberty Tedd.

Last night had been restless, not helped by Cherrypop being in the mix.  They’d spent a couple hours trying to sleep while a small, abrasive voice piped up with random commentary about the placement of buttholes on various animals, whether kitchen sponges should be edible, that one show about a cartoon dog she’d seen once, and how she was absolutely, undeniably positive there was a spider under the covers.  They’d made Snowdrop take Cherry for an hours-long walk so they could sleep.

“You never explained this shirt,” Avery said, turning around to show Snowdrop the shirt she’d worn the night-

-the night Bristow had gone the way of the brownies.  That Alexander had died.

It was pink, with a winking opossum with makeup caked over its face, holding its paws over its nose.  ‘Eyes over here.’

“I’ll tell you, the goblins that aren’t Toadswallow won’t,” Snowdrop declared.

Cherrypop twisted around, looking, then burst out laughing.  “The shirt!”

“Tell me, Cherry,” Avery said, eager.

“Don’t!” Snowdrop called out, then slapped her hand against her palm.

“It’s the nostrils!  Opossum dong!  Bahaha!”

“What?” Avery asked.  “That makes no sense.”

“They- the stupid people, they came over and they saw opossums the first time!  The guy opossums have two- two heads, forked!  So clearly, bahahaha, they think it has to go in the nose!”

What?” Avery asked.

“It wasn’t the first invaders in America,” Snowdrop sighed.

“I was wearing this?”

Verona smiled, turning her back and making sure she had all of her pens, markers, watercolor brushes, colored pencils and the various rulers, stencils, and compasses for drawing, putting them in the battered and scuffed fabric pencilcase.  She collected all of the papers, then knocked the stack against the desk to make the pile even.  If she had some of Lucy or Avery’s stuff in the pile she’d sort it out later.

“Snowdrop, can you unsummon all this extra clothing?” Avery asked, holding up the ‘wet aaaa possum’ swimsuit.  “I shouldn’t pack it all, and it can’t be good for you if it’s made out of your lifeforce or whatever.”

Verona picked up the chair with her feet on either side of the seat, trying to balance it.  “I’m curious, did you actually spend the time to make the clothes, pull them off, become an opossum again, and stack them that way?”

“Nope,” Snowdrop stated.

“Love that,” Verona said.

Snowdrop smiled.

“You should have!  That would be great!” Cherrypop raised her voice, because she was small enough that she had to shout to match the rest of them in volume.

“You know what else is great?” Verona asked.  “Chips.”

She put the chair down, took more chips, stacked them,  and gave them to Cherrypop, who opened her mouth wide to take in as much as possible.

“Check the drawers?” Lucy asked.

Verona went through the drawers of the wooden desk in the corner.  Spell cards, more pens, some failed drawings of earrings and lanterns… she collected it.

Packing up.

Getting so they were ready to go home when their ride arrived.  Which would be after this field trip.

“You’re getting potato chips all over my sock,” Avery noted.

Cherrypop proceeded to try to roll in the potato chips, which happened to also put her face in closer proximity to the chips on the bed than she’d been managing before.

“Want to be a vacuum?” Snowdrop asked, picking up the sock-ensconced goblin, and holding her just over the bed.  Cherrypop laughed, tried to suck up and lick up the bits of chip as she was moved into proximity with it, and coughed when the two actions conflicted.

“Go easy, Cherry,” Avery said, wincing a bit.

“Nev-” Cherry coughed, licked, mid-cough, then hiccuped.  “-ver!”

It was honestly sort of funny to see how Avery ratcheted up that initial wince, arms folded, shoulders drawing together, as Cherry added talking and hiccups to the mix of coughing and eating.

“She’s a goblin,” Lucy said.  “She’s tough.”

“I’m just imagining the brownies reacting to a pile of goblin vomit as they sort out our room,” Verona said.

“Don’t encourage her,” Avery said, still wincing.

“Take-” Cherry managed.  “a crap-”  Cough, cough, eat, hiccup, “-on the floor!”

“Hey, hey, stop for a second,” Lucy said, reaching over and lifting Cherry to an upright position.  She faced the goblin down.  “No.”

“One goblin plop and three human plops and one opossum plop all on the floor!” Cherrypop declared, grinning wide.  The grin was interrupted with a hiccup.

“No.  We’re trying to wrap this up with as few enemies as we can manage.  I don’t want the brownies following us home.”

“But-”

“No,” Lucy told her.

“No, Cherry,” Verona said.

“No,” Avery stressed.  She looked at Snowdrop, pointing.

Snowdrop clamped her mouth shut.

The smile dropped from Cherrypop’s face.

“Okay?” Lucy asked.  “You made promises during awakening.  This is serious.”

“Vacuum?” Snowdrop asked.

If you agree not to make enemies,” Avery said.

The little goblin, still with only her face sticking out of a sock, looked around at the three of them, then nodded.  “Okay.”

Avery moved the curtain, then looked outside.  “We should go.”

“I’ll nettlewisp our stuff and catch up,” Lucy said.

Verona looked at her friend’s arm, which had shed the lingering effect of the one night spent with the nettlewisp activated.  They’d used it again at the shore of the river with no issue for Lucy.

“Okay,” Verona said.  “We’ll drop off stuff at the library-”

“And drop off Cherry too,” Avery added.  “She can’t stay in our room.”

They split, Verona collecting the books, Avery taking the three schoolbags they were bringing on the field trip, and Snowdrop taking Cherry, while Lucy stuck behind.  They’d been conserving glamour from the start of summer and the shift in schedule meant they didn’t have to anymore.

Room all packed up, stuff sorted, they had the field trip pulling them away today, and then they’d come, grab their stuff, and go back.

Avery jogged off with Snowdrop, as Verona turned to head into the library.  She pushed the door open, and came face to face with the entire library of books she hadn’t been able to read.

Nina approached, stopping a distance away, and then turned, holding her tea and saucer, apparently taking in the books in a very similar way.  Nina wore a vest over a top with a frilly collar that was fixed in place with a ribbon.  She also wore a knee-length corduroy skirt, platform heels with a marked patina to the leather that matched the tones and patina of her belt, had her hair tied back, and thick-rimmed glasses.

Not quite Verona’s style, but she took mental note, all the same.  If she had to grow up, there were worse cues to take than this distillation of librarian chic.

“Might be the last time I grab a book,” Verona told Nina, as she dropped off the books, wiping the cover of one clean with her hand.  “We’re expecting an email about some Others later, and we don’t know when we’re taking off with Zed, so I might try to cram something in.”

“I do love that you’re a reader,” Nina said.  “Do you want to stay for tea and a chat?  I want to ask what you’ve read and enjoy it vicariously.”

“Sorry,” Verona answered.

“Morning class?”

“Field trip to the Faerie.”

“I should pay more attention to the world outside.”

“Or live your best life and get us to fill you in.”

Nina smiled.

“I feel… melancholy, leaving this behind.  Lame, I know, I’ll have mixed feelings about this school but this library won’t be mixed.”

“Always, when you leave unread books behind,” Nina answered.  She stroked the back of Verona’s head.  It felt like a big sister or mom thing, and that made Verona feel weird, because she’d never had much of either.

She could hear running in the hallway, and turned, “Bye.”

“We may see each other if Zed stops in to see you outside of summer,” Nina told her.

“Maybe.  That’d be neat.  I’ll have to find a good bookstore to show you.”

“You should be looking for good bookstores regardless.”

“True!” Verona called out, as she hurried off.  She smiled as Nina shushed her.

Lucy was running to catch up.

“You’re don’t want to exhaust yourself, running before a trip where we might be walking around a lot,” Verona told her friend.

“From a minute of running?” Lucy asked.  “I’m not you, Ronnie.”

Verona wanted to laugh, but the hallway wasn’t entirely empty, and she could smell the food brownies had cooked for students who weren’t having the food that was being delivered or catered.

The laugh died in her throat.

“The joking about Cherry puking made me want to ask…” Lucy ventured.

“I’m fine.  I don’t- I mean, I know I’m bad at knowing if I’m fine, but I think I’m fine.  I should be good, unless something specific gets thrown at me that pushes specific buttons.”

“Hmm.”

“What about you?”

Lucy frowned at Verona.

“I’m just asking.  You were involved.”

Lucy shrugged.  “Booker’s home.  I can look forward to that.”

“And his girlfriend?”

“Trying to be nice,” Lucy said, a bit sing-song.  “Trying to be nice.”

Verona smiled, and joined Lucy in pushing the door open.

Avery had run off to the edge of the woods to drop off Cherrypop, and carried an animal-form Snowdrop as she ran back.

“Watch out for America,” Verona said.

“Yeah.  We got the warning from Liberty, and it seems like she’s timing something to happen at the field trip?  Which is weird?” Lucy asked, not sounding very confident.

“Weird,” Verona echoed.

“Tons of supervision, controlled environment, it’s not her… I don’t know the word.  Battlefield?  Middle of faerie land and she specializes in goblin stuff?”

“No idea,” Verona said.

“We’ll watch out.  Watch each other’s backs,” Avery said.

As a group of three, they approached the students who had already stepped outside.

Estrella and Silas Vanderwerf were at the head of the class with Raymond and some of the apprentices.  Zed stood off to one side with Brie.

Verona gravitated toward Zed.  “Heya.”

“Hey.”

“Estrella, huh?” Verona asked.

“She’s the BHI’s best contact when it comes to Fae.  Next year she might start teaching classes.”

“Huh.”

“Estrella’s kind of cool,” Avery said.

“Is she?” Verona asked.

“Don’t be a goblin, seriously.  I’m so goblined out after the stunt at the river and Cherrypop all night.”

“I liked how Estrella handled things the other night,” Lucy said.  “I wonder if she’s a good teacher.”

“This might be a bit of a test run,” Zed noted.  “Seeing how she handles herself and the younger students.”

“Nicolette shares a bathroom with Estrella,” Brie added.  “We could ask her what she thinks.”

Saying Nicolette’s name seemed to get her attention.  She was standing between Tanner and Fernanda, and approached, eyebrows raised.

“What’s your take on your bathmate?” Zed asked.

“Organized but not inflexible.  Day one, she had a schedule for us to use the bathroom.”

“To use the bathroom?” Verona asked.

“For showers, in the morning.  And blocking out time for baths in the evening.”

“Cushy, you get bathtubs?” Lucy asked.

“You can ask for the brownies to put one in, and Estrella asked.  Scheduling those wasn’t much of a concern, I don’t take baths,” Nicolette said, folding her arms. “If she brings that kind of organization and conscientiousness to managing students, I think she’ll do fine.”

“The guest teachers have been a bit hit and miss.  Or hit and miss and miss, if you want to get the proportions right,” Verona said.

“Your standards might be high,” Zed noted.  “A lot of these students are like… Sol, he had six years of lessons with his mom, awakening partway through those lessons at ten or whatever.  So even a teacher like Mr. Mace yesterday might be a step up from what he’s had in magical teaching, half his life.”

“God,” Lucy groaned.

“You three are leaving later?” Nicolette asked.

“That’s the plan,” Verona whispered.

Why was she whispering.  She frowned and looked around.

Estrella, at the front of the group, was slowly lowering her hand.  The volume of the crowd dropped.  Like a conductor, she flourished, then straightened.

I bet a lot of teachers wish they knew that trick.

“Alexander indicated that the students that won his approval in the class on coup and claim would get to choose our destination, and the three wild practitioners made their choice with my and Silas’s advisement.  We felt it was hard to go wrong with a trip to the High Fall.  Christmas is a little over six months away and there is only so much time to shop.”

“She’s real serious about Christmas,” Avery whispered.

“If you have a mom like Sol or Talia do, you stress about gifts,” Zed whispered back.

Verona nodded, though Christmas hadn’t been a time to get excited or happy for a few years now.  Mostly it was just stress over gifts.

“High Fall is focused on transaction and transformation,” Estrella explained.  “I know some of you have expressed some interest in visiting the Shedding Tree, the Corridor Market, the Doll Alley, and other landmarks.  We will not be doing that.  As appealing as the idea of visiting key locations is, I have taken on the responsibility of guiding you, and I am focused on safety and stability.  Those landmarks are tourist traps of a sort, emphasizing the traps.  Acceptable?”

She asked that last bit of Ray.  Raymond nodded, his expression serious.

“The Faerie is exciting and interesting enough I don’t think you’ll go wanting for things to see, do, or learn, if you take my prescribed route.  I will lead the way, Jarvis will hold the midpoint, and the teachers and apprentices who are coming will follow up the rear and watch the group from behind.  You’ll be paired off as I see fit, and you’ll stay with the group.”

Talos raised his hand.

“Yes, Talos?”

“We can’t pair ourselves off?”

“No you may not.  We’ll be visiting locations where the locals go for their food, resources, trinkets, and materials, instead of locations intended for tourists.  The deals are better there, and the residents less predatory.  Less.  There are still predators in their number, and as Faerie they prey on you on a social level.  Your long and storied experience with siblings or friends is more material for them to work with, the nuances between you are subtler, and you will lose in that subtlety.  No, I’ll pair you off with people you barely know.  Focus on improving that relationship and getting to know them better, and that’s a much simpler matter.  It is harder to interfere with without the fae being forced to be blunt.”

She began listing off names.

“I guess we won’t get a date in the Faerie?” Brie asked Zed.

“I think phrasing it that way is like wanting a date in shark infested waters,” Verona remarked.

Lucy elbowed her.

“We’ll do something another time,” Zed told her.

“It’ll have to wait almost a week.  You’re dropping these girls off, I need to redo my binding… then you’re helping teach a class?”

“True.”

“Lucy Ellingson, Tymon Leos,” Estrella called out.

“Could be worse,” Lucy said.  “I sorta wanted to hang out with him more.”

“Does mean you’re not mending fences like we wanted to, though.”

“Kinda,” Lucy said.

“Careful,” Zed warned, as Lucy walked off.

Lucy nodded.

“You said that at the beginning of the semester, about the Leos,” Avery commented.  “To be careful.”

“I did,” Zed agreed.

“How come?”

“Their families.  Their methods.  They dabble in alchemy and you do not want to fall victim to that alchemy.”

“Huh.”

“They were told to be good and they’re being good, it seems.”

“Zed?” Estrella asked.

“Can’t I supervise?”

“With Sol.”

“Huh,” Zed frowned.  “I wonder if we can work in some gentle talk about tricky parent stuff.”

Zed walked off.

“I hope he doesn’t,” Brie said, quiet.

“How come?”

“I only ever see Zed truly unhappy if he’s upset with Ray or he starts talking about his childhood, and he’s already upset with Ray.  The two things together…”

“Brie?  With Kass.”

“I said too much already.  Forget I said that,” Brie said, before departing.

“Zed’s rubbing off on you,” Nicolette said.

“Maybe.”

“Avery?  Fernanda.”

“Of fucking course,” Avery said.  “Don’t you say anything.”

Verona threw up her hands, the picture of innocence.

“Raquel?  With Verona Hayward.”

“Huh,” Verona made a bit of a face.  “I don’t get the logic.”

“She’s faerie-adjacent.  I wouldn’t try,” Nicolette said.  “Damn, was hoping to have a word in private.”

The rest of their group had been called away.

“How come?” Verona asked.

“Doesn’t matter.  Maybe later.”

“But wuh?” Verona asked.  But Raquel was signaling, and Nicolette walked off.

Because of the thing the other day?  The interrogation?

Something else?  A warning about the field trip?”

The rest of the students got sorted.  Verona walked over and met Raquel halfway.

Raquel looked her up and down.  Verona raised her eyebrows, thumbs hooked into the belt-loops of her denim skirt.

“I like your top,” Raquel said, with zero passion or goodwill backing the words.

Verona rubbed her hand across her stomach, smoothing the fabric.  The brownies had done their laundry just after the implement ritual, and it was less wrinkled than it might otherwise be.  Textured black fabric with bands of lace and more lace along the top and straps.

Raquel was wearing a dress, her hair up in a swirly sort of bun that wasn’t super neat, but seemed un-neat in a way that was very designed, with locks of hair peeling off intentionally.  Strands of hair ran down in front of her ears, which had pearl studs in them.  She was tall, slender, with brown hair that had a natural wave in it, and something about her made Verona think she was a girl with money who just happened to ride horses, because she had that look.  Straight-backed.  Sort of reminded her of Lucy in some general ways, like the same skeleton or general blueprint, filled in with something very different.

“I’d compliment your stuff but you always look great,” Verona said.

“Stuff?”

“Hey, Raquel, I don’t know.  Outfit and more?  Cut me some slack.”

“Hmm.”

“Are you getting a headstart on the homework with that compliment?  Improving our relationship starting with this?”

“Not really,” Raquel said.  “Faerie make me nervous.”

That was jump from one idea to a seemingly random topic, but whatever.  “Only sensible.”

Raquel smiled a little, and it was a tight, contained smile.  “Seems I don’t have to worry about you being an idiot and dragging me into it.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Verona replied.

Raquel gave her a look.  Scandalized.  Alarmed.

“I mean, we all do dumb stuff sometimes, don’t we?  We’re teenagers.  You and I are the same age.  The whole point is that our brains aren’t fully put together yet.”

“In my family, and families of those close to me, twelve or thirteen is the cut-off point.  You need to figure things out by then.  You own whatever happens after that.”

“Yeah well… I think that’s dumb.  We should get to figure things out by making mistakes and figuring out what we do well, and sorting it all out like that.”

“Maybe.  But for most of us, we don’t get to ‘figure out’ anything.  It’s decided early.”

Verona wrinkled her nose.  “And you think that’s good?”

“I think it just is, sometimes as much as gravity is something that pulls us down and fire is warm.”

“Huh.”

Estrella kept on pairing off students.

“Do you know if your uncle or whoever is going to end up headmaster?” Verona asked.

“I’m not allowed to say.  They’ll make an announcement, and me hinting one way or the other could be seen as changing the result.”

“Okay, so is there anything about all this that you get excited about?  Practices you love?  Stuff you’re into?”

Raquel gave Verona a look, a bit puzzled.

“Cool Others?”

“If an Other cooperates with me, that’s as cool as it gets.”

“Oh my god.  Okay, new tack.  What gets you up in the morning?  What gets you excited or makes you happy?”

“There’s a boy I like back home.  I think he likes me back.  I’m looking forward to seeing him again, maybe asking him out.  But are we really going to descend into boy talk?  Have we already sunken so low?”

“I think that’d be a pretty awkward convo.  I’m not interested, or I guess I’m not interested in the sense you’re talking about.  I’ll hear you out if you want to talk about your guy though.”

“Not without reciprocity.”

“Sure.”

“I suppose we’ve sunken further than even that level of conversation.  We don’t even have boy talk as the low bar.”

“I guess so, frig,” Verona sighed.

Estrella wrapped up the naming.  It helped that a small handful of students were apparently sitting out on this field trip.  Verona was curious why.

“I’ll tell you now, this is the time to work on your poker faces,” Estrella addressed them all.  “We’re going shopping.  We’ll model some bargaining for you, so you can do your own if the item is very minor.  If the item isn’t minor, then find me or Silas, and we’ll barter.  But if you indicate any interest or let your gaze linger too long, then you’ll find that by the time we go back, the product will be inferior in quality and much higher in price.  If you find your sellers whispering among themselves before or while you buy, walk away.  If there’s something you want and you know in advance, talk to us before we get there.”

Estrella’s hand was bent at the wrist, fingers apart and posed like she had them on strings.  As her hand relaxed, she signaled that they were free to ask questions.  Nobody had any.

“We walk four astride, don’t walk with your friends, or you invite what comes.  Mind your partners, keep them on course.  Silence is friendly, rudeness may be a necessity, don’t fall victim to convention, implied or otherwise.  Treat them as you would the school’s brownies.”

All students were ready, standing straight.

“I have work to do, so I’ll be leaving you to this,” Raymond said.

“I’ll exclude you,” Estrella told him.  She reached into her blouse and pulled out a series of what looked to be seven keys.  She selected one, copper, held it in front of herself, raised one slender arm over her head.  Then she snapped.

As if shaken free, wood layers, paint, and translucent peels of glass drifted off of the cabins and buildings nearby.  They fragmented and caught in the air, drifting like blossoms in the wind.

She snapped again, arm still outstretched overhead.

More of the scene fell away, including details.  The leaves on every tree on the far side of the workshop buildings, shingles, wood, glass… there were places which were almost impossible to see on the other side of the now-storm of blossom-like fragments that stirred in wind, dark and distorted.  The group of them was caught on the inside of the storm, but the blossoms nearly blocked the view of Raymond.

Third snap.  The remnants of the Blue Heron Institute scattered into the wind.  The fragments found their place, settling in among fallen leaves.  The smell of dried fruit and vegetables was heavy in the air, and there was little to no smell of mold that normally accompanied fallen leaves.

Dappled sunlight stabbed down through the foliage overhead.  Trees were squat and strong, with dense branches that met and knit overhead, turning the avenue they were on into a corridor of sorts.  Verona turned her face skyward and looked through the leaves and branches, and it looked like there were more and more things that filtered that light.  More branches that made it all dappled, or cave roof with holes in it, or clouds and mist.  For the light to get this far and be this strong, with beams warming the fallen leaves, it would have to be a hundred times more intense than their sun.  Or it was allowed or made to get this far, for this very effect.

Raquel sighed, the breath heavy.

“Are you okay?” Verona asked.  “Want to hold my hand?”

“I’m not seven.

“Right.”

One side of the avenue had a stone wall that looked like it had been raised around the trees, with apertures for branches to reach through, and it had been painted with a mural.  On the left side of her, houses and apartments were arranged together, in a way that made it hard to tell where one ended and one began.  Who owned that archway over a path?  What about that house where the second floor bled into the first, but had a totally different style?

Old fashioned buildings, quaint, white plaster reinforced by dark wood, or stone masonry, or brickwork with rough-hewn bricks and greenery woven into the masonry.

Fae children ran by, all wearing masks.  The girl at the tail end was covered in dark fur that drew together into styled tufts, her feet tufts suggesting that her feet were curled up at the toes.  A boy was so slight and thin that he appeared weightless, using the shawl-like top he wore over a bare upper body that had been painted to help him glide.  His feet only touched ground once for every ten steps any of the others took.

The masks were haunting.  A skull, a man’s face screaming in rage.

They turned, twisted, but lost no momentum, practically dancing as they eyed the collected Blue Heron students mid-run.  Verona met the eyes of a girl with wild hair with branches in it, and those eyes, behind the eyeholes of a bird mask, were coins wedged into empty eye sockets.

This was a feast for the creative mind.  The clothes the children wore were things she wanted to photograph and make herself.  The mural was something she wanted to spend an hour with.  The trees- could she ever own a house and make the trees do that?  Did that take generations?  Would she have to have kids and pass on the task to them?

She’d never wanted kids and she’d definitely never wanted to pass on a random responsibility to kids like that.  She still found her mind doing somersaults, straining to find a way to get… to get here.

“Silas has just reminded me,” Estrella said.  Silas stood next to her.  “This is so elementary to me it didn’t occur.  Don’t get baited.  Don’t be led astray.  You’re Blue Heron students.  Don’t disappoint us all and get… I don’t know.  Seduced by promises of a cure for what ails you or by the appearance of an animal that resembles some dead pet.  Really.  Now follow.  Don’t let your eye get so caught you lose sight of who you’re following after.”

Verona refocused.  America Tedd was still in the group, paired up with Silas’s friend Jarvis.  It seemed they were keeping her close to the middle of the group, while Verona and Raquel found themselves in the tail end.

Estrella touched a point on the mural, and it opened.  A door.

Passing through, even with a bunch of other students leading the way, felt a bit like intruding into someone’s backyard.  The space was more of a community garden in actuality, with a cobblestone path cutting its way between irregular plots, which weren’t marked out so much with wood or fences as with where the perpetually falling blossoms and fruit had settled.  Houses on either side framed and looked in on the corridor-like space.  A very normal looking woman leaned out of a windowsill with about fifty birdcages behind her, the birds silent and watching.  Her fingers tapped out a rhythm against the side of the house just below the windowsill, like she was playing an instrument, or tapping out a code.

As Verona looked, she saw that some of the ‘fallen leaves’ were bushes, the leaves of those bushes cultivated to be various hues of amber, crimson, and even black.

An old woman by the side of the path was sweeping another cobblestone pathway, narrower.  Her wrinkles had wrinkles, her skin was a deep brown, and mouth and downswept eyes disappeared into the detail.  She looked almost wooden, except she moved with vigor.  She completely ignored them.

The community garden past the houses and into a more open street that looked out on a river.  It reminded Verona of Kennet.  Of Avery’s house, and how there was her house, then the street, then a patch of nature, then the water.  Fae folk were washing themselves and clothes in the water, some were doing something with dyes, and the dye was coloring the skin or hair of some of the younger folk who seemed not to care in the slightest.  One slender, feminine figure had tattoos all up and down her body and the dye was absorbed by the tattoos without doing anything to the rest of her, so blue they almost glowed in the gloom from the trees, clouds, and cave roof overhead.

A pretty little child in a dress at the water’s edge was stripped of skin like it was a suit she wore, revealing something vaguely humanoid but insect, which the mother brusquely proceeded with a stiff-bristle brush on a stick.  The dye in the water from upstream made the suds blue.

They went over the bridge, and there were interesting people on both sides.

“What do you want to buy?” Raquel asked.

“Uhh… probably everything.  But some art stuff would be nice.”

“I think she might have paired us off like she did so we’d temper each other.  Each of us being impatient with the other’s shopping.”

“Questioning the other’s picks?  So you aren’t interested in art stuff?”

“No.  No I’m not.”

This wasn’t a world made for cars, Verona noted.  It was for pedestrians, winding, and probably she could live here for the rest of her life and keep finding paths.  The obvious paths were maybe the trap Estrella was guiding them past.  The way that would lead them to more and more obvious, common routes that would eventually take them to the tourist destinations and major landmarks, where some Fae knew to wait for visitors.

There was art to it and that simple fact made her ache for what her world lacked.  That nobody would pave the footpath of a bridge with colored stones in a way that made it beautiful.  That murals like that one they’d left behind didn’t exist except maybe as graffiti.  Booths on the far side of the river had fae hawking wares.  One had things in cages, and let a spine-covered centipede free of one heavy cage so it could wind up an eerily tall woman’s body, settling around her neck like a boa.  So she could try it on.

The masked children from before were on the far end of the bridge, sitting on a wall like they’d been there for a while, even though their trajectory had to have been more roundabout.  Five sitting, that other boy balancing on one foot, swaying in the wind, hands gripping the shawl.

Watching them some more.

Past the bridge, the foot traffic was a little more dense.  Verona’s head whipped this way and that as she tried to fix images of people into her mind’s eye, saving them for later.

She kept her poker face on, avoiding betraying any fear at a glimmer of something behind a mask or hood, avoiding too much interest when a man walked alongside her, naked and barely covered by the cloth he’d draped over himself and belted close at the waist.  He raised a hand in a wave to someone distant, picked up speed, and then became wind-scattered pages, browned at the edges with age, the wind of his initial momentum carrying the pages over the heads of people in the crowd.

The market spaces here were so often haphazard, wedged in, so that one had to squeeze by, or almost squeeze through.  More buildings, more like apartments than the vague homes of their starting point, framed all of this, and they walked down a street that one car might have passed, that had booths on both sides and fae navigating between.

A hand took Verona’s, firm.  She turned and saw herself face to face with a man shorter than she was.  He held up her hand, adjusting his grip to hold her middle finger.  “How much?”

“For the finger?” she asked.  Raquel’s hand rested on her back.

“Fingernail.  It has glamour beneath it.  Two second process, I put it between my teeth and pull.  It’ll grow back.  I’ll…”

He reached into a pocket,  He tried to push fat golden coins into her hand.  She didn’t let him.

“I’d take the finger if you’re offering,” another man said, leaning into the other guy like he was a friend.  “Like biting a carrot in two.”

“No, I’m not offering.”

“These coins are real gold, a small fortune.  No strings, no obligations, nothing I do comes back to you.”

“No,” Verona said, disquieted.  She pulled her hand free of his grip.

The group had slowed, so they hadn’t fallen behind, but there was a Fae wearing very similar clothing and similar-ish hair to Melody Kierstaad, walking a matter of feet from her.  Verona wondered if she should call out a warning to Erasmus.  How easy would it be for Melody to get snatched up, that Fae walking alongside Erasmus instead?

“Art stuff,” Raquel said.

“Are we shopping?” Verona asked, wishing they’d gotten further from the fingernail guy before finding the art.

“I think so.  Hey!  Are we shopping!?”

Her voice carried, and drew a lot of eyes.

Rather than Estrella answering, it looked like Silas answered, and others along the line passed on thumbs up.

Art stuff, in this case, was a series of little portraits, each with brushes that had a single hair.  Writing Verona couldn’t decipher seemed to note what the hairs were from.

Oh, the art also suggested it.  Hair from lovers reaching hands together but unable to touch.  Hair from a horse with a fish tail for a back end.  That seemed impractical steedwise, but the hair had a blue tint.

She moved on.  Stones.

“Come on,” Melody called back.

They were urged forward, and Verona gave the stones a longing look before hurrying to catch up.

Estrella was negotiating at a table.  “Seventy five Canadian dollars.”

“You betray ignorance, girl.  We don’t trade in your money.  Do you have any baby’s sighs?  Untold jokes?”

“Seventy Canadian dollars.”

“My dear… what are you doing?  Do you want this?” the merchant asked.  he wore a simple, crude clay mask over a face that, just from the little that could be seen, looked ten kinds of beautiful, with skin marked in thousands of fine lines ranging from silver to gold to ruby, overlapping and interlocking.  A hooded cloak covered most of the rest of him.

What he held was a bottle with what looked like a miniature baby in it, pale blue in greenish water.

“Sixty-five Canadian dollars.  We can keep going or you can give up the act.”

“I am all act, and this is a treasure.  Worth far more than-”

“Sixty.”

“Seventy-five.  I suppose I can find some use for your currency.  Let’s not keep your audience waiting.”

“Fifty-five.  I have a responsibility to my audience, and backing down now would fail them.”

The cowled man held out the bottle.  Estrella didn’t take it, instead counting out the money.  She made sure he had a grip on it before taking the bottle, then let go.

“Fae love our currency,” Estrella said, putting the bottle into a bag.  “High Fall Fae come to our world to bargain and barter, to purchase things to bring back here.  They maintain connections that way.  Go shop.  Come to me if you have questions.”

“What was that?” Talos asked.

“A potion.  Something to gift away come Christmastime.”

Verona caught a glimpse of Avery hanging out with Fernanda, looking at a top.  She was smiling, animated.

She caught Verona looking and flipped the bird at her.  Verona laughed, which got a look from Raquel.

“My friend.  She’s sorta asking for that fingernail guy to come for her, giving me the finger like that.”

“Ah.”

Avery was doing better at this random partner thing than Verona was.  Figured.

Verona resolved to give this a better shot.

“What do you want to buy?” Verona asked Raquel.

“Tools.  I spent a little while getting power, I’ve spent my whole life learning to most efficiently and subtly use the power I do have, but the last week taught me there are some gaps.”

“Gaps?” Verona asked.  “You’re a collector, right?”

“Soft implements.”

“Which means?”

“Indirect use.  Like your friend’s earring.  Or chalices, or talismans, or books.  Less swords and wands, which are good at doing.”

“Ahh.  So to fill the gap, you’re looking for a weapon?”

“Something I can put power into, in a bad situation.”

“Let’s look.”

Some dude and his female companion were getting undressed in the middle of the street, which was woah, simultaneously getting draped in other outfits that they were trying on.  Further down, a man was so unrealistically tall he couldn’t feasibly see the things in the booth or talk to the seller.  He used his cane to stab at an oil lamp in the display window, indicating it.  He banged it twice in short succession to confirm or deny something.

In another booth, two kids roughly Verona’s age, a boy and a girl, were modeling modern clothes, while a crowd pressed in tight, invading personal space to squint, peer, and stare, not at the clothing but at them.  Their skin and their hair.

Verona peered at that one, curious, and someone saw her looking, hurrying out of her way.  That same person grabbed Raquel, one hand at Raquel’s upper right arm, the other at her upper left, and snatched her up off the ground.

“Hey!” Verona shouted.  She kicked him.  His leg was hard beneath her toe.

“Here, here!” the man said, not even seeming to care about the kick.  “An expert!”

“What am- what?”

“Two of them, let’s see, let’s check!”

“Do not manhandle me,” Raquel said.

Verona had to fight to keep up, pressing forward, pushing some Fae aside.

Raquel was pushed to the front of the crowd, many hands turning her around, and she was placed face to face, more or less, with the children, who were a bit shorter than her.

“Assess!” a man said, in a heavily accented voice.  “Tell us!  Does it fit?  Are the details right?”

“Details about what?”

“Skin!  Hair!  The glint in the eye, the sound of their breath!”

“I don’t-”

“Pay us,” Verona said.  “In common currency, no curses, no tricks.  Expertise is worth something.”

“Yeah,” Raquel said.  “Deal.”

Verona pushed her way forward until she stood next to Raquel.

It took a few seconds of haggling, but some of the Fae of the crowd made their agreements.

Verona joined Raquel, leaning her face in close to the boy while Raquel checked the girl.

Like an ordinary boy.

“How do they put it on?” Raquel asked.

“A bit of glamour to grease the fit, any point of entry works but the top of the head is common.”

“Bend over?” Raquel asked.  “Show me the top of your head?”

The girl did.  Raquel poked at hair.  Verona arched an eyebrow, watching.

“Whorls to the way the hair flows away from the crown are weird.  But you wouldn’t notice that unless you went looking,” Raquel said.

“I think there’s some link between hair whorls and autism,” Verona mused.  “But I don’t think you’d want to jump to using autism as cover for being nonhuman.  That’s gross.”

“Better to just hide it,” Raquel said.

“Folds and little creases around the eye look good,” Verona said.  “Those are tricky.  And eyes vary.  I had to study a lot of models for my drawing and I’m still awful at it.”

“We should pay you less then,” said a man in the crowd.

“Taste and ability are different things,” Raquel said.  “We can have refined taste and not have the ability to replicate it.  You’re paying for taste.”

“Nicely said,” Verona answered.  “Teeth?”

The boy smiled, showing his teeth.  She motioned, and he opened his mouth wide.

“Mouth opens a bit too wide.”

“An accommodation for some types who would wear the skin,” the seller said.  “They must eat, after all.”

“And those who don’t will need to restrain the movements of their mouths to make sure they don’t unnerve people.”

“Buyers are informed.  Part of the package includes lessons in acting.”

“Clothes are nice,” Raquel noted.

“We asked a merchant on the Earthside to pick.”

“So you don’t know enough to include that in the classes?  That’s tricky,” Raquel said.  “If you’re wearing clothes in a particular style, you’ll want to stay consistent to that style.”

“We’re Fae, we understand style better than you could in a lifetime.”

“Sometimes the people who invest the most in fashion are the most out of touch,” Verona commented.  “Being too fancy or innovative is going to throw people off.  You have to match the times, the area, the personality of the person picking.”

“Being a little below-board is better than being perfect,” Raquel said.

What would Jeremy wear?  What would Jeremy look like, if he swapped places with this boy?

“Oh,” Verona grunted the word.  “One thing jumps out at me.”

“Oh?” Raquel asked.

The seller, a slender guy with a faint point to his ears, seemed intrigued by that, but she had the vague sense he was a little nettled.

“He’s not blushing.  Girl in his face and he’s not blushing or bothered.”

“He may not be attracted to you,” the seller said.  “Boys vary, as do those pretending to be boys.”

“Maybe, sure, I’m okay but I know I’m not anything special.  But can they blush?”

“Makeup, glamour, and tricks can indeed put a blush on the cheeks.”

“But he can’t blush on his own?  I think that’s where the uncanny valley is coming from.”

“Uncanny valley?”

“Just… so close to reality it should work, but it doesn’t and it feels vaguely creepy.  The lack of reaction and the lack of blush…”

“Skin not matching temperature and circumstance,” Raquel said.  “You’d be a bit paler with this breeze flowing through.”

“They did get goosebumps, though.  Gotta tie whatever they did to do that to subtle color changes, mottling,” Verona said.  “I think that’s all I got.”

“Payment,” a man said.  He got what looked like some marbles out of a pouch, pouring them into his hand.  She’d seen something like those in the Shellie vision.

Dealing with brownies, which reminded her of Bristow, which… the people around her weren’t un-brownie-like.

The area suddenly felt very claustrophobic.

She glanced through the crowd, reminding herself of where America was.  She saw America staring at her.

“Silas!” Raquel called out.

Silas jogged over.

“They’re paying us for a review.  One-twentieth the stated value of one of these.”

Silas counted out the marbles.  As they caught the light, images were reflected in them.

“Three sweet sorrows, four severed bonds, eight bursts of inspiration, twenty baby’s sighs.”

“How would we split this in half for Verona and me?” Raquel asked.

Silas organized it.  “I can change it for bills, if you want.  Or I can change bills for more Fall currency.”

“Are they useful on their own?” Verona asked.

“For manipulating glamour?  Yes.”

“Can you point us to tools?  Weapons?” Verona asked.

“Tools yes, I don’t think they sell weapons here.”  He pointed.

“Thanks.”

They headed down to the far end, and in the doing, they passed Lucy.

“Talked to Estrella about what we were interested in.  Catch you when she gets back to us.”

“Great,” Verona said, before following Raquel.

At the far booth, there were some artisan-style objects that looked like they were high quality, but a quick check confirmed that the only magic they held was from them being here, absorbing that dust that filled the air and soaked into things.  At the next table, there were some objects that were explicitly magic items, and Raquel immediately set to checking each with an expert eye, haggling.  She didn’t seem too focused on one, and Verona hoped it kept her from being cheated.

An old woman with a child’s proportions and amber eyes endlessly studied a simple hammer.

“Pen.  Every means of dying you pen down can’t find you in the next sixteen hours.”

“How clear is that?  If I put down fall, will it save me from the fall, or will I still die from the landing?” Verona asked.

“You would need to specify both.”

“And if I put down stabbing, would that block out kidney failure?”

“It could.  It could.”

“Meaning it could not?”

“I don’t want a pen, and I don’t want another defensive item,” Raquel said.  “Tell me about the knife.”

“It’s a key, it’s a way in, you see.”

“I don’t want a key.”

“A violent means of entering the person stabbed.  You’ll get one breath to do as much harm to them as possible, while walking around in the temple of their Self.”

“Seems more efficient to use a regular knife and stab them more than once in that same breath,” Raquel noted.

“If you want them to die, yes.  But if you have an enemy you want to destroy…?”

“I might’ve had enough destroying for one lifetime, thanks,” Verona said, uncomfortable.  “What about that hammer?”

She indicated the hammer the tiny old woman had.

The woman startled, slapped some of the marbles down on the table, and then fled, carrying the hammer.

“Sold.”

“Right.  Okay, cool.  And this needle?”

“Whisper a name to it, then let it go,” the seller stated.  “Salamanseu.”

The needle twisted around, quivering as it pointed back over the seller’s shoulder.

He let go, and it flew into the head of a wooden bust on a shelf behind him, impaling one eye.  Fifty needles exploded out from within, extruding from face, ears, chin, and the back of the head.

“You named the bust?” Raquel asked.

“After a cousin.  I had custody of my child’s child, after my son was lost in war.  This scion of my scion… a rare thing for us, you call them…”

“Grandkid?” Verona guessed.

“Yes.  Grandchild.  We have so few children and fewer grandchildren that we exist long enough to see.  And my cousin turned her into a fish and fed her to me.  I smile when we meet but I’ve named the bust after him.  Perhaps one day he will chance upon this market at the same time I demonstrate how the needle is used.”

“Good luck with that, I guess,” Verona told the seller.

“Seems too simple,” Raquel noted.

“It can’t kill, you see.  Permanently blinds, deafens, wounds the mind, but it won’t ever finish a man nor fae off.  And you mustn’t ever say the name of someone you don’t wish to destroy while you bear it on or near your person, unless you’re willing to accept the collateral damage.”

“I see, I see,” Raquel said.

“If you want a killing weapon you may have better luck beyond this market.  It’s against laws to kill, you see.  That earns us exile or the predations of the Hunt, depending on who dies.”

Verona felt uneasy, and she had a hard time putting her finger on why.  She stepped a bit back, surveying the crowd and keeping an eye on America, as America held out something that was clearly goblin-made.

The children from earlier sat and reclined on the rooftops on either side of this market, the girl with the bird mask and coin-eyes draped on the downslope from a roof’s peak, on the verge of tipping over and falling the full way down, the lightweight boy standing on a peak.

A small hand clutched at her, startling her.  She pulled back, more uncomfortable.  People were so grabby.

She turned, and saw a child, about ten, of indeterminate gender and shaggy hair, inside a birdcage.  The person carrying the cage on a pole tugged, and the child hung on, resisting.

“Help,” the voice was reed-thin, sonorous.

The seller gave Verona a sharp look, expression twisting.

“I didn’t think they sold children in these markets,” Verona observed, her heart in her throat.

“Not for sale,” the person with the pole barked.  He was covered in curly hair, but he had eyes that made her think of a dog, not a person.  Too wide an iris, not enough white.  And burly enough to carry a ten year old child in a metal cage on a long pole without really straining much.

She could see a bit of Daniel’s expression in the child’s face, behind that long hair.  A bit of Shellie, after everything.

The child tugged, pulling Verona closer, and the other hand gripped her shoulder, fingers catching on the lace strap of her top.  She didn’t know what to do, but was caught between holding on and extricating her strap from his grip at the same time.

“Did you come here by deal or bargain?” Raquel asked the child.

“Shush!” the owner barked.  “Don’t answer!”

The child fell silent, but pressed forehead against thin wire bars, grip tightening.

Something in his eyes, wide-

He spoke, quick and rushed, and it reminded Verona of leaping off of that bridge.  “I didn’t.  My name-”

The owner pulled, and his grip came free, lace strap tore, and the cage thunked hard against the ground as he was dropped.  Silencing him for a moment.  Then the owner was off, pushing through the crowd, which blocked Verona as she stepped forward.  Raquel gripped her arm, tight.

“Bill Her-!” the boy shouted.  The noise of the crowd and possibly some other interruption from the person carrying him cut him off.

“A ruse,” Raquel said.  “It’s bait on a hook, I think.  To pull us in.  It’s good you care, but don’t fall for it.”

“How would you know?” Verona asked.

“The voice.  It sounded too perfect.  The timing of the details he released.  A hint of a name, and you have to chase to get the rest?  I don’t think you’d find your way back.”

“I met someone who had a voice like that.  Perfect and weak at the same time.  It wasn’t a ruse for him.”

Raquel’s expression darkened at that.  Like she’d been sure, and now she wasn’t.

“I don’t think you’d find your way back,” Raquel repeated herself.

Verona nodded, but she felt unsure.

She tried to fix her strap, which had slid off her shoulder, but it had torn or stretched some, and slipped off her shoulder again.

“Your friends want you.”

She gave that road the boy had disappeared down a long look, then went to find her friends, Raquel following.

A woman sat in a booth with skin that looked like it had been painted like a fine plate, except it wasn’t paint.  Some books and papers were arranged in front of her, but they were for her, not any buyers.

“Here she is,” Lucy said.

Lucy, Estrella, Avery, and their partners were all gathered around.

“Keeping an eye out for America?” Avery whispered, leaning in close to Verona and glancing back.

Verona nodded.

“Hopefully we’re okay, between all of us,” Lucy said.

“Are the questions and answers both for all ears present?” the woman asked.

Avery and Verona exchanged a glance, while Lucy made a pained expression.

“Do you want to go for a short walk, Fernanda?” Raquel asked.

“I guess, is that okay?” Fernanda asked.

“Yes,” Estrella told them.

The others departed.

This still wasn’t super private, but…

Verona nodded.

“You want a decisive means of dealing with the High Summer and Dark Fall Courts?”

“Yes,” Estrella said.

Verona’s heart, already heavy, felt heavier.  In this claustrophobic space that reminded her of Brownies, of what had happened to Bristow… that boy, it felt worse.

She could hold herself together, and avoid betraying weakness, but there was a feeling nagging at her, like this was bad, and it was a bottomless sort of bad, that bothered her and ate at her.

And all that needed was something more, a push over the edge.

She looked for America in the crowd once again.

Absent.  And Jarvis, her partner, looked bewildered and alarmed.

Vanishing Points – 8.7

Avery

Going back a bit

“What do you think this place is?” Fernanda asked.

“What?” Avery asked.

“Making conversation.  What do you think this place is?”

“It’s… a fae market.  There’s lots of traps.  Lots of items, some presumably cursed.  I’ve been warned about this stuff a few times.  In books and by other Fae.”

“Yeah.  That’s one takeaway,” Fernanda said, browsing some finely decorated bookends and book holders.  Some of the statues stretched a bit or shifted position to give her a better look.

“What’s the other takeaway?” Avery asked.

“Maybe I’ll share my take later.  Are you buying anything?” Fernanda asked.  Fernanda was buying a lot.

“I’ve only got twenty bucks, and I was going to save it for the ride home. I’d rather have a decent thing to eat without making Zed pay for it than…” Avery leaned in closer to a little figurine carved out of wood.  It looked like a fetus, and it curled up tighter into its fetal position as she drew closer.

“If that was your one purchase, I’d wonder about you,” Fernanda said.  “Pregnancy charm.  You brew tea with it in the steeper ball or kettle.  If there’s an iota of a chance they could get pregnant, they will.”

“Huh,” Avery replied, leaning back and stepping back from that… whole table.  Not that there was an iota of a chance.

Fernanda went on, “In some circles, it’s the only kind of card you can play.  It’s more useful for putting someone you know into a compromising position than for drinking yourself, because the pregnancy comes on hard and heavy.  Depletes the body to make things happen.”

“We have a variety of materials, miss, some made of softer wood, to be gentler or subtler than others,” the seller said.  “Some…”

He didn’t finish that last sentence, but did touch a charm that looked like it was carved out of obsidian, edges sharp.  The fetus carving had three heads.

Avery was in the middle of trying to formulate an appropriately horrified response without offending the Fae seller when Fernanda turned on her.  “You’re really not buying anything?”

“I don’t know.  Maybe something will catch my eye?”

“Something for your familiar?  New clothes, maybe?” Fernanda asked, pairing the question with a bit of a tone and an up-down glance that carried about five layers of meaning, four of them negative.

Avery’s hand went to her shoulder, where Snowdrop was fast asleep, tired from being up most of the night with Cherry.  “I like my clothes, Fernanda.  We’re trying to get along, remember?  I think you’re getting sidetracked from that.”

“A lot of people dressed up.  Even your friend Verona.  And you’re wearing-”

“Still getting sidetracked there, Fern,” Avery said, laying a hand on her ‘Wild Side’ tank top.  She’d paired it with jeans and running shoes.

“Call me Fernanda, please,” Fernanda replied, arch.  “Mis-naming me is a surefire way to poison our interaction here.”

“And dissing my clothes isn’t?”  Avery asked.  She and Fernanda moved away from the table.  Ulysse and Eloise were violating Estrella’s rule about people not pairing up with those they knew, and were talking together, only really stopping students from going down the stairs at the end of the narrow bazaar or visiting one or two booths at the end, which they’d apparently decided were inappropriate or dangerous.

“Come, let’s shop more,” Fernanda said, taking Avery’s hand, and the way she took it was by bumping shoulders, her arm winding around Avery’s to make it impossible to do anything but walk shoulder to shoulder.

Verona wasn’t looking, was she?  This was just Fernanda being Fernanda, wasn’t it?

Fernanda leaned into Avery, confiding, “Just… do yourself a favor, and never wear a sports bra when you’re not actively playing sports.”

“That’s a bit creepy.”  Avery unwound her arm from Fernanda’s.

“It’s honest, and our instructions were not to get along or be nice, Avery.  They were to improve.  My experience in life has been that nice takes too long, and we meet too many people in this crazy world of ours.  The best approach we can safely manage is to part ways having both benefited for the meeting.”

“Being nice costs nothing and helps with that.”

“That’s… so like your top there, as sentiments go.”

“See, if you just came and hung out and were nice instead of… doing that, it’d be way easier, Fernanda, and it’d leave me in a better mood.”

“Moods come and go.  The last time I met someone who was properly nice to me and that simple smile or ‘how are you’ actually made my day?  I was a child, Avery.  Now I know it for the chore it is, I know it’s strategic and how nice a person is… social calculus.  And it does cost, to take the time, to put the energy into that.  The top, a simple ‘this is me’ identity stamped on it instead of conveying that same message from the design of the thing?  It’s childish.  Like a man’s suit, the closer you get to the top and the older you get, the more you come to appreciate the subtle tells.  I’m trying to catch you up.”

Avery shook her head.  She wasn’t sure how to react, so she didn’t react beyond that.  She had never interacted with another human just as… prickly was the wrong word.  Weird?  Off?  Anti-her, as Fernanda was?

“Just don’t do yourself a disservice,” Fernanda said, as if it were the last word and she’d won or something.

“It does me a service if I’m more comfortable this way.  Since when is this your business?  Or anyone’s?”

“Since far too long ago,” Fernanda said, affecting a fake aristocratic tone.  “That’s ladies’ fashion for you.  So much of it serves us up on a platter for the world to feast on.  Sorry.”

“Back in my homeschooling group, I was even more of a tomboy than I am now, and there was nothing about the way I dressed that deserved some of the creepiness I got from a couple of the dads and relatives of some of the kids I was with.  Said stuff I didn’t even understand until this year and I thought back on it.  People think they have the right to get up in our business even if they have no right to.”

“Boys and men.  I think we all deal with that.  But that’s fair.  What if I said it serves us up, but we can use it to give and to take away?”

“Still real creepy, Fernanda, and that thing I said about people getting up in our business when they have no right to?  I’ve told you this thing you’re doing isn’t great, creepy even, and you’re still doing it.  It’s not just boys and men.”

“Putting me in the same box as those homeschool dads of yours?”

“Close to.”

“Huh,” Fernanda said, looking like she was considering that.  Then she smiled a bit.  “Well, if there’s any food for thought in the mix, I hope it makes up for it.  I was going to buy you a top.  Can I still do that?”

Weird.  Avery couldn’t find mental footing, and the more time she was spending with Fernanda, the more she was coming to suspect that was Fernanda’s thing.  It recontextualized a lot of other stuff.

That, and that smile- was Fernanda enjoying this back and forth?

“We’ll see,” Avery said, wary.  She reminded herself that there was a whole market around them, with Faerie spying on them, and that America was still over there…

America was looking at Lucy, right now.  She was restless, but her partner seemed insistent that she stay close to him, and he wasn’t moving around a lot.

“You knew what the charms did,” Avery observed.  “You’ve been here before?”

“I’ve been, but it was to what Esty called the tourist traps.  Some of the same things, but five times the price.  My family dabbled in manipulation and politics, before Chase found his niche.  With that specialty, you have to know a little something about the Fae, get that glamour supply.”

A table of fruits and vegetables, breads, some in unusual combinations; bread with certain fruit in it, still fresh and whole despite being baked in, some fruits mingled with other fruits, ciders and juices that looked like potions more than anything else.  A woman who looked more human sat with two eerily well-behaved children.  One of the children was wiping down a glass bottle, working the cloth into the grooves.

Avery considered that her mental bar for child behavior was excited homeschool kids at group meets, Kerry, and Declan.

“Have a taste for free?” the woman asked.  “First sale is half off, if you’ll pledge to come back to me for more, should you decide to buy more.”

Fernanda steered Avery away from that table before she could respond.

“I’ll note I’m doing all of the work here, trying to improve things,” Fernanda said, as they passed by a table of small butterfly-winged fairies in glass bottles.  All dried, browned and withered except for the scintillating wings and details to hair and dress.  Avery frowned.

She was happier to move on to another table, where the materials were simpler.  Papers, all decorated at the edges.

“I don’t know what to say, Fernanda,” Avery admitted.  “You don’t want nice.”

“I do, I simply don’t believe in nice for niceness’s sake.”

“I guess… I know things are hard.  And I’m leaving, and I don’t think I’m coming back to this school.  Verona might try but if you want to tell me something or vent or anything like that… no need to act, pretend, or put on a mask, then I think I’m a pretty good choice.”

“Would you swear to keep my confidence?”

“Unless someone’s safety was at stake or I was at risk of being forsworn, somehow.”

Fernanda gave her an appraising look, like she might have been about to say something, then said, “No.”

“That’s okay.”

“What have we got?” Fernanda asked the nearest seller.  She tapped the table.  “What’s this?”

He pushed a cocoon in a bottle forward.  “Eat it, it’ll make you sick for exactly a day.  The worms will spin up phlegm and bad symptoms.  Rashes, cold sweats, bleary eyes.  Then they die.  You’ll be right as rain after.  If you don’t give them water.”

“Indigestion?” Fernanda asked.

“By default.”

“No indigestion.  I can’t bear it,” Fernanda said.

“A touch more expensive.”

“That’s fine.”

The seller tapped out some salts into his hand, uncorked the bottle, then deposited the salts and re-corked it, before giving it a shake.  They broke up into vapor that swirled within.

“Wait, I think we glossed over the warning.  What happens if you give them water?” Avery asked.  “What qualifies?”

Fernanda sighed, impatient.

“If you drink water then the worms will cocoon and multiply inside you and you’ll have ten times the symptoms of anything similar you might find on earth, with worms as long as you are crawling out of you.  You’ll have to avoid water for longer, as well, to be sure you’re rid of them.”

“Thank you,” Fernanda said, leaning forward, opening a little purse to dispense some glass beads.  She held her hand back before paying.  “Give me a twenty percent discount and I’ll keep shopping.”

“Done.”

She handed the beads, took the vial, and added it to her shopping.

“Gross,” Avery said.

“Trust me, Avery, there are days I’d rather be sick with fae worms in me than dealing with certain people.”  She tapped the table by some glass beads wrapped in what looked like black gossamer.  “Stolen beauty?”

“A keen eye, miss.  I know many practitioners of Fae arts like to use it to steer their children’s appearance.  Or their own.  You’re young, aren’t you?”

“I am,” Fernanda said.  To Avery, she said, “It’s a vanity thing.  It can give you a boost in a pinch, for an important event, but it’s most often used to make sure children grow up handsome and pretty.  I knew someone who had to have one with breakfast, one with dinner.  Her older brother didn’t turn out well.  It won’t change what you have for very long, but they say it influences what you get, drawing on what your genes provide.  Might be a placebo.  But it provides some peace of mind.”

“I think I’d have more peace of mind knowing I’m the real me.”

“Oh honey.  You’re naturally pretty, so of course you get to say that.”

Avery frowned.

“When buying stock like this, which has a limited shelf life, you should purchase it like you would fruit.  They push the old stock that’s close to expiry to the front, because that’s what we reach for first.  It’s a simple trick that’s as valid in the Faerie realms as it is in our world.”

Fernanda selected ten or so, then paid.

“Why is it called stolen beauty?”

“You have to get it from somewhere, don’t you?”

Avery felt acutely uncomfortable.

America was watching her, she realized.  And so were the children they’d seen earlier, who were walking up the edges of the rooftops, where brickwork jutted out and made stair-like ascents.

Fernanda, too, was looking at her, when Avery looked away from America.

“It’s a once a week thing, for me,” Fernanda said.  “For the next few months.  Do you want any?  It’s meant to make sure your nose grows straight and your face doesn’t get too long as you age.  Among other things.”

“I’m fine.”

“I also have lost voices,” the seller pitched.  “Knock back a draught and change your voice for someone else’s.”

He licked a finger and rubbed it on a bottle he kept closer to himself.  It made a murmuring sound in a deep man’s voice, words indistinct.

“How do they keep?” Fernanda asked.

“Keep the glass clean.  If it’s left dirty, they’ll start to die, they won’t last so long after a quaff.  Expect one good conversation out of them, as is.”

“Meaning if the glass is dirty, the voice will die at the tail end of the conversation?” Fernanda asked.

“Perhaps so.”

“Two men’s voices, two women’s.  I’ll leave it to you to select voices different from my own.”

“You’re sure buying a lot,” Avery noted.

“What do you have waiting for you when you return home?” Fernanda asked.

“An… awkward conversation, I imagine.  Some complicated practice stuff.  New people, a… crisis.”

“You should go in armed.  Select your tools, be prepared for circumstances.  When I go home, I expect to find my family in utter shambles.  We raised ourselves up with my older brother’s help and then we bet it all on the wrong horse.  Or Chase did, and I suppose I played my part in him going that way.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s reality.  I can’t control what my family does.  I can only… fake a phone call, to deflect and drop a tidbit of information that nudges them one way.  Or happen to be sick one day they want me to meet a man they’re thinking about marrying me off to.”

“That’s so horrible, that you have to.”

“Always have to have my guard up against that sort of thing.  Always a card in my back pocket, so to speak.”

“Lucy and I talk about always having our guard up, how exhausting it is.  Verona feels that exhaustion too, kind of, but that’s more dealing with a crummy dad all the time, you know?  But that’s different from… a door that your family just decides to close for you forever.  Love.”

“Mm hmm.  Your friend Lucy’s black, so I think there’s always that little worry for her.  The chance someone decides to come after her is just that much higher.  Getting killed or hurt closes a much bigger door.”

Huh.  Empathy?  Avery raised her eyebrows.

“And you?” Fernanda asked.  She walked over to a booth and leaned over. “Can I touch this?”

“If you pay,” a very narrow old man with horns told her, touching two fingers to the table.

Fernanda paid with a marble, then lifted up a top off a mannequin.  The mannequin shifted its weight, resettling into a more neutral posture.

It was sheer, shimmery, and a kind of halter style, tying up around the neck and draping forward while leaving the back completely open.  And Fernanda laid it across Avery’s front.

“Not really me.”

“Is it a you you could become?  Sir, do you have a looking mirror?”

The old fae with the horns pointed at a cloth draped over something.

“How much to look?”

He held up two fingers again.

“Is that an amount?” Avery asked, as Fernanda laid a marble down, then dragged her over.  “Two…?”

“It’s a size,” Fernanda said.  “Width of two fingers.  If the fingers face you that’s one denomination.  If it’s the back of the hand, fingernails facing you, that’s another, steeper denomination.”

“Interesting.  And the mirror?”

The old man pulled the cloth off the mirror.  It was framed by wood, and the reflection was vaguely tinted blue.  A bit foggy and scratched up.

Fernanda held the top up against Avery’s front, and the Avery in the mirror stood wearing the top, without Fernanda’s hand in the way.  Snowdrop was there too, but only the general outline.  The rest of her billowed smoke, pouring off, and her eyes glowed.

Avery gave Snowdrop a stroke, and Snowdrop stretched.  The reflection of her did much the same.

Fernanda held up the three stolen beauties, and as the focus shifted, she stood there, looking… a whole lot nicer.

“Pose,” Fernanda said, leaning in closer.  “And hold one.”

Avery’s instinct was to do something like stand on one leg, like when she stood on a telephone pole, but she played along, mimicking Fernanda, turning in close.  Holding the stolen beauty made it look like she was wearing some nice makeup in the reflection.

She was startled as the picture was taken, because mirror-Fernanda wasn’t holding anything.

She caught a glimpse of Verona and turned away.

“I’ll send you a copy,” Fernanda said, to Avery, before turning to the shopkeeper.  “Are there other settings?”

“I’m not rich.  There’s a backside.  Tilts forward.”

“Perfect,” Fernanda said, satisfied.  “Please.”

He tapped the table, and she paid.

“You’re putting a lot of money toward this when I’m not interested in the top.”

“It’s not about the top, Avery,” Fernanda said, exasperated.

The old man rotated the mirror, flipping it around in the wooden mount to show the other side.  The tint was purple, the background blurry and dark and they weren’t any of the three things.

No, they were older, by maybe ten years.  A twenty-three year old Avery wore the top, as well as a resized version of her regular jeans.  Tattoos decorated one arm, shoulder, and disappeared behind the fabric at her side.

“It’s a look forward, not the look forward,” Fernanda said.

Fernanda was pretty, but her clothes had changed, like the style she wore in the future shifted.  Showing off cleavage, her hair longer and styled.  Her expression harder.

Snowdrop stretched at her shoulder, claws touching but not scratching bare shoulder, and that made Avery put a hand up, ready to catch her if she fell, which she never did.  And it made her check the mirror.

Nothing.  No Snowdrop.

Avery and reflected Avery’s hand closed, then opened, reaching, hesitated.

When she stopped hesitating, she took Snowdrop, indicating for Fernanda to move the top away from her chest, then lifted Snowdrop around to the front, cradled in her arms.  The opossum stirred, and Avery hugged her close, kissing her between the eyes.  Snowdrop, eyes closed, tried for a lick in response but missed and hit only air.

It hadn’t hit home, until that… absence.

She felt so stupid, so irresponsible, not thinking about this more.  Thinking… what, that opossums were out in the wild so that simple internet search on lifespan might be skewed?

“I guess we’re not taking this,” Fernanda said, in a tone that bordered on disgusted.  She hung up the top.  It only made every single one of the feelings Avery was dealing with flare up, defensive, guarded, annoyed, protective.

Was that a facet of what Estrella had talked about?  The way the fae could subtly work in wedges between relationships?

Or was it…

“Snowdrop was missing.  Was that what Estrella talked about?” Avery whispered.  “Preying on weaknesses, and stuff?  Subtle tricks?”

“I don’t think they could do that with a familiar.”

“She’s a boon companion, not a familiar.  It’s not… formalized.”

“Well,” Fernanda said, “I guess you should get on that.”

Avery hadn’t been sure if she would take the demesne or the familiar, and she’d been leaning toward the demesne, because it worked on so many levels.  But if it was a question of saving Snowdrop, tying Snow’s lifespan to her own, then there really was no question.

“Guess so.  Frig,” Avery muttered.

“You seem to have taken away something from this shopping trip of ours.  Something good?”

“Something I needed.”

“Good.  Then I’m glad I spent the money.  I’m glad you three picked this place.  Good move,” Fernanda declared.

“Was it?  Estrella suggested it.”

“Almost everyone will be pleased at the chance to go shopping.  Most other courts would be hit or miss.  It’s good politics,” Fernanda said, with just as much confidence.  She put her hand at the crook of Avery’s elbow and swung her bag a bit with her other hand.  “I think you need to think more like a practitioner.”

“The way some practitioners think scares me.”

“Good.  You’re going into a crisis, lots of new Others, and your focus is on the food of the trip home?  Come now.”

“I- I wouldn’t even know what to buy.”

“What’s your style?  How does it fit with your friends?”

“Verona improvises, she’s really good at some parts of practice.  Finding answers.  Lucy’s got some of the combat stuff down, and showmanship stuff, she’s really good at that.  I’m… I like to think I’m good at exploring places.  Not so much here.”

“We’re all paired up and restricted to one place.  I bet if you had free rein you could navigate the Bright Fall well enough.”

“I’d like to think so.  Just… a lot of it doesn’t translate well to helping my friends out, sometimes.  I think I might be the worst straight-up practitioner of us.”

“What about your style, outside of practice?  If you were never practitioners?”

“We’d never have met.”

“Let’s say you had.”

“Then… I’m the nicest?  That might be mean to say, and it doesn’t really matter to you, does it?  You don’t think nice for nice’s sake matters, right?”

Fernanda smiled.

This was weird, being arm in arm with an objectively pretty girl, one who was touchy-feely, on what could be called a shopping date…

“Lucy’s…” Avery said, looking.  She found Lucy, talking to Kass and some of the boys.  “Mission-focused.  Tackles the issues.  Verona’s… she pulls back, waits.”

“Pulls back like you do?  Goes places?”

“That’s the practice and I… I don’t do that.  I’m not good at articulating this.”

“That’s okay.”

“I should probably be wary of telling you too much, right?  Thinking like a practitioner?”

“You’re leaving, right?  We might never cross paths again.  So it doesn’t matter, by your logic.”

“That’s cagey enough I feel like I’m being manipulated.  I’m not sure… what are you and me doing here?”

“Shopping.”

“And?”

“And I’m having fun.  You were playing sports with Corbin and the boys.  You were allegedly pretty good.”

“Allegedly?”

“I don’t know these things.  No interest.”

Avery made a small, exasperated sound.

“It’s winging a ball or a puck around with lots of rules and next to no relevance to everyday life.”

“It’s set me up okay for some of the practice stuff I like.”

“Fair.  But my sport is… hearts.  More relevant, I think.  Especially when you might get married off with just a few days warning, like my cousin did.”

“Ah.  Yeah, I mean, I can see that, but I feel like we’re dancing around… you know I’m into girls, right?”

“I did not.  I’m not, for the record.”

“Okay,” Avery said, a little confused, because this had felt a bit like a date.  Fernanda’s hand still rested on the crook of her elbow, as she carried Snowdrop.

“Are you into me?” Fernanda asked.

“No.”

“I’ve dropped my opinion of your taste.  Who are you into?”

“I liked… my old classmate, but you wouldn’t know her.  Clementine, a bit.  She showed up that other night.  Cute hair and she looked… huggable.  This is awkward.”

“Anyone here, in this crowd?  To give me a sense of things?  This does change the top I’d recommend.”

Avery looked.  Fernanda was so aggressively back-and-forth, playing this game that Avery really didn’t, that she felt like she hadn’t focused nearly enough on her surroundings.  She looked and scanned the crowd, reminding herself of where her friends and America were.

Her eyes fell on a tall woman, tattooed, with clothes draped down from a single piece of metal that had a hole for the head and draped across the shoulders.  A bit muscular.  She had a little boy with her.  A son?

Fernanda leaned her head over, to match her gaze roughly to Avery’s.  “Huh.”

“I dunno.”

“I forfeit, don’t know what to say.  Follow your heart.”

“My heart’s going nowhere good anytime soon.  I have it on… shady authority that there’s no girls for me back home.  Or there wasn’t.”

“Are you into boys?  You didn’t specify.”

“Pretty sure no.”

“Does Ulysse do anything for you?”

Avery craned her head around, looking.  Ulysse was objectively nice to look at, sure, but… “Nah.”

“Safe to say you’re not into boys then.”

“Is he enchanted or something?”

“He’s not.  He’s a fine specimen of boy-ness, that’s all.  So there’s nobody for you at home, you like running away to explore places.  What if you didn’t go home?”

“And went where?  Stayed at the Blue Heron?”

“Go wherever.”

“I’ve got family.  Family I love, and responsibilities.”

“Okay.  I’m only asking, I do know about family and responsibility, believe me.  So that leaves us to wind our way back through the conversation…”

“I can’t really remember what we were talking about before.”

“Another skill for the practiced practitioner to know.  It helps to keep tabs on these things.  We were talking about your style and how you approach the world.  I’m getting a feel for what you want, and what you don’t want.  Can you articulate what you were saying now?  The difference between you and Verona?”

“I… touch ground.  If we’re all going in our separate directions then I guess Verona’s trying to reach the clouds.  I’m going on trips, but I come back in the end.  Hopefully, anyway.”

“Departures and arrivals?” Fernanda asked.

“Sure.”

“Come on,” Fernanda said, pulling on Avery’s arm.  “Grace, important to you or no?”

“Not really.  Nice sometimes.”

They reached a stall where a number of Fae were examining boots and shoes in a variety of styles.

“Dancing shoes, they keep you dancing for the full duration of the song, whether you want to or not.  Running shoes, same idea, they take you to the destination,” Fernanda said.  “Don’t dance with a song without end and don’t pick a destination your body can’t manage.”

“Why would you want that?”

“A lot of practitioners will buy them.  It’s not to ensnare others,” Fernanda said.  “Sometimes your family sets you a task and you have no other choice but to follow through.  If Nicolette was assigned a task by Alexander and she had to be there by noon the next day, it can make sense to have the shoes.  If her car crashes she can say the word and ensure she gets there.  She might pass out or damage her feet but she’ll be there.”

The mention of Nicolette was something of an escape.  “You get along with Nicolette.”

“I do.”

Nothing given.

“Keys,” Fernanda said, as they reached a booth with a number of keys.  Script in a loopy writing Avery couldn’t read was penned out on papers beside each key, which was spaced a set distance from the others.

“Fernanda, you’re focusing a lot on me, but I’m not that interested in buying some magic item that’s a perfect fit for me.”

“I am,” Fernanda said, firmly.  “So shush.”

“Okay, not objecting, if that’s what you want to do, but why are you being nice to me?”

“Why is it so important that one hockey team scores the most points?”

“Goals, not points, and… it isn’t, I guess.”

“But people pray, hands to the sky, full-hearted with faith, that their team wins.  Right?”

“Yeah.  You’re right.”

“This is my game, and this is how I win, I win people over, or I destroy them, and I’m tired of destruction right now,” Fernanda said, before addressing the key salesman.  “English?”

He shook his head.

“Anyone translate?  I’ll pay?” she offered.

Nobody bit.

“Silas!” Fernanda called out.  Avery winced, as did one or two Fae.

It was that leap, that sudden swing from one tone and manner of address to another, abrasive one that threw Avery a bit.

And Fernanda was smiling.

Silas walked over, arms folded.  “Avery, your friend Lucy and Estrella are negotiating prices about questions you wanted to ask.”

“Oh, do they need me right now?”

“Don’t you dare,” Fernanda said.  “I want you to buy something.”

“Not just yet.  What did you want?”

“Can you translate?” Fernanda asked.

“Which ones are you interested in?”

“All of them.”

He made a face, but he pointed.  “Opens any door to open flame.”

“To… you just put it in a keyhole, turn, and you get a furnace on the other side?” Avery asked.

“That’s what it reads as.”

Avery could picture opening a door as something charged at her, and letting it charge through.  Which would be a pretty extreme way of doing things, and reminded her of Bristow walking into the kitchen.

Ugh.

“Plug this one into an animal, and through a combination of left and right turns, designate what beast it should unlock into.”

Verona might like that one.  “Does it work on humans?”

“No.  This one sets a trap.  Spring-loaded spikes, flame, darts.  Doesn’t work on doors, only other things with keys.”

“We’re looking for departures and arrivals.  Ways to get places.”

“Or get home,” Avery said.

A faerie bought a key from a pile of similar-looking ones.  All bone white, with the head of the key a white flower inset into a ring, the teeth twisted.  Silas indicated those.  “Escape keys.”

“What are those?”

“To find the way home.  Or get home, depending.  If you’re stuck somewhere, they’re a way back.  Looks like he sells locks you can carry with you and mechanically install, so you have somewhere to stick these keys.  If the way home is easy it opens a door and you can step through.  You’ll be back.  If not, it breaks the door or wall or whatever, and you use the way the pieces land or point to find the best direction to take.”

“That’s actually pretty great,” Avery said.

“Hot ticket item, it seems,” Fernanda said.

It was true, two had been sold in the time they were standing there.

“How much?” Avery asked.

Silas switched to another language, that rolled off his tongue.  The seller replied.

“How much do you have?”

Avery held up the twenty.

“You’d need three times that.”

“For a key that’s selling that fast?”

“It’s high in demand,” Fernanda answered.  “Let me.”

“I don’t want to owe you-”

“You don’t and you won’t.  Thank you, Silas.”

“I can moneychange.”

“I… here,” Fernanda said, plucking the twenty from Avery’s hand, then handing over two more.  “There.”

Silas provided Fernanda the money, and she bought the key, handing it over.

“Why are you being nice to me?” Avery asked.  “And don’t tell me it’s a game.  You’re spending money, you wanted to buy me a top.  That’s not… you don’t know me, it doesn’t matter if I’m going to be gone.”

“Then it doesn’t matter.  I’ve got my family’s money to spend and I might not when this summer is over.  I want to have good things to take away from this summer.  That aren’t Alexander dying and my family being ruined.”

“And… you were friends with Laila.”

Fernanda looked aside, searching the crowd with her eyes, and almost absently said, “Don’t spoil this.”

“I’m not wanting to spoil it, but I was there and if you wanted to talk about it…”

“I don’t.  I really don’t.  You don’t have to reciprocate, you do realize that?  You don’t have to get involved.  Trying might get you hurt someday.  You got into the thing with the school and the fight between headmasters and you didn’t have to.”

“Our hands were forced some.”

“They were, probably, I did hear Verona shouting at Raymond about that.  But… start looking for other ways.  You don’t have to save me or help me.”

“It’d be nice if there was a way to.”

“Nice for niceness’s sake is meaningless, remember?  You can’t.  You’re not all powerful, you’re not even that important.  Do your thing, enjoy what parts of life you can.  I kinda hope that tough conversation that’s waiting for you goes okay.  I kinda hope that crisis goes okay.  I don’t care that much but it’d be good if the world sucked a little less.”

Avery floundered a bit.

“Say okay.”

“Okay.  Yeah, I just… it was cool, hanging out.”

“Naturally.  I’m good at this.”

“And getting the tour, seeing this through your eyes.  Getting a few wake up calls or some food for thought,” Avery said, stroking Snowdrop.  “You’d be a good teacher or counselor one day, I bet.”

“I’m not sure about that, but thanks for saying so.  Your friend Lucy’s waving you over.”

Avery nodded, pocketing the key.  The teeth of the old fashioned key had a way of snagging on the fabric inside her jeans.

Lucy, Tymon, Silas, and Estrella were standing by a booth.  Estrella was talking with one of the Host brothers about something they were buying, apparently.

“How are you getting by?” Lucy asked.

“Spent my snack money for the ride home, but I got a key that might save my ass in a pinch.”

“I’ll lend you money if you need it.”

“Mayb- sure.  Where’s Verona?”

“Shopping with Raquel.  Get everything you wanted, Fernanda?  That’s a full bag.”

“I’m not even halfway done.  I’m leaving nothing to chance.”

Avery kind of appreciated, on a level, that the shopping trip had paused.  Fernanda was intense and demanded focus, and the shopping was dangerous on a level, and she’d had little time to appreciate the scenery.  The people.

The kids from the street where they’d arrived were up on the rooftops.  They’d been tracked here and it felt… it felt like being stalked because they were being stalked. The distinction was that she had no idea if the stalking was something dangerous or if it was benign.  Were Fae just interested in them because they were human, strangers in a strange place?

The people shopping barely seemed to care.  If anything, it felt a bit like they were in the way.  Which was weird, when so many Fae were so overt, cunning with words.  How different would this be in the tourist trap areas?

The large muscled woman with the little boy had lifted the boy up to one shoulder, where he sat with room to spare, which was really cool.  He was carrying the shopping.  Rolls of cloth.  Maybe she was making another outfit like the one she was wearing.

One old and stooped merchant packed up his booth, folding up a cloth in a way that seemed to not care about all the portraits and pictures that were beneath.  It folded into a one-foot by one-foot square, with what Avery suspected was about a hundred pounds of stuff inside.  Someone else began setting up in the same booth as he departed, carrying his stool in one hand and the cloth in another.

“Can’t make heads or tails of this,” Tymon said.  “Feels like you have to ask about every item, but they almost get annoyed if you try.”

“You pick up an idea of it,” Fernanda replied.  “Living charms tie into life.  Fruit that looks artificial, with grapes that look like jewels?  Appearance-focused, or status.  Ephemeral baubles for ephemeral effects.  A solid, inflexible key for solid, inflexible effect.  Structure.”

“Fernanda’s actually really good at this,” Avery said.  “Some past experience, though.”

“Some.  One visit.”

“That was something Laila was good at,” Tymon said.

Avery made a small gesture.  Tymon didn’t elaborate.

Fernanda didn’t react.

Avery glanced at the woman in the booth, with blackboard-black skin marked with fine gold curls, waves, and decoration like expensive china.  The clothes she wore weren’t anything too fancy.

Verona hurried over, trying to fix a strap that was falling off her shoulder.  Raquel followed at a more leisurely pace.

“Here she is,” Lucy said.

Verona looked a bit out of sorts.  Was that because of the America situation?

America was looking impatient, and frankly looked a bit bored.

It would be weird if Verona was more alert for that stuff than Avery, for once.  Which made Avery feel guilty.

She leaned in closer, whispering, “Keeping an eye out for America?”

Verona nodded.

“Hopefully we’re okay, between all of us,” Lucy commented, despite not being close enough to hear the whisper normally.  She glanced at the booth, then Estrella.  Avery did the same.

The woman at the booth took that as her cue.  “Are the questions and answers both for all ears present?”

Verona looked at Avery, while Lucy frowned.

“Do you want to go for a short walk, Fernanda?” Raquel asked.

“I guess, is that okay?” Fernanda asked.

“Yes,” Estrella told them.

Tymon stood up, stretching a bit, and walked over another two booths.  Silas followed after him, as if keeping within a couple of strides.

“You want a decisive means of dealing with the High Summer and Dark Fall Courts?”

“Yes,” Estrella said.

Their reasons for coming here had been layered.  On the one level, like Fernanda had said, it was politics.

On another level, it was strategy.  High Fall sold answers.  Remedies for afflictions, ways out, ways in, ways to be pretty.  They needed answers.  Among those answers, they needed some stuff on Maricica, and who better to reflect on Dark Fall than Bright Fall?  High Summer was simpler, but if there were ways to deal with a Guilherme betrayal, or a way to change up Guilherme’s situation, maybe that was for sale here?

Like with the key and a possible escape from the paths, even a hint in the right direction could be vital.

“Estrella,” Verona said.  “Jarvis looks confused.  I think America ran off.”

Estrella turned, looking.

“And just saying, she kinda sorta might be wanting to start some crap with us,” Avery said.

“I knew that much.”

“I told her,” Lucy added.

“I knew before.  America is many things but she’s not subtle.  Silas?  Fan out, notify the other apprentices.  Students should gather at the… where was America last?  With Jarvis?  Opposite corner then, southeast.  Close to here.  Send Jarvis to me.  You three, stay here for a moment.  Tell students they can shop for small items, but nothing more, until Silas or myself are back.”

“Can we ask our questions?” Lucy asked.

“It’s why you’re here, might as well.”

Lucy took the money she’d pooled from each of them.  Minus the fast food they’d grabbed and money Avery’s parents had sent her, it was seventy five bucks in total.  Lucy handed it to the woman at the booth.

“Ask your three questions,” the woman at the booth said, as she put the money on a shelf beneath the table.  “For each, you get one answer you want, and one you didn’t expect.”

“Nine gifts from a dark fall Faerie, outlined here,” Lucy said, handing over a paper.  “Three traps among them.”

“The challenge?  Clarify.”

“In a set and strict contest, we have the right to challenge the result.  Depending, the opposition may have to prove that it’s doable.”

“And the disguise glamour?” the woman asked.

“We thought that might be one of the traps,” Avery said.  “I was shown how to dress myself up to be a boy.”

Off to the side, Zed and Sol hurried over, guiding students.  He urged them back, but Verona walked over to whisper to him, and he remained where he was, a distance away, ushering students.  Brie guided others, as did Eloise and Ulysse.

“I can tell you where the traps likely lie, but I don’t think you’ll be satisfied with the answer.”

“Tell us,” Lucy said.  “We have suspicions about two, from past incidents.”

“The nettlewisp and the animal form.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “The nettlewisp can get stuck if it’s not triggered, so long as it’s attached to us.”

“More than that.  If left too long on something unattended, it can seize the item for itself, making it impossible to retrieve.”

“And the cat form,” Verona said.  “I’ve had a bunch of Faerie force me back into it.”

“What occurs with repetition can become expectation.  You make it easier to do to you every time you do it yourself.”

“There should be a third trap,” Avery said, careful to avoid asking a question.

The woman reached out, and Avery extended her hand.  She glanced back, nervous both because something from America might be happening now and the woman might be up to something.

The woman held a single charm from the charm bracelet between her fingers.

“The like-to-like charm,” Avery murmured.

“You give up a bit of claim to the person who gave you the glamour, every time you make the change.  They could take these items from you in a critical moment.”

“Really good to know,” Lucy said.

“And it won’t matter.”

Lucy frowned.

“It won’t matter much that you know.  Seeds are set and you can answer each of these traps, and it won’t matter.  That’s the unexpected answer.  If a twenty-five dollar answer were all it took to beat her, then she would have chosen a more effective path.”

“How did you know it was a she?” Lucy asked, suspicious.

“Because I know things,” the woman said.  “I earn my keep doing this, inferring and deciphering.  What are your other questions?  How to beat the High Summer faerie if he becomes your enemy?  How to beat this young Dark Fall fae if she becomes your foe?”

The students were chattering, a distance away.  Not in earshot, but close, and some had filtered away from the main huddle, to continue shopping or to talk to the apprentices who were keeping them corralled.

“Something like that,” Avery told the woman.

“Those answers will be even less helpful.  Focus on the one, the traps, or think of another thing to ask about.”

“Like?” Verona asked, just as agitated as Avery.  She had her back to the woman, and was watching the surroundings.

“Do you want to make that your question?”

“Would it be smart to?” Verona asked.

“Only if you’re inflexible of mind and short of imagination.  You could come up with better yourselves.”

A number of the Faerie seemed bothered by the students being grouped up and blocking the way, and were talking to Eloise and Ulysse in a heated tone.  Or Eloise and Ulysse were talking to the Faerie, upset about what had happened to the goblin princess.

“What are we not getting about the traps?” Avery asked.

“That she has her traps for you, in the midst.  Three simple traps that she may use to foil or distract you.  Inconveniences.  A nettlewisp you can’t put away, a like-to-like charm that might cost you ownership, temporary or permanent, and an animal form that makes your own shape harder to hold onto when you’re dusted in glamour or cat hair.  But there are traps there that are from you, for yourselves.”

“Telling me I’ll be alone?” Avery asked.

“No.  Unkind in the moment, but it’s given as a gift, I believe.  One that may serve her as much as it serves you.  She’s set your trajectories by handing you tools.  Telling you that you may easily become Other and that you were chosen for that reason.  Giving you a way of putting your mark on an argument and making it yours, when it’s rare you would want the argument and its consequences.  Giving you another face to wear, so you’re left more certain that you want your own individuality, your own Self.”

She met Avery’s eyes as she said that last bit.

“Is that a trap?” Avery asked.  “They’re traps in another way?”

“Only if you let them be.  Knives put into children’s hands, knowing they may either put them to use or, more likely, do themselves or others harm.  This isn’t the answer to your question.  It is good backing for that answer.”

“Backing?” Verona asked.

“She’s young, as Fae tend to be.  She hasn’t yet learned patience.  You may be among her first targets, as these things go, and as a result, she’s-”

“Blown her wad?” Verona asked.

“-Played her full hand, when one card would do.  This is the critical takeaway from the traps, and the many gifts.  That the fae you’re dealing with has little experience with humankind.”

“She was born in Dark Fall.  That’s apparently rare,” Avery said.

“It is.  I would imagine she has toyed with humans before but she’s never had a proper target fall into her hands.”

“Except maybe Charles,” Lucy mused.

“Charles is such an easy target it’s like shooting dead fish in a barrel full of bullets,” Verona said.

“You’re such a poet sometimes,” Lucy said, dry.

“She may still be learning how humans move and react.  It’s experimentation more than manipulation.  Observation more than infiltration.  You may find it easier to slip her interference so long as you stay close to humans.”

“Ugh,” Verona said.

“Daniel,” Lucy said.  “He hurt her.  Caught her off guard.”

Because he was human?

“That’s your standard answer.  The answer you won’t expect is that I can infer who she is.  There are ways to find out the totality of her past.”

“What do we make our third question?” Verona asked.  “How to get those answers?”

“We might want to make it fast,” Lucy said.  “I think our classmates are restless.”

“I told Zed Estrella gave us the a-ok for this,” Verona clarified.

“I don’t want to push it too far, and I feel like we’re sticking out as easy targets, so long as we’re standing over here and the rest of our classmates are over there.”

“We should ask about Guilherme,” Avery said.

“The High Summer Fae is falling to Winter,” Lucy told the faerie woman behind the table.  “Is there a way to stop it?”

“Killing him.”

“Besides that,” Lucy told her.

“Decline is inevitable.”

“Can we delay it?  If it’s motivating some awful behavior-”

The faerie woman was already shaking her head.

Avery thought of Snowdrop again.  Gone from her shoulder.  She stroked her pet.

“If he’s as close as I infer, then no.  The delays won’t be meaningful.  What is meaningful is how things sit toward the end.  The roads available to him are narrowing down to one.  If you know what stories remain to him, then be mindful of where he is and what he does as the last story ends.  That may be him forevermore.  That should be the expected sort of answer to the question.”

As the Carmine Beast thing resolves? Avery wondered.

“What about the unexpected?” Verona asked.

“Unexpected?  He will remain himself much as you know him now.  And it will be harder than you expect to deal with.”

“That’s not great,” Lucy said.

“No.  A fall to winter rarely is.  You should go to your classmates.”

“You were more upfront with us than a lot of Fae we’ve dealt with,” Lucy noted.

“Many here are.  Your teacher chose this location for a reason.”

Sensing that things were winding down, Zed waved them over.

“This place is weird,” Avery said.

“I saw a little kid in a cage and I have no idea how to digest that,” Verona said.  “For all I know he was the real master, it was all an act, and if I’d done something about it then I’d be in deep trouble.”

“You got what you came for?” Zed asked, as they joined the group.

“Yeah.”

“We’re going down the road a little bit, to be a little less in the way.  Other than that, we’re staying put like Estrella told us to.”

“I asked some questions at that booth,” Corbin said.  “I’m not sure I got my money’s worth.”

“She seemed okay,” Lucy said.  “Felt like it was on the money, and Estrella backed her.”

“Yeah, well, we’re currently waiting for Estrella to find a lost or runaway student, and if a student who got put in charge loses a student right after the whole thing with Bristow and Belanger, then I think some parents are going to lose their shit,” Corbin said.

“Enough,” Zed warned.  “Let’s not stir things up.”

It was interesting, Avery saw, that as they huddled, the student body didn’t feel as divided as before.  When teams had been picked everyone was in their own sub-group, still divided into the Bristow and Belanger halves, and stuff was tense and kind of awful, still.

And now they were all together, all a bit stressed, but they were stressed together.  No sides, really.  Or far less.

Had Estrella done that on purpose?  Probably.  Had the easy companionship she’d found with Fernanda toward the latter half of their whole discussion and shopping binge been intended?  Less probably.

Still interesting.

“Where’s Liberty?” Lucy asked.

“Went with Estrella.  She knows her sister and where her sister would go,” Ulysse said.

Some Fae were giving them a wide berth, now.  A family where the children didn’t match the parents in any way, a woman that looked like she was made of gnarled wood.

Snowdrop started climbing down her arm, and Avery lifted her down.  Snowdrop became human.

“Awake?”

“It’s boring right now,” Snowdrop said, looking around.

Avery put a hand on Snowdrop’s hair, smoothing it a bit where it stuck up.  Need to figure out what to do with you.

And what to do with Guilherme.  And everything else.

Rain began to fall in fat droplets.  Each seemed to strike a surface with the intention of making specific noise.  The lightest taps of drumsticks on stones and leaves.

“Rain doesn’t fall in a place like this unless someone wants it to,” Eloise said.

“What does that mean?” Zed asked, as the rain steadily increased.

“It might mean someone’s set a fire or created a mess and the rain is intended to put the fire out or wash away the mess.”

Droplets on warm stones made the faintest mist, little bits of water refusing to settle or go back down.  A haze covered the ground.

Shoppers continued shopping with little care.  Kids jumped in the growing puddles.  Some students pulled out raincoats.

Avery almost did; she had a waterproof jacket with a hood that could be clipped on in her bag.  She held off, saw Fernanda huddled over, looking uncomfortable, and handed her the jacket instead.  Fernanda didn’t say no.

“Wow,” Verona said, under her breath.  “Smooth.”

Avery moved to backhand Verona as lightly as possible in the cheek, but Verona turned her head at the same time and Avery whapped her in the mouth instead.

“Wow,” Verona muttered.  “Also ow.”

“Be good,” Lucy told them, before lightly whapping Avery in the mouth.  It didn’t hurt, but the reciprocation made Verona smirk.

“Always,” Snowdrop assured Lucy.

The rain came down heavy, and it caught oily, rainbow hues from residue -glamour residue- on stones.  It gave new life and light to murals, and cast other details in fog that lingered at waist level.

Water soaked Avery, head to toe.  It was refreshingly cool, and she pushed hair out of her face.  Snowdrop flipped up her raincoat hood but left her coat unzipped.

“Over here!” Jarvis called out.

Liberty, soaking wet.

“What’s going on?” Amine asked.

“America slipped away to open some goblin holes,” Liberty said.  “Trying to raise an army here to stir up some trouble, create distractions.”

“And?”

“And the locals were pretty on top of it, they’re keeping the goblins in.  But America slipped away and Estrella can’t find her.  Fae aren’t good at blocking the holes or getting rid of them, so I helped for a few minutes.  I might have to stay.  America will be upset I helped.”

“It’s good you did,” Zed told her.  “What is she thinking?”

“She’s mad and she doesn’t know how to deal with it.”

“Estrella doesn’t need you to keep plugging up holes?” Zed asked.

“She says Silas should take us back to the spot we came in.  The way through is thinner there.  I can escort and deal with goblins.  Then I’ll go back and keep helping.”

“She being Estrella?” Silas asked.

“She- yes.”

“She wasn’t forced?  No knife to her throat?”

“Easy does it, Silas,” Zed said.

“She wasn’t,” Liberty said.  “I tell you this in good faith.  I’m hoping if I cooperate, I can tell you guys to go easy on her and you’ll listen.”

“Liberty was cool with us earlier,” Avery said.  “I mean, I could do without not nearly falling off the bridge, scraping myself up, but… she could have been way less cool.”

“Let’s go,” Silas said.

The distinction between the Faerie who were here and couldn’t spare them a second thought or glance and the Faerie who were watching was much more stark now.  Figures off by the wayside had to stand close enough to peer through the rain, while others came, went, and bought things.  Materials, food, trinkets, cloth.

They backtracked, and the scenery had all changed.  The river, droplets hitting droplets and creating many times the mist, all fog.  People by the banks were moving up to the slope to set up shop on higher ground.  It pressed crowds in closer, and those crowds didn’t seem to care in the least about getting wet.  They didn’t shrink in size, maybe.  Or they did shrink but they didn’t appear to because they walked closer together and the areas off to the side were foggier.

Here and there, light stabbed down through the tree branches that were perpetually overhead, through cave roof, and it was bright enough to light up the fog, and to reflect the hues of the leaves beneath.  So it was rarely a pure white or pure grey.

Goblins jeered in the distance.

“Estrella is going to be upset.  We have contacts here,” Silas said.

“It might mean another, longer-lasting expulsion for America, again,” Zed added.

They trekked through puddles and mist, dodged the faerie who ran this way or that.  Here and there, the masked children could be seen, observing.

Something came straight for Avery, fast, fierce, and with no sign of slowing down.

She held onto Snowdrop, touched the black rope that was coiled in her pocket, and threw herself into mist, turning her head.

She’d spotted a roof and she placed herself and Snowdrop there.

Below, a faerie cut through the crowd of kids like they weren’t there, charging forward, too big and too hurried to really slow down for them.

“Avery!” Lucy called out.

“Here!  Got spooked!” she called down, waving so Lucy could better see her.

Verona pointed, and Avery turned, expecting to see America.

It was the girl with the black fur, now wet.

“You wear a mask,” the girl said, reaching out.

Avery took a step back, bringing her to the very edge of where the roof’s peak stopped and the descent to the ground began.  Snowdrop crouched in front of her, low to the ground, water streaming off her raincoat.

The masked girl’s hand touched air, and the image of the deer mask traced its way through the mist, as if it were pushed aside.

“Are you important?” Avery asked the girl.

“Aren’t we all?”

“I mean… do you have a role?”

“Don’t we all have many?”

“It just feels like… judges.  Or like you could have the appearance of children while being rulers here.”

“Where do you think we are, that we would have rulers?”

“The… Bright Fall court?  Am I wrong?”

“You’re right,” the girl with the mask told her.  “But you’re paying attention to the wrong things.”

That felt like a warning.  America imminent.  Avery glanced around.

Other children were gathering.  The girl with eyes like gold, flat and wedged in raw eye sockets, beneath a bird mask.  The boy who was so light the wind could lift him a little ways off the ground.  A girl with a pretty dress and a mask with an upside-down face with tears streaming from eye sockets to eyebrow to the top of the upside-down head.  All soaking wet.

“I’m sorry for the trouble.”

“Trouble rolls downhill to reach us.  You know a little something about that.”

“Yeah.  Kind of.”

The girl with the curly hair and curled toes stepped forward.  “Do you want to stay?  We can fix up your mask, make you pretty.  Friends, tasty food, and young love that never stops being young or lovely.”

“I was just telling- telling a friend, I love to go places but I don’t think I’ll ever intend to stay in those places.”

“Then it’s time to head down.  She’s waiting.”

Avery turned, looking.

Fernanda, wearing her coat, and Verona, and Lucy.

They were waiting, yeah.  They couldn’t go if that meant leaving her behind.

“Snow,” she said, taking hold of Snowdrop.

Then she hopped down from the roof, clapping shoes together twice.

Wind stirred, fog spread, and they landed on the footpath below.

Hands seized her, as if to steady her, and she was reminded of the Forest Ribbon Trail.  Meeting Snowdrop.

Then those same hands pulled her down, sideways, and off balance.

Into darkness and into muck.  Goblins chittered and chattered.

She’s waiting.

It’s time to head down.

There was only a sound of Lucy shouting, and a burbling of mud.

She slid on her belly and it felt a bit like sliding down a water slide with razor blades set in it.  She stopped sliding down the narrow tunnel and immediately curled up, knees to chest, rolling a bit.

Snowdrop, muddy, clambered over her, taking up a stance to protect her, a dinner knife in hand.

“The thing about Faerie is it’s all so fragile, it’s all so fake.  Pretty and little else,” America said, in the gloom.  The mud sucked at her boots, but didn’t really slow her down.

“The thing about me,” Avery grunted.  “Is I’m probably the wrong person to drag into this situation.”

She found her footing, muddy hand against mud-slick belly, which stung from the various cuts that had been bandaged before her downward slide had peeled it off.  It stung more than mud should, like lemon juice had been rubbed on it.

The Tightrope of Lights path had given her a minor boon of balance.  It had blessed Lucy and Verona with the same, but less, both because they weren’t Finders and because she’d done the ritual and led the way.  There were ways to do that ritual and take away trinkets and boons but they’d mostly just wanted a way home after a long night, stopping Clementine and Daniel and Sharon.

Balance helped in this mud.

The Zoomtown path had bestowed the ability to navigate a crowded way forward.

There were goblins in this tunnel, between her and America.

She had Snowdrop, and she had the black rope, which were both from the Forest Ribbon Trail, though the black rope was from Miss.

Her spell cards were wet, but she had her charm bracelet.  She pulled the Ugly Stick free.

“I’ll probably get expelled for this, but I’m having trouble seeing the point of staying.”

“Liberty?” Avery asked.

“Liberty will stick by me.”

“That’s not…” Avery started.  She glanced down at Snowdrop, who was crouched in front of her, knife in hand.  “…Not something to take for granted.”

“You know what is something to take for granted?  My boot up your ass.  Because there’s a heck of a lot of things worse than the boot I could use.”

Goblins chattered and sniggered.

“Aren’t you tired?” Avery asked.  “I’m tired.  This is all so… so stressful.  The fighting-”

“I didn’t get to fight!” America shouted back.  Her voice didn’t ring off the wet mud walls, nor the ceiling that was so sloppy with mud it felt like it could cave in at any point.  “They- you took that power from me!  You took the right to have a say!”

Avery’s eyes adjusted to the gloom.  Her Sight helped her to see America, and see the goblins.  She could see charms on a chain that was wound around America’s arm.  Spiky and vicious.  Ready to use.  The staff she held, with giant rail-spikes driven through the shell at the top.

She was out-armed.

“You’re doing this because you think you missed out?”

“My dad doesn’t get me.  He loves me but he doesn’t get me, so he goes and gets sent to jail sometimes and crap, and he’ll ask how I’m doing and if I need anything, but he won’t… he doesn’t care.”

“That has nothing to do with me.”

“But it does, don’t you see?  Teachers either hate me or want to mess with me or both.  Classmates are scared of me or hot for me or both.  If we’d just returned everything to normal then that’d be great but you guys scared Alexander off and I didn’t get a say!  The whole point of this, of these guys, of my whole way of life…”

She smacked the staff into the muddy wall.  It sucked as it came free.

“…is I get a say.  One way or the other.  A bit of anarchy, I can say fuck the system, unless the system earns better.  And Alexander was nice to me and Uncle Toadswallow was… life defining for me and you scared away one and you stole the other and I guess I’m making sure I have my say now.  And I say eat shitty mud.  You guys, see if you can make her eat shitty mud.”

The goblins didn’t move until she prodded one with the end of her staff.  It started forward, hard to see in the gloom, except for the glow of its eyes in certain light.

Snowdrop collided with it, tackling it into muck.  But others were coming.

And America was holding the head of the staff close to her mouth, whispering to it.  Big slimy spell incoming, if yesterday was any clue.

She couldn’t let Snow be the bodyguard here.  She had to meet the problem.

Making her shoes tap was hard in mud that buried her up to the shoetops, but she stepped back, found something solid, and kicked twice, hard enough to punch shoe through mud.  Activating the diagrams on her spare running shoes.

She leaped.  Over Snowdrop and over incoming goblins.

America aimed for where she landed.  She landed in a skid, a goblin coming right for her, blithely unaware or uncaring about the incoming slime spell from America’s staff, and Avery lifted up her leg, kicking it twice.

Activating her shoe again.  The third kick let her throw herself against the curved side of the tunnel.

Sliding up it, where she banked off it, into the air, suspended for a moment.

Her Sight was a good clue of where her enemies were turning.  She was right over America, who swung the staff blindly her way, but-

She could use the black rope, while they couldn’t see her clearly, between gloom and her unexpected movement.

She landed on hands and knees in the mud behind America.  The girl was taller than Avery by a head and a half, and that mattered very little after Avery knocked her legs out from under her.  Avery pushed the staff aside, submerging it in mud.  In the process, something jagged and rigid dragged against her arm.

“You’re ruining things for classmates!” Avery shouted.

“Fuck my classmates!”

“And Liberty!”

“Liberty can deal!”

“Don’t do that!” Avery raised her voice.

Goblins clawed at her, dragging her back.

She kicked, once, twi- almost twice.  A strong hand seized her ankle.

“You’re causing the Bright Fall Fae grief!”

“Fuck the Faerie most of all!” America crowed, her hand finding Avery’s neck and shoving Avery off her and into the wall.  She settled with the staff beneath her, points jabbing the back of her shoulder.  Goblins seized Avery’s wrist before she could prop herself up.

“No, that’s a cute goblin joke but-”

Goblins crowded Avery’s head.  For a moment, heart-pounding, she was certain she was going to get drowned in mud, her head forced under.

You own the arguments you claim.  You own the consequences.  Hadn’t it been something like that?

Snowdrop threw herself at the goblins, snarling and hissing.  Bowling them over so one landed against Avery’s head, but at least they weren’t shoveling mud onto her, smothering her.

She wasn’t stronger than America, let alone the goblins.

Were her friends coming?  Was there a way through or a way in?

She wanted to ask Snowdrop to go and get them, and to show them the way, but she was pretty sure that if she did then something really bad would happen in the meantime.

The sounds Snowdrop was making were emotional, furious.

“You’re scaring my opossum!”

“Fuck your-”

Avery hit America, as hard as she’d ever hit anyone without her hockey stick in hand.

“And fuck you!”

“You’re just making everything worse because you’re angry!  Things suck already, and I know they suck for you-”

A goblin blindly flung some mud at Avery.  The weight of the goblin princess was pushing her down, and only the staff being where it was was keeping her from getting drowned in this dark, shitty hole.  But she could feel the point sinking in at her shoulder, hitting bone.

“But they aren’t great for us too!  We’re trying to handle it as problems come up and you’re sinking everything!”

“No, fuck you, fuck your pet, fuck the fae, fuck all this Blue Heron crap!  Fucking where fucking is deserved!  They can deal with the goblin holes, the Blue Heron can run damage control!  And as for you, you can eat mud until you can’t look me in the eye anymore and I’ll show your sorry mud-fat face to your friends and then I’ll do it to them!  And how about if you don’t, if you get away, if you chicken out, I can find you where you live and I’ll do it to your family!”

Avery swung for another punch and her hand was caught.

Her hand trembled, shaking from emotion and exhaustion.  Her feet scraped in mud and couldn’t find anything solid, and the mud was too dense for her to tap her heels together in any timely way.

“And this is it?” Avery asked.  “This is the way it goes?  Keeps getting worse because we have to hurt more than we’re hurt?”

“Eye for an eye!”

“You’re asking for two eyes, you’re-”

Avery groped, and Avery found the answer somewhere in the dreck of this ruined field trip.

“-They’re poor.  They’re struggling.”

America didn’t answer.  But her eyes narrowed.

“The Fae!  That’s what Estrella wanted to show us, I think.  They’re not rich they’re not fancy they’re not super manipulative.  They’re tired and life’s hard and they’re selling stuff but-”

But some of those pleas and offers hadn’t been manipulation.  The woman offering free fruit for steady business.  The faerie selling the information.  The fact one Fae hadn’t known English.

Sure, the stuff was pretty and cool, but was Kennet any different?  Kennet sold stuff in stores that was objectively fancy, like music and music devices and televisions and stuff, but it didn’t change that Kennet wasn’t exactly doing great.

It had been Faerie, not practitioners, shelling out for an escape key because they couldn’t trust that they would always be able to get home.

“They’re poor or they’re down on their luck or they’re not really fancy Faerie and to them seventy five bucks is a lot and you’re- we’re kind of ruining their day, causing this mess.  Sending goblins at them.  How is that an eye for an eye?  You’re making the lives of struggling people harder!  You’re not the victim, you’re the asshole!”

America didn’t let up, but she didn’t retort either.

They wrestled, Avery struggling to find some traction, pressed down, a stabbing pain at her shoulder and more pain at her arm, and her stomach stung and indignant fury gripped her.

That Snowdrop was struggling and fighting too.

Avery found the breath to shout again.  “I didn’t want this outcome!  I know Verona-” she stopped and grunted out air as she fought for a second.  “I know she said it, I’m saying it more!  I didn’t want this!  I don’t even eat meat, and you think I wanted Bristow dead!?”

“You being vegetarian makes me want to hurt you more!”

But, as much as America said that, the wrestling fight tapered off.  America hurled herself back, because there was literally no other way to safely disengage, and then she rose to her feet.  Avery remained where she was, panting for breath, until a goblin moved to her left.  She sat up and shoved the goblin off Snowdrop, who was on top of another goblin.

America bent down, grabbed the end of her staff, and pulled it through the mud, shaking it free.

A good thirty seconds passed without comment, each of them heaving for breath.  Goblins started to edge in closer, and America gestured for them to back off.

“If you’re mad, be mad at the right people,” Avery said.  “I’m… not the right person.  Neither are the High Fall fae.”

“Stop blabbering.  I stopped hitting you, give me a bit of quid pro quo.”

“Be mad at the arrogant jackasses who pushed for this crap when it was all for them, their goals, and we were the cannon fodder,” she told America.

“Stop.  Or I’ll start on you again.”

Avery stopped.

“Tell Liberty I’ll be at home.  I’m done here.  There’s nothing I’m that interested in at the school.”

Such a waste.

America whistled for the goblins, and the goblins went.

And Avery lay there, half-sitting against the wall, wrapping an arm around Snowdrop as Snowdrop came over.

“Want to be my familiar, Snow?  I gotta do right by you.”

“No.”

“Okay.  How hurt are you?”

“I’m gonna die, Avery.  Mortally wounded, so if you want to force me to be your familiar you’ve got to do it fast.”

“Okay.  We can’t take too long.”

“Yeah.”

They lay there for another minute.  Something squelched further down the tunnel, and they went still.

After another bit, they rose to their feet, and tried to go the way they’d come.  When they found the way too steep and slick, they found their way around.

Goblin eyes surrounded them in one of the winding side tunnels.  Some of those eyes disappeared, the others remained silent.

An indeterminate amount of time later, Liberty appeared, Lucy and Verona following.

“I couldn’t convince her, really.  Just… she walked off.  She doesn’t intend on coming back to school.”

“Doing this, I don’t think she’s welcome,” Lucy said.

Avery shook her head, angry at herself.  “I thought I could get through.  Shake her up a bit.”

“Sometimes people are too mad, they can’t be reached,” Lucy said.

“Some books go unread,” Verona added.

Liberty led the way out, wordless, goblins herding around her.  When they reached the exit, they looked at the injuries.

The exit came up at the shore behind the gas station, and Zed was ready with his station wagon.  In the end, they used the hose by the gas station, with permission, to hose off the mud, and then she got patched up some more, with stuff bought inside.

“We could stay the night,” Zed told them.  “Let you recuperate, make it easier to explain things to your parents.”

Lucy and Verona looked to Avery, but she had the impression they had their own feelings on the matter, and they lined up with hers.

“I want to go home.”

“Let me help grab the bags,” Zed answered.

Lucy went with.  Verona, exhausted from the hike through the Warrens, sat with Avery.  Neither had much to say.

It was dark and food was being delivered off to the side of the school.  Nicolette brought over some.

“Everything okay?”

“Not great but I guess it’s as resolved as it’s going to get.  Goblin princess still angry at us, but… maybe not so angry she’ll keep coming after us,” Verona summed it up.

“You going tonight?” Nicolette asked.

Avery nodded, putting most of her energy into cuddling Snowdrop in her lap.

“Mr. Musser’s going to be the new headmaster.”

“What?” Verona asked, aghast.

Nicolette shrugged.

Avery stewed over that.  Remembering Mr. Musser attacking the goblins.  The approach of the school.

Lucy and Zed brought out the rest of their stuff.  Avery got up, hand at her stomach, wincing a bit, as Verona popped the back so the bags could be dropped in.

“Mr. Musser,” Verona passed on.

“Ah, yeah,” Zed said.  “I was going to tell you in the car.”

“Feels like the wrong call,” Lucy said.

“I think it’s the call he feels he had to make,” Nicolette said.  “Give me a second with them, Zed?”

“I’ll warm up the engine and pick the music,” Zed said.

Nicolette nodded.

The door slammed.  Verona closed the back.  The windows rolled up.

“If your discussion with Raymond had gone another way…” Nicolette said, trailing off.

“Which discussion?” Lucy asked.

“The other day.  The questioning about Alexander.”

Lucy nodded, her lips pressing together.

Avery swallowed hard.

“If it had gone another way, he might have felt differently, but Musser can protect the school, he’d be able to handle that kind of interrogation in a way Raymond couldn’t.  It’s what the school needs, Raymond thinks.  Don’t tell Zed I said that or he’ll get mad at Ray again.”

“Maybe he should be,” Lucy said.

“Lies and deceit and a dead staff member… there’s no way it ends in a clean, tidy resolution.”

“You think we…” Verona asked, trailing off.

“I know.  So does Raymond, I think.  Or he’s suspicious enough that he chose a headmaster that would be strict, be very practitioner-like practitioner, and be focused enough on his own agenda that he’ll listen when Raymond says he’s reasonably satisfied with the result of the investigation so far.  He’ll want to focus on other things.  Doesn’t care enough.  Anyone else, including the other contender, Crowe, they’d dig.  And this thing would be perpetuated endlessly.”

Neither Lucy, Verona, or Avery really had an answer.

“Alexander was dangerous.  I don’t know how it happened or what happened or what your degree of involvement is, I don’t exactly care.  Do Raymond or I need to worry about this going further?  I mean, I know it will, somehow, these things always do, but from you three?”

They exchanged glances.

Lucy shook her head a little.

“Raymond still wants to meet with Charles, he said to pass that on.  I’ll be in touch somewhere down the line.”

“Bye,” Verona said.

“Bye,” Nicolette said.  “Have a nice drive.”

She handed over some of the food in paper packages that she’d been holding, and gave over Avery’s jacket, from Fernanda, then walked off.

The three of them and their one opossum climbed into the back, shutting the door, Avery met Zed’s eyes, saw them as curious, penetrating, until he looked away, focusing on the controls of the car as he shifted the clutch and got it moving.

To home.  For better or for worse.

[8.7 Spoilers] New Other Correspondence #2

Subject: (2nd Batch) Tashlit
From: Matthew Moss (Mossball@mooseboop.ca)
CC: Avery (AKelly@tbaynorth.ca); Verona (VHayward@tbaynorth.ca); Lucy (LEllingson@tbaynorth.ca)
Attached: Cblock6.jpg

Because Verona was interested I forwarded you guys some early thoughts on Tashlit.  It’s tricky now to give you a rundown without retreading old ground.  What I can tell you is that because the approach with Tashlit differed from our usual (with the exception of the unnamed goblin painter that Verona also liked) we had to work backwards.

With most other recruits we either knew what they were capable of when they joined because we had initial skirmishes.  Others (like Montague) we sought out for specific roles.  In Montague’s case that was powering the perimeter.  For Tashlit we had only the recommendation from Verona (To paraphrase: “she probably doesn’t eat babies. Good fashion sense”) and we had to figure out what to do with her.

This is fine.  I don’t want to sound critical.  It’s good if you help vet incoming Others and have a role.  But there were a few days where both we & Tashlit felt a bit awkward trying to fit her into things.  She has had a long and tiring walk across Canada since leaving her dad’s place.  We don’t begrudge her a bit of respite and she spent a day swimming and setting up in a disused cabin south of Kennet.  But things were not easy and while she did guard the river mouth from a kelpie and drowned echo she communicated to Alpeana that she felt guilty for not doing more.

However she was able to do some healing and helped power the perimeter one evening.  We also discovered she can spend power to raise and lower the water level of the river and while not useful right now it gives us options.

Mostly now she intends to help with walking the perimeter if we expect trouble.  If Verona is serious about wanting Tashlit as a familiar then it might be best if we don’t become too dependent on Tashlit in one area.

Tashlit is sponsored by Alpeana and Guilherme.


“What is with this recruitment process, Ronnie?  Please tell me you spent more time with Tashlit before recommending her.”

“I basically said hey cool Other, I know you want the jewel Clementine has but no and she listened.”

“Ronnie.”

“That counts for something!  After a night of dealing with a tour through the ruins, then butthead ghosts, old stillbirth ghouls or whatever, and then freaking Sharon?  And expecting to deal with my dad, and then there was Bristow, but that was later…”

“I really want to put Bristow behind us.”

“Yeah.  Sorry Ave.  So, uh, nothing was working that night and Tashlit was like, a reminder.  Of what I wanted the practice to be.”

“I liked her, and so did Snow.  I think it worked out.”

“I guess.”

“I think my instincts are pretty good.”

“Can you imagine the mound of crap we’d be in with the local Others if she hadn’t worked out?  We’re already on testy ground.”

“But she did work out, is the important thing.”

“I, um, I don’t think it’s a bad thing.  Even if Tashlit isn’t a perfect fit, isn’t she the Other we can trust most?  We could use more of that.”

“You’re not wrong.”

“Seems like I was ahead of the game, picking her.  Really, you two need to pick things up a bit.  Why am I doing all the legwork here?”

“Easy does it, Ronnie.”

“I even picked Snowdrop.”

“Muh?”

“Go back to sleep, Snow.”

“Is she okay?”

“She’s okay, I think.  Battered but she’s tough.”

“And you?  Are you okay, Ave?  How’s that shoulder?”

“It sucks and I’m really hoping Tashlit has the juice for a healing because I don’t know how to explain this to my parents.  I’m trying not to think about it, which brings it down from about a nine to an eight point five.”

“We could ask Zed to stop and see about buying better meds for the pain.  Want to tap him on the shoulder, Lucy?  He’s wearing noise canceling headphones.”

“I’d rather get home sooner, actually.”

“Sure, Ave.  Why don’t you send Matthew a message asking to make sure Tashlit saves her faith juice, Ronnie, and I’ll get up the next email to read aloud?”

“Good plan.  Emailing him now.”

“Next is… Lis.”


Subject: (2nd Batch) Lis
From: Matthew Moss (Mossball@mooseboop.ca)
CC: Avery (AKelly@tbaynorth.ca); Verona (VHayward@tbaynorth.ca); Lucy (LEllingson@tbaynorth.ca)
Attached: Cblock7.jpg

One persistent issue we were having was that we could patrol the perimeter at night /walk the boundaries/put power into things and that helps with more dangerous threats that come by woodland path or backroads.  It doesn’t help with those that come by car.  Cig has been handling some of that but the reality is that a hundred people will stop in Kennet on a quiet day as they pass through on the highway.  They get fast food or stop somewhere to use the washroom & any one of them can be a practitioner or a very subtle Other.  Cig can’t get into the gas stations or fast food establishments and can’t easily tail someone in a car who comes into town and drives straight to the town center.

Lis is a Wallflower Doppelganger.  Dopplegangers often copy an individual and some may mirror someone and then remove that someone to take over their life or steal boyfriends (among other things).  Lis doesn’t match herself to a single individual and instead will match to a group.  She averages out the traits of the group for physical features & mannerisms & can act seamlessly as a member of that group.  The bigger the crowd the better the effect.

I won’t lie.  Lis has had a difficult history.  She could be compared to John.  John came into being fighting from minute one.  He took lives and gained some awareness and more capability for critical thought and reflection with each one.  Is it possible that we could have a conversation with John and decide that at one point he was capable of stopping what he was doing and leaving but didn’t?  Sure.

Lis manifested in an all-girls private school in Quebec and she came out fighting in her own way.  The climate she arose in was one of backstabbing & sabotage & bitterness and she blended into that crowd and poured fuel on the fires.  From day one she turned student against student and teacher against teacher and lives were lost.  Two groups of witch hunters banded together to try to sort through the mess and the three hundred students in attendance and she joined the collective witch hunters with each group thinking she was a member of the other.  She blended in with the staff of the motel where they were staying when they weren’t investigating & acquired keys.  Then she quietly and methodically went from room to room to where witch hunters were sleeping and executed them.

That’s the reality.  This is part of what I was dreading discussing with you girls.  That some of the Others we need in order to maintain the peace and security of Kennet are ones where– I don’t know.  I don’t know where I stand on what Lis is and the history she comes from or how responsible I think she is about it all.  She sprung from humans and human nature and she has settled down since.

The last two witch hunters she tried to kill were returning from a shift watching the school and they smelled the blood the moment they opened the car door in the parking lot.  They killed a motel staff member out of paranoia before injuring Lis & driving her away.  She remained in the wind for some time after and I think that was the break she needed to start thinking straight.  She hit the ground running and then went from crisis to crisis without stopping to think– hiding meant calming down and finding a kernel of Self without being surrounded by the infighting and ugliness that helped her come into being.

Lis is now pretty quiet and thoughtful.  She has been very honest and straightforward about her past which is how & why I can tell you.  I get the impression she only really enjoys herself when part of a crowd but she sticks to observation in those circumstances now– unless we need to deal with a problem.  We set Maricica and John with the task of monitoring her but with her going back and forth to Edith a lot of the time you could consider Edith an unofficial sponsor.

She has the disguise ability with its limitations: she can pick what crowd she uses to blend herself in even if that crowd is ‘everyone on this side of the room’ or ‘all men in the immediate area’.  Structure throws her for a loop so schools and things are tougher.  She doesn’t control or edit anyone’s thoughts and her ability to infiltrate is limited mostly to never being the face that stands out of the crowd.  A big benefit is she can pick up sentiment so if someone comes looking for trouble and they are a part of a group she is mimicking & averaging out then she can feel that little desire for trouble & narrow down the sources by sorting through the groups she absorbs.


“I’m wondering if he sent these in order.  Is this him easing us into the bad stuff?  Am I going to be ticked at Matthew again?”

“I have so many questions.  How do things average with stuff like gender?  Can you put an adult and a kid together and get a really weird teenager?”

“I think they have to be part of a group.”

“But if you put them in a room then they’re part of a group that’s ‘people in a room’ and then you can combine them.  What I’m wondering is if there’s some weird combo where the average is weirder and more stand-outty than not.”

“Let’s not get too sidetracked by the interesting Other.  Zed’s being really nice while we’re being rude and asking him to give us privacy.  I don’t want him to have to do that the whole trip.”

“Lucy. Lucy Lucy Lucy…”

“Ronnie, I love you but that tone makes me want to empty this bottle of water over your head.”

“After all her smirking over Fernanda and me earlier, I think you doing that might help make my shoulder feel better.  It would at least distract me.”

“Really, Ave, we can stop for something.”

“Really Luce, I’d rather get some supernatural healing than get a pill that never does much for me anyway.”

“And if she doesn’t have the juice?  What do you tell your mom?”

“Ave can tell her mom she almost fell off a bridge.”

“That’s not going to make life easier.  And talking about this is just reminding me the injury is there and is making me notice it hurts.  I regret bringing it up.  What were we talking about?”

“I was going to tell my beautiful and judicious best friend that our duty is to get sidetracked by the interesting Others.  We figure them out and their motivations.”

“More with the original Others than the new ones, right?  These new guys aren’t, uh, our primary focus.”

“They could be assistants to the primary focus.  She’s close to two people we’re keeping a close eye on.  Checking in with E on the regular?  That’s…”

“…Possibly because Edith is the person who’s home most of the day?”

“Maybe.  I don’t like it.  And I don’t like that the Other with a serious body count of innocents and maybe-good-guys is that close to two people we don’t necessarily trust.”

“On the flip side, what happens if we ask her to average out the Kennet Others and she gets a bad sentiment?”

“Hmmmm.  She might be humans only, no Others.”

“Ugh.  I’m going to get some serious salt on my fingers as I snack, so can someone else unpack the next email?  Ave?”

“On it.”


Subject: Jabber (2nd Batch)
From: Matthew Moss (Mossball@mooseboop.ca)
CC: Avery (AKelly@tbaynorth.ca); Verona (VHayward@tbaynorth.ca); Lucy (LEllingson@tbaynorth.ca)
Attached: Cblock8.jpg

Jabber is an alchemical Other created by an alchemist who wasn’t among the kinder souls in practitioner society.  In the poor lighting he could be mistaken for a goblin but he has flesh resembling wet white clay braced with splints/screws/rods where it wasn’t strong enough on its own.  He has a mouth like a bear trap and a crude white mask that could be paper mache or plaster.  Metal bands looped around his head and screwed into bone help keep his skull from collapsing sideways and keep the mask in place.  When still he could be mistaken for a macabre doll but he is rarely still– he limps and drags himself around and makes incessant noise.  His namesake.  He makes Cherrypop seem quiet.


“Wait wait wait wait wait- stop reading.”

“Don’t tell me you have a phobia of creepy dolls, Ave.”

“Wait.  We might have forgot something.”

“Oh no.  Is it the kind of something we can have Zed send-”

“Cherry.”

“What?”

“Lucy, when you grabbed our bags, did you pack Cherry?”

“I figured since you guys were hanging back you would.  Since Zed and I were carrying and you know, actually doing the laborious thing.”

“I have mud inside my jeans.  I have mud inside my shoes, in my socks, and that’s after a quick change of clothes.  I have a gaping shoulder wound.”

“I was watching Avery.  And talking to Nicolette.  Did Snowdrop?”

“Yes!  Yes, I got Cherrypop like the good friend I am.”

“Really, if anything, I could argue it’s her fault for keeping us up last night and making us so tired that we’d forget.”

“We may be among the worst guardian witches or whatever our title is supposed to be.  We’re- I feel so guilty.  So guilty.”

“I- frig!  We’ve been driving for thirty minutes.  Zed.  Zed!”

“What’s up?  I had my headphones on.”

“I know and it’s appreciated and something’s come up and we’re really sorry and I understand if you ask us to find another way home…”


Jabber is fashioned of the same kind of clay that gods would breathe life into & was hollowed out to serve as a hallow and host of sorts.  He was made as part of a set of dolls with interlocking functions.  One to stir up feelings and another to collect/ one to refine and one to recycle.  They were smashed because they were being used to gather up civilians and then keep them in place while they were harvested of all relevant fluids and parts.  Jabber escaped but was already worse for wear: the dark deeds he was part of have tainted his clay and nature somewhat and he wasn’t pure to begin with.  The hands that made him were stained enough.

Jabber has been the kind of Other that we would hear of now and then for the last five or so years.  Through luck or some strange cunning that lies buried in that clay Jabber has avoided the attention of practitioners and witch hunters.  He has gravitated closer with the Carmine blood soaking Kennet and did not put much effort into eluding us.  When we laid out terms he nodded his assent with no negotiation required.

In another context and made by other hands Jabber’s functionality on paper could be called a positive thing.  He draws out happy energies and mirth and acts as a battery.  In actuality Jabber’s laughter and smile could be considered infectious or viral.  This lasts as long as he remains nearby or until he “tops off” on what he can absorb through air.  In past years this would be the cycle and he would wander into a crowd or find his way into a house through a pet’s access door & he would fill up.  Then the stored energy would leak out through cracks or imperfections in his body until he felt the absence and sought more.  Rinse & repeat.  Affected civilians experience lost time as a blackout or disconcerting daydreams and are depressed & emotionally imbalanced after the fact.

Jabber is the closest thing we have to a big red emergency button.  If trouble brews and civilians are in the midst then he will make them forget what occurs and preserves their innocence.  He is also a vessel for raw power and in the event we anticipate an attack and Montague is not enough then we can use Jabber.  In a bad situation we could tap more civilians in Kennet to fill him up again for a second use in a short span of time.

Lis raised difficult questions about her history and habits.  Jabber raises questions about how much we’re willing to use/abuse the human side of Kennet.  Between the two of them we had a fair few debates and I would like to think you three would have sided with me.  More on that in my next email.

Jabber is being monitored by Charles and myself.  Every aggressive use stresses his body and we’re the only ones with the practical knowledge on how to look after him.  He seems content to be deployed strategically (at enemy incursions so far) and the only practical issue becomes ensuring he doesn’t wander off.  He isn’t like a goblin who will sit and watch television or sleep most of the time and he is difficult to communicate with.  But he remains a necessity of sorts in case of an emergency situation.


“I don’t get it.  This badly made doll wanders up, smiles, people smile, it moves on, and they sort of forget the last five minutes?  And we get a bit of power to charge up the perimeter with?”

“I wonder if there’s more to it.  Maybe we have to see him in action.”

“You’re getting outclassed by these new Others, Cherry.  Cig is weaker in a fight than you-”

“Bahaha!”

“-Jabber is noisier-”

“Ey!  No!  I can be noisy!”

“Why on Earth would you get her started with that, Ronnie?”

“-I think Tashlit might be the coolest…”

“No!  Aaa!  No, Snowdrop is coolest!”

“Awww.  That’s actually touching.”

“Yeah, uh huh!  She gives me trash to eat!”

“A little less touching, Ave?”

“You got her all riled up and there’s still so much car ride left.”

“Aaaaaa!  Aaaaa!  Aieeee!”

“Cherry, do you know what would be hilarious?”

“Neh?”

“Zed’s got his headphones on again-”

“No small wonder.”

“-and if you became a fork again and you were really, really quiet, you could jump out and shout boo right after we got to the destination.”

“I would love to see that.”

“Yeah.  That would be great.”

“Ehehehe.”

I can’t believe that worked.

“Let’s just commit to not forgetting the fork between the seat cushions or whatever.”

“Shhhhh.  We make no mention of any situation where we -hypothetically or otherwise- forgot Cherrypop.”

“Who’s the next email?”

“This is an odd one.”


Subject: Ken (2nd Batch)
From: Matthew Moss (Mossball@mooseboop.ca)
CC: Avery (AKelly@tbaynorth.ca); Verona (VHayward@tbaynorth.ca); Lucy (LEllingson@tbaynorth.ca)
Attached: Cblock9.jpg

We didn’t recruit Lis and Jabber one after the other– there were other Others between.  They were contentious picks however and they led to a lot of discussion between us about what we were trying to do and where our responsibilities lay.

The suggestion on compromise came from Charles.  Representing the people of Kennet is… Kennet.  We’ve gone to the spirit world to make our appeal of necessity and because there is no Lord here & no set system in the spirit world it was the Judges who heard our appeal.  Aurum & Alabaster.  All us Others of Kennet with Cherrypop and Snowdrop excluded attended and this left the perimeter open.  An unfortunate kind of circumstance that results when we turn to ceremony.  Ceremonies are a kind of ritual after all.

When we left that day it was with the added company of Kennet’s Anima Corporeal.  The spirit of the city made flesh.  He was fine shortening his name and even seemed to prefer it.  We also knew (as would soon be confirmed) that trouble might have slipped in during what were normally the quiet parts of early day when we relied on perimeter more than anything else.

Ken is surprisingly political and seized on the small amount of power he had as a newcomer to the council & as a representative for the citizenry.  He is vocal with his opinion and yet has little to no ambitions in leadership (preferring to complain rather than do…).  This is something of a relief on one level and a daily headache on another.  In another town or city with these same circumstances I could imagine the city or township spirit taking over the council– many city spirits are in fact Lords and trade on the power of how distinct their city’s image is.  It’s interesting to compare him politically with our last Other.

I’ve come to love Kennet where I’ve spent a third of my life and expect to spend the rest and thus I like Ken.  At the same time however Ken is our town in totality… including parts I don’t tend to grapple with.  I knew those parts existed because of the customer service side of my work at Buckheed but now I face it daily.  In lieu of family Ken turns his focus to tiredly minding the spirits of Kennet.  He does have a drinking problem.  He does have a drug problem.  These things are (usually) background.

If Lis is the average of a small group then Ken is that stretched out to Kennet as a whole.  The dynamics and effects are similar but reversed: Lis extends herself out and Ken can (if he wants) divide himself down into rough regions.  After our initial experiments doing this however we have agreed this isn’t for the best:
1)  The industrial corner of Kennet is badly cared for and malnourished with a lot of latent frustration (and so is the ‘split’ of Ken that represents it).
2)  The commercial downtown area has a rampant drug problem that is evident if you spend even fifteen minutes there (& so does the ‘split’– spend fifteen minutes in her company…)
3)  The residential area is the most active & present but is primarily focused on getting by and doing what needs to be done.
4)  The tourist end is a bit scattered & eternally hopeful but anyone who lives here will acknowledge it is only useful or awake a portion of the year.

The extra hands simply aren’t worth the hassle of finding oneself face to face with the other aspects.  Split they tend to share out the demographics of Kennet: two female and two male.  One old (usually #1 above)/two roughly middle aged (2 & 3)/one younger (usually #4).  Undivided we get Ken: a man a little older than me and ambiguously blue/white collar.  Somewhat more median/mode than mean.

Ken’s awareness & attunement to the people & places of our town of five thousand people are valuable.  Working with him lets us put some power into reinforcing aspects of the town or even quickly navigating it.  He’s not quick about it but he can alert us to problems.

Ken has been able to tell us that something’s wrong with him and getting worse: the Carmine Beast effect.  It’s a more violent edge that catches him and us off guard at times.  This doesn’t mean he turns into a killer or a monster or anything but it does manifest as temper and a darker edge at times.  He recognizes this isn’t him and this disturbs him.  Aside from this he can tell there are intruders present.  This appears to be some less human Others– no tie to any commander or summoner.  They aren’t eating and they aren’t emerging when Montague powers the perimeter diagram.  He feels they will do us harm but can’t place it.  It’s up to you if you want to help.

More than anything however is that Ken cares about the people and well being of the town and in our debates about Jabber and Lis I intuited that those of us who were more wary of their inclusion had the same general worry: that we risked focusing so much on the Other/Practitoner side that we would lose sight of the Innocent.  Ken’s primary duty is to keep us square there.

Which makes our next & last email an uncomfortable change of tone and focus…  Give me time to type it up.

Ken is sponsored by me & Edith.


“In other words they were worried they focused so much on the Other side of Kennet that they made a new Other to kind of address the regular people?  It sounds like Matthew wants a pat on the head for sparing humans a second thought but what?

“You sound annoyed.”

“I am annoyed!  How on Earth do you think that a distillation of our crummy, struggling little town is going to be anything other than imperfect and prone to dragging things out, and dragging them down?  It’s unvarnished society as an Other and society’s the thing that needs about a thousand sharp kicks in the ass to get to a better place.”

“You can go back to sleep, Snow.”

“Uggh, but this is boring though.”

“I bet- I bet this Ken guy is vaguely racist.  I bet- God Matthew I really do hope he’s a pain in the ass for Matthew.  If we’d been consulted I could have guessed most of this and they’re all surprised that there’s a drug and alcohol problem and that he’s a butt who’d rather complain than anything.  Sorry.”

“No way, don’t be sorry.  I’m not… emotionally smart.  I’m not sure I get why you’re as bothered as you are, but the more you talk about it, the more I get it.  Mostly I’m marveling at how articulate you are when you’re ticked off.”

“Is this where we drop the bad quote, ‘that’s her secret, she’s always a bit ticked’?  Sorry, I don’t mean to actually put words in your mouth.”

“No, actually you’re kind of right.  Ugh.  It’s like… imagine if the email was like, hey girls I want to give you an update, we were worried about the common man not having a voice so we invited your dad onto the council, Verona.”

“Oh god.”

“Right?  I mean, isn’t that basically the analogue?  Or Avery-”

“Oh no.”

“Imagine… what was that Incarnation that almost got you?”

“Yearning.”

“Imagine having to deal with it every day on the council now and Matthew’s all ‘give me a pat on the head, haven’t I done good, thinking of the little guy’.  Except this isn’t the little guy, this is the guy who steps on the little guy.”

“Okay, okay, but for the record I kind of got it already.  I didn’t need that mental picture.”

“Boo, Matthew.”

“Boooo.”

“Maybe I’m making mountains out of molehills.”

“Nah, I’m with you Lucy.  I vote that if this does turn out to be a pain and especially if it’s a pain for you then we all give them flack for not seeing it coming.”

“Avery, since you have the phone, do we have the last one?  It should be the Other that he held off on naming.”

“He hasn’t sent it.”

“Oh!  Nag him.  And tell him we might have to yell at him and it’ll be worse than Lucy’s wind power thing.”

“Typing.”

“Meanwhile- sorry, Lucy, did you want to say something?”

“More ranting.  You talk.”

“I can’t help but wonder about the moves they’re making.  It feels like we made a certain move by going off to school.  And we did that because of Miss, a bit.”

“Yes.”

“And these are some of the counter-moves they’ve made in the background.  Discreet and there are justifications for each move but there are also- there’s at least one person responsible.  At least two if we go by what Yalda said about there being two people there when she was turned into the Hungry Choir.  And they’re doing their own things.”

“Yeah.  We have to read between the lines and wonder how these things fit together.”

“They aren’t just there sitting on their hands.  They’re thinking about how to handle us and still get what they want.  And these are just the big moves, right?  The allies they’re recruiting and possible complications they’re going to throw in our way.”

“Exhausting.”

“Here’s the email.  Want to look it over?”

“Good.  That works.”

“Send.”

“There.  It looks like we have the next email.  Cutting it down to the wire, Matthew.  And it’s…”


Subject: (2nd Batch) Crooked Rook
From: Matthew Moss (Mossball@mooseboop.ca)
CC: Lucy (LEllingson@tbaynorth.ca); Avery (AKelly@tbaynorth.ca); Verona (VHayward@tbaynorth.ca)
Attached: Cblock10.jpg

Throwing a quick note on top of this email before I hit send: Had to negotiate to share this information and didn’t get much time to formulate my response.  We went into this with a set of precepts we wanted the new Others to follow but as pressure increases we have had to compromise on precepts.  This felt like the largest compromise.

I can tell you that the new Others swore to the same deals we did and while this doesn’t hold the same exact sort of weight that them being at the awakening ritual would it does mean they are sworn not to do you harm.

Crooked Rook takes on the appearance of an elderly woman of the stiff-backed/strong & no-nonsense variety.  She carries but rarely wears a mask.  She joins us as an Other who has seen many situations like Kennet’s and is correspondingly opinionated.  It is hard to shake the feeling that she would wrest control of the council from E & I if given the chance… just to have a better chance at a good outcome.  She has seen many bad ones.

She has a keen understanding of Others and how Others are put together and knows her way around practice like Maricica knows her way around illusion.  It is for this that we brought her on board.  Even after recruiting Tashlit & Jabber & more goblins & ghouls & spirits & doppleganger infiltrators we felt the need for a way to handle the likes of Nicolette & Zed & Alexander.  We have a big emergency button in Jabber and he can give us a shock of power esp. if we’re willing to tap into the well being of citizens to get it… but that matters not at all if we don’t know how to apply that power or where to aim it.

She knows.

The price however is that she would turn Kennet into something it is not.  She would do much the same with Kennet Others.  New Others especially listen to her.  She has means of dealing with incoming practitioners that she will not directly show or teach us but they do apparently work.

She hails from Europe originally but has tentative links to forces elsewhere.  She has spent two decades in remote areas extending influence and arranging traps.  I overheard her telling Maricica that she has stepped in as a challenger against eight different Demesne claims and successfully denied all eight practitioners their claim.  She seems to prefer to prepare and direct other Others and gets involved only when she can do so decisively.  She otherwise seems to prefer to act without direct involvement and keeps her existence largely off the record with minimal traces.

Even extracting a name for her that we could give you and getting permission to share this much was a task.

If this approach reminds you to some degree of Miss then… all I can tell you is that it seems so.  I keep writing that.  That it seems she prefers this or it seems that… she shares little.

What we know of motivations: as payment for giving up a title and ‘name’ for her she wanted company for her patrols.  This was something I was reluctant to give her.   She doesn’t seem to need or want much assistance and she is aloof enough to not seem to care about the company.  Instead it feels more like politics.  Now Edith and I must perform the political math of who might listen too intently to her & who might become too much of an unknown factor.

She is not an especially strong fighter but she picks her fights and her moments well and reaches out to us when she needs assistance.  She can recognize practice at work and either intuits or has the prior knowledge to address it.  One case where this is critically useful is that she can intercept an Other on the periphery of Kennet and recognize it as bound or not.  This helps to differentiate the natural Other wildlife from the sort of thing that Nicolette’s birds or sent eye-thief were.

Expect to see her standing in high places, looking to the horizon.  If all goes well and you and she are with us for the next few decades then I confess I would not be too shocked if those twenty or thirty or forty years passed and she never warmed to you.  She has no intention of attending meetings where you three are present and has suggested she intends to have minimal interaction with you.

But to turn that around (and defend myself)… she may come for Edith and I well before she does anything to bother you three.  In twenty or thirty or forty years I would not be too shocked if she had taken control.  Maybe she becomes your headache then.  Maybe you find your equilibrium.  I don’t know.

I do know that we have had two practitioners prod at our boundary in the time between the perimeter falling and your announcement that you were coming home.  Many Others have tried to come into Kennet and many of those were dangerous.  She helped.  Several of those were actively bound by practitioners and in another circumstance we would have either had to either kill them to silence them or know that they would tell the ones who bound them that Kennet was what it was.

Instead Crooked Rook was able to erect a box around these Others.  Within she painted them in new colors.  She undid some bindings and twisted the definitions of others.  At our request she kept precepts that kept some of those Others from harming humans and simply allowed them to go free.  We need that kind of victory if we’re to turn tides or change the trends that run against Kennet.

If we can resolve the Carmine Beast business and keep up that kind of deflection (especially if Miss returns and can work with Crooked Rook) then I harbor hope that we can find a way back to normalcy.  That hope is so essential in a struggle like this because some of us would have given up already if we thought this would be Kennet from now on.

For that?  I can deal with the political maneuvering and the other difficulties this Other poses.

And I can only apologize for any difficulties this poses you.  Once I realized Crooked Rook’s stance I kept you three firmly in mind for every & all interactions with her.  I’ve worked to extract promises from her she was reluctant about (including the pledge to do no harm to you) & made sure that the prices paid for these things fell on us.  Not on you.

Guilherme and Maricica are the primary points of contact with Crooked Rook and are sponsoring her.

Ask if you have any questions.


“Huh.”

“Digesting that.  And Lucy’s already got her phone out.”

“Hey first best friend, buddy old pal.  What are you writing?”

“Gimme a second, Verona.”

“Maybe show us before you send it?”

“I’m of two minds for this one.”

“Do tell us.  Is this what you’re writing in the email?”

“No, I’m- it’s going to help me make up my mind on how I feel.  So, point number one is I kinda like her.”

“That’s my line!  Not for her but whenever we meet a neat and weird Other I say I think they’re cool -because they are- and then you guys sigh and stuff.  But you like her?”

“Straightforward, set rules and expectations.  If she’s serious about the agreement not to hurt us…”

“I guess.”

“…And on the other hand, I’m so not a fan of the fact Matthew has some idea of what she is and is dancing around the subject.  So I’m texting him and asking if Crooked Rook is an Oni who has warred with practitioners but is mostly cool with us again like the ones Yadira’s family sort of worked with… or if she’s an Oni who was a part of all that and really hates practitioners.”

“Ohhhhh.”

“P.S. Does she hate humans too?”

“Oh I didn’t even think of that.”

“Lucy’s so good at this side of things.  Subtext.  But you like her?  Huh?”

“Question and P.S. sent.  I mean, if she doesn’t like practitioners then I can’t say I one hundred percent disagree?  A lot of practitioner families are messed up.”

“True that.”

“And so are some solo practitioners.  And after Bristow I’m not sure I love me, Lucy the practitioner, as much as I otherwise would.”

“I really, really want to put Bristow behind us.”

“I don’t think we can or should, Ave.  He’s a jerk and he did it to himself as much as anything but we played a part and not becoming one of the really awful practitioners means carrying that.”

“Ugh.”

“Well put, Avery.”

“Oh, here we go.  Reply from Matthew.  According to him he thinks she’s the never-stopped-fighting type of Oni.  And she doesn’t care about humans but she doesn’t go out of her way to hurt or bother them either.”

“You were spot-friggin’-on.”

“I wish I wasn’t.  Not caring about humans is, uh, a lot more dangerous than it sounds, I think.  I can’t help but fixate on Matthew’s comment here… ‘you girls sure got an education in the short time you were there.  I only learned what Oni were this year.  I don’t know why I’m so surprised you’re so on top of this.'”

“The student surpasses the teacher.  I’m so glad I bugged Corbin about the Oni.”

“Lis, Jabber, and Crooked Rook sound like ones to watch out for.”

“Matthew just sent a follow-up.  Edith is asking if we want a meeting.  With everyone.  After we’ve had time to get settled and catch up with family.”

“Yes.  Yes yes yes.”

“I want that healing, then I gotta do the catch-up time… ugh.  Then meeting, I guess.”

“Sent, signed Lucy Verona Avery and Snowdrop, and presumably delivered.”

“Welcome home, huh?”

Vanishing Points – 8.8

Lucy

Last Thursday: New Other Correspondence #2


Lucy’s sneakers hit the sidewalk.  She’d put her bag in the back of the station wagon first so she’d had to climb over the others’ stuff to grab her bag.  Its weight added to hers made for a hefty landing, and accompanying rustling made her look down.  She saw that some unseasonal Bright Fall leaves were tangled up in her laces.  Before she could fix that, something bumped her from behind.

“Oh, did I hit you?”

Lucy straightened, turning, and saw Verona, leaning over the back seat, the very picture of insincerity.  She’d tossed Lucy’s backpack across the back section of the station wagon.

“You know full well you hit me.”

Verona grinned.

“Snacks.”  Avery winced as she twisted around to hand the plastic bag over the back seat.  Lucy hurried to lean into the trunk area and take it so Avery wouldn’t hurt herself.

She kept her hand over Avery’s for a second.  “Good luck.”

Avery nodded.

“Hey Zed!” Lucy raised her voice.  Beside her, Cherrypop clambered over the back and leaped from trunk to road, scampering off on all fours into the neighbor’s overgrown lawn.  “Before you drive off!”

“What’s up?” Zed leaned out the window as she walked around.

“Wanted to say thanks.  You’ve been cool.”

“Life goals.”

“I mean it.  This hasn’t been an easy few weeks.  You’ve been consistently decent.”

“I wouldn’t have met the woman I’m in love with if it wasn’t for you three, so that’s worth something.”

“Give Nicolette our best?  We keep ending up at odds with her, or interacting with her when there’s a lot of crap going on… I want to send her an email or something but I don’t know what I’d say.”

“She’s a friend, so yeah.  I’ll pass on the goodwill.  She’s been embattled from pretty early on, either surrounded by problems or being worked like a dog.”

“And now she’s got Seth?”

“I was thinking more… now she’s got Raymond.  He’s taken her under his wing some, but she’ll want to prove herself.”

“I wonder if we can pull her away from it all or… I don’t even know.”

“Take her to an amusement park?” Avery asked.

“That’s random.”

Avery shrugged, then winced.

“What the hell?  Go get your shoulder fixed up, Ave.  Sorry to keep you for longer, Zed, after the trip back to pick up Cherry.”

“S’alright.  Your family just stepped outside.”

Lucy bounced on the spot, perking up and turning to look.  Booker, mom, and whatshername were at the front stairs.  Booker was wearing a slate blue t-shirt and black jeans.  Alyssa was not much taller than Lucy was, to guess, had her bleached white-blonde hair in a ponytail so short it bristled at the back, and wore a heathered gray top with the University logo on it.  Her sporty shorts had the same logo at the corner.

“Can I say I love his hair?” Zed asked.  Booker’s hair was long enough that even with the curls it draped over his shoulders.

“You can say that, thanks Zed, bye Zed!” Lucy called back, as she hurried around the car, snatched up her backpack and bag from the sidewalk, put them down, closed the back hatch of the station wagon, picked them up again, and then halfway down the path to the front steps, dropped them on the grass because they were slowing her down too much.

She threw her arms around Booker, hugging him.  He hugged her back, picking her up off the ground.

“Woah,” he said.  “That’s a hug.”

“Missed you lots,” she told him, mumbling into his shirt.

“Saw your room,” he said.

Huh?  What?  Did he see magic stuff?

She pulled back to look up at him.

“The music boxes?”

Ohhh.  The ‘music box’ was the subscription he’d been part of that she’d taken up when he’d left.  She’d put the album art and artwork on half the walls of her room and on some of the ceiling.

“Didn’t realize you were so into it.”

“Yeah.  It’s something to look forward to,” she said, flashing her mom a smile as her mom’s hand ran over her head.

“So, welcome home,” he said.

You welcome home,” she said, hands at his midsection, giving him a bit of a shake.  “How are you?  What are you up to?  How long are you staying?”

“I’m good, school’s tough.  Not up to much.  A couple weeks.  This is Alyssa, you’ve seen her on webcam.”

“Hi,” Lucy said, pulling away from Booker.  She didn’t want to hug her, so she put out her hand, shaking Alyssa’s.

“Nice to finally meet you in person.  And to get a look at, uh, Kennet, I guess.”

“Kennet’s, uh…”

“Dull?” Booker asked.

To agree would be a lie, with everything going on, so Lucy shrugged.

Alyssa interjected, “It’s nice seeing where Booker comes from.  Even if it’s quiet.”

Booker prodded Lucy’s earring.  “This is new.”

“Verona and Avery made it.  It was a whole special thing.”

“It suits you, I would have thought you’d bought it,” he said.  She had to twist her head around for her mom to see it.  “Did you get any more holes in your ear to keep it in place?”

“You didn’t, did you?” mom asked.

“I didn’t.  Same hole as before, and it just pinches over the rim up top.”

“Okay.  Have you eaten?” Lucy’s mom asked.  She hugged Lucy, one arm, and Lucy bonked her head against her mom’s side, resting it there.

“Had junk and we stopped halfway for a small bite.  Had fried zucchini.”

Fantastic,” mom said.  “I’m really glad they fed you right.”

“The food was actually super healthy, for most of it.”

“Who drove you?”

“It was Zed.  Kind of a mentor and a friend.”

“A single guy?” mom asked, wincing.  “Was there anyone else, or…?”

“Zed’s in the top three coolest people I know,” Lucy assured her mom.

“That doesn’t mean-”

“And he’s stupid in love with a girl, and it’s cool, really.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” her mom said, not sounding entirely satisfied.  “Want to get your bags?  Come in.  I want to hear everything.”

You really don’t.  Lucy hopped down the stairs, and Booker followed, and for a bit they were matching stride.  Lucy smiled, swiping the heavier bag before Booker could.  He grabbed her backpack.

“It was a rough semester at the end there, mom said,” Booker noted.

“Yeah, a bit.  But we’ve talked about that.  What about you?  You said university wasn’t great, or…?”

“It’s different and it’s also learning to be on my own in the dorms, instead of having mom helping out, and some of my first year classes fail a third or a half of the students.  I don’t want to be in that group.”

“Did you do okay?”

“I did alright.  Passed everything, even if I wish I was getting more Bs than Cs.”

“Hey,” she said, and she had to let go of one of the two straps of the bag she was holding at her side to give him a punch in the arm.  “If it’s that hard and you passed then isn’t that pretty good?”

“I guess,” he said.  He hung her backpack up on the post at the bottom of the railing by the stairs.  Lucy put her bag down in the corner.  He added, “Alyssa was good for me.”

“She wasn’t a distraction?” Lucy asked.  Alyssa was in the kitchen now, talking to mom.

“No.  She kept me focused on the schoolwork.  A new friend of mine, Jackson, he got a girlfriend and it was… not good.  I get what you’re asking and for him, you know, it’s the honeymoon period, you don’t want to spoil those initial good vibes.  Takes courage to risk upsetting that good mood or chance screwing up the other person’s early impression of you.  But she nagged me when I needed nagging.”

“Did you trade mom for someone else to boss you around?” Lucy asked.

Wow.  Don’t hold back there, baby sis.  I still have a bit of ego left intact.”

“If you could see how I see you, your ego would be in danger in the opposite way,” Lucy said.

“Aw, kid,” he told her.  He paused, then said, “You know, I want to talk seriously about some of the stuff from last semester.  I’ve been thinking about it a lot.”

“Yeah, for sure,” Lucy replied.  “Now?”

“Not, uh-”

“Lucy!” her mom called out.  “Are leftovers okay?”

“What is it?”

“Homecooked chicken larb, it’s a bit overcooked.”

“That’s okay.”

“I think we have some lettuce leaves we can put it on.”

“That’s great.  Home cooking sounds perfect.”

Alyssa emerged from the kitchen as Lucy entered to see about food.  Lucy glanced back as Alyssa intercepted Booker with a hug, one leg bent, foot in the air.  She seemed to be in good spirits and she was clearly comfortable here already, which… sure.

“I like her,” mom said, quiet, as she emptied a tupperware container into a bowl and popped it in the microwave.  “She brings out the best in him, from what I’ve seen.”

“That’s good,” Lucy said, sitting on the stool by the counter and flopping down there, hands pushing her cheeks up.  When that made her face hurt, she flopped over, watching Booker and Alyssa sideways.

“There are moments I see him with her and I’m left breathless because he reminds me so much of your father.”

Lucy looked from them to her mom, saw the look on her mom’s face, and still lying sideways, reached out to rub her mom’s arm, holding her hand for a second.  She looked back and she couldn’t really see it, not based on memories that were foggy and distant.  But she was willing to take her mom’s word for it.

“When Booker was little there was a pretty wide consensus that Booker took after me, and I think that holds mostly true, but it’s… wonderful and heartbreaking to see your dad’s… fierce caring, I suppose.”

“You weren’t like Booker when you were a teenager, were you?”

“I might’ve been, but your grandparents were ready to paint grids on my rear end with a switch if I so much as slouched while sitting at the dinner table.”

Lucy made a face.

“Yeah.  I left home for nursing school as soon as I could and I suppose I did what Booker is doing now and I hit the ground running.  Matured fast because I had no other choice but to figure things out right away.”

Lucy digested that.  “Huh.”

“I’m so glad you got this summer thing to change things up.  Unless…”

Lucy, still with head, arms, and upper chest draped over the counter, looked up at her mom.

Her mom read her expression.  A sad look passed over her face and Lucy had to look away.

“Oh honey,” her mom said, reaching for a loose lock of hair and tucking it behind Lucy’s ear.  “I do want to talk about it.  If you’re okay, we could break it down tonight.  Make a night of it, I could go pick up ice cream or something, we’d get in pyjamas, go easy on ourselves.”

“Uhh.”  A whole night?  “I’d… need time to figure out what to say and how to say it.”

“Okay.”

“I did chat with Dr. Mona a bit.  I really like her.  I don’t know if the chat was like, overtime payments or anything-”

“It wasn’t, it’s fine.  Don’t worry about that.  I just thought we could go over things and catch up tonight because Booker’s going out.”

“Booker’s going out?” Lucy asked, sitting up.  She glanced back at him, kissing Alyssa in the hallway, then at her mom.  “Where?”

“Booker?” her mom called out.

He and Alyssa entered the kitchen, and he was hugging Alyssa from behind, so he had to rock from side to side to walk, placing his feet to the left and right of her feet.  “What’s up?”

“You were going out?”

“Yeah, uh, yeah.  I was saying, Lucy, going to visit some old haunts, meet some high school buddies.  We made the arrangements before we had a firm time on you coming home.”

“I hope you have a good time,” she told him.

“Thanks.  I think we’re going to head out now, actually.  Alyssa, you wanted to grab a shirt.”

“Where’s the laundry room?” Alyssa asked.

And there was that flurry of activity, the two of them making sure they had stuff, disappearing into the basement, emerging, then running upstairs to get more stuff.  Lucy got her larb from the microwave, sprinkled lime juice over it, and spooned it out over crisp, cold lettuce leaves.

“Do you have laundry?” mom asked.

“We had the staff do it last night, uh, just these clothes I’m wearing, I guess.”

“That makes life easier.”

“Guess so,” Lucy said.  She glanced through the kitchen door as Booker and Alyssa came down the stairs, grabbing stuff, Alyssa with a jacket slung over one shoulder.  They kissed, and Lucy glanced away again, chewing on her larb.  It was one of those things where being leftovers made it better, probably.

“Hey,” Booker said, coming through.  He gave Lucy a hug from behind.  “Glad you’re back.  We’ll catch up.”

She nodded.

“Is it cliche to say you’re more grown up than I left you, somehow?”  He gave her an up-down look.

“Super cliche.”

He bent down, and when he straightened, he was holding the sprig of leaves in autumn colors that had been tangled up in her laces.  “In summer?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Where the heck were you?”

“Haha.”  She made what should have been two notes of laughter a single-syllable word that came out like a sigh.

“See ya.”  He kissed the top of her head, and then jogged over to Alyssa, wrapping an arm around her.

Then the front door banged shut.

The house felt very quiet and open in the aftermath of their departure.

“If you’re okay with me leaving you for a minute, I’ll use the time they’re gone to do laundry.  The house was so empty when you were gone, and then he arrived the other night and I had to adapt to having three people around again.  Can’t take a shower or use the washing machine without bumping into one another.”

“Yeah, sure,” Lucy said.

“You okay?  Really?”

Lucy shrugged.  “It was a long drive over.  I wanted to ask, how’s Verona’s dad?”

“He’s… mostly better, I think.  He might bounce back faster if he was more careful with himself.  We’re lucky he didn’t need the surgery.  It self corrected.”

“That’s good, I guess,” Lucy replied.  “Thanks for checking.”

“Yeah.  The offer for dessert is still open if you want it, you know.  I’m not demanding a recounting of events in exchange for it.  We can call it a celebration of you getting home.”

Lucy smiled.

Her mom ran a hand over Lucy’s head, then she headed downstairs.

Lucy finished her larb and the accompanying fried vegetables, fork clinking against bowl, bowl clattering against the counter as she put it down, after lifting it close to her mouth to shorten the distance for those last, fork-evading scraps.

She picked up the sprig of Bright Fall leaves, and crushed a leaf in her hand.  It wasn’t especially dry, but it crushed well, and she pinched the crumbled bit between finger and thumb.  She reached down into the sink to rub the end of the fork with the stuff.  It tinted the metal red.  A wash of water from the faucet erased it.

Downstairs, the washing machine began knocking audibly.

Lucy took her bags upstairs, and she sorted out the contents.  Magic stuff in a drawer she could lock and seal with a connection breaker.  Phone plugged in to charge.  The invitation to have a proper meet with the Kennet Others, old and new, was the latest message.  Backpack emptied out of everything except what she needed if she had to sling her bag over her shoulder and run to go face down trouble.  Knife, mask, spell cards.  She put the Bright Fall leaves on the far end of her desk, resting against the wall.

Clothes put away in drawers.  Reinforced hair and makeup kit unpacked, bottles put in the appropriate rooms.

She saw her brother’s room, Alyssa and his stuff mingled.  She did hope they were having a terrific time, but this did also suck, somehow.

Her red raincoat needed to go downstairs, so she took that down.  Then, not really knowing where else to go, she walked into the backyard and leaned over the railing.  Looking at the ski hills.

She blinked, closing her eyes firmly.  When she opened them, she Saw Kennet.  Kennet beneath a red sky, wounded and pierced with blades, embedded so deep in sky that they remained there, some rusted, some broken, all massive.  She Saw her hometown in red and black watercolor with streaks of white.  Ragged and torn ribbons caught on branches and on fences.

Fighting had happened here.  In her neighborhood.  In the next neighborhood over.  In those hills in the distance, in the woods, across town.  The Carmine influence was so much worse than it had been.

And things would get worse still before the end of summer, when it all came together.

She sighed, heavy in a way that made her lean harder into the railing, sagging until it dug into her underarms and armpits, her chin resting on her arms.

Her mom found her there, and walked up beside her, rubbing her back.

“Want to go out and pick up the ice cream and pastries?”

“Heck yeah,” Lucy said, doing her best to inject the appropriate enthusiasm into the words.


Snowdrop

“And then I sat there, and as that crazy, unreasonable mad-lady stared me down, I drank it,” Snowdrop explained.

“You’re getting it all wrong!” Cherrypop cried out, aghast.

“I knew for sure it was poisoned but I stayed there like a crazy person,” Snowdrop explained.  Half of the Kennet goblins followed her, listening avidly.  “And I told her, ‘I burned down this library, and I’ll do it again‘ instead of running away.”

“Aaaa!” Cherrypop exclaimed.  “You didn’t do that and you didn’t fight the hundreds of brownies and you didn’t respect that dick-nose’s privacy either!  I was there!  Why are you so bad at this?”

“This is a good story,” Toadswallow said.  “And perhaps the most important detail of this sordid little adventure, you stuck by our practitioner trio.”

“I didn’t faint even once,” Snowdrop said.

“You did!”

“Alas,” Toadswallow said.  “But they’re still here and so are you.  You’ve done your duty.”

They walked uphill, and Toadswallow huffed. Others weaved through trees or pushed at one another to be closer or be the one in front.

“What elth?” Nat asked, her ungainly walk punctuated by punches of her oversized, piercing-ridden hand punching the ground as a kind of third leg.  Her chewed-up tongue lolled out of her mouth, apparently twice as long as it should be because it had been torn near the base and all down the middle, so the part that dangled furthest down was a ragged bit of tongue-root.

“There was the time I fought a video game monster and I didn’t get my butt kicked.  You weren’t there around then.”

“They were!”

“During a fight with a big group of goblins I jumped off into dead rat water-”

“Liar!”

They slipped into a Warrens tunnel because it was faster than navigating the rocky outcropping on the hillside.  Snowdrop paused where the mud-and-newspaper wall had slumped a bit, fixing where a picture had been finger-painted there.  She talked while she addressed it.

“-and I wasn’t scared at all while I was surrounded.  Cherrypop had a chance to reveal she was a fork and she couldn’t.”

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaugh!  What’s wrong with you!?  Auuuuugh!  Aaauagh!”

The picture on the wall was of herself, her head a triangle with jagged teeth and round ears, and Cherrypop, drawn overly large, her head round with a triangle for a nose.

The other goblins were patient, making no complaint.  Cherrypop was too upset to even notice.

“…And at the end, I fought a bunch of nasty goblins in the Warrens tunnel to protect Avery and I failed.”

Gashwad clapped a hand against the small of Snowdrop’s back, hard.  He nodded approvingly, then got distracted trying to swat Cherrypop while she had an aneurysm.

They reached the upper edge of the hillside, and the goblins slowed, then fell back.

Snowdrop made a dismissive ‘get-lost’ wave at the goblins.

It was so nice to hang with them again.  The new ones had quickly accepted her as an honorary goblin, too.

She crossed the gravel driveway, and walked over to the porch.

Melissa sat there, sitting on the steps, smoking a cigarette.  She called out, “She’s out!”

“I know!” Snowdrop called back, even though she was already at the point where raising her voice wasn’t super necessary.

“Who are you?” Melissa asked.  “I’ve seen you around.”

“No you haven’t.”

“Pretty sure I have.  You a family member of Louise’s?”  Melissa twisted around to look back at the house.

“Yeah.”

“Huh.  You look nothing alike.  I’m just some loser kid.  Supposed to walk for physiotherapy.  I way overdid it, hiking up here, but I felt like I needed to walk with a destination in mind, you know?”

“No.”

“No, I guess you wouldn’t.  I’ve been walking to the grocery store and getting snacks at the bakery, or going to the convenience store, but that’s definitely not helping me lose the pounds that being a cripple have put on.”

“Sure it is.”

“It isn’t, really, I’ve seen the bathroom scale, believe me. I thought I’d be good for a change and leg it up here.  Work up a sweat.  Louise has- she’s your mom or something?”

Snowdrop stared blankly at the thirteen year old girl with the hair that had once been crimped into waist-length zig-zags, that had lost that texture for something more natural.

“Aunt?”

“Yeah, sure,” Snowdrop replied.

“Yeah.  Huh.  She said I could phone and ask her if I had questions or come by if I wanted to sound her out about any of the weird stuff around town.  But she doesn’t know jack.  So instead it became about me complaining and she’ll listen even though she has way worse issues, apparently.  Want one?  Or are you going to rat me out to your Auntie Louise?”

“I’m nothing like a rat.”

“Cool.  Want one, then?”

“Sure.  Cool.”

Snowdrop took the offered cigarette.  Melissa reached over with the lighter.  Snowdrop let her light it, then held it away from her mouth, burning and making smoke that made her want to sneeze.

“Stole them from her.  She had a bunch stowed away.”

“Huh.  I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah.  I don’t suppose you know anything about the weirdness?  Any idea what I’m talking about?”

“I don’t know much, no.  No idea, really.”

“Too bad,” Melissa said, bitter.  She exhaled smoke and looked skyward.  “I’m figuring out bits and pieces.  Got a spell sort of working, based on a picture I took with my phone.  Magic, can you believe that?”

Snowdrop shook her head.

“Figuring it out.  Tell you what, if you don’t rat me out about the stolen cigarettes or the magic, I’ll show you some of it.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” Snowdrop told her.


Verona

If you’d given me more notice-

“I don’t mind, it’s fine,” she said, into the phone, waving goodbye to Avery and Zed.  I told you we were coming home a few days ago.

There’s leftovers in the freezer.  It’s either curry or chicken a la king.  And there’s butter chicken frozen dinners.

The leftovers were a coin flip: either sorta-decent curry, a slimy heap of sadness on a plate.  Except it was a weighted coin flip, because every time she’d been able to definitively identify leftovers as curry, she’d eat that, while she avoided the chicken a la king.  The other option was butter chicken, which was one of the only decent frozen dinners but for that same reason she’d eaten it so often she couldn’t really taste it anymore.  Maybe now that she’d been away for a couple weeks…

“I’ll probably figure it out,” she told him.

I’m really not pleased you didn’t check in more, Verona.  I’m going to need you to pick up some slack now that you’re home, especially now that you’re finally available.  Things have fallen behind around the house.”

She let herself in through the front door, then dumped her bags off in the hallway.

“I need a promise from you that you’ll get on top of the mowing and the laundry.  I would have done more but I’m still far from one hundred percent.”

The house smelled so stale.  She wrinkled her nose.  She hit the hallway light and only one of the two lightbulbs in the little fogged-up dome came on.

“Can I get a promise?  It would help me feel better about the direction we’re going here, Verona.  At least communicate with me.”

She was so tempted to hang up on him.

“I hereby communicate.  I hear you.”

“While I’m on the topic of things that need to be done, the house needs a good sweep.  There are dust bunnies on the stairs.  I’ve been mostly on top of the dishes, I’m really not eating much, but that damn glass stove has crusted-on bits, I’d like you to give those a scrub with the stovetop cleaner that’s under the sink.  Don’t use steel wool on the glass.”

“I know that much.  You’ve only told me at least a dozen times.”

“Don’t snark, Verona.  I’m serious.  The past few weeks have been really, really hard for me, I would get into it more but one of my coworkers is in the building and I don’t need him to overhear that stuff.  I’m staying late to get caught up on work and I’ll be staying late every day for the next week.”

If he expected sympathy he was going the absolute wrong way.  It was the best thing she’d heard since leaving Zed and Avery.

“Speaking of, I should catch them before they leave.  I’ll talk to you tonight to go over everything in detail.”

“Bye.”

“Bye Verona, love yo-”

She hung up.

Love you too, she thought.  She wasn’t brave enough to put it to actual spoken word.

Every second she spent standing in this hallway, bags by her feet, she felt less at ease.  An invader in a dark, stale space.  The only reasons to stay were the questions of basic need.  She probably had to eat at some point, but she was full enough on snacks that it wouldn’t be now or in the next couple hours.  Sleep, clothing, all that crap.

Restlessness consumed her, she shifted her weight, started forward, hoping that that initial burst of momentum would carry her to what she needed or wanted to do, and found it died.  She snatched her bag, pulled out some clothes and moved them to her bigger bag, until it was some general magic stuff, reversed direction, went through the front door, and locked it behind herself.

And only after that was she left to figure out where she was going with such energy and vigor.

They had agreed to wait to face the local Others.  Lucy would get upset if she went and found Alpeana or one of the new Others.

She walked to the corner store by the bridge, in the end, and sort of imagined she’d just wanted to be sure she was armed with practice in case of another crisis.  She kept her Sight on throughout, and the Kennet that had been dark and sunless, every solid object wrapped in veils of white cocoon, gossamer web, clear cheesecloth and-or pale, scuffed up plastic, with meaty things squirming in their depths had changed.

Now, in maybe a third of the places she saw on her way to the corner store, the coverings were stained in patches, and in another third the things within squirmed, thumped, and twitched on the spot to a faster beat.  Doubletime, almost.

At the corner store, she bought a turkey mini-sub, a drink, then stopped at the coffee station for napkins and to load it with salt and pepper because she knew it would be tasteless.

All around her, the gossamer was soaking through with red, and the meat-things were thumping against the glass of the built-in refrigerators and ice cream makers, or squirming within and through boxes.  Where other places on her wall had been one or the other this place was both.  She wasn’t sure if it was because of an event or because it happened to fall inside a narrow part of that… diagram type thing with the overlapping circles.

The person at the counter looked tired, but they roused to say, “Have a nice night.”

“Gotta figure out how, but thanks.  You too.”

“Yep.  Gotta figure out how,” the older teen at the counter said, smiling a bit.

Verona stepped out onto the stairs and leaned against the railing, eating the sandwich.  It was pretty tasteless, and the addition of salt made it tasteless with added salt, and the pepper made her cough once or twice.

She finished, wiped her hands with the napkin, and then started wandering the neighborhood.  Not engaging with the Others, exactly, or looking for trouble, but seeing what was up.

She found a ghost in a dark space between two houses, and it was a person on their knees, knife in hands overhead, stabbing it down repeatedly.  It was pretty thin and ragged at the edges, and the repeated stabs lingered, multiple arms and hands sticking up in the arm as a dissolving cloud, joined by blood sprays.

It made it look less like a human and more like a human’s lower body and then a general conical shape of plunging arms and knives knit together by blood spray above.

“You being good?” she called out.

It flinched at her voice, then the fraying at the edges got worse.

A stirring in the distance made Verona turn her head.  At the edges of Kennet was a loose loop, as though giant gossamer-cocoon-plastic were tracing a circle around Kennet, close to the ground with bits reaching skyward.  It picked up, and as it picked up, the fraying of the echo got worse.

It staggered to its feet, muttering obscenities.

Verona took a swig of her water, then coughed a bit at the pepper.

It came at her, running.

“No,” she told it, firm.

That, like her initial call-out, was damaging in a way.  The damage found weak points, and it fell apart.  It collapsed a few steps away.

She was a bit tickled that worked, even if…

“Sorry, stabby-head.  Wish we could’ve hung out.”

“Who are you talking to?”

Verona turned around.

Jeremy.

She raised a hand in a little wave.  “You’re breathing hard.”

“I saw you from a distance and jogged over.  Sorry, not a runner.”

“Big same.”

“Who were you talking to?”

“Ghost.”

“That’d be neat.  Maybe,” he said, smiling.  That smile faltered slightly as he saw her expression.

She forced a smile, to put him at ease.  He smiled back, shuffling his feet.

“Thought you were away for the summer.”

“I don’t think I gave any specific timing, but yeah.  Came home sooner than I thought we would.  There was a whole thing with leadership and our… I don’t even know what to call it.  Scholarship?”

“Ahh.  Im sorry.”

“I’m not sure if I am,” she said.

“Are you up to anything?” he asked her.

“I am the opposite of up to anything.  I’m bored and wandering.”

“Come on.”

She went.

If he wanted to show her a rock that might be more interesting than the non-ghost parts of what she’d been doing.

He led her to a house, then opened the garage door.

In the corner was a-

“Kitty!” she exclaimed.

The kitten was in a cardboard box, lined with old towels, with a flap that could fold up and down, right next to a litter box.  The kitten roused and stood up on its legs, front paws on the edge of the box.

Verona cooed, extending a finger, which the kitten batted at.

“I’m not allowed to keep him in the house, and we have to either find a home or let him go be a stray, but for my birthday I asked my mom if instead of a present we could take him for a checkup.  Vet said he was probably too young to fend for himself.  We got him neutered and he’s allowed to stay until he’s bigger and healed.”

“Aww, little guy.”

“I’m calling him Sir.  I like the way stuff works like that.  Here’s your dinner, sir.  You’re looking handsome today, sir.”

“You’re looking so healthy, Sir,” Verona told the kitten.  “Does he have a full name?  You could add your last name.  Sir Clifford?”

“I thought that if we went with Sir Whatever, there would be a risk people would call him Whatever, and that ruins the effect.  So instead of Sir Pancake people would call him Pancake.”

“That’s not allowed, that’d ruin the effect!” she cooed, to Sir.

“I can’t tell if you’re making fun or if you think it’s lame.”

“It’s great,” she said, looking up and smiling at Jeremy.  “You’re great, looking after him like this.”  She turned back and gently scratched beneath Sir’s chin.

He laughed, even though she hadn’t been funny.  “Thanks.  I’m worried I’m not doing the best job.  He’s not eating much.  It’s kind of why I took him to the vet.”

“He’s not very big, so maybe he doesn’t need to eat much?”

“Even for his size he’s not eating much.  Vet said to buy this and that and we did but he’s not in love with it.”

“Are you cheating, Sir?” she asked.  “Not eating so you stay small so you can stay?”

“That would be a relief, if there was a good reason for it.  I’d take him to the vet again so they can check up, but I’m not sure, and the neutering was kind of an extra expense that I thought was responsible-”

“Sure.  Very.”

“-But that’s money that was taken out of my Christmas present, too.  If it’s all in my head and I spend the rest of the money for next Christmas that’ll suck.”

“Hmmmmmmmmm,” Verona hummed, which got Sir’s attention, so she hummed more.  “I have books.”

“Books?”

“I could get them.  I like cats so I bought some cat books a while back.”

“I… any help would be great.”

“Okay,” she breathed the word, suddenly conflicted, because Sir here was a balm for the soul and her soul needed some balm and she didn’t want to leave the handsome Sir.  “But I don’t want to leave him.  This is so nice.”

“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself.”

“Made my night.  I needed this.  Thanks Jer,” she said.  “And thank you, Sir.”

Jeremy laughed a bit, again.

“But I’ll go get those books.”

“You could bring them by another time.”

“I could but we need to see if there’s anything about Sir to be concerned about.”

“I could bring him.  Maximize your time with him, wait outside while you go inside.”

That was ridiculously awkward and she nodded with enthusiasm.

Jeremy fixed up the side that could fold down, arranging it so it couldn’t fall over, then picked up the whole box.

They walked over a couple blocks to her house.  Jeremy recounted the Canada Day stuff, and she told him stuff about the school that had nothing to do with magic, like jumping off the bridge, and the food.

They reached her house, Jeremy went to wait outside, and on impulse, she tugged him inside.

“My dad’s been sick, and I haven’t been home, so sorry if it’s dusty or gross,” she told him, while bending down to pick up her bags.

“That’s alright,” Jeremy said.  “My parents accumulate a lot of clutter, especially when they bring their work home, so I’m not about to even notice.”

“Do me a favor, just wait here, let me sort out my room?”

“Sure.”

She let herself into her room, closing the door behind herself, dropped off her bags again, then stopped and took stock.

Magic stuff, had to put that away.  They’d been warned Jeremy would probably cotton on pretty easily, so she cleared her desk of experimental drawings, magic circles, unfinished and experimental spell cards, illustrations of Kennet Others, and stacked them, putting ink bottles on top of them.  There were some investigation notes on her bedside table, and she closed those books and put them with her other notebooks.  And…

A giant painted connection breaker on her floor.

She dragged the red, fuzzy, threadbare rug from the foot of her bed to the middle of the room.  It would get in the way of the wheels of her computer chair, but it covered the paint.  She scuffed it with her foot to make sure it wouldn’t slide aside.

Then she kicked some stray clothes to the space where they would be between her open door and her bookshelf, which served as her dirty clothes hamper.

“Sorry for the wait.”

“So this is your room,” he said, looking around.  “I like the art.  And the color.”

“Thanks.”

She took Sir from him and set the cardboard box on the bed, sitting near the head of the bed, while leaving room for him to sit on the foot of the bed, box between them.  Jeremy seated himself in the computer chair instead, looking at her art desk.

“You do art, right?” she asked.

“Yeah.  More markers and stuff.  You’ve got lots of paint.  And ink bottles?  Lots of ink bottles.”

“Yyyyyep,” she agreed.

“And… are these jars of hair?”

“Empty ink bottle of… stray cat hairs, I think.  Picked off my clothes after the last meeting with Sir, and collected from one of the neighbor cats.”

“Why?”

“For projects.”

“Why separate bottles?”

“Oh!  That one was cat hair, then that one is opossum hair.”

“Opossum?”

“In the other jar are some crow feathers, and songbird feathers.  I collected them after a certain, very pretty, very cool little cat pounced on the birds.”

“We’re glossing over opossum and what?  Do you have an attack cat?”

“I’m closely associated with one, yeah.  And on the topic of cats…” she went to her bookshelf.

“Do you make your own brushes or something?”

“I’ve tried.”

“Huh.  That’s really neat.”

She pulled books from the shelf.

“And that book is way bigger than I thought.  I figured it would be like the books my aunt and uncle gave me every Christmas, edutainment stuff with five hundred high-quality images of birds, or insects.”

“Old vet’s guide to cats,” she said, hefting the tome.  “I got it halfway because it was about cats and halfway because I like having old books on my shelf.”

“Works,” Jeremy said.

She moved Sir’s box and put the books down, then opened the smaller one, flipping through to the back, then the table of contents, to get a sense of the chapter topics and ranges, then flipped to the page in question.  “You’re lucky I’ve been working on my research skills.  Key points of care… temperature, if they’re young enough, nutrition and diet, cleanliness, socialization…”

“Sure.”

“And infection.”

“Worrying.”

She kept the book in her lap and reached over to scratch Sir.  He nuzzled her hand with his head and her heart melted some.

“What does it say for diet?” he asked.

“Come, see,” she told him.

He hesitated, then came and sat on the bed.  She scooted as close as she could with the box between then and balanced the book on her knee, tilted toward him, so they could both read it.

“Huh.  We did get special kitten food, vet specified.”

“Might be infection, then.”

“Ugggh.”

She made a face, reached over to pet Sir, and her fingers bumped Jeremy’s.  He pulled back, and turned, looking at everything except her.

It reminded her of sitting on the cabin porch with him.

But she wasn’t doing anything embarrassing for him to spare her pride, and there was nothing really to make him pull away like this.  His attention kept going to the window and what lay beyond it.

“Do you want to go?” she asked.  “Hopefully the books help.  You can borrow them.”

“I think they might, and uh, do you want me to go?”

“No, I mean, if you’re uncomfortable or bored or if my room is too messy or if I stink because I’ve been in the car for hours and hours-”

“You’re fine, this is fine.  It’s- it’s- it’s good to see you.”

“You’re just sorta focused on other stuff.  Bashful?”

“I- yeah.  Except more I don’t know what to do.  I do want to say… sorry?”

“Why?”

“For, um, how I handled stuff, at the end of the year party.  Before we got interrupted looking for your bag.”

“You’re fine.  It’s cool.”

“I’ve been kicking myself over and over again and replaying the conversation in my head constantly wondering if I hurt your feelings or if I was insensitive when you talked about your parents or…”

She was already shaking her head with vigor.  “No.”

“Okay.”

She didn’t get why he was there, and she was here, and there was a gap, and she felt like it was her job to bridge that gap.  “You were super cool, and it was super nice, and it was really super nice that you stepped it up like you did to help with my bag.  I think with… I guess regular human males-”

“Huh?”

“It was manly.  Stepping up-”

Jeremy made a sound, almost like scoffing, but it was a half-laugh, followed by a chuckling fit, that was more than a bit dorky.  A ‘huh huh haw haw’ kind of sound.  He put his hands to his face like he could stifle it.

“What was that?” she asked.

“That…” he kept his hands there.  “Can you look after Sir for me?  I’m going to go run home and set myself on fire.”

“Don’t!” she said, leaning forward and over Sir to catch his arm.  She hauled him back down to a sitting position on the bed.  “Just talk to me.”

He was flushed, and he pushed his hair back.  “Brain misfire.”

“Oh, that happens.”

“Because I really like you, and I’ve liked you for a while, and I think I said something like that at the party.”

“Yeah.”

“And you called me manly and that overloaded my brain.”

“Would it happen again if I kept saying it?  That you were manly then?”

“I don’t think so.  I hope not.”

“Darn.  That’d be funny.  One time, I tried to hack my brain.  Um, I’m embarrassing myself here, telling you, it’s not a boy thing or a girl thing but I remember a few years back when my parents divorced, I’d get these really dark, intrusive, self-hating thoughts.”

“I won’t pry, you don’t have to say.”

‘It’s just- nah.  I’m mostly past all that.  But it’s like, my grades were awful, and my dad kept saying my mom didn’t want me and she wasn’t exactly acting like she wanted me, and my dad couldn’t afford me and it’d be like… any time of day that I started thinking about any of it I’d think about all of it.”

Jeremy nodded.

“And so the brain hack, every time I started to think in that direction I’d try to break it up with a really vivid mental image.  I thought if I could visualize something big and clear and detailed enough, with sight and sound and fill up my brain it wouldn’t have room for the other stuff.  I chose a cat.  Of course.”

She gave Sir another pet.

“Did it work?”

“Nope.  All I ended up doing was adding a meowing cat to the jumble of stuff that was overwhelming me.  And that, Jeremy, is the very long story for how I ended up meowing to myself randomly at school a couple of times.  I think Amadeus heard me once.”

“Sorry all that happened.”

“Like I said, I got past that.”

Jeremy smiled, and he pet Sir as well.

“Thanks, for telling me that.  I’m not exactly sure how it fits in with the goofiest laugh in the history of man, though.”

“I get how brain misfires happen.”

“Oh.”

“Yep.”

“I guess that does make me feel better,” he said.  “Uh.  About trust.  And about what I was saying before.  I feel like a jerk, a bit, because I’m not sure I deserve your trust.  I keep thinking back to our conversation that night, and I don’t get it, and I’m worried I’ll say the wrong thing because I don’t get it.”

“I think you’re a good guy, Jeremy.  I’ve met some awful, awful people.  A lot in the last few weeks.  And you’re not a bad person.  So even if you did somehow hurt me by saying the wrong thing I… trust you.  I don’t think it’d be on purpose.”

He nodded, even though he looked uncertain.

“Cool,” she said.

“I don’t want to make you feel bad and I have no idea how to word this… but I really don’t get it.  And it’s frustrating, and… I’m worried I’m being one of those jerk guys on TV if I want to date and I’m pressuring you in that direction by asking but that’s not…”

He faltered.

“Sorry,” she told him.  He looked really upset.

“It’s not you, it’s probably me being dumb and it’s really stupid.  I don’t get where the lines are drawn or what the rules are.  I kind of want to ask for rules or figure you out but I feel like that’s demanding or I’m prying.  But it’s also nagging at me and that part of it sucks.”

“Sorry,” she said.

“Really, it’s not you, it’s…”

He trailed off.  She didn’t know what to say.

They sat there, the cat between them, both of their hands running through one side of Sir’s fur.

“Do you like boobs, Jer?” she asked.  “Or the idea of them?”

“What?”  His eyes went wide.  He looked startled.

“Play along?  Just go with it and I’ll try to convey where I’m at and where those lines are?” she asked.  “On a scale of one to ten, how do you rate the boob?”

“I… seven.”

“That’s way lower than I’d have figured.”

“I mean, I’m risking my man cred saying it but it’s honest.”

“Honest is good.”

“I was at a friend’s house and I’m not going to name the friend because you don’t diss a friend’s family- I stayed the night.  And I woke up at five something in the morning and I couldn’t get back to sleep and I decided to go downstairs and get some time in with his Slaycast.”

“Very reasonable.”

“And I walked by their bathroom and his mom was in there, door cracked open and I saw what I didn’t want to see.”

Verona winced.

“Brought down the average.”

“Oh no.”

“There was hair.”

“Below the-”

“On the- upper body.”

“Oh.”

“So yeah.  Not really sure where this is going,” Jeremy said, frowning at her, looking antsy.

“And you like girls romantically…”

“Yeah… if we’re using scales, nine out of ten.  I like you, ten out of ten if that wasn’t clear.”

“Thank you for the compliment,” she said, feeling more awkward than she had during the boob talk.  “Swimsuits, underclothes…”

“Sure.  Seven out of ten-”

“Makes some sense, same logic.”

“And nine point five out of ten?” he said.

Really?

He looked startled, like he was ready to bolt or he was spooked at her reaction.

“That’s interesting,” she said.  “Why nine point five?”

“I… intimidating?  I dunno, I wouldn’t know how to-”

Verona leaped to her feet.  Again, Jeremy looked out of sorts, like he was ready to apologize or bolt.

He was practically frozen as she opened a drawer and pulled out some bras, placing it in his lap, hand moving to stop it from falling to the floor.

She dug through the drawer some more, skipping some that were especially juvenile, or that had gotten grody in the wash.  She pulled out one last one and added it to the pile.

She moved the box with Sir in it, and sat next to Jeremy, her left leg against his left leg, her right leg hooked around his butt, her chin on his shoulder, looking over it at the pile.  He still wasn’t moving.

“I can back off if you want me to,” she said.  “You can dismiss this as my mental misfire and we can reset, or…”

“No.  I just don’t know what this is.”

She reached around him and showed him how the clasps worked with a few of the different types.  As he got some, she tossed them into the dirty laundry pile by her door.

“Practice,” she said, leaning back to let him do a few on his own, and to pet Sir.  “I… I like guys, but I don’t like the idea of a boyfriend.  Or a husband, or kids, or all that.”

“Oh.”

“Sorry, thought I was clear,” she told him.

“You probably were but I’m a butthead about things.”

She leaned forward again, chin going to his shoulder, and watched as he finished.  “A year ago I read through some old books aimed at boys in hopes of finding out the secret world of boys, watched old movies and I kept on being disappointed.  It’s half the population and I just don’t know how… boys work.”

“Yeah,” he said.  “After this I’m about a thousand percent less sure I know how girls work.”

“We could work on that.  Hey, you’re done.  One mystery hopefully solved?  You’ve learned something about girls.  A little less intimidated?  Less likely to fumble when it counts?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“That’s what I want.  I’m just… curious, and into boys bodies, and boy brains.  And I think of you as a friend and figuring that out with a friend would be cool.  Especially a handsome, manly friend…”

She trailed off, hopeful, and he didn’t have a response.

“I hoped that’d get another dorky laugh out of you.”

“Sorry,” he said.  “Thinking about what you’re saying.  Paralyzed.”

“I might joke about the laugh but I liked it and there’s… no reason to be paralyzed.

“I think I get it now.  Sorry I’m dumb.”

Verona shook her head.

She hesitated.

“Want to try it on a live model?” she asked.

Verona pulled her top back on as she opened the door and crossed the hallway to the bathroom, remembered her stuff was packed up and went looking for her toothbrush in her bag.  She put a jar of her own hair clippings in with the cat and opossum hair, grabbed her other toiletries, and clamped her heavy electric toothbrush between her teeth so her hands would be free to carry stuff over.

She dance-walked from her room to hallway to bathroom, happy.

“This big vet book looks great,” Jeremy said.  “It gets into diet.”

“That’s great.”

“And talks about calcium and stuff.  And changing wet foods if they don’t take to one.  Maybe I can call the vet’s office and ask if there’s something else that works?”

She brushed her teeth and talked around the sound of the electric toothbrush and the foam, “And if it’s not that then maybe assume infection and take him in?”

“Yeah.  That’s good.  It’s good to have a plan,” Jeremy said.

She spat, wiped her mouth with the side of the hand that held the toothbrush, sos he could flash him a non-foamy smile.

“You good?” he asked.

She’d resumed brushing her teeth, but she nodded, and danced a bit on the spot.  She pointed at him.

“I’m good,” he said.  “Not really sure how to… what to do, now.”

“You do what you wanna do,” she told him.

“Go home?  Is that rude?  I went to ask the guy down the street if I could borrow the lawnmower and then disappeared, I’m actually surprised my phone isn’t blowing up.”

“Then go, that’s cool,” she said.  “And fill me in about everything about Sir?”

“Of course.  You can come by, if you want.”

“So can you,” she said. “Give me a bit of notice so I can clean up some.”

“I can’t imagine myself making that call.  But sure.  This was nice.”

She nodded, feeling awkward.

He picked up Sir and tried to find a way to hold the books and stuff while also holding the box, and settled for holding them underneath while supporting the base.  “Can I kiss you?”

“I’m toothpastey.”

“I don’t care much.”

She stood on her toes to kiss him, and it was… a kiss.  Nice but not especially interesting beyond that.  She put the toothbrush aside and followed him down the stairs, opening the door for him.

As he headed down the stairs, the street was illuminated some with headlights.  Her heart sank just hearing the car, as if her body had learned to recognize the sound of her dad’s car.

Her dad got out, more slowly than he would have before she’d left for summer.  He stood tall and ominous by the car, staring Jeremy down.

Jeremy, halfway across the lawn, looked at Verona.

“Hi dad.”

“A friend from camp?”

“Classmate.  I loaned him books for the cat he’s taking care of.”

There was a look from her dad, like he knew exactly what had transpired, and Jeremy’s stricken look didn’t exactly help sell the casual vibe Verona was going for.

“Go home, Jer!” she called out.  “Take care of Sir!”

“I’ll let you know how it goes!”

“Thanks!” she called out, not breaking eye contact with her dad, as she stood at the top of the stairs and he stood by the car.

Her dad grunted as he walked the little path that cut from driveway to front steps.  Verona remained where she was.  She remained where she was as her dad made heavy use of the railing by the stairs, his expression periodically pained as he ascended.

It didn’t really matter that she and Jeremy hadn’t really done much.  The way her dad held himself and looked at her and the way she could face him down… it felt like the paradigm had changed.

As if the house had been strictly his and she’d just lived in it.  And now he knew it was hers too and he had to deal with the knowledge he couldn’t control everything she did there.

“Did you manage to do one chore this evening?” he asked her, as he opened the front door.

“Nope,” she answered.  She licked her lips in case there was any toothpaste there, then smiled as she followed him in.  “Was busy.”


Avery

“Here,” Bluntmunch grunted the word.  “Down this path.”

“Thanks Blunt,” Avery told him.

“Mm.  It’s good you’re getting that looked at.  Goblin weapons can poison.”

“I think it would have hit me already if it was that bad.”

“Goblin weapons can be tricky.”

“Yeah,” she replied.  “Alright, thank you.”

“I’ll stay.  Watch for trouble.”

Avery nodded, putting a hand on the big goblin’s shoulder.  Partially to convey thanks, partially to steady herself as she stepped down onto the sloping path.

The cabin was small, barely larger than her room at home, and had colorful clothes hanging from a clothesline, which had camo-printed tarps on either side, shielding them from the eyes of bystanders.  The river cut through the woods without much shore.  In some places, roots extended out further than the rocky shoreline did, like they were drinking directly from the river.  In other places, the line between algae, plant life, and moss were hard to distinguish.

“Tashlit!” she called out.

There was a splash.

Tashlit emerged from the water, pushing hair out of her face.  Her scalp sat askew, so the hair did too.  Behind that loose skin cover, the skinny human silhouette that was painted with a  kaleidoscope of yellow eyes peered out at Avery.

“Hey, how are you doing?” Avery asked.

Tashlit gave her a thumbs up.

“That’s good.”

Tashlit emerged from the water and squeezed out her hair.  She pointed at the ring of stones with logs in it.

“You want a fire?” Avery asked.  “Is it supposed to get cold tonight?”

Tashlit nodded, paused, then nodded again.

“Can try,” Avery replied.  She walked over, sat on the cut log that served as a bench, and found the lighter, inside a plastic case.  Kindling, some cotton fluff, some extra Kennet Kaller newspapers…

She arranged the logs so there was space beneath for the air to flow, put the kindling and fluff there with crumpled paper and lit it.

“Are you okay here?” she asked.  “Is this comfortable?”

Tashlit shrugged.  She’d gone swimming in clothes and they were soaked through.  She held up one finger as she headed into her cabin.  It looked nice, if small, but one window had broken and had plywood nailed up over it.

“Are you going to be warm enough in winter!?” Avery called out.

She wasn’t sure what reply she expected.  A minute passed.

The fire seemed to be catching.  Cotton burned, which let the kindling catch, and now the bark on the bigger logs was starting to ignite.

Fires were satisfying.

Tashlit emerged, wearing fresh, dry clothes, and it looked like she’d toweled as much as was possible.  She shrugged dramatically.

“You don’t know?”

Tashlit shook her head.  She pointed at the fire and gave Avery a thumbs up.

“Thanks,” Avery replied.  “You know, if heat is a concern, we could look at doing a kind of heating and insulation diagram around the campsite.  Keep you comfortable enough.”

Tashlit nodded, then pointed at the fire, then her own… eye sockets, in the face of the loose skin that hung at the side of her head.

“Fire… eyes?  Edith.  Edith said something like that?”

Tashlit nodded.

“Cool.  Great, so that’s probably an option.  It’d be nice if you guys were all happy and comfortable.”

Tashlit circled the fire and benches, and walked around to Avery, making a hand gesture, a small shrug, before waving her hand around Avery in general.

Avery hunkered forward and pulled up her shirt, wincing at the intense stabbing pain at her shoulder.  It had been dull to start, very real in a way most other bruises and scrapes hadn’t felt, but the pain had rolled in slow and mounted over the course of the drive.  She’d had to twist to avoid letting the backrest of the car seat press against the injury, but doing so made her stomach hurt, and staying in a weird posture had given her a twinge in her back.

Tashlit’s hand was cool and damp.  She could feel the thrum of it, as Tashlit pressed in some power.

The older teenage Other gave Avery a pat on the shoulder where it had been injured, and she tugged her shirt back down her back.  “Thank you.  That really helps a ton.”

Tashlit gave her a thumbs up.  She gestured again, finger waving without aim, tracing figure eights and such, indicating Avery in general.

“I’ve got this cut on my arm, and scrapes at my stomach.”

Tashlit paused, eyes narrowing.

“Is that a problem?” Avery asked, caught off-guard.

Tashlit nodded, which put her more off-guard, but then Tashlit reached out to give Avery a pat on the shoulder.

Reassuring, being gentle.

Oh, it was a problem, but only because it was sad, or whatever.

“It hasn’t been easy for you guys either, has it?”

Tashlit shook her head.

“Are you… are you doing okay?  I know I asked a similar question before, but how are you managing?  I hope you’re not regretting coming here.”

Tashlit rocked her head from side to side, looking ambivalent, then gestured, holding up three fingers.

“Three words?”

Tashlit pressed her hands together, loose skin smushing up, then turned her face skyward.

“Faith?  Religion?  Are you religious?  Wait, that’s a dumb question.”

Tashlit emphasized the hands.

“Praying?”

Tashlit nodded, gave Avery a thumbs up, and then pointed at the thumbs up.

“Approve?  Good?”

Tashlit nodded.  Then she touched the back of her wrist, where a watch would be.

“Time?”

Tashlit pointed at Avery, then motioned over in the distance.

“Time… there?”

Head shake.  Tashlit paused, then did the time gesture, followed by jerking a thumb over her back.

“Back…”

Tashlit made the time gesture, followed by pointing at the ground.

“Here?  Time back, time here, time…” Avery raised her head, then dropped it in a single nod as Tashlit pointed in the distance again.  “Past, present, future?”

Tashlit nodded, then pointed in the distance again.

“Praying for a good future?”

Tashlit made a so-so gesture.

“Hoping for a better tomorrow.”

Tashlit gave her a solid thumbs up, before leaning down to touch Avery’s injured arm.  Light glowed between hand and skin, and a deep pressure drove into the injury, white froth bubbling up with looked like grains of sand or iron filings.

Avery frowned at that.

Tashlit gestured, mouth to ground.

“Sick?  Yeah.  Bluntmunch just said.”

Tashlit nodded, keeping her hand there for a bit longer.  When she pulled her hand back, there was no scratch.

She reached for Avery’s stomach, and Avery leaned back, hiking up her shirt to her ribs to show the scrape from the bridge fall.

There was a glow, and she felt a stirring, but then Tashlit whipped her hand back.

“No?”

Tashlit shook her head.

“Okay.  That one’s minor but annoying.”

Tashlit circled around the campfire, and sat on the log opposite Avery.

“If you’re hoping for a better tomorrow, does that mean today’s not great?”

That question got her a shrug.

“I can’t remember, because Verona would’ve handled it.  Do you eat?” Avery asked.

Tashlit shook her head.  She crossed two fingers over where her mouth would be.

“Oh.  Listen, I’m really thankful, this… makes a lot of things easier.  I don’t want to take it for granted, so is there anything I can get you?  Things you like?  That would make today better?”

Tashlit plucked at her shirt, which was sky blue with a pink scribble design at the center of the chest.

“Clothes.”

Tashlit put her hands together in a pretty clear reading of ‘book’.

“Stuff to read.  Books?”

Tashlit shrugged.

“Audiobooks, to break up the silence?”

That got her a more enthusiastic nod.

“Magazines?  Comics?”

More nods.

“I think I have a few graphic novels.  I can steal a few of my brother’s.  Yeah, for sure.  I want to get along, so if there’s anything, let us know.”

The teenager gave Avery a thumbs up.

“How is this?  The cabin?  It’s not too small?”

Gestures.  Past… thumbs down.  Now… so-so.

“Okay,” Avery said.  “I’ve got a teacher- I had a teacher who was super into self sufficiency, building his own cabin and stuff.  I don’t know if that’s your style…”

Tashlit shrugged and nodded.

“Cool.  Yeah, I just thought it might give you ideas if you wanted to improve things.”

Tashlit gave her a thumbs up.

“Cool,” Avery said.

Tashlit got out her old-school music player, and fiddled with it for a bit.

“Is it not working?” Avery asked.

Tashlit held up one hand, flat and turned sideways, then pressed a fingertip against it.  The loose skin smushed and went sideways.

“Tough to press buttons?”

That got a nod.

“This might be a weird question, but does it serve any function?  The skin?  Could you just… lose it?”

Tashlit gestured, the watch gesture followed by a point to the distance.

“In the future?  Do you mean you could, later?”

Head shake.

“You want to?”

Head shake.

“But you will?”

Nod.

“Sorry I’m not great at this.  Verona’s practically psychic, she’s so good at it.”

Nod, shrug.

“So you’ll keep changing?  Is that okay to ask?”

Nod, pause, nod.

Music started playing.  Electronic, rock, and pop sounds with some latin chanting mixed in.  Lucy would probably have a better sense of what it was.

Still, it was atmospheric.

“I’m not in the way, am I?  Am I interrupting your evening?”

Head shake.

“Good.  I’m kind of… procrastinating on going home.  Isn’t that lame?”

Head shake.

“I think it is.  Maybe with context,” Avery said, dropping her eyes to the fire.  “I’ve been so proud of myself for moments of bravery and this… I’m not very brave.  I’ve told friends, I’ve told strangers.  My parents pretty much know and I’m pretty sure I know what the reactions will be.  My sister prepped me with what she thinks and it makes sense to me.  I think Mom’s going to be cool.  I think Dad’s going to be okay, but just okay, not like, excited.  And I think Grumble, my grandfather, he’s going to be not great.  I think my little siblings will be sorta dumb about it.”

The music picked up in intensity, out of sync with how she felt.

“And I’m scared,” Avery confessed.

She looked up from the fire to see Tashlit waiting, hands over her heart.  She ‘blew’ that out in Avery’s direction.

“Thanks,” Avery replied.  “You um, you used to be human?  Stop me if I’m crossing a line.”

Head shake, pause, then head shake.

“You didn’t?  Oh, right, you were always an Other, it just didn’t show?”

Nod.

“What happened?  How did your family react?”

Tashlit held up one finger, then grabbed two fistfuls of loose skin and pulled them to her lower face, startling Avery.

Then Tashlit brought up fingers and thumb and twisted skin around her lower ‘face’, making a…

Mustache?

Avery laughed.  “Your dad?  Sorry, I shouldn’t be laughing.  I just didn’t get that at all until the mustache.”

Tashlit gave her a thumbs up, nodding a bit.

“Just him, huh?”

Tashlit put a hand to the forehead of the loose skin, moving the face to where her face would normally be, giving Avery a glimpse of the girl she’d been once, kind of.  Tashlit mimed a line, from the corner of the eye to the chin.

“Cried?”

Nod.

“I’m sorry.”

Shrug.  Followed by that ‘blowing a heart’ gesture again.

“I can see why Verona likes you.  I’d really like to- it’s our duty, you know, to look after Kennet.  To help you guys.  So I want to help get you to where you’re not so-so here.  Where you’re as happy as can be with where you’re at, who you’re with.”

Tashlit nodded slowly, every single one of her eyes looking into the fire.

“Any tips?”

Head shake, shrug, then a point, off toward Kennet.

“You want me to go?”

Head shake, shrug, point.

“But… I should go?”

Nod, a tap at the wrist.

“Yeah.  Before it’s too late.  I guess if I show up super late in the evening, it’s adding that stress of ‘where have you been’ with everything else.”

Nod.

“Thanks for the chat, Tashlit, cool music.”

Thumbs up.

Avery stood, feeling a bit better than she had, with the healing.  Her stomach still hurt.

“Bye.”

That got her a wave and a glance, before Tashlit’s eyes went to the fire again.

She left that behind.

Bluntmunch caught up with her as she entered the woods.

“Is she safe?”

“Yeh.  Safe as any of us.”

“Okay.  How are you, Blunt?  How are you doing?”

“I’m good,” Bluntmunch answered, and the deep, grating nature of his voice almost made that ‘good’ a rumbling purr.  “This is the life.”

“Stuff to fight, goblins to order around?”

“Yeh,” Bluntmunch answered.

“That’s cool, I guess.  Listen, uh, as much as I appreciate the bodyguard, I think I’m going to run.”

“Whatever works.”

“Make sure the new goblins don’t boss around Snowdrop?”

“Already have.”

“Cool,” Avery replied, nodding.  She reached into her pocket for the black rope, set her damaged mask into place.

Eyes closed.

Eyes opened.

The world cast in mist, traced with blood.  Crimson handprints throughout the woods, wetter and dribbling.  Trees had chunks out of them where there weren’t enough handprints to hold them together, and some were so lacking that the upper parts had nothing between them and the stump to support them.  Just… hovering treetops, maybe held up by the intertwining foliage above.

He handed her her bags.  She’d packed lighter than Lucy or Verona, but it was still a weight.

“Bye.”

“Smell ya later.”

Avery ran.  Through the woods, weaving through trees.  The black rope let her skip past just about anything that was too inconvenient to go around or over, including jumbles of gathered tree branches- possibly dens for an animal of some sort.  Rocks, rises.  Painted in handprints or so dissolved they were solid objects suspended in air.

Her antler on her mask had broken when America had come at her, but by her Sight, she could see it.  Suspended there.  Belonging there.  A gap between the base and the upper part she could swipe a finger through.

Her Sight let her spot the incoming trees, let her check her flanks for anything coming at her.

Altogether, it let her run without slowing.  Burning off nervous energy.

Running because if she did anything but, then she’d possibly slow down or procrastinate more, and it wasn’t entirely about not getting in trouble.  If she hesitated or delayed then a part of her would feel like she was doing it out of shame or something and screw that.  She’d kicked herself and blamed or gotten down on herself for a lot of things, but never who she loved.

The bag was heavy but she didn’t mind, and her shoulder was fixed and that felt vaguely euphoric, just as a contrast to how miserable it had been making her.

She wove between buildings, ducked behind cars to emerge from others.  A dog at a window barked at her and she held off on using the black rope until she was sure it wasn’t looking anymore.  It kept barking at where it thought she was.  Whoops.

She slowed as she got home, bending over with hands on her knees, breathing hard.  She pulled her mask off, then hooked it on the side of her bag.  It wasn’t like her family members hadn’t seen it.  Declan had messed with it early on.

Siblings.  Family.

Everything.

She closed her eyes, putting the Sight away, and kept them closed, trying to find her center.  She thought of checkmarks, of the little lessons.

I go out there, to strange and weird places, and then I come back.  Home.

Departures and arrivals.

Arrival time.  She walked down the street to her home.  She did dawdle, pausing to look at the neighbor’s repainted house, stopping when she thought a goblin or Snowdrop might be close, then finding out it was birds.

She did make her way home.  And on hearing the commotion in the backyard, she walked down the driveway.  Her house’s driveway and the neighbor’s were side by side, garages next to one another with a gap Snowdrop sometimes lurked in, where Avery stowed her bike.  Her bike had been shoved further in, two strange bikes in their place.

The Declans were all present, running around in the backyard with a plastic toy.  The adults- mom, dad, and Grumble, were all up on the porch.  Sheridan too.

“Avery!  Hey!” her dad greeted her.

“Hey.”

They came to her, rather than the other way around, coming through the garage because the gate didn’t close right.  Avery shuffled her feet a bit.”

“Hey honey, you look so tired,” her mom greeted her, laying fingers on Avery’s cheeks for a second before wrapping her in a hug.  “Everything okay?”

“Did you walk back?” her dad asked, joking.

“No.  Got a ride from a friend.”

The hug with her mom ended, her dad went in for a hug, and Avery hesitated.

“Hug from your dorky old dad too much?”

“No,” Avery said, hugging him.

He gave her a firm pat on the back as he broke the hug.

“So how was it?  What exactly were you doing?”

“It was just stuff.  It kind of fell apart near the end-”

“With Lucy and Verona?” her mom asked.

“No.  No.  The whole… other stuff.  Lucy and Verona are cool.”

“That’s good.  That’s important.  The most important thing, isn’t it?”

“It’s up there.”

“You’re more subdued than usual.  Is everything okay?” her dad asked.

“I’m- can we talk?  Away from them?” she asked, looking over at the rest of the family.

Sheridan waved at her, expression about as sympathetic or whatever as Avery had pretty much ever seen it.

Damn it.  She did not want to cry.  She managed to hold back.

They walked to the end of the driveway, which felt weirdly exposed but there was probably no way they could be inside and not have Declan and his friends tearing through the middle of the conversation or whatever.

“I heard, um, you talked with a coworker, dad.”

No ums, no hesitation.  Be solid, Ave, she told herself.

“Yeah.  I realized when Sheridan started poking around the topic that she’d heard, and I thought back to how fast you’d disappeared when you left for camp… yeah.”

“Yeah,” Avery said, nodding.  Remember that shitload of golden check marks, no tears, no ums, no hesitation, no wavering.

“What’s your take on that?” her dad asked.

“Your coworker sounds like an asshole,” Avery said.

“Yyyyes.  Yes, no, you’re absolutely right.  He is.”

“Why were you mad, dad?” she asked.

“Because I love you.  Because I want a good life for you, and I want you to be happy and whole and I worry you haven’t been either.”

“This… the fact I’m a lesbian doesn’t take away from either.”

Her mom pulled her into a hug from behind, which surprised her a bit.  But… it was a gentle hug and she leaned into it.  Her mom at her back, her dad in front of her with his forehead wrinkled with worry.

“No, but it does make life harder sometimes,” her dad said.  “And I don’t want your life to be harder.”

The hug at Avery’s shoulders tightened, her mom tensing maybe unconsciously.

“That starts with you, dad,” Avery said.

“Yeah,” he replied.  “I realized that.  I love you and I want good things for you and I want you to love yourself and want good things for yourself.  I want…”

He reached for more words.

Avery swallowed.

“…I hope I’m not one of the reasons you’ve been struggling, or stressing out, or been unhappy.”

He had been, but she couldn’t say that.

“I was caught off guard, that’s all.  But I suppose with Sheridan not dating and you going this way, I don’t need to worry about any teenage daughters getting pregnant until Kerry gets older?  That’s a huge load off my mind,” he joked.

“Connor, come on,” Avery’s mom said.

Avery spoke up, “Sheridan’s been cool.  I wouldn’t rule out some guy seeing that coolness in her, if he got the chance.”

Her dad sobered up some.  “Yeah.  I really do want nothing else than for all my sons and daughters to love and be loved, Avery.  I really do believe you deserve that.  I’m proud you’ve found yourself.”

“That’s me, I’m a finder.”

“I don’t think this has to be a big dramatic thing,” her mother said.  “Don’t wait too long to bring your first girlfriend home, and I’ll do my best to keep your dad from making too many dumb jokes.”

Her dad chuckled.

Avery put her hand over her mom’s.  Her mom kissed the crown of her head.

“Did you take one bath while you were gone?” her mom asked.  I got grit in my mouth kissing your hair.

“Oh.  Mud fight,” Avery told her.  “I hosed off but I guess I didn’t get all of it.”

“I see.  Why don’t you unpack, take a proper shower?  I did a big grocery shop today, so there’s tons of ice cream bars, popsicles and things.”

“I missed dinner actually.  Had some fried stuff on the road.”

Her mom nodded.  “There’s plenty of food too.  Help yourself, you know how to use the microwave.  You can ask if you want anything particular.”

“Thanks,” Avery said, and it was a multi-layered thanks to her mom.

The boys in the backyard were shrieking, a sound that increased in pitch as they topped one another.

“I’m going to go make sure the Declan trio aren’t killing each other,” her dad said.  He tapped the underside of her chin, “Proud of you.  Love you.”

“Love you dad.”

Her mom squeezed her shoulders in a tight finish to the hug, dusted off the top of Avery’s head, then let her go.

Mixed feelings swirled through Avery.  She was uneasy and vaguely unsatisfied and had trouble putting her finger on why.

She carried her bags in, taking them upstairs.

“Kerry had a friend over and her friend slept in and peed on your bed,” Sheridan said.

Avery made a face, looking up in the direction of the bedroom.

“Dad cleaned it but I thought you should know.”

Avery gave Sheridan her most unimpressed look.

“How did it go?” Sheridan asked.

“Mom was cool.  Dad… was okay.  Hard to say why I feel like it was just okay.”

Okay is pretty good, isn’t it, Avery?”

“I wish he’d… I think he kept saying I, I, I, him, his viewpoint.  I don’t know.  He joked.”

“I ran into that when I ran it by them.”

“I was a little forced, like if I was better at noticing details I might’ve noticed how he was standing further away than usual or something.”

“Couldn’t tell you.  I can tell you, you know, it’s better than it was?  He came around.”

“I wish he hadn’t had to.”

“Yeah well, maybe he came around ’cause he loves you, you dingus.  That’s not worth nothing.”

“Guess not.  Maybe I’m being greedy, wanting more.  I didn’t get kicked out of the house or anything.”

“Nah.  Kids starve in third world countries, doesn’t mean you can’t feel like crap because you’re hungry.”

Avery nodded.  “Those are some good words you just strung together.”

“Stole ’em.  I don’t have an original thought in my head.  I’m a sad sack of regurgitated memes and references.”

“You’re also a pretty cool sister, you know?”

“Ew.  I don’t want that.  Means I’m related to a chihuahua in the body of a six year old girl, a little misogynist-”

“I’ve pledged to do some yelling at him for that one friend he was shitty to.”

“-Damn right, there’s Rowan who doesn’t have an original or unoriginal thought in his head.  Why would I want to be a sister to any of that?”

“What about me?”

“You…” Sheridan hesitated, shaking her head.  “You’re the weird-ass, weirdly dusty-”

“Mud fight.”

“-girl who’s going to sleep on a mattress with probable traces of kid pee on it, tonight.”

“Get bent, Sheridan.”

“Loop me in when it’s time to yell at Declan about being shitty to his female friends.  We should get him when the other members of his group aren’t around.”

“Can do.  I love you, you know.”

“Fuck off with that so I can get back to fantasizing that I’m an only child.”

Sheridan headed back in the direction of the back yard.

Her absence had let the clutter of her other sisters take over the room, including her upper bunk, which was freshly made but had some of Kerry’s toys on it.  She chucked them into a plastic bin by the dresser.  Spaces in the dresser had been claimed with Kerry and Sheridan’s clothes, like they’d been put aside in an empty space so they could dig through things, and then had never been put back.

Nobody had brought up Grumble, but that wasn’t a surprise.

She spent a while clearing out her share of the room again.  And when it was clear enough, she used the black rope to put herself through the window and onto the roof.

She lay there, back against gritty shingles, taking five minutes to herself.  Thinking.

Off in the distance, a silhouette of a woman stood atop a streetlight, faintly illuminated from below.  She was rigid and narrow enough with draping clothing that could be mistaken for an extension at the top of the streetlight’s pole.  Facing Avery.

If her eyes were any worse, she might not have seen.

She used the Sight and watched as Alpeana crawled up the nearby tree to the parts of the streetlight that its own light didn’t touch.  A morass of hair and darkness weaving their way up like a snake until the body emerged, crouching on the part the woman wasn’t standing on.

To Avery’s Sight, as she checked, she could see disturbances in fog, and movements here and there across Kennet.  Faint light glowed within the fog, faint, and she could only guess at what was beneath.

Her phone buzzed, and she turned, lying sideways on the roof, one leg extended to rest against the mounting for the gutter.  A message from Lucy and Verona.

Asking how she was.  Had she had a chance to ask?  How was her shoulder.

It had felt weirdly lonely, being home.  She was probably unique in that.  But the phone call mattered, it helped.

They’d been apart for a handful of hours and now they reconnected, as sure as anything.  She took her time telling them, sharing thoughts, hearing theirs, each with a faintly audible ‘bloop’ as the messages were sent, a ‘bing’ as they came in.

Alpeana and the new other, the Crooked Rook, they moved on.  Avery remained where she was.

They could handle that, presumably.

Avery knew that she and her team would have things to tackle, things to do.  To be outlined at that meeting with the local Others.

The conversation petered out, the sky turned from dark blue to starry black, and even without the Sight, the stars seemed to have a faint red tint at their bottommost edges.  Like the were filling up or dripping.

She remained where she was, phone resting on her upper chest, for another ten minutes.  Just sitting, watching the sky, missing Snowdrop a bit, though Snow was catching up with Louise and the goblins, and that was important.

Family started calling for her.  She put the phone away, rose, and stretched.

She black roped her way inside, where family was, talking over one another, chaotic and distracted and emotional and normal.  She’d met it head on, talking to her parents.  Departures and arrivals… she kept coming back a bit stronger.

She badly wanted to walk another Path.  To get ready and get stronger than she’d been for the Blue Heron stuff.  She wanted to meet this, all of this Kennet and practice stuff, head on, too.  As she’d done here.  Head on- no.  Prongs-on.

Shaking Hands – 9.1

Lucy

Something was wrong.

Lucy’s body felt like a lead weight as she pulled her head off of her pillow and her upper body up from the bed.  That heaviness wasn’t the problem.  She was tired from… from everything, more tired because it was-

The clock flashed 0:00.  She must have mucked it up while getting everything sorted out and put away.  The dull red light lit up her room on and off, illuminating the album art and posters she’d plastered one half of her room with.  An awful lot of skulls and demons and things there, mixed in with faces being dissolved into abstract images, landscapes, and city shots.  Different images stood out when the clock flashed than when the room was lit by the lights outside the window only.

She crept out of her room, unsure of the time, and passed by Booker’s room.  She was so used to seeing it neatly made and empty that it was disconcerting to see it messy again, strewn with Alyssa’s clothing and stuff.

Why weren’t they home?

It was hot from the summer, and the house smelled faintly like something had burned, and she wasn’t sure what it was.  Had a stove burner been left on?

The chicken larb.  It had been overcooked.  It had felt like she was floundering, heavy with fatigue and sleepless with no solid ground to stand on, but finding that fact to anchor to helped.

She made her way down the stairs, crossed the hall, and stopped.  Her mom was sitting on the couch, rigid, hands together with fingers hooked, fingertips digging into the sides of other fingers, until it was all a jumble.  And her eyes-

That look as she saw Lucy.  Lucy could see the tracks of tears on her mom’s face from the fleeting light outside.

“Mom?” Lucy asked, crossing the front hallway.  Crossing the living room.

Her mom pulled her into a hug, and those fingers that had been hooked into one another hooked into Lucy, tight and violent and so unlike her mom it caught her off guard.

The sound of her mom’s voice was so like her mom that it pulled her right back.  “It’s Booker.”

And the words themselves, their implication, cast away everything.

She’d been pulled in so quickly and so tight that she couldn’t even brace herself properly against the couch or sit on it, and it was all she could do not to fall on top of her mom.  She remained there, paralyzed and awkward.

Her mother’s voice wasn’t quiet, but it was still whisper-thin with emotion in Lucy’s ear.  “I talked to the police just before you came down, they explained-”

The words broke down.

There was only the too-slow thud of her own heart.

“The car rolled,” her mother told her.  “They said it would have been instant-”

Lucy fell on top of her mom on hearing that, her own fingers digging in, now, face buried in her mother’s shoulder.  No air in her lungs.

Her mom’s words came in a tumble.  “They were out drinking with their friends, his friends told me Alyssa drove, she-”

“Did she drive drunk?” Lucy asked.  She tried to pull away, struggling against the tight hug.  “Mom.  Did she-”

“No, Lucy.  But the other driver did.”

Her mom pulled her in for a tight hug, and she let her.

Unreasonable thoughts were stampeding through her head.  That this wasn’t a teenager thing to do, hugging her mom like this.  But Booker was gone?  That fast, that suddenly?

The air went out of her lungs again, and she’d barely recovered any.

Was there a fix?  A way to change this?  A way to-

Was there an enemy?  She wanted there to be an enemy.  She wanted to not have to think about- about if she’d made him stay, or if she’d….

She pulled her head back and away.

Her mom was sobbing.

“They said it’s been a problem this summer.  Crime, drunk driving, people getting away scott-free.  If they’d just-”

If we’d just… if they’d gotten on top of this situation instead of leaving, if they’d been ready, if they’d stopped this situation from coming up…

Her mom was condemning her.

She wanted to hug her mom, her mom was trying to pull her back in for a hug.

And she had no right to.  The intermittent red light illuminated the tear-tracks on her mother’s face, their absence let Lucy see the concern in her mom’s eyes.

Lucy shook her head.

“You said the police just called, but you talked to Booker’s friends?”

“Dinnae gang’n do tha’!  Stop!”

Lucy turned, her face streaked with tears.

“Ye’ll wake yerself up, ye tit!”

Alpeana came down the stairs as a tumble of dark hair, matted and flecked with fingernail clippings and teeth.

That dark hair flowed in after her, filling the stairwell, then the hallway, and then the living room.

Alpeana tackled Lucy.

Then it was just them in darkness.  Floating, no solid ground at all, no gravity, only darkness and them.  Lucy had to use her Sight to see.  Ironic that she felt more grounded now than she had moments ago.

But her heart, pounding in her chest, still reeled.  Her face was still wet.

The Nightmare drifted in a complete circle around her, hair billowing and floating around her, merging into the darkness around them.

“Ah’m sorry, lassie.”

“Did you make that nightmare for me?”

“I did-”

“Why would you show me that?  Why would you do this to me!?” Lucy raised her voice.

“Hold on thar.  If ye get tae crabbit ye’ll wake yerself up.”

“Why would you show me that!?” Lucy raised her voice more.  It broke.

“Ah wanted tae talk.”

Lucy made a small sound, drawing knees to chest.

“I am sorry.  Thar’s no good way tae talk, otherwise.”

“Verona said you showed her something but she refused to tell me what it was.”

“Aye.  Pullin’ her intae maself.  But that’s that an’ ah’m wantin’ a talk, Lucy.”

“She said she didn’t want to help it come true.”

“It micht, it can.  Thir’s often a scrap o’truth at th’ root of it.”

“Do these nightmares come true?”

“Aye, they can.  They micht not, either.  I cannae say this is tha sort tha turns out ta happen,”  Alpeana reassured.  Lucy wasn’t catching all the words, but the tone was soothing, even if nothing else was.  Alpeana spoke once again, “Now ye’re waking up, it’s hard tae hold ye under, ah’m sworn not to harm ye, an’ tryin’ tests that.”

“That nightmare hurt.”

“It ain’t a real hurt, Luce.”

“Feels real.”

“Ah’ll get ta it then.  Ah’ve a message far ye three, lassie, had ta fly it under tha radar.  Did it while ah’m working, jus’ in case.  Ye’re tha easiest t’reach, so I’ll tell ye.  Ye’ll need tae be wary.”

Lucy didn’t respond.

“Ah’m not one for tha politics, lassie.  But ah’m seeing tha need.  Tha dreamscape is changin, thar’s more trouble in yer world, more crime, an’ Lucy…”

The tone of those words, as she said her name-  Lucy met her eyes.

Alpeana strained to make her words clear, suppressing her accent, “…I’m fairly sure that the one who killed the beast ain’t going to be putting it right when they take its seat.”

Lucy dropped her eyes.

“Scares me,” Alpeana said.

“What do you want me to do about it?” Lucy asked.  She winced.  “I didn’t mean that to sound like I wouldn’t do anything, I just don’t know what you expect me to do different.”

“Rook says that tha original Kennet Others, they’re dangerous, tha co-conspirators haf too much power.  An’ the new ones, I can tell ye, none trust ye yet.  Especially now ye’ve been at tha school.  Tha ones tha’ act like they trust ye are the ones to watch for.”

“Rook says.”

“Ye’re wakin’.  Rook says, aye.  Asked if I would reach out to ye three since I know ye.  She’s seen this before.  She says ye’ll want to protect yer families.  Not now but soon.  The ones who did away with the Carmine Beast will want you distracted and that’s the best way.”

“And how do we trust her?”

A feeling of falling swept over her, pulling her through that dark cloud she occupied with Alpeana.  Cutting off Alpeana’s response.

Lucy sat up in bed, heart pounding.

She took a second, wiped the tears from her cheeks, then looked down at her pillow, where more had dampened it.  She flipped it over.

Five in the morning.

She got out of bed, crept down the hall, and peeked through her brother’s bedroom door, quiet as she could.

He slept there, one arm around Alyssa.

She eased the door closed.

Down the hall, to check on her mom.  Her mom was fine, and half-awake, raising a hand.  Pointing at Lucy, then making an ‘ok’ sign.

“Better now,” Lucy whispered into the darkness.

She went to the bathroom, washed her face clean, then went back to bed, where she lay on her side.

She watched the clock tick its slow way to six in the morning, and then sleep found its way back to her.  A gentler dream.

“Honey, I hate to break it to you…”

Lucy moaned, stretched out over the counter in the middle of the kitchen, face close to the surface, arms out as far as they would go.

“…But you don’t want this to be the way your summer is.”

“I would love it if this was the worst part of my summer,” Lucy protested.

“We could go shopping.”

Lucy moaned.

Her mom sighed.  “Lunch soon.”

“What are we having?”

“After this breakfast?” her mom asked, checking the box of pastries they’d bought last night.  Turnovers and danishes and other things.  “Something healthy.”

Her mom paused, giving Lucy a look.

“What?” Lucy asked, looking up, without lifting herself off the counter.

“I thought that would get me another moan.”

“So long as it’s normal food.”

“Maybe that school wasn’t so bad after all.  Want to help?”

Lucy groaned and moaned.

“What’s this about?” Booker asked, as he ventured into the kitchen.

“You’re up!” mom exclaimed.  “Almost noon.”

“Ahhh, volume,” he winced.

“I figured that was why you were so slow to start with the day.  I hope you drank water,” mom said.

“Not enough,” he said.  “I forgot how intense some of those guys get.”

He reached down to where Lucy reached across the counter.  She tried to trap his hand under hers, while he did the same.  He was slow to move, and when her hand came down a little hard, slapping the counter, he cringed a bit, closing his eyes, and it looked like it took him a couple seconds to recover.

“Is Alyssa downstairs?” mom asked.

“Not yet.  Using the washroom so she’s presentable to the family.”

“Then I can-” Mom interrupted herself by hitting the button on the blender.  It blared to life, loud enough that even Lucy covered her ears.

“-Evil,” Booker said, as the noise faded, the first part of the sentence lost in the noise.

“I did tell you to check in.”

“So that was punishment?”

Mom smiled knowingly but didn’t confirm.  “Sit.  Have some.  It’s the best hangover cure I’ve got, picked it up in nursing school.”

She set down the glass, dark green and full of flecks, then poured another, presumably for Alyssa.

“…Thanks,” Booker said.  “I sorta expected to be yelled at.”

“You’re an adult, you can make your own decisions.  But if this is an every-night thing, then I’m going to be a little less nice about it and a little more concerned.”

“Did you have fun?” Lucy asked.

“Some,” he replied, sitting, drinking.  He reacted to his first sip of the drink the same way he had to the noise of the blender, but he kept drinking.  “The ramp-up to the drinking was nicer than the drinking itself.  Hearing the stories people had to tell, where they were at, bad bosses, good friends, you know?”

Lucy nodded, sitting up.

“Then the stories ran out before we were a couple hours in.  And they filled the silence with drinking and talking about drinking and… I remember whispering to Alyssa, that could’ve been me.  You’ve gotta- you need to study, get out of here when you can, baby sis.  Don’t get stuck in a place where a year gives you only a couple hours of stories.”

“The last few weeks have felt like ten months have passed.  I think I’m clear of that.  But I’ll try.”

“That’s good,” he said, voice strained by the reaction to the taste of the drink.  “I’m starting to think this is the punishment for not checking in last night.”

“If it was, I wouldn’t have a glass poured for Alyssa.”

“Huh,” he said.  “You know, I’m not sure I should say this in front of mom…”

Mom looked over her shoulder, eyebrow arched.

“…Last night, I dreamed my way through the longest, most intense drunk driving PSA ever.”

“Huh,” Lucy commented.

“And the weird thing?  So did Alyssa.”

“Do I need to worry?” mom asked.

“I was good, mom.  Really.  Got a cab.”

“Good.”

Thanks, Alpeana, Lucy thought.

“I dreamed something like that too,” Lucy said.  “Sucked.

“I remember you were up in the middle of the night,” mom said.

“Yep, nightmare,” Lucy said.

Her mother rubbed her back for a second as she passed by.  She leaned into Booker as she thought Lucy wasn’t looking, and whispered.

Your sister wants to spend some time with you.  She was waiting for you half the morning.  Maybe spend some time with her before she explodes from anticipation?

“Boom,” Lucy commented, stretching.

“You’ve got some good ears there, Lucy,” Booker said, looking surprised.

“I’m exceptional in some ways.”

“You’re exceptional in a lot of ways.  What would you want to do, Lucy?  That’s quiet, gentle, no bright lights, curtains drawn…”

“Curtains drawn?  Horror movie marathon?”

“Did you miss the entire rest of that sentence?”

Alyssa entered the kitchen, hair wet.  “What’s this?”

“Making plans for the day,” Booker told her.  “Spend some time with my sister?”

“Cool,” Alyssa said.

Lucy warred with instinct and won.  She reached for the box of breakfast pastries and slid it over Alyssa’s direction.  “We got some blueberry stuff because you told Mom it was your favorite.  It’s my favorite too and it’s taken a lot of willpower not to scarf it down.”

“I’m not sure I have it in me to eat anything sweet right now,” Alyssa said.

“And we’re eating lunch soon,” Mom commented, bustling about the kitchen.

Mom seemed happy, Lucy noted.  That was nice.

Alyssa leaned into Booker and asked Lucy, “Do I get more points if I respect the willpower by eating it and enjoying it, or if I let you have it?”

“Either-or.  I’ll give you the points anyway, since you asked.”

“Have it.  There’s too much of a chance I wouldn’t enjoy it, with this hangover.”

“Mmm, try enjoying this, then,” Booker said, sliding the glass her way.

Lucy took a bite of the blueberry danish, earning her a look from her mom.

They stood in the parking lot, framed by the various fast food places, post office, and a printing business that looked like it was barely surviving.

“What did you end up doing?” Avery asked.

“Went for a walk in the woods.  Quiet, slow, in the shade.  Talked about his school.  My stuff with Mr. Bader.”

“That sounds nice,” Verona said.

“What about you guys?”

“Babysit the entire day,” Avery said.  “Welcome home.  Here’s a child who may, according to Sheridan, resemble a chihuahua in a six year old’s body.”

“Love that,” Verona said, smiling.

“And you?” Lucy asked.

“Holed up in my room and did magic prep stuff, my dad left halfway through the day and I did a few chores.  Today was quiet but last night, hoo.”

“Last night?” Lucy asked.  “In your texts you said last night was a good night.”

“Had Jeremy over,” Verona said.

“Oh no.”

“It was good, it was nice.  We messed around, we might do it again.”

“Huh,” Avery said, glancing at Lucy.

“Poor Jeremy,” Lucy said.

“He’s okay.  No hearts broken, boundaries were laid out on both sides,” Verona said.

“No hearts broken yet.”

“Oh boy,” Lucy replied, turning away to scan their surroundings.

A group of teenagers were hanging out outside the little pharmacy, holding sodas and chips.  At the opposite end, there was a play structure shared by two different fast food places, and it was dinky and not in the best shape, but there were a ton of kids there.  It looked like a summer camp or something, with counselors trying and failing to herd their charges.  It didn’t help that some of the counselors were hanging back, looking bored, while the ones who seemed to care were losing their minds from stress.

Then there were the grazers.  Lucy didn’t know a better way of thinking about them.  The moms and occasional dad who hung out in the parking lot or in the coffee shops, shooting the shit for hours.

“Any idea?” Lucy asked.

“It’s like those ‘find the monkey’ children’s books but the monkey is a human,” Verona said.

Avery shook her head.  “I think we have to wait.”

“Alpeana reached out to me last night,” Lucy told the others.

“Aww, you first?” Verona asked.  “Bias.”

“We’ll want to keep an eye out, according to her.  Protect our families.”

“Creepy,” Avery commented.

“Yeah.  Creepy’s a mild way of putting it.  I hate that it’s a thing.”

“Want to set up wards then?” Verona asked.  “Your place first, Lucy, then Avery’s?”

“Then yours?” Lucy prodded.

“Enh.  I guess.”

Avery frowned.  “We gotta set up the wards in a way that escapes the notice of people ranging from six to… however old my Grumble is.”

“And that works against a variety of Others,” Lucy added.

“Ugh.”

Camp counselors were now trying to herd kids onto a half-length school bus.  As the three of them stood in the middle of the parking lot, Lucy with her hands in the pockets of her skirt, her backpack sitting by her feet, one kid refused to board the bus.  A boy, covered in wood chips, hair tousled.

The door closed.  The bus did a u-turn and pulled away.

It passed the kid, and when it did, the boy disappeared.  A thirteen year old girl stood at the edge of the playground, a backpack slung over one shoulder.

“This is so weird,” Verona said, as the girl -Lis- perked up, then started running over.

The girl had light brown skin, red-brown hair with a faint wave to it, that extended halfway down her neck, and a smattering of freckles.  She wore a dark red V-neck top with a yellow symbol on the pocket, and denim shorts.

“Heyy!” she greeted them, as she reached them.

“Find anything interesting?” Verona asked.

“Nope.  Today was a boring day, so I played on the slide and I annoyed people by getting, uhhhh…” Lis narrowed her eyes, peering across the parking lot.  “That old guy with the beard, if you get him talking about healthcare he will go on forever.  But he’s old so he sits at the center table, and everyone else pays attention to that table.  The ex-mayor is there.  Got him to change topics five times, seeing how many people decided to go home.”

“Why?” Avery asked.

“Flushing out the regulars, seeing who stands out.  Don’t worry, it’s not that mean-spirited.  I’m focused on the mission.  Helping out.  Are we going to the meeting?”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “Is the perimeter going to be okay?”

“No idea.  But Matthew says we should do the big meeting.  Almost everyone will be there.”

“Huh, do you want to walk?” Avery asked.

“Since you asked nicely,” Lis replied, sticking her elbow out.  She waited, then frowned, reaching over, and making Avery link arms with her.

They walked.

“Have you talked to Crooked Rook much?” Verona asked.

“Some.  She’s cool,” Lis replied.  “Scary.”

“Scary how?” Lucy asked.

“Scary like… I saw her trap an Other.  Bogeyman, strapped to a spiked wheel.  Had a bunch of spirits with her, and they dove into the trap.  A wind elemental too, I think.  Adjusted the box, rotated parts of it.  She asked for reinforcements in case it came out fighting.  I was there, so were goblins.  Trap opens, and the Other isn’t strapped to the wheel anymore.  No spikes.  Looked happier, balancing on the wheel, cavorting around like a circus performer.  Then she bent down, picked up a corroded iron spike that had been stuck in the ground, and put it in her belt.  For the next time.”

“She changes them, fundamentally?” Verona asked.

“Took the abyss out of it, put in some wind and spirit.  Like it was easy.”

“I wonder,” Lucy mused.  “If-”

“If she asked for the reinforcements not because she needed them, but because she wanted to show us?” Lis interrupted.

“Yeah.”

“I thought that too, at first.  But the more time I spend with her, the more I think she’s not… not a schemer.  She doesn’t lie while telling the truth or pull tricks like a Fae does.  That doesn’t mean she doesn’t like sneak attacks, she does.  But she’s a tactician.”

“More overt?” Lucy asked.

“Yeah.  She doesn’t leave you wondering, I think.  It’s about where, when, and how she makes her moves.”

“Food for thought,” Lucy said.  “Thanks.”

“I’ve really been looking forward to you guys showing up.  The Others are great, they’re neat, learning about the town and the ins-and-outs of this place, that’s been super great.  Thing is, I’m derived from people and I operate off of people.  Sometimes you just want to talk about movies, or hockey.”

“You like hockey?” Avery asked.

“It’s alright.  I feel like it’s better for going to watch than anything.”

“Yep,” Verona agreed.

“Not that I have a lot of time,” Lis said.  “Trying to do my part, earn my stripes.  Earn my place in the group.”

Lucy nodded, but she didn’t really engage.

“Oh, check this out!” Lis said.  She pulled her bag off, unzipped it, and then reached inside.  She pulled out a wooden mask.  Grey, carved, of a rabbit.  “Interesting, huh?  I’ve got a hat and cloak in here too.”

“A rabbit?” Avery asked.

“Right?  I think, uh, it’s bouncy and it’s prey animal, like a deer, that’s one commonality, and it’s a trickster animal in folklore like a fox, and it’s an animal associated with magic, like a cat.”

“It makes so much sense I don’t know why I didn’t expect it,” Verona replied.

“Right?  Yeah, I thought it was cool,” Lis said, hugging the mask to her chest, unzipped bag still slung over her shoulder.

They walked out of downtown, toward the residential area.  It was the same path they took on their way back from grabbing lunch, if they ever left school to run to the store.

Conversation had died, and Lucy wasn’t sure what was running through Verona and Avery’s heads, but she couldn’t help but recollect that Alpeana had warned her that the ones who act like they trusted Lucy and her friends were the ones to watch for.

“I’m the odd one out,” Lis said.  “I feel it, you can guess why.  I hope I can earn your trust and that we can be cool.  I’m just trying to figure out where I’m at, while suspicion is flying around, I think everyone’s on edge waiting to see how things settle here.  Who stays, who leaves, what happens…”

“What do you hope happens?” Lucy asked.

“I hope that what I’m doing in the here and now, meeting cool new Others, exploring this town, I hope it matters.  Like, I want to stick around for a good long time, if I’m allowed, so I’m really exploring this place, figuring out the people.  It’s the first time things have been good after a lot of anxiety.”

“You kind of caught us at a bad time,” Avery said.  “We just got back from the school and that wasn’t super great.”

“I’m getting everyone at bad times, feels like,” Lis said.  “Sucks.”

“Maybe tell us about the Others?” Verona asked.  “The new ones?”

“What do you want to know?  Who about?”

“Cig?” Verona asked.

“I don’t know Cig much.  He doesn’t talk, you know, and we do similar types of shift.  Watching people come in.  So we don’t interact much.”

“Doesn’t that mean you’d interact more?” Avery asked.

“Not really.  If I’m at the west end he’s at the north and the other way around.  If I have something to do he’ll cover me, and same for the other way around.”

“And you don’t sleep?” Verona asked.

“Not as long as I make myself part of a group of awake people.  The pickings can get pretty slim, though.  But we’re talking about Cig… I keep getting sidetracked.  Wonder why?”  Lis smiled, finger pointing at the three of them in turn.

“Funny,” Verona said, but she did look like she thought it was funny.

“He’s cool.  More passive than even me.”

“What about Jabber?” Avery asked.

“Don’t see much of him.  I think he’s out and about today.  They’re trying to find the Others who snuck in while they asked the judges to let Ken pass the threshold.  If we’re lucky we won’t see him.”

“If we’re lucky we won’t?” Verona cut in.

“Yeah.”

“But is he like, happy, does he have a personality?” Avery saked.

“Terminal happiness in a lumpy little body and sure, for a certain definition of personality.  It’s the sort of thing you have to see to get.  Who else?”

“Ken?” Lucy asked.

“I think he’s doing the work to get a feel for if anyone slips into Kennet while we’re meeting.  So I wouldn’t expect him to talk much if he’s concentrating.  I hang with him some.  Next best thing to some human contact with humans I don’t have to hide my real nature from.”

“If you can get along with the personification of Kennet then I guess you can get by here, long-term, right?” Avery asked.

“You’d think.  I hope so.  It’s really hard to know because things have been so over the top.”

“I’m actually more interested in that than in the local Others, who we’re about to meet,” Lucy said.

“Wuh, no,” Verona protested.  Lucy gave Verona a light push on the arm.

“The longer things stay like this, the more stuff rolls… downhill, I guess,” Lis explained.  “It’s like as far as violence and trouble are concerned, in this whole area the Carmine Beast used to manage, the easiest roads to travel are the ones that take them here.  And people are noticing.  Practitioners trying to stop things, and ones trying to catch them so they can use them.  Witch hunters.”

“Witch hunters?” Avery asked.

“They tend to operate in groups, because one witch hunter can rescue another from… whatever catches them.  A binding, entrancement, possession.  And there are two groups who are interested.  That’s the big thing Cig and I are looking out for.  One of them got close and Maricica revealed herself to them, did her best to lead them away.  Her coming back is going to be the first time in more than a day that she comes back.  And we’re all hoping the witch hunters keep following the trail she led them onto.”

“No guarantees?” Lucy asked.

“Not with witch hunters.  They tend to have tricks and things.  Either by accident and luck or because they went and looked for them.  A lot of them are Aware with special qualities, others are really organized.  Pretty much all of them are really dangerous.  They go looking for trouble and right now trouble is concentrating in one place.”

“You have experience dealing with witch hunters, don’t you?” Lucy asked.

“I wondered if you’d bring that up.  Matthew asked permission to share that detail and I told him.  Yeah.  I was a different person then.”

“By definition?” Lucy asked.

“Yeah.  And intrinsically.  For now I’m trying to be a part of the team.”

“By definition,” Lucy said.

“Of the Kennet team.  The other day I saw some guys unloading luggage in the middle of the day, at the motel.  Heavy bags.  And I thought, isn’t that weird?”

“Was it?” Avery asked.

“They weren’t witch hunters, but they were practitioners.  Immediately started setting up this really old looking chemistry set.”

“Alchemists?”

“Maybe.  Could be enchanters or something.  I told Matthew and Edith, they sent in Jabber, just before sundown, tons of people around.  Jabber gave cover for goblins to go charging in, we sent more in the back way.  While the practitioners were distracted, the goblins in the building trashed and stole their stuff.”

“Did they keep any?” Verona asked.

“I don’t know.  Probably.  You’d have to ask Toadswallow.”

“Sweet.”

“And the practitioners?” Lucy asked.

“Seemed pretty unnerved by Jabber, really.  They left and we haven’t heard anything since.  We’re hoping they think Kennet is one of those towns that’s just run down enough that Others have the run of the place.  That doesn’t tend to warrant much attention, unless it’s from specific types.”

“Hm,” Lucy made a nonspecific sound.  “Not sure how I feel about that.”

“Come on, this way!” Lis said.

“We know.”

They weren’t far from Matthew and Edith’s place, now.

“Did Snowdrop come?” Lis asked.

“She’s sleeping in my bag.  The goblins kept her out late.”

“That kind of night, huh?” Lucy asked.

“Can I meet her?”

“I guess it’s about time we wake her up, if we want her alert,” Avery said.  She enlisted Lucy’s help in getting her bag off and holding it, and then unzipped it the rest of the way.

Lis reached over, and Snowdrop startled awake.  Immediately, the opossum began to hiss, raising her paws and scratching at the air.

“Oh, wow,” Lis said.

The hissing continued.

“I’ve heard that opossums might hiss but they very rarely bite.”

“Snowdrop’s not your usual opossum,” Avery said.  “Might be best not to test it.”

“Yeah, okay,” Lis said, frowning.  She looked really down, in the aftermath, and Lucy had no idea how to read that.

“Want to walk, Snow?” Avery asked.

Snowdrop buried her face in Avery’s shirt.

“You’re really spoiled.”

Snowdrop hissed.

Matthew’s truck rolled down the street as they arrived, which was a strangely common occurrence.  He waved as he passed them, parked close to the house, opened the garage remotely, and then drove the pickup in.  Doors opened, and Lucy could see the two twenty-somethings emerging, one with a jacket pulled over her head.

He ducked under the closing garage door.  He looked like he’d aged a year or two since they’d seen him last.  He was normally pretty warm, inoffensive, an approachable guy with an easy smile, and a little bit of that had worn away.

“Welcome back,” he greeted them.

“Here we are,” Lucy replied.

“Any problems, Lis?”

“All quiet, north of downtown.”

“Bonding?” he asked, indicating the mask.

“I don’t think we count as bonded until Snowdrop accepts me,” Lis said.

Snowdrop hissed.

“I think you just surprised her.  Right, Snowdrop?” Avery asked.

Snowdrop became human, dropping into a crouch.  She frowned.  “No, wasn’t surprised.”

“That’s a relief,” Lis said, her forehead creasing with concern.

“Why don’t you go inside, I think almost everyone’s here.  Goblins are taking their time escorting Jabber.”

“You put Jabber and the goblins together?” Lis asked, already most of the way to the front door by the time he finished talking.

“I don’t know, Lis.  There’s only so many people who I’d call responsible, here, and we loaded ourselves down with sponsorships.”

“I’m not sure I’d call myself responsible, pulling that, Matthew.”

“They’re the good- or mostly better goblins!” he called out.

She’d already disappeared inside.

“Hands full?” Lucy asked.

“Like you wouldn’t believe.  I’ve got to go sort out Montague.  Come on in, we’re set up inside this time.”

He led the way.

Lucy hung back, touching Verona and Avery’s arms.  Snowdrop remained because she stuck close to Avery.

“What was that?” Lucy asked Snowdrop.  “More than surprise.”

“Feels like Avery but isn’t.  Feels like you but isn’t.  Feels like Verona, but isn’t,” Snowdrop said, dropping her head closer to her shoulders.

“I think that’s just what she is, Snowdrop,” Verona said.

“Doesn’t feel off or anything.”

“Good to know, I guess,” Avery said, frowning.

Matthew was waiting.

They jogged ahead to shorten that wait.

Inside, the lights were off.  Curtains were drawn, and the Others were assembled in the living room.

Matthew and Edith’s house was very much them, and they were candleflame and doom.  Solid dark furniture, paintings with orange imagery, decorations that included a lot of unlit candles, and a prominent brick-laid fireplace defined the space.

The usual suspects were all present: Matthew stood by Edith’s chair, setting a radio down on top of the television in the corner.  Edith sat in an armchair, an ashtray resting by her hand, cigarette smouldering.

The Faerie were on either side of them, Guilherme in boy form beside Matthew, watching the radio bleed, John Stiles beside Guilherme, arms folded, watching things unfold, nodding as he made eye contact with Lucy.

Maricica stood by Edith, poised and wrapped in transparent moth wings.  A woman dressed in a plaid dress, 30-something and tired, leaned in to whisper to Maricica.  Lis.  Charles stood in one corner, to Edith’s right, and Alpeana sat on the ground by them, looking up, looking over at the three of them.

Lucy gave Alpeana a nod, wanting to acknowledge what she’d done for Booker, without giving away that Alpeana had reached out.

Alpeana nodded back, her expression remaining serious.

The goblins sat in front of them all, except the difference now was that there were a lot of goblins.  Lucy could remember when there had been only the four.  Now it was Toadswallow, Bluntmunch, and Gashwad, followed by Nat, Butty, Doglick, and a half-dozen more.

More, Lucy saw, were pushing a ventilation grate aside by the fireplace and crawling out, between the legs of Matthew’s chair.  Bluntmunch clapped a heavy, calloused hand on a female goblin’s pale-haired head.  Some scrambled to the back door, opening it.

Jabber came in, Cherrypop following and laughing.  He was three feet tall, thin, with an oversized head, his body pale to the point of being off-white, and undefined by nipple, by bellybutton, or other real features.  There was staining in the recesses, like mold, which seemed to have gone straight to near-black or black, and this same staining filled empty eye sockets, the rough triangle of the hole where the nose should be, and the inside of the very wide mouth that would have been ear to ear, if he had ears.  That same mouth was lined with blunt teeth that didn’t look like they’d been set in with any care or organization.  The various details of the face were hidden behind a plate-shaped mask that had holes cut out for the eyes, just a bit bigger than the too-round eye sockets, a triangular hole for the nose, just a bit bigger than that indentation, and a jack-o-lantern semicircle hole for the mouth, which only really lined up if his mouth was open, which was sometimes.

The plate was held in place by a ring of metal with screws extending between it and his head, another band encircled the jaw, reinforcing it.  He had a bar at the neck, three bars at one upper arm, and a kind of stiff rubber glove over one hand.  No pants, no genitals, just an askew pelvis that sat perpetually thrust forward.

And he gabbled, with volume varying.  It made no sense and barely resembled speech, rattled off without the experimentation of a baby’s babbling.  His right knee and left ankle didn’t fully articulate, so he stomped with virtually every step, sticking a leg out and then swinging it down.

“Gallaballaualgugh!” Jabber announced, in a voice like it came from a bit too far away from a microphone, put through a speaker at the bottom of a well.  Stomp stomp stomp.  “Baraulla hulla!  Ruggamuggabulla!”

Cherrypop laughed so hard she could barely walk.

Lucy took in a deep breath, sighing.

The ghouls were sitting on the very end of the couch, by goblins and by John.  They looked twenty-something, underweight, and their eyes caught the light from the door to the backyard and made that light paler and foggier.  Chloe lounged, her head resting against the hip of the guy who sat on the armrest, his arms wrapped around her shoulders like he was holding her back as much as he was holding her.  He’d be Nibble.  Her eyes didn’t even focus on Lucy, Verona, and Avery.

Nibble was skinny, dressed in a long-sleeved shirt, shorts, and beanie hat with bits of greasy black hair sticking out, and Chloe wore an unseasonal sweater and knee-length dress, her feet bare and dirty.  Her hair had been pulled back into a messy ponytail, and the state of the ponytail made Lucy think it was her boyfriend who’d done it for her, when he hadn’t done a lot of ponytails.  Her demeanor didn’t suggest she did a lot of that stuff on her own, either.  As if Chloe was a little bit… gone.

Nibble did a good job of hiding that his fingertips were abnormal, flesh calcified in a way that made it hard to tell where the finger ended and the nail started.  His teeth were similar, only visible for a fraction of a second as he bent down to say something to Chloe.  Ridged, pointed, but the line between one tooth and the next was hard to make out.

“The practitioners of this town are here.

Chloe, by contrast to Nibble, didn’t do a good job of hiding teeth that were meant for tearing dead flesh, more pronounced and jagged than his, with one lower tooth bearing a fork that made it look like another tooth had grown out of it.  And she didn’t really hide the claws of her fingertips and toes, either, or the exaggerated, edge-heavy points that marked the joints of her hands and feet, turning rounded knuckles into pale, bony points that jutted back.  The only masking of the fingers and toes that she did was in pulling one foot back and out of the way of the light that came in through the open back door, toes curling.

Her reaction to his voice was delayed and listless.  She turned her head and eyes to look at the three of them, but didn’t so much as twist a muscle otherwise.

Lucy looked, and saw that the radio had bled into the television, which now churned, the picture flickering, showing red-and-black television static, barely visible in the current light, with the television being as old as it was, and some images of men in suits, nodding, bowing, offering hands, all distorted, a bit macabre.  None had faces, only red smears where their heads should be.

“Tashlit, Ken?  Can you get the door?” Matthew called out.  “And the curtains?”

Tashlit and Ken came in from the kitchen.  Tashlit carried a glass of water in the loose skin of her hands, in what Lucy deemed a very precarious hold.  And even with that, Ken held back, letting her put down the glass and handle the door instead of reaching back to do it himself.

Lucy held back from commenting on that.  They’d heard he needed to concentrate, because he was the only one watching the perimeter.

“Thanks,” Matthew said.

Edith snapped her fingers, and candles around the room lit up.  Chloe, sitting on the couch, flinched, started to rise, and was pulled back down by Nibble.  Chloe’s expression settled into a scowl.

Tashlit used one hand to hold the glass against her upper body -she was wearing a teal top with a pink symbol on it- and offered her hand in a fist-bump to Lucy, because Lucy was closest, then Avery, then Snowdrop, then high-fived Verona.  She seated herself at the end of the couch closest to them, opposite the ghouls.

Ken navigated around to stand behind Matthew and Edith’s chairs, by the fireplace.

“First things first,” Matthew announced, as he settled.

“First things first is I’m not the weakest anymore!” Cherrypop declared.  Jabber followed her statement with a couple syllables of nonsense.  “I helped!”

She marched her way over to where the rest of the goblins were, focused her full attention on the littlest goblin with one eye and a shallow beak of a mouth framed by nostrils, and shoved him over, hard, onto his ass.

He sat there, clearly hurt, and looked up at her.  Affronted.

“Bahahaha!” Cherrypop cheered, fists in the air.

“Don’t be an asshole, Cherry,” Verona told the goblin.

“Bahaha!”

The little one-eyed goblin rose to his feet, rubbing his rear end.

Then he tackled Cherrypop.

“No!  No!  I’m not the weakest anymore!  You’re not allowed to-”

“I’m guessing this is going to be a long night,” Matthew told Edith.

“Girls,” Edith said, while the goblins fought.  Chloe reached out one claw, groping in their general direction with fingertips like knifeblades.

“Heya,” Avery replied.

“I’m sorry the school ended up getting so ugly.  I’m glad you’re with us in one piece.”

“So are we,” Verona said.

“I’m glad Kennet’s still okay,” Lucy added.  “I get the impression it hasn’t been easy.”

“It’s going to get harder.  Which is part of what we’re talking about tonight.”

The mute little one-eyed goblin rose to his feet, standing on Cherrypop, who lay on her stomach, wailing.  He pumped his fists into the air.

“No, no!”

“Cherrypop,” Matthew said.  “That’s enough for tonight.  You can continue this feud another night.”

“No!”

“You’ll do as he says,” Toadswallow warned.  “You’re my apprentice, and you’ve been lax with the rules about swearing.”

“No!  I forgot!”

“Do as he says.  We’ll let it slide.”

“I can’t- I’m not going to be the weakest anymore!  Not after tonight!  I’ve gotta- go away!  I can’t fight you anymore!”  She pushed at the one-eyed one.

Glancing back at the other goblins, getting some nods, he stepped off of Cherrypop.

She sprang to her feet, and she scrambled up the side of Edith’s armchair and tackled the ashtray, knocking it to the floor.

“What the f-” Matthew stopped himself from saying the full swear word.  “Cherry, stop that, leave him alone!”

“I’m not the weakest, he can’t even fight back!” she screamed the words, wrestling the unremarkable cigarette to the ground.  “Suplex!”

She suplexed the cigarette, rolling around in the scattered ashes, then cackled her victory.

Matthew had to rise, picking up his chair, with John taking hold of it so he could access the space beneath.

Cherrypop shrieked.  Not because of Matthew, but because the suplex had put her face against Cig’s burning end.  She let go and rolled around in the scattered ashes of the ashtray, holding her hands to the burn.

“Did Cherry just lose a fight against an inanimate object?” Avery asked.

Cherry shrieked more as Matthew picked her and Cig up.  He handed Cig to Edith.

“I think Cig wins this one,” Toadswallow declared.

Other goblins acknowledged that with murmurs and nods.  Cherry’s wails grew louder in response, while Matthew carried her into the other room, opened the door with care paid to the curtain, so he wouldn’t let sunlight into the room, and placed her outside.  Cherry pressed her face against the glass there, sobbing, but silenced by the intervening door.  Tiny hands pounded on the surface.

Edith had put the ashtray back, and used the little broom by the fireplace to sweep the ashes aside, with Ken standing out of the way.  John put Matthew’s chair back.

“When we brought you onboard,” Matthew said, before he’d even taken his seat, “We asked for help protecting Kennet.  The plan was for you to investigate, to forestall outside investigators claiming the right to come in and find out everything about Kennet, and maybe do what only practitioners could do to ward off some outside harm.  Simply having the ability for you to claim you were the practitioners of Kennet was a big part of it.”

“But we’ve left a lot of that in the past now.  We didn’t think things would get this bad,” Edith said.

“We swore we’d protect Kennet,” Lucy said.

“You have.  If you don’t give us cause by actively harming Kennet, nobody here will gainsay you in that,” Edith said.

“Or forswear us?” Verona asked.

“It’s not easy to forswear without gainsaying.  No, we will not forswear you unless you act in direct contradiction to your stated role.”

“You want us to stay out of it?” Lucy asked.

“I want to give you the freedom to.  John told us that what happened wasn’t easy.”

Lucy frowned.  Unbidden, not helped by the macabre scene on the television, she thought of Alexander, head cracked open.

“John informed us that Alexander’s dead,” Charles said, from the corner, by that bloody television.  He wasn’t just as far from Chloe as he could be, but he stood with as many people between himself and her as possible.

“Yeah.  Bristow too,” Verona told him.

“I’m sorry you had to have a part in that,” Charles said.  “I knew them a long time ago.  They had their good points, but I could easily see them becoming the types of people John described.”

“Raymond Sunshine wants to meet and talk to you sometime this summer.”

“Not easy, that,” Charles replied.  “Getting away.”

He looked at Matthew as he said it.

“We can make arrangements if you want them.  You’re not a prisoner.”

“But I am condemned.  Me going requires that someone come with, to extend protection, and the person who comes with gives things away, just by being there.”

“We can figure something out,” Edith said.  “If you want to.”

“I want to,” Charles growled.

“Then we’ll figure something out,” she said, voice firm.

“There is some minor business we should have you three attend to, as your firm responsibility,” Matthew addressed them.  “The Aware girl, Melissa, has learned some magic, she’s on a fast road to a fate like Charles’s.”

“Didn’t even offer me a cigarette,” Snowdrop muttered.

“We can look into that,” Verona said.

“I’m trying to figure out what you called this big meeting for,” Lucy spoke up.  “It feels like you’re dancing around the subject of Kennet and our responsibility in it.  You say you want to give us the freedom to back out, but is there a motivation behind that?  Is there a decision you’d rather we make?”

“I think, depending on who you asked in the room, you’d get very different answers,” Matthew said.

It felt, in a way, like it had when they’d done the awakening ritual.

Except that day, Charles had warned them, told them not to say yes, and cautioned them, in a way that really hadn’t sold the argument, that this world was dangerous and hostile.

Now it was the voice in her head that was echoing Charles, reminding her of the trouble out there that existed.  The dangers, the hostility.

“I’m going to be blunt,” Edith said.  “I think you appreciate that.”

“I do,” Lucy replied.

“A lot of the new Others are anxious.  A firm statement would help.  Matthew is offering something of a truce.”

“Do we need one?  We’re on the same team, arent we?” Avery asked.

“A truce,” Edith repeated herself.  “You can stand down, and we can do our best to handle things, but I think what some of the new Others really want is an assurance that if they don’t bother you-”

Jabber cut in with a “Gaaaallllaaaaa!”

“-that you won’t bother them.”

Lucy exchanged looks with the others.

“Weren’t we doing that already?”

Avery’s voice, a whisper.

Verona was unreadable, but she met Lucy’s eyes and shrugged.

“We’ll do what we’ve been doing,” Lucy said.  Verona didn’t act like she’d done the complete opposite of what Verona wanted, so she went on with some confidence.  “We acted against the Choir because they were hurting people.  If you don’t hurt people and you don’t violate your oaths and hurt us, there’s no problem.”

Matthew looked concerned.  “We could reduce your responsibilities, at the least.  You witnessed a murder and that’s not something I wanted to put on your heads.”

“I could’ve told you it was a risk, if you’d listened,” Charles said.  “It’s been too long since you were a proper practitioner, Matthew.”

“I was really never one to begin with.  We can assign blame later.  For right now, things are violent out there, the people and Others coming to Kennet are dangerous.”

“I’d hate to miss out on what’s going on,” Verona said.  “Or miss meeting cool Others-”

She put out a hand and Tashlit high-fived it.

“Or opportunities to learn cool stuff.”

“And,” Lucy said, “I live here.  My family lives here.  I’ve got the ability to change things, I’d hurt much more if they got hurt and I could’ve done something to make all of this better.”

“That’s your stance, then?” Edith asked.  “I’m not objecting, I just want to be clear.”

“It’s our stance,” Avery said.

“We’re holding to what we did before.  I think we’ve put a lot on the line for Kennet-”

“That’s the problem we’re wanting to address,” Matthew said.

“-and we’re not going to stop here, Matthew.  The terms we agreed on seemed to be great for the original Kennet Others when we did the awakening ritual, nobody except Charles really objected, I don’t see why those same terms are objectionable now.”

“Not objectionable, exactly.”

“Leave the citizens alone, live your best lives, we work together to protect this space, keep you guys free of binding… we get taught some cool stuff in return, which help us to do this job better.  Isn’t that ideal?”

It felt like a rock-solid point to argue from.

The response, unspoken, conveyed through spots of restlessness, silence, and the lack of unanimous agreement?  It jarred that feeling from certainty to uncertainty.  Most of the Kennet Others seemed on board, but for many of the new Others, it seemed like they couldn’t wholeheartedly agree.  Why the frig not?

“Okay,” Matthew said, sounding not entirely pleased, himself.  “Let’s move on.”

Shaking Hands – 9.2

Verona

Okay.  Things weren’t super great.  Cannibal ghouls, goblins, and assorted murderers and monsters were all pretty suspicious or hostile towards them.  That sorta sucked.

But it was still better, Verona decided, than the portion of the afternoon she’d spent doing laundry, handling her dad’s underwear to throw it in the washer, and sorting through the stuff in the washer to pull out her dad’s work shirts and hang them up just so, because they shrunk in the dryer and wrinkled if hung up carelessly.  Mowing the lawn with the lawnmower she’d christened Warmed Cow Shit.

That was the awful part of life where it didn’t matter how smart you were.  It just sucked to do and maybe if you were rich you could hire someone to handle it, sure, but she had no real interest in being rich.

This?  This was handleable.  This was the sort of thing where they could work together to figure out a good angle of approach, identify the problem, and handle it.

She was a problem solver.  She was dumb in some areas but she was good at that, especially if she had her friends at her back.  Verona thought of Bristow.  Sometimes she was too good at that.

Edith addressed the room, “The big issues hanging over our collective heads right now are Melissa Oakham, we can thank Snowdrop for tipping us off, there’s the lingering issue of the invading Others who slipped into Kennet and haven’t revealed themselves, and then the ongoing handling of the perimeter and those who slip it.”

“You three are fine trying to get your classmate to a better place?” Matthew asked.

“We’d-” Verona checked with her friends.  “-I think we’d like to try and help with all of it.”

“Yeah,” Avery said.

“Okay,” Matthew said.  “If you decide it’s too much or you’re stretched too thin, as many of us here have, then focus on the one thing.  Workable?”

“Workable,” Lucy replied.

“Ken?” Matthew asked.  “Sorry to distract.”

“It’s fine, give me a second,” Ken replied in a vaguely aggrieved tone of voice.  He tied with Charles at appearing the oldest in the room, had a bit of a beer gut, and wore a plaid, summerweight work shirt and jeans.  His expression reminded her of her dad, but it was baked in by another decade or so of aging, framed in hair that had settled into locks with sweat and the kind of vague oiliness that came with insufficient or poorly chosen shampoo and conditioner.  The effort was there but misapplied.

To her Sight, he was a silhouette of a man crammed with five thousand wriggling meaty things, slithering up, down, and around a core of not human bones, but sprawling tracks connecting geometric chunks of concrete.  If she stood closer to him, she imagined she could interpret some of the arrangements.

“You needed something?” Ken asked.

“Any new feelings on the secretive Others?  Or sum it up for the girls?”

“Vaguely hostile,” Ken replied, settling a hand on one side of his stomach.  “Not connected to anyone outside, I think I’d feel that.  I don’t think they’re animal.  Closer to appearing human.”

“And not up to talking to us.  In fact, they may be actively evading us,” Edith said.  “It doesn’t feel like coincidence, that they arrived when we weren’t looking and they just so happen to have avoided running into any of us.”

“And something’s bubbling,” Ken said.

“Bubbling?” Edith asked.  “Are they preparing something?”

“Or plotting, or working themselves up into a- not a frenzy, I think Montague would have shaken them from that early.  Working themselves up, somehow.”

“All the more reason to track them down.  Blunt?” Matthew asked.

“Mmm?”

“The one group of goblins is looking for a new Barney?”

“It’d be nice,” Blunt said.  “Doesn’t really work in a town this size.  But we might be getting to a special case.”

“While you’re-” Matthew started, but Verona’s voice overlapped his.  He held up a finger.  He tried again, while Verona hung back.  “Since the goblins are making an event of searching for one, can you all look for the new Others while you’re at it?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“What’s this?” Verona asked.  “This is about the human who paid the bills?”

“Toadswallow?” Matthew asked.

“Ahem, my wheelhouse, I suppose,” the stout goblin replied.  “Some goblins partner with humans who’ve had enough drink to tip over into being Other, at least temporarily.”

“Otherness can be temporary?  Super cool,” Verona replied.

Lucy tapped Verona’s side with her elbow.

“It requires a special case.  A stint of drinking that tests and pushes human limits and severs connections to all things.  A goblin can hop on board to be the imaginary friend, the pilot, the remover of roadblocks.  It’s an art form, a partnership meant to be, where the goblin pilot, the Tod, is nothing without its Barney, the Barney a fleeting mess without its Tod, but together they spin legends.”

“The goblin’s an enabler?” Avery asked.

“My dear, by the time someone’s prepared to leave humanity behind and become a Barney, the idea of enabling as you understand it is a bridge that’s been burned and long forgotten.”

“I’d like to think there’s always a way back to health.”

“Indeed, yes.  Sometimes that way back starts from rock bottom, and sobering up at the end of a Barney-and-Tod binge is a special kind of rock bottom.  In another country, retracing steps from blacked out days, weeks, or months, learning you had, ahem, dates with a string of washed-up celebrities, tipped the initial domino in felling an international drug cartel, and seeded a new religion, with one or all events commemorated with brand new tattoos.”

There was a segment of goblins getting excited as Toadswallow explained.

Toadswallow added, “Once the Barney sobers up, they don’t go back to whatever they were imbibing.  The Tod must find another.  Biscuit here wants to learn to become a Tod, so we’re looking.”

Biscuit was a goblin not all that much bigger than Cherrypop, and weirdly on the not-offensive-looking side of goblindom, with makeup on and clothes possibly stolen from dolls.  She looked pretty hyper at the prospect.

“You said it’s hard in a small town?” Verona asked.  “Why?”

“I’d describe it as having an overcompensation-type sports car on a go-kart track,” Toadswallow explained.  “They thrive and pick up momentum best if they can go from scene to scene, event to event.  There aren’t enough scenes or events here.”

“One wrong move and you’ll punch through or ramp off and you’ll leave the track,” Bluntmunch added, his voice deep and rough.

“Out of Kennet?” Lucy asked.

“With hours of car trip to get to the next place,” Bluntmunch said.  “Yeh.”

“You said it might get easier?” Lucy asked.

“If we go down this road we’re on.  If things keep getting bad, we crater.”

“Crater?” Verona asked.

“I kind of explained that,” Lis said, tired.  She was thirty-something, brown hair, a bit overweight.  Matching to Edith and Matthew, it looked like.  “When trouble comes calling, it’s all downhill with a wind at its back until it gets to Kennet.  Leaving is uphill, wind in that trouble’s face.”

“And that makes it easier for the Barney to stay in bounds, I guess?” Verona asked.

“There’s going to be a point near the end of summer where that effect may start to affect people, too,” Matthew said.  “But that’s a topic for another meeting.”

“Right, sorta forgot, you had stuff you wanted to talk about,” Verona said.  “Thanks for answering about the Barney thing.”

Matthew nodded.  “It’s fine.  Cig, Lis?  We’d like you two to loop through town, think where that hiding spot might be.  Places the goblins aren’t.  Places that Others can’t easily go.  People-dense.”

“I was looking at summer camps and summer schools,” Lis said.

“Good, thank you.  Also businesses, hospitals, anywhere that an influx of new people.  Building on Ken’s instincts from before.  Unless you’ve got more, Ken?”

Ken looked annoyed, but shook his head.  “The bubbling feeling, that’s it.”

“If you four can think of any places Others may be lurking, it would help,” Edith addressed the four of them.  “And keep an eye out for anything unusual, any people who seem out of place?  Your Sight may identify them.”

Verona gave her a thumbs-up as the others nodded.

“Which leaves the third and final major issue of this meeting, the perimeter and patrols,” Matthew said.

Charles picked up where Matthew left off without being prompted, which suggested this pattern had been established before.

“The perimeter holds.  Attention in the form of patrols and regular maintenance support and power it.  The presence of the intruders within the city sap from it.  There are three parts to it: it makes Kennet inhospitable terrain for intruders, it acts as an outright barrier when we need it to, and it alerts us to trouble while deflecting the attention of that trouble.  When all three parts are working in coordination, it works well.  Slows anyone uninvited down, turns them aside, stops them if they’re insistent enough to find their way to the boundary… and you’ll be alerted so you can meet them at that boundary, or flank them while they’re being turned aside.”

Verona nodded.  This was interesting.  She put up her hand.

Charles looked pained, looked at her, then Matthew, who nodded, then back to her.  “What?”

“Saw a wraith, I think, getting chewed up by being inside the perimeter.  Pretty thin and weak.  Things kicked up at the perimeter when I noticed it.”

“That’s the way it’s supposed to work.  That part of it is working fine.  For Others, it slows them down, makes them more tired, makes them need more to eat, whatever it is they eat.  For outside practitioners, it’s a little less effective, has a different influence, but it makes their practice a little less… less meaty, I suppose.  Less practical.  If they had a trick that took a word then it might take a word and a gesture or a bit of diagram to get it to come to life.  They’ll notice it but it won’t stop the determined.”

Verona nodded.

“Worth saying, that’s working but it’s only when Montague isn’t powering the boundary.  When he does, we get a different flavor of things inside Kennet.  Aggressive, a bit more power for the practitioners, especially the nastier types.”

“I wouldn’t phrase it quite that way, Charles,” Edith said, without looking at him.  “There are some practitioner types, like Matthew was, who I wouldn’t call ‘nasty’.”

“Sorry,” Charles replied, not sounding particularly sorry.  “Practices that hurt, corrupt, and take away from others or from themselves.”

So the ‘wear down invaders’ part was working.  That was interesting, about Montague.

“The second part, the barrier, it’s not working like it should.  What I originally built was like a house of cards, encircling Kennet.  It was delicate to set up but once set up it protected itself from outsiders trying to tear it down.  The skeptic came in and tore through a portion, then kicked the cards that hadn’t fallen yet to her left and right, flattening the cards.  It wasn’t actually cards, but that should give you a mental picture.”

“Could we help?” Lucy asked.

Charles’s entire tone was almost as if he wanted to die, talking about it.  Like he was deathly tired of the subject or something.  “It was mind-numbing and frustrating to set up before.  In this climate?  If you three girls dedicated a week, slept a minimum, if every Other here guarded the perimeter to avoid letting anyone in?  You’d still need a helping of luck.  Two hours of laborious work get undone if one stray echo comes through a spot with no guards, or where the guards are like our goblins, who don’t interact with echoes.  We have a lot of stray things being drawn in.”

Lucy folded her arms, frowning as she thought about it.  “So we’d need the right perimeter guards in the right places…”

“Luck, like I said.  We’d need a dry spell.  It’s building a wall of sandcastles down the length of a popular beach and we’d need a lot of people to decide not to go to the beach that weekend.  We’d need people able to spot and intercept the kids who’d come and kick it down and the people who’re so oblivious they’d walk into it.”

“Think I got it,” Lucy said.

“We have Montague.  How does that impact things?” Matthew asked, twisting around to look at Charles.

“He gives the barrier power.  No side effect I can notice, shores it up.  If we wanted to save up his power, then use him intensively in the final day, skip sleep, it’d take luck out of the equation for the last third of it.  Makes it about hard work and dealing with not having Montague while we’re saving up his power, then dealing with his side effects inside Kennet for a full day.”  Charles sounded as if he resented entertaining the idea about as much as Verona resented mowing the lawn.

“That’s something we’re prepared to do in case of a siege,” Edith said.

“I wouldn’t recommend trying to rebuild it right now.  The cost of using Montague, and you all being tired, frustrated at every small failure, you’d eat each other alive.  Or eat the trio…” Charles growled.

Snowdrop, standing beside Avery, mock-bit Avery’s arm.  Some goblins giggled, others liked Avery’s response, getting Snowdrop in a headlock for a second.

“…And then even if you finished the task, you’d have Kennet in a state, after a full day of Montague,” Charles added.

“Would you be willing to try it?” Matthew asked them.

“Three days of not going home?” Lucy asked, wincing.

“Of practice, though?” Verona asked.

“Mind-numbing, repetitive,” Charles cut in.

“I’d want to do it after- after family leaves,” Lucy said.

“It’d be better to do it soon, I think?” Edith asked.  She looked back to Charles.

“It would.  But I really wouldn’t bother,” he told them.  “We might get some security.  And we might get a powerful Other coming at the barrier with enough force to break it all over again, after that struggle.”

“It doesn’t sound worth it, from what Charles is saying,” Avery said.

“Maybe not,” Matthew said.  “If you three aren’t up for it, I won’t push you.  I just wish there was a way to make things better.”

“It’s up intermittently, it’s up all the way when Montague powers it, then slowly lowers.  At its weakest, we’ve got… imagine great big panes of glass, covering about a third of the perimeter, slowly rotating around Kennet.  Sometimes things bump into it, other times they walk through.”

“And the third protection?” Verona asked.  “Connection stuff, alarms and turning others aside?”

“Nothing,” Charles said.  “We took down what we had.  That part of it is meant to protect itself like the barrier does.  We need the wards to divert attention from the wards.  Incomplete, it’s something for people walking in the woods to find and draw attention to, which puts them close to the barrier and everything else.  It wouldn’t work anyway, way things are.”

“With things treating all roads to Kennet as downhill, wind at their backs?” Avery asked.

Charles nodded.

“Turn them aside and they continue rolling downhill right after,” Verona mused, rubbing her chin, before adding a quick, “so to speak.  What can we do?”

“Patrols add spirit and intent to what remains intact,” Charles said.

“How are we doing on that front?”

John answered like Charles had earlier: he knew his role.  “Goblins are doing a fine job of keeping an eye out.  Nibble and Chloe had a scrap with a plague doctor Other up at the top of Bowdler.  We’ve been treating the roads as the only port of entry for practitioners and potential witch hunters, and forests as the means of approach for Others, but it’s not that simple.  We’re lucky they had a nose for it.”

“Thank you,” Matthew told the ghouls.

“Give the thanks to Chloe,” Nibble said, he sounded surprisingly normal.  “She sniffed it out, thought it was food.”

“Disappointed,” Chloe uttered the word, bringing her head back to rest against Nibble’s lower body, then flopping over, arms and head draping over his leg.  Sitting a bit above her, he adjusted his grip on her, moving a leg so it crossed her stomach.

“Were you three wanting to help with patrols?” Matthew asked, looking at the three of them.

“Yes,” Verona told him.

“If it helps, and it sounds like it helps,” Lucy said.

“It helps,” John said.  “A problem we run into is that we aren’t all effective against all kinds of Other.  The goblins can’t easily deal with ghosts.  I wouldn’t pit Maricica against something mindless.”

“You can’t pit me against something mindful either.  I go where I please,” Maricica said.

“No offense meant,” John said.

“Do you three want a schedule?  Do you have anything in mind?” Matthew asked.  “Times that work?”

“Probably won’t be four in the morning,” Avery said.  “That’d be hard to explain if I got caught sneaking out.”

“We were talking by text last night,” Verona added.  “We want to meet the new Others.  If there’s ways to help we want to help.”

“Absolutely,” Lucy said.

“Like, I don’t know… is food an issue, Nibble?  Do you have a food supply set up?”

Chloe reached her claws toward Verona, groping, teeth gnashing.  It was hard to tell how much she was being ironic, but some of it was ironic.

“There is no supply for a ghoul,” Nibble answered, once he was sure Chloe wouldn’t stand and she’d settled back against him, smirking a bit.

“None?” Verona asked.

“If I may interrupt,” Matthew said.  “Sorry, we can’t dawdle or chit-chat too much.  Edith and I would like to walk and talk with you girls after we’ve closed the meeting.  We could take you along the same route Nibble and Chloe go, you can ask questions then.”

“Don’t say sorry,” Lucy said.  “Verona will ask questions for hours if she’s stuck on a topic, and this is stuff we need to know.  Tell her to shut up if it’s getting in the way.  I do.”

“I will,” Verona admitted.  She shrugged for effect.  “I’ll ask questions for hours.  Tell me to stop if you’re uncomfortable or whatever.”

“In this world, when an enemy knows you they can destroy you,” Nibble said.  “Questions are dangerous.”

It felt a bit like the new Others had been told things about them that had poisoned the waters.  Like the first impression had been made for them already.  Verona frowned.

“In this world, we’re going to be neighbors,” Lucy told him.  “We’re the practitioners of Kennet and I hope we’ll be serving you guys in some way for a good long time.  Hopefully you’re sticking around and you find… stability, I guess?  Contentment?”

“Mm,” Nibble grunted his response.  Still unhappy, still wary.

“Knowing more about you means we won’t step on your toes as much.  Hopefully,” Lucy said.

“The sun is setting and it should be dark by the time we leave,” Matthew said.  “You three girls can come with Edith and I.  Nibble, Chloe, you come with?”

Nibble nodded.

“We’ll talk patrol schedules, walking the perimeter.  Then you can meet some of the new Others and once you’ve figured out your comfort zones and theirs, you can decide how you want to handle patrols for the rest of summer.”

“And after summer?” Lucy asked.

“We’ll see, I guess.  Hopefully things calm down.  We’ll have to adjust some so we don’t impact your schooling, at the very least.”

“Ugh,” Verona muttered.

“I think a better use of our time would be to have a quick question session.  Does anyone have any questions for the three practitioners of Kennet?  Keep in mind, they’ll probably be reaching out to question you in turn.”

A few hands went up.  A lot of goblin hands.

“Polite questions,” Toadswallow clarified.

A lot of the goblin hands went down.

“Hey Nibble,” Verona addressed the ghoul with a raised hand.  “Unless you’d rather I use another name?”

“Forgot it,” Nibble said.  “Nibble’s fine.  You’re investigating the Carmine Beast, right?”

“Yes,” Lucy and Avery said, at nearly the same time.

“How’s that going?” he asked.

“That’s a loaded question, with potential culprits in this room,” Lucy said.

“Okay.  Been watching a lot of crime drama stuff. I was curious, it’s not that important to me.”

“Tashlit?” Avery asked.

Tashlit mimed, pointing at herself, then pointing at the ghouls, then Verona.

“Can Tashlit come out with us, Nibble and Chloe?” Verona asked.

“Sure.  We’ll have to drive out a short way and then we can walk the rest of the way.  It shouldn’t make too much of a difference.

“Goblins,” Lucy said.  “Give us your name while you’re at it?”

“Ramjam,” said a goblin who probably weighed about as much as a bowling ball, skinny, with a skull-like head and curling horns.  “I heard you met America Tedd.”

“Not a question,” Lucy said, “But yes.  Liberty too.”

“They’re so great,” Ramjam said.

“Still not a question, and not really, we fought- we left on okay terms.  Avery had a pretty rough fight with America.  Needed healing.”

“So lucky,” Ramjam said.

“Not really,” Avery said.

“Avery won,” Verona butted in.

“Don’t tell them that.  I don’t want to get on their bad side.”

“They respect that crap.  Right?” Verona asked.

A good few goblins nodded.

“We did pretty well in the sparring class against them,” Lucy said.

“I like sparring.” another goblin asked.  He looked mostly boneless, like a lot of lumpy crap stuffed into a skin suit the proportions of a short human.  He slapped his chest and an egg-shaped lump slid from beneath his hand to his armpit.  “Humpydump.  I want to know about the sparring.”

“Let’s keep this a Q and A,” Matthew said.

“Were there spikes?” Humpydump asked.

“There were some spikes,” Avery said.  She frowed.  “Kind of.”

“Were there explosions?”

“Lots,” Verona said.

“Let’s stay on track,” Matthew said, looking rather exhausted.  “Let’s keep questions relevant to Kennet.”

“Will you spar in Kennet?”  Humpydump asked.

Verona saw Lucy glance at Guilherme, who nodded.  “Yes.”

“More relevant to the perimeter, and keeping Kennet safe,” Matthew said, leaning forward and bringing his hands to his face, rubbing.

“Do you have a plan?” Lis asked.  Her expression, pose, and position in the room were serious, dark, intent.

Lucy shook her head.  “Melissa, helping patrol, trying to find a way to shore up the perimeter, maybe trying to identify these new Others.  Continuing some stuff with the Carmine Beast.”

“That may only be so we can tell people we are, maybe turn away some practitioners,” Verona added.

Lucy gave her a look.  Verona shrugged.

“Some stuff,” Lucy clarified.

Maricica was smirking.

Pretty thin, yeah, but they didn’t need to broadcast they were still intent on this.

“Helping out you guys.  Finding stability.  Cool stuff,” Avery said.

The radio atop the television buzzed, as the television flickered.  They looked, and Montague retreated back into the television.

An old-timey black and white advertisement of a young girl holding her hands to her cheeks, miming surprise, while a man in a waistcoat flourished a bow, holding out a small, gift-wrapped box.  His face was a bloody ruined mess and the blood ran down the television screen to the floor, going from black and white to red as it did.

“Gifts?” Avery asked.

“If you were human, you’d be the kind of kid who reminds the teacher they need to assign homework, wouldn’t you?” Ken asked.

“We told them that it would be fair for you to ask for gifts for the service you do Kennet,” Edith said.  “But the terms of this are different.  When we invited you to be practitioners, we made the invitation with certain needs in mind.”

“Some, even many of these Others want to be left alone,” Matthew said.  “If you wanted to minimize your responsibilities to them, they could hold off on the gifts, and that simplifies things a great deal.  Alternatively, you could make individual deals, a favor for a gift.  Or you could simply demand what you’re due.”

“That feels a bit… not great,” Lucy said.  “Like you’re putting us on the spot.”

“We are.  The new Others are taking on significant responsibilities, their powers are being drained, or they’re fighting to defend this place,” Edith said.  “That could be considered a gift of sorts.”

“There’s no way to argue this point without sounding like an asshole,” Lucy said.  “I don’t even care that much about the gifts-”

“I do,” Verona interjected.  “Gifts are cool, not that I’m going to twist your arm about it.”

“-but I do care that I’m being put in this position.  We didn’t ask, Montague offered.  And now we’re being made to look like bad guys for even entertaining it.  This sucks, you guys, and it sucks because you’re making it suck, and I don’t know why you’re doing that.”

“I want to get stronger,” Avery said.  “And I want to get stronger because I want to protect my family and protect Kennet and protect you guys.”

If you’re on the level,” Lucy added.

“May I make a suggestion?” Guilherme asked.

“Please,” Lucy said.  “Anything but this current line of conversation.”

“We protect Kennet to receive the protection of living in Kennet.  That’s the deal we entered here at its core.  Any deal with you three is secondary.  We get benefits from you three stepping in to deal with the likes of Nicolette, Zed, Bristow, or Alexander.  Befriending the first two and convincing them to stay away.  Helping to arrange the removal of the other two.”

Maricica tittered.  Verona was reminded of how she’d laughed in the classroom, while they’d been questioned.

“I wanted to change the topic, but not to this,” Lucy said.

“If any deal with you is secondary, make them explicitly so.  You’ll meet each of the new recruits, possibly excepting Crooked Rook.”

“I want to meet her too,” Lucy said.

“Then Maricica or I will let her know.  My point is, make it explicit when you meet them.  If you can help the new Others, you can ask a gift.  Fair and equitable.”

“That sounds decent,” Avery said.  “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Verona said, smiling.

Lucy nodded, but added, “Thank you, Guilherme.  I don’t like how this was framed, Matthew, Edith.”

“So you’ve said,” Edith replied.  “I don’t think Matthew meant any ill-will.  Right now we’re trying to be as fair as possible to the new Others.  We’re still learning of concerns, sensitivities, past traumas.  Be patient.”

“Be fair to us too,” Lucy said.  “We don’t have any interest in enslaving, or taking over, or anything like that.  Go easy on us.”

“Let’s wrap up here, talk on our walk, then.”

Lucy nodded.

“Questions?  Anything?” Edith asked the room.  “Cig?”

She adjusted the ashtray.  The cigarette rolled slightly.

“That’s a no from Cig,” Matthew said.

“Um,” Avery said, raising a hand.

“Avery?  If it can wait, we can discuss-”

She shook her head.

“Ask.”

“I’d like to formally announce my intention to do the familiar ritual with Snowdrop.  I know it’s not the best shortcut to power, but if it keeps her around for longer than the usual four or five years of an opossum’s lifespan then I think that it’s something I really gotta do.”

“You gotta,” Snowdrop said.

“I gotta,” Avery said, insistent.

“Do you need anything?” Matthew asked.

“Just Snowdrop,” Avery said.  “Um, but that’s not all of it.”

“What else?”

“About Raymond, we talked about him earlier, he wants to meet Charles.  And about Zed, and about Nicolette, and even Jessica Casabien.  We’d like to stay in touch with them.  I know people won’t be cool about them sticking their nose into things-”

“We won’t stand in the way of your communications with them,” Matthew said.

“I’d like to get the okay to invite them to Kennet.  We can get them to agree to stay quiet, I think, and not interfere.  But when it comes to stuff like the wards, or finding the Others, I think they could be big helps.”

Verona’s eyebrows went up.  She looked around he room and ‘not cool’ was an understatement.

Even Maricica wasn’t smiling.  Toadswallow looked serious.

“Girls, I don’t think that works,” Edith said.  “That may interfere with the idea of what Kennet is.”

Avery glanced at Verona, and that glance was like a plea for help.  She did, presumably, the same to Lucy.

We interfere with the idea of what Kennet is,” Verona said.  “By being here, by being practitioners in this no-practitioner zone.”

“All the same.”

Lucy spoke up, “If that exception exists, then exceptions for guests can exist.”

“They may even make this place stronger against intrusion,” Verona pointed out, before anyone could interject.  “If we set the expectation of having no practitioners except those who respect the town and its Others then a practitioner slipping in like those alchemists did doesn’t defy Kennet.”

“At least until they make it clear they won’t respect the place,” Ken said.

“Exactly, yes,” Verona said.

“That’s a slippery slope, girls,” Lis said.

“Only if we let it be,” Lucy said.  “I think it’s good to keep doors open.”

“We’ll discuss it,” Matthew said, his voice firm.  “We’ll hold another meeting tomorrow night.  If you girls could patrol alongside any Others who don’t want to add to this conversation at that time, it would be a load off our minds.”

We’re not invited to that meeting, it seems.

But Lucy nodded, so Verona did too.

Verona was really curious what had prompted Avery to bring that up.

“Goblins, you’re on patrol, west side.  Circle south, spread out, cut through lower Kennet, see if you can’t identify anything about our quiet intruders.  John?  You’ll also patrol?”

John nodded.  “I’ll take Doglick and Ram.”

Doglick yipped.

“Everyone else, enjoy your evenings.  Nibble, can you take Chloe out for a walk at the perimeter when the goblins are done?  Guilherme, north to east?  See about Rook while you’re at it?”

“I’ve told you we shouldn’t have too set a pattern,” John said.

“Then handle or pace it how you see fit,” Matthew said, rubbing his face again.  “Thank you, everyone.”

The Others picked themselves up.  Jabber gabbled and nammered on as smaller goblins pounced on him and rode him.

“Take Jabber to the back room, please!  Not outside!  John, would you look after Montague?”

The television was bleeding upward, drips extending up to the radio, surrounding it.  It shuddered, sputtered with radio static, and then turned from a brown encasement to a textured crimson one, like blood had dried over the plastic.  The antennae bent and jerked, splintering to have needle-like and iron-filing spikes sticking out from it.  Backwards singing began to play from it.

So cool.  Verona watched as John picked it up and carried it outside, where Cherrypop clamored for an update.

“Hold my hand, Chloe.  Don’t let go,” Nibble said, as he moved to let her stand.  She held his hand firm, and leaned into him.

“Hey, Tashlit.  Glad to see a friendlier face,” Verona murmured, looking up as yellow irises on black eyeballs looked down from Tashlit’s ‘face’ to her.  “I like the shirt.  Teal suits you.”

Tashlit pointed at Edith.  Edith wouldn’t have worn something like that, Verona mused, so that meant…

“Edith bought it for you?  That’s so nice.”

Tashlit nodded.

“Avery said your place was a fixer upper.  Is there anything I can do about that?”

Tashlit shrugged.

“Okay, well, I want to.  Avery said you had music.  That something you’re into?”

Nods.

“I’ve got tons of music,” Lucy said.  “What format, and what kind?”

“She had a CD player,” Avery said.  “It was latin chanty sort of rock.”

“I want to hear this now,” Verona added.

Tashlit nodded.

“Hey, so listen, did you want to come to ask for something, or to tell us something, or-”

Tashlit was shaking her head.

“Just to hang?”

Nod.

Edith made a hand gesure, and candles went out.  Matthew locked the back door.  It made the inside very dark.

“Cool, great.  How are you for heat at your place?  Is that an issue?”

“I brought that up,” Avery said.

Tashlit put two fingers together.

Verona nodded.  “Small issue.  Really?  I guess if you’re into water, you’d need something.”

Tashlit pulled at the skin of her face, moving it aside.

“And you’ve got loose skin.  Barely attached skin, barely feel it?”

Tashlit nodded.

“Cool, cool.  Makes sense.”

“Garage is through here,” Matthew said.  “Tashlit got a ride early, while it was quiet, sat on the patio.  Do you girls want to ride in the truck bed?  I’m not sure if you’d need to do a connection block.”

“Easy enough,” Verona told him.

“Tell us through the window when you’re set.”

“Go in first, Tash,” Nibble said.  “It’s best if I sit between you and Chloe so she doesn’t try chewing on your skin again.”

“Jerk,” Chloe told him.

Tashlit gave him a thumbs up.

It took them a minute to get sorted.  Avery leaned around and tinted the windows with glamour, to better hide Tashlit, while Verona did the connection block, to ward off any cops who might take issue with them riding illegally.  Warding off family, siblings, teachers…

She knocked on the window.  “Good to go!”

The garage door opened, and they pulled out.

The extra precautions didn’t really wind up mattering.  They didn’t see any cars on the road, nobody was in a position to look through the windows, and the ride wasn’t that long.  Just a bit south, to the bottom end of the residential area, where it started to segue into the older factories and buildings.  A few blocks closer to the river and they’d be near where John was holed up.  South of that point was the hidden cave by the riverside where the Faerie were.

They stop by a hiking trail.  The three of them hopped out, while Matthew and Edith climbed out.

“Coast is clear,” Matthew said.  “Not seeing anyone or anything.”

Matthew and Edith moved the front seats so the Others in the back could squeeze out.

Chloe shied back from the sky, which was more purple than anything, the sun well on its way to setting.  Nibble didn’t seem so bothered.

Reacting that way to light when there was barely any light at all.

“Let’s get that sweater off,” Nibble said.

“I like it,” Chloe said.  “Reminds me of when I was human.”

“I know that, but wearing a sweater in summertime gets weird looks if any bystanders see us from a distance,” Nibble told her.  “Come on, arms up.  Duck hands.”

“Can they be dead ducks?” Chloe asked.

“Only if they’re stiff enough to be dead ducks that keep their heads upright.  I don’t want to tear your sweater on your claws.”

“You girls wanted to talk to these two, so Edith and I are going to walk ahead,” Matthew said.  “We’ll signal if anyone comes the opposite way.  Keep an eye on your tail for any bikers.  Not that I think anyone takes this route on a bike.”

“Watch for tree roots, tripping hazard.  Be-” Edith paused, glancing at Chloe, who had the sweater up around her head and armpits now, “-safe.”

“Got it,” Lucy answered.

Nibble pulled off Chloe’s sweater, then sorted out her t-shirt, tugging it down.  He balled up the shirt, then used the claws of one hand to comb at her hair where it had pulled loose of the ponytail.  It draped across her face and she smiled, showing off the jagged teeth.

Verona smiled back.

“That meeting didn’t feel like it went well, and I don’t really get why,” Lucy said.

“No snacks,” Chloe muttered.

“Chloe has a bit less of a one-track mind when she’s had something to eat recently,” Nibble said.  He tied Chloe’s sweater around her waist, then combed her hair back from her face with his claws.  She leaned in and gave him a peck on the lips.  “As for the meeting…”

“Night and day from what our first meeting with the Others was like,” Avery said.

“The difference is the Others knew of you before that meeting.  Came to terms with you, discussed you.  For us, you were an afterthought.”

“That’s on Matthew and Edith, huh?” Lucy asked.

“Some,” Nibble said.  “Walk on the left side of me, Chloe.  You girls on the right.”

“Sure,” Verona said.

“What were we talking about in the middle of the meeting?”

“You were saying you had difficulties with food supply?” Verona asked.

“Sure,” he replied.  “No grocery store to go to.  No place you can regularly find bodies, safe and easy.  When John goes on patrol he can sometimes put a bullet in an animal.”

“Which isn’t ideal, right?” Verona asked.

“I forgot Matthew said you did research.”

“Damn straight.”

“Yeah.  Good to know some of that.  About Faith.”

“Poor Faith,” Chloe said.

“Poor Faith,” Nibble added, voice soft.

“What are the requirements like?  How much do you need?”

“Human corpse every two weeks.”

“Each?” Lucy asked.

Nibble shrugged.  “I get by with less.  I’m thinking of Chloe’s needs, here.  If it’s not human, it’s closer to needing one animal every day or two.  Bit more infrequent if it’s a big meal like a deer or something, maybe three animals if it’s birds.  I know some ghouls kill and eat bugs, but at that point it’s something you’re doing every hour of every day.”

“It tastes bad,” Chloe said.  “Animals.  I don’t eat bugs.”

“Tastes a heck of a lot better than losing humanity,” he said.  “Bugs or animals.”

“Scary,” Avery said.  “My grandfather’s had strokes and it takes so much away from him and his abilities, and I think that might be similar-”

“Might be.  But he has doctors, hospitals, right?”

“Yeah,” Avery said.  “Family.”

“He has resources.  The resources are against us.  And when they do exist, if we fight for something or scrabble together a working solution, it doesn’t last.  Outside of a place like this town, practitioners and witch hunters corner us out of some of the ways of getting food.  Because they use it for magic or because they want to starve us out.”

“But that makes you more feral?” Verona asked.

“It makes us dumber, costs us memories, scattershot, pure chance if it’s a memory of something stupid or a core memory.  It regresses us, takes away our understanding of how the world works.  If we don’t have a steady supply, we lose humanity, gain weaknesses.  Opposite if we eat well, but we almost never do.  Our paramour, Faith, she was spawn of a ghoul who ate the freshly dead every day.  He could go out in the sun, pass as human, had all the strengths of a ghoul.  Claws and teeth when he needed them.”

“I miss Faith,” Chloe said.

“I know, babe.  Look, if we don’t eat, it’s the opposite.  We eventually lose our minds.  All of the weaknesses of being ghoul or human, none of the benefits.  Our fangs fall out, our claws break away, we rot fast in some dark place people don’t go and they chalk us up as dead junkies and homeless.  If they ever find us.”

“So what do you do?” Lucy asked.

“I dunno.  I don’t know.”

“Work out a system?” Verona asked.

He shook his head.  “No systems.  Remember, resources are against us.  Even in a place like this, removing that problem of witch hunters and practitioners- hopefully removing that problem, a steady supply of dead bodies isn’t easy to find.  Grave robbing is a lot more effort than you’d think, and many graves are protected by faith, ritual, or both.  Some ghouls like Faith’s old sire find people willing to give away ‘medical cadavers’ off the books, or sell bodies instead of cremating them, but the kinds of human who facilitates that get arrested.  You always wonder when that supply of food will stop and then you’re scrambling again.  Not that you aren’t scrambling to get the money to pay the girl at the crematorium or the cadaver guy.”

“Don’t become a ghoul, Verona,” Avery said.

“I’m not gonna.  I’m not even thinking about that.  I’m thinking about the problem these guys have and how to fix it.  How do we get them meals without issues?”

“I like you,” Chloe said.  “I like the way you think and what you think about.”

“Food?” Avery asked.

Chloe nodded with enthusiasm.

“Hopefully we can figure something out for you guys,” Verona said.

“Yeah,” Nibble replied, but he didn’t look pleased or grateful.

Which went back to how weird the meeting was.  Verona glanced at Lucy, who frowned.  She looked back at Tashlit and Snowdrop, then nearly tripped over a tree root because she wasn’t looking where she was going.  Avery caught her arm.

“Thank you for telling us stuff,” Lucy said.  “I know you were a little wary.”

“You told us stuff about Faith, and how she operated, and how Chloe functions, maybe.”

“I barely function!” Chloe said,   Near Death Experience ghouls and… curse ghouls?”

“Something like that,” Verona said.

“If I’d known more I could have saved Faith.”

Chloe bumped into Nibble, wrapping arms around his body, making him stumble.  As the two of them veered right, Chloe’s claw went out, groping blindly.  Verona stepped back out of the way of it.

Chloe peeked around Nibble back, smiling mischievously as she walked while hugging him.  Like it had been a joke.  But the degree to which it was a joke was kind of in the air.

“Easy does it there, Chloe,” Lucy said.

“Is she- be good, Chloe,” Nibble said, sighing, and adjusting Chloe so she wasn’t peering at them.  “This is why I worry.”

“It seems like a lot,” Avery said.

“It is.  I used to be… kind of fun, I guess.  I might be editing my memories there.  I used to be a loser.  I think my family had money, they left me money when they all passed, all at once.  I stopped living life, ended up like this.  But I used to be easygoing and now I don’t get the chance.”

“Sorry,” Verona said, quiet.

“I love this girl, and that’s love, isn’t it?  You stand by those you love.  Sickness or in health.”

The three of them nodded.

It was hard to really add anything to that.  They walked for a minute, avoiding the tree roots, which wasn’t super easy in the dark.  Verona used her Sight to see in the dark.

Lucy put on her mask.

In the back, Snowdrop chattered at Tashlit, “I don’t even get to be an honorary goblin.  They’re so mean to me, they don’t share any of their snacks!”

“I think part of what Matthew and Edith were doing was covering for Chloe,” Nibble said.

“Take off your sweater, Chloe, it’s not good to wear sweaters in summertime,” Chloe said.  “Now I need covering again.  Make more sense, Nibs.  Do I need covering up or not?”

“You know what I mean, you aren’t that far gone,” he said.

“Yet.”

Verona glanced at Lucy and Avery, biting her tongue.

In the back, Snowdrop went on, “had to tell Bangnut that no, obviously an opossum high score can’t be how much trash blows out of your rear end when you get hit by a car.”

“Snowdrop, geez, what are you telling poor Tashlit?” Avery asked.

Verona smiled.

In the chatter that followed, Snowdrop talking to Avery while the two of them tried badly to interpret Tashlit’s gestures, it was almost impossible to hear Nibble’s, “Yeah, yet” response.

It felt like adding anything to that or saying anything would be intruding.  They walked down the forest path, stepping over branches, clumps of weed, and roots.  Nibble and Chloe’s irises were pale discs in the gloom, like faded moons in the darkness.

Matthew and Edith waited out where the path ended.  The way they’d taken was a serious detour, a curving path that took them away from the town, then back.  The four-lane road that cut north-south through eastern Kennet ran alongside the space.

Nibble stopped, an arm around Chloe, and turned to face them.  Lucy, Avery, and Verona stopped.

“They were covering for us.  I keep an eye on Chloe, but I don’t know what happens if she has a bad day.  If she goes feral, if she breaks away.  I don’t think we can make oaths swearing it won’t happen.  They’re helping us, protecting us, supplying food sometimes, I’m being careful, Chloe’s… putting in an effort.  You might be able to have more of a conversation with her and see that effort when she’s eaten properly.  But…”

“You can’t promise a mistake won’t happen?” Lucy asked.

“I think there are a lot of cases like that.  A lot of us… we haven’t lived in this cozy town for long at all.  Not like your original Others did.  That pushback, that worry, it’s because we don’t know you and a lot of our situations are messy.”

“We have people we care about just as much as you care about Chloe or Faith,” Lucy said.  “If something happened to them… that’s nightmare material, as far as I’m concerned.  If someone like Chloe hurt them…  just about everyone in Kennet’s precious to someone, like that, aren’t they?”

“Do you have a solution?” he asked.

She shook her head.  “Not a good one.”

“Got a bad one?” he asked.  “I might take it.”

“Binding Chloe?  Just so you know, I feel pretty gross suggesting it, but maybe in a situation where she wasn’t Chloe anymore…”

“Still pretty bad,” he said.  “What about you guys going hands off?  Ignoring us?”

“Pretty bad,” Lucy echoed him.

“Yeah,” he replied, nodding.  He pulled off his beanie hat and stuffed it into a pocket, and combed the claws of one hand through hair, still holding onto Chloe with the other.

“If we found a food supply…” Verona ventured.

“If you can that’s great.  But it’s harder than it sounds.  I think we’re going to go.  We live just down there, in the old factory.  Set up a nook.  Going to watch a movie, I think.”

“Needs to have the high frames,” Chloe said.  “My eyes can’t see it right if it doesn’t refresh the frames.”

“Yeah, got that covered,” he said.  To the three of them, he said, “No hard feelings?  We okay?’

Verona nodded, as did Lucy and Avery.

“Good.  I’ll figure out something to give you for a gift if you can help sort out the situation.  Might be a temporary gift, because the sorting out is rarely permanent.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “The gifts really aren’t important to me.”

“It’s the situation of all that and how it was framed.  I get it,” Nibble said.  “I get bad situations.”

Lucy nodded.

He raised a claw in a wave, leading Chloe down the sloped bit of grass.  He exchanged a couple words with Matthew and Edith on the way.

Verona and the rest of their group trailed a bit behind, giving the pair space to walk off.

“Will them being here be a problem?” Matthew asked, as they walked over.

“I don’t think so.  Them being elsewhere seems like it’d be a bigger problem for others,” Lucy said.

“Reminds me of where I was, fresh to Edith’s body, being chased by the doom,” Edith said.

“Sucks,” Avery said.  “That whole thing.”

“They’re good at heart, even if those hearts don’t beat,” Matthew said.  “It’s good you got the chance to talk.”

“What do you think?” Edith asked.

“Of?”

She swept her arm out.

Verona took a step aside, then looked.  They were on a triangular bit of grass, a short cliff up from the four-lane road, which was pretty quiet.  The view was just such that they could see over old buildings, factories, and things to the water.

“Kennet?” Avery asked.

“Here, specifically.  This,” Edith told them.

Verona looked down.  Looked around at the grass, which needed a bit of mowing, had some weeds.  A few divots where something like groundhogs had dug through.  A few trees stood at the back.

Verona took stock of it.

“For the Demesnse?” she asked.

Edith nodded.

“It isn’t pretty but that can be fixed,” Matthew said.  “A colleague who works with me at Buckheed can bring in some dirt, rent a small dozer and push some dirt around to flatten it if you want.  It’s big and it would be yours, if you want it.  The amount of space you start with is pretty important.”

“If I’m taking the familiar, then this would be yours, Ronnie,” Avery said.

“Just like that?  No strings attached?”

“Do what you’re doing,” Matthew said.  “We’ll figure out our end.  Outside of that, no strings attached.”

It was a nice view.  That was important too.  Quiet.  Most traffic went east-west or vice-versa, up at the north end of town.

“Don’t do what that lady in chapter nine of the Demesnes textbook did,” Lucy said.

“But it’s my space.”

“That you’d be sharing.  Seriously, Ronnie.”

Settling down, locking an area down as her own for life, taking on that as a responsibility and investment… it felt like a lot, somehow.  Heavy.

“Are you okay with this?” she asked.  “Spending the money to buy it, gifting it… you bought Tashlit’s shirt… I worry-”

“That’s for us to concern ourselves with.  It’s in our price range,” Edith said.  “For you three, there are things you can do if you have a place of power here, negotiated fairly.  If you want it.”

Verona hesitated.  She glanced at the others.

“It’s up to you, Ronnie.  If it doesn’t feel right, it doesn’t feel right,” Lucy said.

“It’d be cool to have a clubhouse,” Avery said.

“Too unfriendly to wildlife, I don’t like it,” Snowdrop added.

Tashlit gave her a thumbs up.

Verona frowned, digesting, and she couldn’t shake the thoughts that plagued her.  It wasn’t that it didn’t feel right, but… she didn’t feel right.

Maybe she needed to visualize what she wanted her Demesne to end up as, first.

Or to figure out what she wanted to end up as, first.

“Can I think about it?”

“Sure, of course.  This spot hasn’t sold for a while so I don’t think it will get stolen out from under you,” Matthew said.

Verona nodded.

Edith walked a few steps away to light up a cigarette.  She moved to stand downwind.

“Do you want a ride back?” he asked.

Verona walked a few steps to the side, walked back, then plunked herself down.  “I can turn into a bird to fly back home.”

“Lucy, Avery?”

“I’m going to go stop in to see Guilherme about sparring and stuff,” Lucy said.  “Gotta figure out how to work with my earring.”

“Snow and I have the black rope.”

“Good.  That makes my life easier.  Tashlit?”

Tashlit sat down beside Verona.

“Much easier, then.  Be safe, getting back to your place.  Maybe you could escort her, Verona?  While flying?”

Verona nodded.  Tashlit gave a thumbs-up.

“See you soon, then.  I’ll be in touch after talking to the Others tomorrow night.”

“Thanks, you guys,” Verona said.  “For taking the time.”

“I think the initial step’s one of the hardest, with this sort of thing,” he told her.

“We appreciate it,” Lucy told him.

He nodded, and then he and Edith walked the path.  They didn’t have to go through the forest- there was a way to walk by the road, but they took that route.  Darker and wooded.

Verona sat for a while, Tashlit beside her.  There was some light talk.  Avery went over the notes they had on the Demesne ritual.  Stuff they had to do, stuff they’d have to specify.

Lucy talked about Booker, which was nice.

Verona hinted at some of the Jeremy stuff, with Tashlit leaning in, good for gossip and vicarious boy stuff.

Then Avery had to go home.  Curfew.  Lucy did the same.

And Verona sat for another hour on the grass, Tashlit quiet beside her, looking out over Kennet, bloody, the perimeter ragged and periodically kicking to life.  Would it always be like this?  If the culprit won the throne, would they keep it this way, the perimeter rough, the town darker than it should be?

Like how the ghouls had to be constantly vigilant or they’d descend into their own darkness?  A Death past undeath?  More or less irrevocable?

Tashlit was changing, Avery had said.  Every change in that direction and there was no going back to the person she’d been.  Sometimes it happened all at once, like her initial change before she’d gone to her dad.

Even the stupid Barney thing, it had sounded like it was temporary, a bit of Otherness to wear for a while, but it sounded like going through that whole thing meant that a lot of them couldn’t be Barneys anymore, that they’d leave the drinking or drugs behind.

This would be a corner of the town just for her.  Maybe a screwed up town with a lot of issues, ghouls who needed help, and a spirit representing the average resident of the town… who looked a scary amount like her dad.  Longer hair, more blue collar, but that look on his face… she’d be making the call to set up shop here and it would be a call she made for life.

Permanence was scary.  The steps they couldn’t take back.

Bristow.

The things they couldn’t undo.